A graduate of The Juilliard School and a Fulbright Scholar, cellist Jennifer Kloetzel has concertized throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as a soloist and chamber musician. A founding member of the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet (1996–2016), Ms. Kloetzel has toured the globe and performed at such renowned venues as Lincoln Center, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Chautauqua Institute and the Ravinia Festival, the Lobkowicz Palaces in both Vienna and Prague, as well as prominent colleges and conservatories worldwide.
Ms. Kloetzel is known for her elegant playing and vibrant tone. She is a sought-after recitalist, performing concerts for San Francisco Performances and on WQXR in New York. The Strad Magazine raved, “Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel is impressively passionate…” The Cello Museum proclaimed that her “energy, ceaseless intellectual curiosity, and virtuosic command of the instrument unite in exceptional musicianship, making her truly a hero of the cello.” Ms. Kloetzel has recorded 36 CDs, including the entire cycles of Beethoven’s quartets and Brahms’s sextets on the Avie label. Most recently, she released Beethoven: The Conquering Hero, the complete works for cello and piano (with Robert Koenig), which was chosen as “Recording of the Month” by BBC Music Magazine in March 2022 and stated, “If only more cellists would play like this—and at this level of ceaseless musicianship … Kloetzel’s playing responds unerringly to the shift of creative tone at each stage of the composer’s development.” The review went on to state Ms. Kloetzel’s playing was “a masterclass in how to engage with the most powerful creative personality music has known.” Gramophone magazine hailed the Beethoven collection for “cello playing that’s notable for its warmth, inward expressiveness … Kloetzel comes across as so utterly natural.”
A champion of new music, Ms. Kloetzel received the Copland Award for engaging living American Composers, commissioning and premiering over 50 works, including five concertos written specifically for her. In 2016, Ms. Kloetzel was invited to join the faculty at University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is Professor of Cello and serves as both Head of the String and Performance Areas. Her recording with pianist Robert Koenig of the complete Beethoven music for cello and piano has been nominated for multiple 2022 Grammy Awards. For more information, visit jkcello.com.
San Francisco-based pianist Allegra Chapman is an omnivorous soloist and chamber musician, adventurous curator, and passionate educator. Her performances have been described as “fervid but impeccably controlled” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “brilliant” by the San Francisco Classical Voice. She is the pianist of the Delphi Trio with violinist Liana Bérubé and cellist Tanya Tomkins, Chordless duo with soprano Sara LeMesh, and a member of Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. As a presenter, Allegra is the founding co-artistic director and executive director of the critically acclaimed festival Bard Music West, a San Francisco-based branch of the Bard Music Festival.
Allegra has performed internationally as soloist and chamber musician at venues including Alice Tully Hall, San Francisco Jazz Center, and Xi’an Concert Hall. An avid advocate for new music, she regularly commissions and premieres works by leading living composers. Recent highlights include the world premiere of Grammy-nominated composer Clarice Assad’s triple concerto, A Story of Mermaids, with Delphi Trio and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra; a recording and streamed premiere of Unravel for solo piano by Josiah Catalan for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players; and live premieres of chamber works by Danny Clay, Carl Schimmel, Ryan Suleiman, and others with Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Delphi Trio. She particularly enjoys collaborating in multidisciplinary projects and has worked with renowned choreographer Pam Tanowitz and soloed with the Garrett + Moulton Dance Company. Her music video with Chordless, The Night in Silence, won the “Best Music Video” award at the 2020 Tokyo International Short Film Festival and screened at four other film festivals. Allegra studied with Jeremy Denk and Peter Serkin at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Seymour Lipkin and Julian Martin at The Juilliard School, and Sharon Mann at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is currently on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory’s Pre-College division.