Nick Kendall, violin; Charles Yang, violin; Ranaan Meyer, double bass
Bonded by an uncommon blend of instruments and vocals, Charles Yang (violin), Nick Kendall (violin), and Ranaan Meyer (double bass), have found a unique voice of expression. To experience Time For Three live is to hear the various eras, styles, and traditions of Western music fold in on themselves and emerge anew.
Earning praise from NPR, NBC, and The Wall Street Journal, Time For Three is renowned for their charismatic and energetic performances in venues including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and The Royal Albert Hall. In 2020, the band partnered with cellist and composer Ben Sollee to put together the soundtrack to the new Focus Features’ film Land, starring and directed by Robin Wright. The film first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 31, 2021. They have collaborated with artists as diverse as Ben Folds, Branford Marsalis, and Joshua Bell, and have premiered original works by composers Chris Brubeck and Pulitzer Prize-winners Jennifer Higdon and William Bolcom. Their most recent commission by Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts, Contact, will be premiered with the San Francisco Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra in summer 2022. This concerto will be featured on their new album, Letters for the Future, alongside Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto 4-3, to be released June 2022 on Deutsche Grammophon.
Oleksiy has built a freelance performing and teaching career in New York City. Originally from Ukraine, Oleksiy’s credentials include receiving a master’s degree from The Julliard School, a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin Conservatory, and a post-graduate diploma in orchestral performance from Manhattan School of Music. From 2009 to 2015, he held the positions of acting associate principal bassoon with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and second bassoon with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. His festival participation includes Verbier and Schleswig-Holstein. Oleksiy is also a bassoon technician and specialist and typically spends his free time servicing, restoring, and repairing instruments on the East Coast.
Upcoming Performances:
Sept 1 – House Concert: There Will Always Be Paris
Sept 2 – Music Hike I: Winds in the Canyon
Sept 4 – Rocky Mountain Power Community Concert
Sept 7 – Grotto II: Winds on the River
Alice has been hailed for her sensitive musicianship, expressive nuance, and passionate commitment to teaching. She is Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director of the Denver Chamber Music Festival. She is a sought-after chamber musician and has performed with distinguished artists including Itzhak Perlman, Mitsuko Uchida, Dénes Varjon, Donald Weilerstein, Pamela Frank, Miriam Fried, Midori Goto, Kim Kashkashian, Jonathan Biss, and members of the Cleveland, Guarneri, Takacs, and Juilliard Quartets. Festival appearances include the Marlboro, Moab, and Ravinia Music Festivals, Music@Menlo, Yellow Barn, Caramoor, Perlman Music Program, VIVO Music Festival, Olympic Music Festival, and IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music. She regularly appears on tour with Musicians from Marlboro and premiere ensembles including the New York Classical Players, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, and Grammy-nominated ensembles A Far Cry, The Knights, and Metropolis Ensemble. Passionate for new music, Alice has worked closely with composers Sophia Gubaidulina, Jennifer Hidgon, György Kurtág, Paul Wiankco, and John Harbison. She has given world premieres of acclaimed composers Samuel Carl Adams and Andy Akiho at Carnegie Hall. Recent recordings include Pierre Jalbert’s String Trio for Music at Copland House, music of the Tonight Show band The Roots, and works by Andy Akiho and Derek Bermel. Alice is currently on the chamber music faculty at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. A native of Bozeman, Montana, Alice lives in Denver and plays on a cello made in 2018 by Ryan Soltis.
Upcoming Performances:
Sep 7 – Music Hike III: Unusual Quartets–Sacred and Profane
Charles “plays classical violin with the charisma of a rock star” (Boston Globe). He received the Leonard Bernstein Award in 2018. The Juilliard graduate has performed as a soloist with orchestras and in concert in the United States, Europe, Brazil, Russia, China, and Taiwan. In 2016 Charles joined the crossover string band, Time for Three. His improvisational abilities on violin, electric violin, and as a vocalist have led him to featured performances in the Aspen, Moab, Schleswig-Holstein, Ravinia, and Crested Butte Music Festivals, the Cayman Arts Festival, the YouTube Music Awards, TED, Caramoor, the EG Conference, Google Zeitgeist, Interlochen, and onstage at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House, David H. Koch Theater, Dizzy’s, David Rubinstein Atrium, The Long Center, Rudolfinum, The Royal Danish Theatre, Le Poisson Rouge, Highline Ballroom, Ars Nova, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Forbidden City in Beijing among many others. He has shared the stage with artists including Peter Dugan, CDZA, Steve Miller, Jesse Colin Young, Jake Shimabukuro, Ray Benson, Michael Gordon, Marcelo Gomes, Savion Glover, Twyla Tharp, Misty Copeland, and Jon Batiste. The Texas Observer has noted, “Mr. Yang is a true crossover artist, a pioneer who can hop between classical and popular music and bring fresh ideas to fans of both genres. Rather than maintaining an insular focus and simply assuming that an audience for classical music will always exist, he wants to actively create that audience, to persuade and seduce others into enjoying a type of music as passionately as he does.”
With virtuosity and “enviable idiomatic rigor” (The Wall Street Journal) at the service of “pure poetry” (Seen and Heard International), pianist Derek Wang is drawing increasing acclaim in the roles of soloist, collaborator, curator, and communicator.
A proponent of the music of Franz Liszt, Derek was awarded second prize at the 12th International Liszt Competition (Liszt Utrecht) in the Netherlands in 2022, which followed on the heels of first prize at the inaugural New York Liszt Competition in 2021. He held a three-summer-long fellowship position as pianist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival, performing a total of over fifty works of the 20th and 21st centuries. In 2025, Derek began a role as Creative Enterprise Fellow at Juilliard, curating a range of programs including sesquicentennial celebrations of composer Charles Ives and poet Rainer Maria Rilke, an interdisciplinary program interweaving ecological texts with George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale), and an all-Philip Glass marathon concert on the composer’s 88th birthday.
Derek holds degrees from Juilliard and from the Yale School of Music. His principal teachers have included Stephen Hough, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Matti Raekallio, and Boris Slutsky. He continues his studies at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover, Germany in the studio of Arie Vardi. derek-wang.com
Upcoming Performances:
Sep 7 – The Promise of Peace
Sep 9 – Grotto III: Manouche!
Frank is one of the most popular and sought after guitarists on the international music scene. His dynamic genre-spanning music has brought him to 21 countries on three continents – and still growing – performing in some of the world’s most illustrious venues, including the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, New York’s Lincoln Center, The Blue Note, and the world’s oldest indoor concert hall, Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy.
Frank has recorded over 30 CDs as a leader and has been a guest on hundreds of recordings. He has written over 18 educational music books, recorded the critically acclaimed, “Vignola Plays Gershwin” CD, and recorded 2 DVDs for Mel Bay Publications. He has also produced 42 full length video teaching courses for TrueFire.com, for all levels. His online One on One private lessons and Jazz Studio continue to thrive, having reached thousands of jazz guitar enthusiasts throughout the globe.
Upcoming Performances:
Sep 7 – Floating Concert II: Ala Django
Sep 8 – House Benefit Concert: An Intimate Evening with Inon Barnatan & Frank Vignola
Sep 9 – Grotto III: Manouche!
Jason is a Grammy-winner described by NPR as “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation”. His multiple appearances for San Francisco Performances, Caramoor Festival, Ravinia Festival, PCMS, 92Y, etc., have cemented his reputation as one of the world’s leading guitarists. Overseas performance venues include Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Concert Hall, Sala Sao Paolo, and Teatro Colon. Jason has performed as soloist with over 100 orchestras, including Cleveland, Toronto, Houston, Nashville, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s, working with conductors such as Giancarlo Guererro, Jahja Ling, Gerard Schwarz, and Michael Stern.
Recent recordings include his long-awaited “Bach Volume 2: Works for Violin” on Azica Records, “Shining Night”, featuring his duo with violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, and Michael Fine’s “Concierto del Luna” for flute and guitar (with flutist Alexa Still) on Sony Classical. Jason also recorded Pat Metheny’s “Four Paths of Light”, a solo work dedicated to him by Pat, for Metheny’s 2021 album “Road To The Sun”.
Jason has performed world premieres from composers Jeff Beal, Avner Dorman, Vivian Fung, Pierre Jalbert, Jonathan Leshnoff, David Ludwig, Mark Mancina, and Dan Visconti, among others. Of his Grammy-winning 2014 solo album “Play”, HuffPost declared that “Play” is “part of the revitalized interest in the classical guitar.”
Jason’s regular collaborators include Escher String Quartet, Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, Grammy-nominated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro, and violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. He holds faculty positions at Curtis Institute of Music and Cleveland Institute of Music.
I am 26 years old and Navajo/Dine. I have been hoop dancing for 8 years and performed at the National Museum of the American Indian Smithsonian in Washington D.C and New York City. I have also performed for the tire company Big O Tires Corporation in Moab, UT. I have been on a TV commercial with a TV brand called Phillips TV. I have also been on a music video with Hip Hop artist “Taboo”, a member of the Black Eyed Peas. I did a week performance in Dubai at the 2020 Dubai World Expo showcasing our World Class Hoop Dancing. The hoop dance has gotten so competitive that now there’s a Worlds Championship Hoop Dance Contest, held every year in downtown Phoenix. Tribes from all of North America come to this competition to compete for the world title of hoop dancing. I am the 2022 top 6 hoop dancer in the world.
Hoop Dancing to me means that I am able to dance for those who can’t. The hoop dance is a healing and storytelling dance. I like to tell the story about the history of the Native American Race of what our ancestors went through. On the Navajo Nation in the late 1800s Navajos were forced to go to boarding schools “until we learned to live like the white men”. So they took away our long hair, our cultural dancing, and told us not to speak Navajo. So when I do hoop dance or speak Navajo, I dance for those who were told they couldn’t.
Nathan is a guitarist, arranger, singer, and band leader based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Whether it’s hot jazz, classical, American old-time, bluegrass, roots country, or an artistic blend of all the above, his music is deeply rooted in a love for acoustic music styles and traditions. A regular on the Utah acoustic music scene, he has performed thousands of gigs all throughout the state and beyond on stages big and small.
After graduating in 2015 from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in jazz performance, Nathan immersed himself in the music of Django Reinhardt. Traveling extensively through Western Europe and Canada to study with many of the greatest masters of the hot-club style, he brought the acquired skills home and put them to work with his band, Hot House West. Combining intricately arranged horns with the explosive virtuosity and beautiful improvisations of Django-inspired hot jazz, Hot House West has carved out a niche in the style “that is both readily accessible and deeply sophisticated.”
Upcoming Performances:
Sept 3 – Water World: Rivers, Bridges, Droughts, and Floods
I am Diné from the small town of Kayenta, AZ, the gateway to Monument Valley in the great Navajo Nation. Since I was 10 years old, I’ve been singing the Native powwow style of music. I sing what is known as the Northern style, which is more upbeat drumming with higher pitched vocals. Growing up, I sang with the northern drum groups of Eagle Creek, Singing Eagle, and Star Eagle Nation–two of which are family drums. As I got older, I made the change to what is known as the Southern Style, which has a more mellow drum beat and lower vocals. Now, I am the founder and lead singer of Southern Soul Singers. I have also sung with southern drum groups including Buc Wild, Southern Style, and Southern Outlaws. Powwow singing is one of my most favorite things and I am always proud and honored to share my talent of which the creator has blessed me.
