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Tavern Music

Kevin Wilt composer
Amernet String Quartet
Irena Kofman piano

Release Date: February 21, 2025
Catalog #: NV6701
Format: Digital

Composer Kevin Wilt’s TAVERN MUSIC is an evocative collection of chamber works performed by pianist Irena Kofman and the Amernet String Quartet. Wilt’s compositions employ vivid musical color and texture across a variety of styles. The title piece draws on Celtic and Gaelic traditions, blending classical technique with folk-inspired melodies; it emulates the sounds of a jam session in a local pub, with friends and their fiddles gathered around a table sharing a pint. Out in the Storm captures the drama of a South Florida thunderstorm, while Silver Nitrate Reverie is a nostalgic reflection on classic cinema. TAVERN MUSIC is an uniquely inviting collection of chamber works.

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Track Listing & Credits

# Title Composer Performer
01 Out in the Storm Kevin Wilt Misha Vitenson, violin; Irena Kofman, piano 10:44
02 Groove Incubation Kevin Wilt Amernet String Quartet | Misha Vitenson, violin; Avi Nagin, violin; Michael Klotz, viola; Jason Calloway, cello 9:19
03 Silver Nitrate Reverie Kevin Wilt Jason Calloway, cello 5:20
04 Lily-By Kevin Wilt Misha Vitenson, violin; Jason Calloway, cello 4:18
05 Tavern Music: I. Pub Session Kevin Wilt Amernet String Quartet | Misha Vitenson, violin; Avi Nagin, violin; Michael Klotz, viola; Jason Calloway, cello 5:07
06 Tavern Music: II. Haunted Battlefield Kevin Wilt Amernet String Quartet | Misha Vitenson, violin; Avi Nagin, violin; Michael Klotz, viola; Jason Calloway, cello 2:11
07 Tavern Music: III. Air for the Fallen Hero Kevin Wilt Amernet String Quartet | Misha Vitenson, violin; Avi Nagin, violin; Michael Klotz, viola; Jason Calloway, cello 3:32
08 Tavern Music: IV. Dance of the Resilient Kevin Wilt Amernet String Quartet | Misha Vitenson, violin; Avi Nagin, violin; Michael Klotz, viola; Jason Calloway, cello 4:55

Recorded May 6-7, 2024 at Forkas Studio I, Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton FL
Recording Session Producer Kevin Wilt
Recording Session Engineer Matt Baltrucki
Recording Session Assistant Engineer Olivier Morency

Each track was produced by Hoot/Wisdom Recordings

Executive Producer Bob Lord

VP of A&R Brandon MacNeil
A&R Danielle Sullivan

VP of Production Jan Košulič
Audio Director Lucas Paquette

VP, Design & Marketing Brett Picknell
Art Director Ryan Harrison
Design Edward A. Fleming
Publicity Aidan Curran
Digital Marketing Manager Brett Iannucci

Artist Information

Kevin Wilt

Composer

Kevin Wilt is a classical music evangelist. He composes music to introduce new audiences to the joy, drama, and adventure of classical music through familiar colors and lush textures, while engaging seasoned audiences with an underlying craftsmanship and sophistication. Composer John Corigliano praised his expert orchestration and beautiful writing, while the Bloomington Herald wrote, “[his music] has a keen sense of mood and tonal balance.”

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Irena Kofman

piano

The renowned Russian-American pianist Irena Kofman has performed around the world to rave reviews as a solo artist and in collaboration with prominent musicians. She is also an award-winning teacher with many of her former piano students attaining great success in their own right as performers and educators throughout the Americas, in the Former Soviet Union, and across Europe.

Kofman holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Miami, where she studied under Rosalina Sackstein, a pupil of the legendary Claudio Arrau. She has critically acclaimed recordings on Wisdom Recordings, Loconto Production, and Talent Records. Among other honors, Kofman was personally chosen by the Dalai Lama to play at his “Compassion as a Pillar of World Peace” presentation and also performed at TEDxBocaRaton.

Early in her career, Kofman founded the Arcangelo Piano Quartet, a distinguished American chamber ensemble that performed across the United States and internationally. She also formed a duo with the eminent Belgian pianist André De Groote. Their three recorded albums received critical acclaim, with international critic Philip R. Buttall calling their recording of Theodore Gouvy compositions “absolutely first-rate.” Kofman continues to collaborate with other outstanding musicians such as Japanese violinist Junko Outsu, Israeli violist Zvi Carmeli, and Swiss cellist Alexander Kaganovsky.

As a teacher, Kofman is sought out by students aspiring to play at the highest levels. She is a Fulbright Scholar, having taught at the University of Taipei in 2023. She has taught master classes and lectured at Florida State University’s Piano Symposium, the prestigious Salzburg Summer Program in Austria, the International Concerto Festival in Russia, the World Piano Conference in Slovenia, and at the Cremona International Music Academy in Italy. She currently serves as a distinguished piano faculty member at Cremona Music International Academy in Italy and holds the position of Director of Keyboard Studies at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

Kofman’s recent distinguished awards include a gold medal from the Republic of Armenia’s Ministry of Diaspora in 2019, the Faculty Fellowship Program to Israel in 2020, a US Fulbright Senior Scholar Award in Taiwan in 2022, and the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Florida State Music Teachers Association in 2023. In addition, she received a Diploma of Recognition from the American Protégé International Competition in four consecutive years for “extraordinary dedication and achievement in the field of teaching music and presenting students to perform at Carnegie Hall.”

Misha Vitenson

violin

Misha Vitenson, violinist, began violin studies with his father, Yuri Vitenson, in his native city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 1990, Vitenson immigrated to Israel and continued his studies with Chaim Taub. During his time in Israel, Vitenson won numerous prizes and awards, including annual America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships and the prestigious Braun Zingel Award as winner of a competition held at the Rubin Music Academy in Jerusalem.

In 1996, Vitenson continued his studies with Sergiu Schwartz at the Harid Conservatory. He was subsequently awarded top prizes in international violin competitions, including Premio Paganini (Italy, 1998) and Pablo de Sarasate (Spain, 1997) and First Prize in the 1998 Città d’Andria International Violin Competition (Italy). Vitenson was the winner of the 1999 Aspen Music Festival Concerto Competition and First Prizewinner at the 2000 National Society of Arts and Letters Violin Competition and is also both a two-time winner of the Harid Conservatory Concerto Competition and a two-time recipient of the Harid Conservatory’s Joseph Gingold Award for Excellence (1998 & 2000). Vitenson’s recent engagements have included appearances as soloist with all the major orchestras in Israel, including the Israel Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra as well as with the Padova e Veneto Orchestra on tour in Brazil, the National Uzbekistan Orchestra, the Aspen Music Festival Symphonia Orchestra, the Harid Philharmonia, and the Harid Chamber Strings. Vitenson has given recitals and chamber music concerts throughout Israel, the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe. As a member of the Kinneret Piano Trio, he participated in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop at Carnegie Hall in 1995.

After receiving the Bachelor of Music from Harid Conservatory School of Music at Lynn University, Vitenson became a student of Joel Smirnoff at the Juilliard School, where he earned the Master of Music Degree. There he appeared as soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra in Avery Fisher Hall under the baton of Hugh Wolff. In the fall of 2002, Vitenson joined the Amernet String Quartet and the faculty at Northern Kentucky University as an Artist-in-Residence, teaching violin and chamber music. Currently, he is Artist-in-Residence at Florida International University.

Avi Nagin

violin

A native New Yorker, Avi Nagin joined the Amernet String Quartet as Second Violin in August 2019. Nagin has also joined the faculty of Florida International University, where the quartet serves as Ensemble-in-Residence.

An active recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and educator, Nagin has performed in collaboration with members of the Ebène and Orion Quartets, as well as with Paul Coletti, Benny and Eric Kim, Ronald Leonard, Julian Schwarz, Ole Akahoshi, J.Y. Song, Kathryn Lockwood, and Gil Morgenstern.

In 2019, Nagin served as Associate Concertmaster of the Sarasota Opera, also leading the orchestra as Concertmaster in the company’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Prior to joining the Amernet, Nagin was Principal 2nd Violin of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Principal 2nd Violin of Symphony in C, section violin with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and regularly performed with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Nagin’s 2019 summer festival appearances included a return engagement performing chamber music at An Appalachian Summer Festival (NC), the Artosphere Festival (AR), Maverick Concerts (NY), Bargemusic (NY), and he was on faculty at East Tennessee State University’s inaugural chamber music festival. Additionally, Nagin performed with the renowned Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in NYC. In past summers, Nagin has served as Concertmaster of the Lake George Music Festival (NY) and Principal 2nd Violin of the Manchester Music Festival (VT).

As an educator in the NY area, Nagin was faculty assistant to Dr. Ann Setzer at The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division, violin faculty and chamber music coordinator at the JCC Thurnauer School of Music (NJ), chamber music faculty for the New York Youth Symphony, and a “Teaching Artist” with Yale University’s Music in Schools Initiative. During his time as a student, Nagin attended prestigious masterclasses and festivals around the world, including appearing twice at the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove (UK), where he performed in masterclasses for Philippe Graffin, András Keller, and legendary violinist Ivry Gitlis. At Carnegie Hall, Nagin was the youngest participant invited to appear in Leon Fleisher’s Brahms Chamber Music Workshop, where he worked with Mr. Fleisher, Yo-Yo Ma, and Pamela Frank as well as performing at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. Nagin held leadership positions in the orchestras of Tanglewood and Aspen, and also attended Kneisel Hall, the Heifetz Institute, and the Meadowmount School of Music. Nagin holds a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music and a Bachelor of Music from The Colburn School. Nagin’s principal teachers include Ani Kavafian, Robert Lispett, Daniel Phillips, and Ann Setzer, as well as violin and chamber music studies with Arnold Steinhardt of the Guarneri Quartet.

Michael Klotz

viola

Born in 1978 in Rochester NY, Michael Klotz has established an international reputation as a performer and pedagogue of the viola. Klotz made his solo debut with the Rochester Philharmonic at the age of 17 and has since then appeared worldwide as soloist with orchestra, recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral principal. After a performance of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 with violist Roberto Diaz, the Portland Press-Herald proclaimed, “this concert squelched all viola jokes, now and forever, due to the talents of Diaz and Klotz.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram recently proclaimed Klotz to be “a superb violist, impressive, with an exceptionally attractive sound,” and the Miami Herald has consistently lauded his “burnished, glowing tone and nuanced presence.”

Klotz joined the Amernet String Quartet in 2002 and has toured and recorded commercially with the ensemble throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Romania, Colombia, Belgium, and Spain. His festival appearances have included Seattle, Newport, Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Festival Mozaic, Great Lakes, Mediterranean Notes Festival (Montenegro), Cervantino, Festival Baltimore, Festival Mozaic, Piccolo Spoleto, Sunflower, Martha’s Vineyard, Skaneateles, Virginia Tech Vocal Arts and Music Festival, San Miguel de Allende, Beverly Hills, Music Mountain, Bowdoin, Madeline Island, and Miami Mainly Mozart.

Passionately dedicated to chamber music, Klotz regularly performs with many of today’s most esteemed artists. He has appeared as guest violist with the Borromeo, Shanghai and Ying Quartets, the Manhattan Piano Trio, and has performed with artists such as Shmuel Ashkenasi, Arnold Steinhardt, Cho-Liang Lin, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Andrés Cárdenes, Paul Neubauer, Vadim Gluzman, Gary Hoffman, Clive Greensmith, Michael Tree, Andres Diaz, Cynthia Phelps, Roberto Diaz, Joseph Kalichstein, Jon Nakamatsu, Franklin Cohen, and Alexander Fiterstein, as well as with many principal players from major U.S. and European orchestras. In 2015 he was named a Charter Member of the Ensemble with the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth and regularly appears on this series. In 2002 and 2009, he was invited by Maestro Jaime Laredo to perform with distinguished alumni at anniversary concerts of the New York String Orchestra Seminar in Carnegie Hall.

Klotz is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where he was awarded the Performer’s Certificate. In 2002 he became one of the few individuals to be awarded a double Master’s Degree in Violin and Viola from the Juilliard School. At Juilliard, he was the recipient of the Tokyo Foundation and Gluck Fellowships. His principal teachers and influences include Zvi Zeitlin, Lynn Blakeslee, Lewis Kaplan, Toby Appel, Peter Kamnitzer, and Shmuel Ashkenasi.

Klotz is a dedicated teacher and serves as Teaching Professor and Artist-in-Residence at Florida International University in Miami, where he teaches viola and chamber music. Additionally, he mentors a select number of highly gifted pre-college students. Klotz has recently presented acclaimed master classes at the New World Symphony, Cincinnati Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, University of Michigan, Penn State University, University of Nevada – Las Vegas, Ithaca College, Texas Christian University, and West Virginia University.

He is currently a member of the faculty of The Heifetz International Music Institute, an Artistic Advisor and viola faculty of The Josef Gingold Festival of Miami, and a viola coach at the New World Symphony. His former students currently attend and are graduates of prestigious conservatories, including the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, Indiana University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music and are already achieving leading roles in the music world. Klotz was recently featured in the “Mind Over Finger” podcast series, the November 2013 issue of the “Alumni Spotlight” in the Juilliard Journal and as the subject of Strad Magazine’s “Ask the Teacher” column in the November 2013 issue.

Klotz resides in Hallandale Beach FL with his wife Kelly and sons Jacob and Natan, as well as two dachshunds named Noodle and Strudel, and a Great Dane named Auggi/Cow.

Jason Calloway

cello

Cellist Jason Calloway has performed to acclaim throughout North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East as soloist and chamber musician. He has appeared at festivals including Lucerne, Spoleto USA, Darmstadt, Klangspuren (Austria), Acanthes (France), Perpignan, Valencia, Citta’ della Pieve (Italy), Jerash (Jordan), Casals (Puerto Rico), Blossom, Brevard, Great Lakes, Kingston, Rockport, Sedona, Sarasota, Music Academy of the West, the New York String Seminar, and Encore. Currently cellist of the Amernet String Quartet, Artists-in-Residence at Florida International University in Miami, Calloway was previously a member of the Naumburg award-winning Biava Quartet, formerly in residence at the Juilliard School.

He has collaborated in chamber music with members of the Cleveland, Curtis, Juilliard, and Miami quartets and with principal players of most of the world’s leading orchestras, as well as with artists including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Roberto Diaz, Gary Hoffman, Ida Kavafian, Kim Kashkashian, Ricardo Morales, and the Penderecki and Tokyo quartets. Calloway gave his Carnegie Hall recital debut under the auspices of Artists International and has also been heard in New York at Alice Tully Hall, Steinway Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, the Kosciuszko Foundation, the 92nd Street Y, and the Polish Consulate; in Los Angeles at Disney Hall, the Bing Theatre, the Skirball Center and Pepperdine University; in Washington DC at the Kennedy Center and at Strathmore; in Philadelphia at the Academy of Music, the Ethical Society, and the Kimmel Center; and live on NPR, WFMT (Chicago), KMZT (Los Angeles), WQXR (NYC), WFLN (Philadelphia), and on RAI television (Italy).

A devoted advocate of new music, Calloway has performed with leading ensembles around the world as well as alongside members of Ensemble Modern and the Arditti and JACK quartets, and with the New Juilliard Ensemble both in New York and abroad, in addition to frequent appearances in Philadelphia with Bowerbird, Soundfield, and Network for New Music. Among the hundreds of premieres he has presented are solo and ensemble works of Berio, Knussen, Lachenmann, and Pintscher, and he has collaborated intensively with some of today’s most important composers including Birtwistle, Carter, Davidovsky, Dusapin, Henze, Hosokawa, Husa, Franke, Rihm, and Yannay. As a dedicated supporter of young composers, he has for several seasons presented a series of concerts of solo cello works newly composed for him, most recently at Harvard and Temple universities, and at Spoleto USA gave the public premiere of Yanov-Yanovsky’s Hearing Solutions for cello and ensemble, in addition to recent appearances at Bowdoin College, the College of Charleston, Princeton University, and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

Calloway prizes his work with Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain, both at the Lucerne Festival and at the Zug (Switzerland) Kunsthaus in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Serenade as part of a major Kandinsky/Gerstl exhibit, in addition to his collaborations with the violinist Gilles Apap and with tap dancer Savion Glover. He is also artistic director of Shir Ami (shiramimusic.com), an ensemble dedicated to the preservation and performance of Jewish art music suppressed by the Nazis and Soviets, and with which he appears frequently across the United States and in the ensemble’s varied performances in Austria and Hungary; and In Flux, an ensemble committed to performing vocal chamber music by the leading composers of today and the recent past.

A native of Philadelphia, Calloway is a graduate of the Juilliard School and the University of Southern California. His teachers have included Ronald Leonard, Orlando Cole, Rohan de Saram, Lynn Harrell, Fred Sherry, Robert Cafaro, Joel Sachs, Felix Galimir, Luis Biava, and Seymour Lipkin. Calloway is grateful for the assistance of the Maestro Foundation.

Notes

TAVERN MUSIC is an album of chamber music by composer Kevin Wilt, performed by pianist Irena Kofman, and the Amernet String Quartet. Although the styles present in this music are on a wide spectrum, they are united by the use of color and texture to evoke images and stories.

Out in the Storm paints the image of an incoming thunderstorm, typical of a South Florida afternoon. The first section, “Clouds Gathering,” uses small gestures in the piano, and an ominous melody in the violin to signal the oncoming storm. The second, “Raindrop Montuno,” uses the first sprinkles of rain to create rhythms of a Cuban dance. The third, Thunderclap Bassdrop, has the piano playing loud thunderclaps, while the violin plays a frantic, stormy line. The closing section, “Orange Sunset,” has the clouds clearing away, ending the piece with warm, sun-lit harmonies.

The original version of Groove Incubation (2013) was written for an ensemble of low voices: two violas, two cellos, and two basses. I maximized this feature with a work that establishes a bass line groove one element at a time. The piece opens with several textural elements trying to establish a basic harmonic language. Eventually, the task moves toward discovering a simple pulse, then a basic meter, and so on, until the first element is solidified in the cello. The piece continues this process, adding layers one at a time until it builds into a dense stacking of rhythmic ideas, complete with several percussive elements as a kind of trap set surrogate. This version for string quartet was written in 2024.

The title Silver Nitrate Reverie is in reference to a chemical in old film stock, mostly pre-1950s. This piece is meant to be a reverie, or lost-in-thought daydream about our favorite movies. It is not meant to sound like any particular film score or to make us think of any particular movie, but rather convey the feeling of remembering our favorite movies, scenes, images, characters, and lines. This work was premiered at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, amidst a 2022 exhibit of old Hollywood scenic backdrops, where I hope this exact kind of daydreaming took place by anyone who walked by. It was written for cellist Jason Calloway, heard on this recording.

Lily-By is a lullaby dedicated to my daughter, Liliana Rose Wilt, who was 7 months old at the completion of the original piano piece. Her name and nickname (Lily), encoded into musical notes, make up the two halves of the main theme. The original piano version was written at the request of my colleague, Kuo-Pei Cheng-Lin, who premiered it on February 26, 2023. This version for violin and violoncello was written in April 2024.

Tavern Music emulates the sounds of a session in a local pub, with friends and their fiddles surrounding a table sharing a pint. It is inspired by Celtic, Gaelic, and other pub musical traditions, as well as the ways those traditions have been filtered through fantasy stories such as Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and The Name of the Wind. Its four movements take us from the local pub into tales of battle, valor, and mourning before returning to celebrate those who have fallen and those who have returned.

As in much of this musical tradition, players often have the melody in unison but provide their own unique ornamentation. In this recording, the members of the Amernet String Quartet made wonderful choices to add authenticity and a sense of “fiddleness” to this piece.

Although it is a work for a classical string quartet, it is written to be enjoyed by a general audience unfamiliar with classical music. As such, it was fittingly premiered in an Irish pub.

Thank you to Michael Horswell, Dean of the Florida Atlantic University Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, and Professor Michael Zager, Director of the Florida Atlantic University Commercial Music Program, for their support of this project, as well as my colleagues and friends Irena Kofman, Misha Vitenson, Avi Nagin, Michael Klotz, Jason Calloway, and Matt Baltrucki for their work in bringing this project to life. And, of course, thank you to my wife, Mabel, and daughter, Liliana, for their endless support and encouragement and for being such a big reason why I love doing this work.