Jennifer Frautschi (violin), Jon Manasse (clarinet), and Jon Nakamatsu (piano) continue our 61st season on Monday, March 15, 2027, at Libby Gardner Concert Hall on the University of Utah campus. A trio of individually celebrated soloists, they bring together a remarkable constellation of accolades: Nakamatsu is the Gold Medalist of the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition; Frautschi is a two-time Grammy nominee and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient who performs on a 1722 Stradivarius violin; and Manasse—called "absolutely first-rate" by the New York Times—is Artistic Director of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival and faculty at both the Juilliard School and Eastman School of Music. Manasse and Nakamatsu are longtime collaborators, making this an evening of deep musical partnership.
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Featured Performers
Jon Nakamatsu, PIANO
Now in his third decade of touring worldwide, American pianist Jon Nakamatsu continues to draw critical and public acclaim for his intensity, elegance and electrifying solo, concerto and chamber music performances. Catapulted to international attention in 1997 as the Gold Medalist of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—the only American to achieve this distinction since 1981—Mr. Nakamatsu subsequently developed a multi-faceted career that encompasses recording, education, arts administration and public speaking in addition to his vast concert schedule.
Mr. Nakamatsu has been a guest soloist with over 150 orchestras worldwide, including those of Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Florence, Los Angeles, Milan, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo and Vancouver. He has worked with such esteemed conductors as Marin Alsop, Sergiu Comissiona, James Conlon, Philippe Entremont, Hans Graf, Marek Janowski, Raymond Leppard, Gerard Schwarz, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Osmo Vänskä.
As a recitalist, Mr. Nakamatsu has appeared in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Musée d’Orsay and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and in major centers such as Boston, Chicago, Houston, London, Milan, Munich, Prague, Singapore, Tokyo, Warsaw and Zurich. In Beijing he has been heard at the Theater of the Forbidden City, the Great Hall of the People, China Conservatory, and the National Centre for the Performing Arts. His numerous summer engagements included appearances at the Aspen, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Caramoor, Vail, Wolftrap, Colorado, Brevard, Britt, Colorado College, Evian, Interlochen, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Santa Fe and Sun Valley festivals. In 2025 he participated in an extended residency at the Bowdoin Festival in Maine and returned to the Chautauqua Institution in New York where he served as Artist in Residence from 2018 to 2023. In 2025 Mr. Nakamatsu served on the juries of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and the United States Chopin Piano Competition.
Post-Pandemic, Mr. Nakamatsu returned to live performances in 2021 throughout the United States and in Europe. Between 2020 and the spring of 2021, he was engaged in a myriad of online events including recording, masterclasses and virtual interviews and lectures for organizations such as the Chautauqua Institution Piano Festival, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute, the Van Cliburn Foundation and the Chopin Foundation of the United States. In collaboration with clarinetist Jon Manasse, Mr. Nakamatsu also produced and curated an online series of interviews and historical performances taken from the archives of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, where he and Mr. Manasse have served as Artistic Directors since 2007.
With clarinetist Jon Manasse, Mr. Nakamatsu tours as a member of the Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo. Following its Boston debut in 2004, the Duo released its first CD for harmonia mundi usa (Brahms Sonatas for Clarinet and Piano) which received the highest praise from The New York Times Classical Music Editor James Oestreich, who named it among the “Best of the Year” for 2008. A frequent chamber musician, Mr. Nakamatsu has collaborated repeatedly with ensembles such as the Emerson, Escher, Jupiter, Miró, Modigliani, Prazak, St. Lawrence, Tokyo and Ying string quartets, the Imani Winds and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet with whom he made multiple tours beginning in 2000.
Mr. Nakamatsu’s 13 CDs recorded for harmonia mundi usa have garnered extraordinary critical praise. An all-Gershwin recording with Jeff Tyzik and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra featuring Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F remained in the top echelons of Billboard’s classical charts for over six months. Other acclaimed discs include the recording premiere of Lukas Foss’ first Piano Concerto with Carl St. Clair and the Pacific Symphony, the Brahms Piano Quintet with the Tokyo String Quartet in the quartet’s final recording as an ensemble, and a solo recording including Robert Schumann’s Second Piano Sonata whose YouTube posting has garnered over 800K hits.
Mr. Nakamatsu has been profiled extensively in print, radio, television and online. He has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, in Readers Digest magazine and recently on Live from Here! with Chris Thile. In 1999, Mr. Nakamatsu performed at the White House at the special invitation of President and Mrs. Clinton. He has also performed for the United States Conference of Mayors in San Francisco and in 2001 was the featured guest artist during the opening and dedication of the Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II in Washington DC.
A former high school teacher of German with no formal conservatory training, Mr. Nakamatsu studied privately with Marina Derryberry for over 20 years beginning at the age of six; worked with Karl Ulrich Schnabel since the age of 9; and trained for 10 years in composition, theory and orchestration with Dr. Leonard Stein of the University of Southern California’s Schoenberg Institute. Mr. Nakamatsu holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Stanford University in German Studies and secondary education. In 2015, he joined the piano faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and in 2023 the Department of Music at Stanford University as a Visiting Artist. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife Kathy and son Gavin.
Jennifer Frautschi, VIOLIN
Two-time GRAMMY nominee and Avery Fisher career grant recipient violinist Jennifer Frautschi has appeared as soloist with innumerable orchestras including the Cincinnati Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and St Paul Chamber Orchestra. She is an artist-member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and has appeared as chamber musician at Chamber Music Northwest, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, La Jolla Summerfest, Music@Menlo, Tippet Rise Art Center, Toronto Summer Music, and the Bridgehampton, Cape Cod, Charlottesville, Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, Moab, Ojai, Santa Fe, Salt Bay, Seattle, Spoleto, and Valley of the Moon Music Festivals.
Her extensive discography includes several discs for Naxos: the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, conducted by the legendary Robert Craft, and two GRAMMY-nominated recordings with the Fred Sherry Quartet, of Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra , and the Schoenberg Third String Quartet. Her most recent releases are with pianist John Blacklow on Albany Records: the first devoted to the three sonatas of Robert Schumann; the second, American Duos, an exploration of recent additions to the violin and piano repertoire by contemporary American composers Barbara White, Steven Mackey, Elena Ruehr, Dan Coleman, and Stephen Hartke. She also recorded three widely praised CDs for Artek: an orchestral recording of the Prokofiev concerti with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony; the violin music of Ravel and Stravinsky; and 20th-century works for solo violin. Other recordings include a disc of Romantic Horn Trios, with hornist Eric Ruske and pianist Stephen Prutsman, and the Stravinsky Duo Concertant with pianist Jeremy Denk.
Born in Pasadena, California, Ms. Frautschi attended the Colburn School, Harvard, the New England Conservatory, and the Juilliard School. She performs on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the “ex-Cadiz,” on generous loan from a private American foundation with support from Rare Violins In Consortium. She currently teaches in the graduate program at Stony Brook University.
Jon Manasse, CLARINET
Among the most distinguished classical artists of his generation, clarinetist Jon Manassee is internationally recognized for his inspiring artistry, uniquely glorious sound and charismatic performing style.
Recent season highlights include return performances with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and debuts with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Erie Philharmonic, The Chappaqua Orchestra, Montana’s Missoula Symphony Orchestra and Oregon’s Rogue Valley Symphony. With pianist Jon Nakamatsu, he continues to tour throughout the United States as half of the acclaimed Manasse/Nakamatsu Duo. The Duo’s activities include the world premiere performances of Paquito D’Rivera’s The Cape Cod Concerto with Symphony Silicon Valley, conducted by Leslie B. Dunner.
Jon Manasse’s solo appearances include New York City performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall, Hunter College’s Sylvia & Danny Kaye Playhouse, Columbia University, Rockefeller University and The Town Hall, fourteen tours of Japan and Southeast Asia – all with the New York Symphonic Ensemble, debuts in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Osaka and concerto performances with Gerard Schwarz and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, both at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall and at the prestigious Tokyu Bunkamura Festival in Tokyo. With orchestra, he has been guest soloist with many U.S. orchestras including the symphonies of Seattle, Indianapolis, Richmond, Pensacola, Florida West Coast, and others. Of special distinction was Mr. Manasse’s 2002 London debut in a Barbican Centre performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with Gerard Schwarz and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
Jon Manasse has been the guest soloist with many of the leading chamber ensembles of the day, including The Amadeus Trio and Germany’s Trio Parnassus and the American, Borromeo, Colorado, Lark, Manhattan, Moscow, Orion, Rossetti, Shanghai, Tokyo and Ying String Quartets, and has collaborated with violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Jon Nakamatsu. Manasse is principal clarinetist of the American Ballet Theater Orchestra and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. In 2008 he was appointed principal clarinetist and Ensemble Member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City. As one of the nation’s most highly sought-after wind players, has also served as guest principal clarinetist of the New York Pops Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and New Jersey, Saint Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, under the batons of Gerard Schwarz, Zdenek Macal, Jerzy Semkow, Robert Craft and Hugh Wolff. For several seasons, he was also the principal clarinetist of the New York Chamber Symphony. Mr. Manasse has been a guest clarinetist with the New York Philharmonic in concerts conducted by Valery Gergiev and André Previn, and he has served as the principal clarinetist of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, performing under the batons of Artistic Director James Levine and, among others, Andrew Davis, Valery Gergiev and Vladimir Jurowski.
In addition to the premiere performances of Lowell Liebermann’s Clarinet Concerto, which was commissioned for him, Jon Manasse has also presented the world premieres of James Cohn’s Concerto for Clarinet & String Orchestra at the international ClarinetFest ’97 at Texas Tech University and, in 2005, of Steven R. Gerber’s Clarinet Concerto with the National Philharmonic.
Jon Manasse has six critically acclaimed CDS on the XLNT label: the complete clarinet concerti of Weber, with Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra; the complete works for clarinet and piano of Weber, with pianist Samuel Sanders; recording premieres of 20th Century clarinet works; “Clarinet Music from 3 Centuries,” including Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet (with the Shanghai Quartet), as well as music by Spohr, Gershwin and James Cohn; James Cohn’sClarinet Concerto #2; and the concerti of Mozart, Nielsen and Copland, with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. Also available are his recordings of Steven R. Gerber’s Clarinet Concerto with Vladimir Lande and the St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony on the Arabesque label and Lowell Liebermann’s Quintet for Clarinet, Piano and String Trio on KOCH International. His debut CD with pianist Jon Nakamatsu, a harmonia mundi album of the Brahms Clarinet Sonatas, was released to international rave reviews, early in 2008. 2010 saw the release of concerti by Mozart and Spohr with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony, also on the harmonia mundi label.
Jon Manasse is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with David Weber. Mr. Manasse was a top prize winner in the Thirty-Sixth International Competition for Clarinet in Munich and the youngest winner of the International Clarinet Society Competition. Currently, he is an official “Performing Artist” of both the Buffet Crampon Company and Vandoren, the Parisian firms that are the world’s oldest and most distinguished clarinet maker and reed maker, respectively. Since 1995, he has been Associate Professor of Clarinet at the Eastman School of Music; in the fall of 2007 Mr. Manasse joined the faculty of his alma mater, The Juilliard School.
Jon Manasse and his Duo partner, the acclaimed pianist Jon Nakamatsu, serve as Artistic Directors of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, an appointment announced during summer 2006.
