SVBF celebrates LGBTQ+ History Month at EMU
GRAMMY Award-winning cellist Andrew Yee has been praised by Michael Kennedy of the London Telegraph as “spellbindingly virtuosic”. Trained at the Juilliard School, they are a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet who has released several albums to Critical acclaim including Andrew’s arrangement of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” which Thewholenote.com praised as “ . . .easily the most satisfying string version of the work that I’ve heard.” They were the quartet-in-residence at the Met Museum in 2014, and have won the Osaka and Coleman international string quartet competitions. Their newest recording of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw won a GRAMMY for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. As a soloist, last season Andrew performed John Taverner’s The Protecting Veil and Strauss Don Quixote. In 2019 they won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for their pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing. They like to make stop-motion videos of food, draw apples, cook like an Italian Grandma, and have developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City. Their solo project “Halfie” draws on their experience as a bi-racial and non-binary person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. The works commissioned and on the concerts will feature a wide range of composers all for solo cello. They play on an 1884 Eugenio Degani cello on loan from the Five Partners Foundation.
SVBF joins Safe Space and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at EMU to celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month. Since 1994, October marks LGBTQ+ History Month in the United States as a time to celebrate the traces of Queer history.
SVBF will celebrate with a special performance by NYC-based cellist Andrew Yee (they/them). Andrew will present their project “Halfie” for solo cello, exploring identity through the lens of classical and contemporary music.
Andrew says, “As a bi-racial and non-binary person, I am interested in the concept of being a member of several different groups at once, but not really feeling at home in any of them. The process of curating and sculpting Halfie is an ever-changing search for answers through works for solo cello.”
October 31, 2021
5:00PM
Common Grounds at Eastern Mennonite University