A Canadian trio lauded as “animated and charming” and three musicians who impressed Maui audiences last year are part of a prize-winning lineup coming to the island in May.
Returning for the 43rd Maui Classical Music Festival are pianist Zhenni Li-Cohen, violist Matthew Cohen and clarinetist Yoonah Kim.
They will be joined by the Gryphon Trio – violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys and pianist Jamie Parker – and violinists Ayano Ninomiya and Stefan Jackiw and cellist Robert deMaine.
Concerts are scheduled May 16 at Makawao Union Church, May 19 at Keawala’i Congregational Church in Makena, May 21 at Wananalua Congregational Church in Hana, and May 23 and 25 at the Iao Theater in Wailuku.
Violist Yizhak Schotten and pianist Katherine Collier were the festival’s music director since its beginning in 1982. Schotten died in September. Collier is returning as a director, along with cellist Amir Eldan, who performed at the festival last year.
The Los Angeles Times has described the Gryphon’s sound as “big, bold, almost orchestral.”

“Gryphon’s musical conversations are animated and charming.… It has character and detail to spare, and elegance is no small accomplishment,” says the Toronto Globe and Mail.
The trio has won three Juno Awards for Classical Album of the Year and Canada Council for the Arts’ Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.
Performances by violinist Ninomiya are "deeply communicative and engrossing,” the New York Times says.
The Boston Globe adds: “She expertly manipulated her tone color, fading from compressed brightness to a wispy shimmer in the space of a blink....A note from her was never just a note.”
The Globe describe violinist Jackiw’s playing as endowed with “uncommon musical substance” and “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says of cellist deMaine’s art: “A beautiful singing tone, lapidary technical precision, and a persuasive identification with the idiom of the music at hand...marvelous...in which every note had something lovely to say."
Clarinetist Kim has won the 2016 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, the Vandoren Emerging Artist Competition, the George Gershwin International Competition and the Vienna International Competition.
She plays with “endless silken tone…full and ringing clarinet sound,” says the Albany Times Union.
Cohen was a special prize winner at the prestigious Primrose International Viola Competition as well as garnering top prizes at the Città di Cremona International Viola Competition in Italy, Vivo International Music Competition and the Art of Duo International Competition.
Pianist Li-Cohen has won the 2017 New York Concert Artists Worldwide Debut Audition, Astral Artist’s 2016 National Auditions, the Grieg International Competition in Norway, and the unanimous 1st Prize at the Concours Musical de France.
Gramophone Magazine has praised her “torrents of voluptuous sound….Li-Cohen impresses as an artist of tremendous conviction, who fascinates even as she provokes.”