Maine Mountain Chamber Music

Yuri Funahashi (piano), Laurie Kennedy (viola) with guest artists Gianluca Pane (violin) and Elena Ariza (cello).

Suggested price is $20 for Adults (more if you can, less if you can't  - everyone welcome, nobody turned away), UMF students and youth 18 and under are free.

Music of Beethoven, Nadia Boulanger, and Astor Piazzolla.

Elena Ariza is a cellist based in New York City, currently pursuing an Artist Diploma at The Juilliard School. She previously received her Master of Music at Juilliard and her Bachelor of Arts at Columbia University, majoring in computer science, as part of its exchange program with Juilliard. She has performed as Principal Cellist of the Juilliard Orchestra under the batons of Nicholas McGegan, Speranza Scappucci, David Robertson, and David Chan.

Most recently, Elena organized and performed a benefit cello recital that raised over $7,000 for Ukraine, partnered with the Mountain View Japanese Seventh-day Church in California. During the summer of 2022, she also participated in the Perlman Music Program Chamber Music Workshop, playing with Itzhak Perlman, and attended the Domaine Forget de Charlevoix Festival in Quebec. Elena won 1st prize at the 2022 Gustav Mahler Prize Cello Competition, 1st prize at the 2022 Philharmonic Society of Arlington Young Artist Competition, and was a finalist in both the 2021 and 2019 Juilliard Concerto Competition. She participated in the Taos School of Music during the summer of 2021, and subsequently toured through Utah and Nevada, performing fundraising concerts for the Haitian earthquake with her long-time collaborator, pianist Misha Galant. While an undergrad at Columbia, she performed the Dvorak Concerto with the Columbia University Orchestra, under the direction of Jeffrey Milarsky. In 2018, she gave a world premiere performance of composer Hiroya Miura’s Lustral Shades, collaborating with esteemed musicians of the Japanese tradition. In 2017, she was invited to perform as part of the New World Symphony on one of its season concerts, under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. Featured on NPR’s From the Top in 2015, Elena also performed as a soloist at Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Elena has won numerous solo and concerto competitions such as the Music Teachers National Association’s California State Competition, Pacific Musical Society Annual Competition,

Mondavi Young Artists Competition, and the Symphony Parnassus Concerto Competition, among others. She has received various masterclasses and coachings from Frans Helmerson, David Finckel, Joseph Kalichstein, Roger Tapping, the Weilerstein Trio, Colin Carr, Paul Katz, the Borromeo, Shanghai, and Brentano Quartets, and has attended the Aspen Music Festival and School, Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival and Institute, the Tanglewood Music Center, Vivac-e!, and the Taos School of Music. At Juilliard, Elena is currently studying under the tutelage of Joel Krosnick and Astrid

Schween, for whom she serves as Teaching Assistant. Her former teachers and mentors include Richard Aaron, Ronald Leonard, Eric Sung, and Sieun Lin.

Gianluca (Luke) Pane was born in Farmington, Maine and began studying the violin at the Academy School in Wilton under the tutelage of Steve Muise. He started taking private lessons with Graybert Beacham in fourth grade, then from sixth grade through high school with Laurie Kennedy. While in high school, he served as concertmaster of the Maine All-State Orchestra for two years, performed the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the UMF Orchestra and attended the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music program for Maine Students. After graduating from Mt. Blue High School in 2012, he attended Brown University where he majored in math and computer science, but stayed active in music, playing in many chamber groups and in the Brown University Orchestra as co-concertmaster. In his first year at Brown, he toured Ireland with the orchestra as a featured soloist in the Gemini Concerto by Willian Perry and in his junior year, he performed Prokofiev’s G minor violin concerto as winner of the annual concerto competition. Since graduating, Luke has worked as a software engineer while remaining active as a musician. He has played in a string quartet and community orchestra and has attended the Music Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut for three years, as well as the Apple Hill Summer Chamber Workshop in New Hampshire and Festival Baltimore in Maryland. He performed with Maine Mountain Chamber Music in family concerts in 2019 and 2020, the latter being released as a video due to the pandemic. He now lives in New York and works at Stripe, a financial technology company.

Laurie Kennedy, principal violist of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, retired in January, 2022, after 40 seasons. She began her career with the Montreal Symphony at age 21, and later served as principal violist for the Vancouver Symphony and the Buffalo Philharmonic. She is co-Director and violist with Maine Mountain Chamber Music, founded with Yuri Funahashi in 2002. She performed every summer since 1977 at the Sebago-Long Lake Chamber Music Festival, and was Music Director there for many years, creating “some of the most evocative programming on the Maine summer music scene”(Portland Press Herald 2011), and presenting “chamber music one would expect to hear at Lincoln Center” (PPH 2014).  She is highly regarded as designer and narrator of “Music for Kids” programs for SLLMF, and “Kinderkonzerts” for the PSO. She resides in Carthage, Maine.

Pianist Yuri Funahashi has performed extensively in Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia and in many of the major halls in the U.S. including the Kennedy Center, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the Music Center in Los Angeles, Jones Hall in Houston and the 92nd Street Y in New York City. She has also been heard on many college campuses across the U.S. such as the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Goucher College, Colby College, Bates College, Kalamazoo College, Tulane University, Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin, University of Louisville, University of Connecticut, University of Southern California, University of Miami, University of Central Florida, and the University of Southern Maine among others. As a member of the Festival Chamber Music of New York City, Funahashi performs regularly in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall and has been a guest artist at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Vancouver Music Festival, Sebago Long Lake Festival, The Portland Chamber Music Festival, the Windham Chamber Music Festival, the Mediterranean Music Festival, and the Seal Bay Festival. She has collaborated frequently with the Verdehr Trio, has appeared in performances with the Brentano String Quartet, the Cassatt String Quartet, the Daedalus Quartet, and is co-founder and co-director of the Maine Mountain Chamber Music series.

Born in Japan, Funahashi moved to the U.S. at a young age with her family and received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School. She has recorded for Musical Heritage and John Marks Records and is on the faculty at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.