Henri Lazarof Concert Series
The Brandeis Music Department is proud to present the 2026 Annual Henri Lazarof Chamber Concert, a continued celebration of contemporary mastery and the enduring legacy of Henri Lazarof.
The annual Henri Lazarof Chamber Concert, at which the Henri Lazarof International Commission Prize winner’s composition will be premiered each year, continues the Brandeis music department’s mission of hosting professional performances that feature works by contemporary composers.
Join us on Sunday, May 3, at 3:00 PM for an afternoon of professional artistry and the birth of a new musical work. Please confirm your attendance by RSVP-ing on Eventbrite. Concert is FREE and open to the public - walk-ins are welcome.
IRINA MURESANU
Romanian-born violinist Irina Muresanu is an artist equally in demand on both sides of the
Atlantic, as she has appeared throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and South Africa. Ms. Muresanu has firmly established herself as a successful recording artist, and her bold programming with exciting thematic concepts define her as a versatile and innovative performer.
A laureate and winner of top prizes in several prestigious international violin competitions including the Montreal International, Queen Elisabeth, UNISA International String, Washington International, and the Schadt String Competition, Muresanu achieved international acclaim early on. Muresanu’s awards also include the Presser Award, the Arthur Foote Award from the Harvard Musical Association, the Creative and Performing Arts Award from the University of Maryland, a prestigious New Music USA Grant, a Pro Musicis International Award.
Ms. Muresanu's 2025-26 season includes solo, recital and chamber music appearances in renowned venues and festivals. As part of her commitment to innovative repertoire, Muresanu has commissioned from Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate the first American Indian violin concerto in history. The exciting world premiere of the work titled “Hattak Hiloha” (Thunder Beings), will take place in June 2026 with the National Orchestra Institute, followed by performances in the Cabrillo Festival (August 2026) and with the National Philharmonic (November 2026), amongst many others. Solo appearances also include a performance and recording of the Elena Ruehr’s Violin Concerto (written for Muresanu) with the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine, an extensive tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina as soloist of the Profundis Orchestra from Skopje, North Macedonia, as well as appearances with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Symphonicity Orchestra (Virginia), and the Cayman National Orchestra.
Highlights of Muresanu’s season also include concerts in the United States, France, Spain and Romania as recitalist and chamber musician. Muresanu has recently launched a project called “Itineraries”, which follows a geographical trajectory through composers from the respective countries. This season’s journeys are: “From Madrid to Bucharest” (with pianist Daniel del Pino) and “From Tel Aviv to New York” (with cellist Julian Schwarz), with more to follow in future seasons. The acclaimed violinist is an ambassador of Romanian music, which she promotes on a regular basis, often in programs with her long-term duo partner, the pianist Dana Ciocârlie.
In parallel, Muresanu's acclaimed solo violin multi-media program “Four Strings Around the World - which celebrates the diversity of music cultures worldwide through works of composers from five continents - continues to evolve. At the present moment, it includes composers from 5 continents and 18 countries. The ever-evolving project includes staple masterpieces for solo violin such as the Bach Chaconne, alongside commissioned new works of Indian composer Shirish Korde, Native American composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, Nigerian composer Fred Onovwerosuoke, Iranian composer Sanam Gharacheh, and Jamaican composer Mikhail Johnson. Released as a solo violin CD in 2018 by the Grammy-nominated Sono Luminus label, the CD has been called an "illuminating release" by the Boston Globe. The program was highlighted in a Virtual Reality collaboration with the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.
Muresanu has recently been awarded the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award and the Independent Scholarship, Research and Creativity Award from the University of Maryland, for her project “Infinite Strings”: the creation of a platform designed to promote violin music by Romanian composers. She is also the recipient of a three-year National Science Foundation grant and a “Grand Challenges” grant from the University of Maryland for the “Music Education for All through AI and Digital Humanities” research she is conducting at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, where she has recently been named Affiliate Faculty.
An active chamber musician and recitalist, Ms. Muresanu is a member of the Boston Trio and has appeared as guest artist in such festivals and venues as New York City’s Bargemusic, Massachusetts’ Rockport Festival, Maine’s Bay Chambers concert series and Bowdoin Festival, Colorado’s Strings in the Mountains and San Juan Music Festival, Hawaii’s Maui Chamber Music Festival, The Netherland’s Reizend Music Festival, Belgium’s Festival van de Leie, and the Rencontres des Musiciennes Festival in France and the Guadeloupe island.
Ms. Muresanu is an avid performer of new music, having had numerous works written and dedicated to her. Her most recent releases are “Irina Muresanu plays Violeta Dinescu” of solo violin works by Violeta Dinescu (September 2023) and “Hybrid, Hints and Hooks” of solo and violin/piano works by Romanian composer Dan Dediu (October 2021), both on Métier label. Other recent recordings include Thomas Oboe Lee’s Violin Concerto (also dedicated to Ms. Muresanu) on the BMOP label, and works by Elena Ruehr for the Avie Records CD “Lift,” included on Keith Powers’ 13 Best Classical Music Recordings of 2016. She has also recorded the complete William Bolcom sonatas on the Centaur label with pianist Michael Lewin, funded by the Copland Recording Grant, and the Guillaume Lekeu and Alberic Magnard late Romantic Violin and Piano Sonatas with pianist Dana Ciocarlie for the French label AR RE-SE (“singing and soaring…[a] sizzling performance.” Fanfare). Of note among additional recordings is the world premiere recording of Marion Bauer’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, with pianist Virginia Eskin for Albany Records.
Irina Muresanu is a Professor in the School of Music, Affiliate Faculty in the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, and Affiliate Faculty in the Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at the University of Maryland, and has been on the faculties of Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She has been previously on the faculties of Harvard and MIT Music Departments. She holds a prestigious Artist Diploma degree and a Doctor in Musical Arts degree from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with the legendary French violinist Michèle Auclair. Muresanu plays an 1849 Giuseppe Rocca violin and an Étienne Pajeot bow.
ASIYA KOREPANOVA
America’s only pianist to perform Rachmaninoff’s complete solo piano works during his 150th anniversary year of 2023, Asiya Korepanova is a pianistic powerhouse, also highly recognized as a composer, visual artist, and poet. A herald of an enormous repertoire encompassing over 60 piano concertos and solo works ranging from early Baroque period to music of living composers, Asiya takes unique joy in exploring monumental sets of pieces, such as Liszt's 24 Etudes or Bach’s complete Well-Tempered Clavier.
The author of many original works and solo piano transcriptions of Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata, Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death, Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, Asiya studied composition with Albert Leman, chair of the composition department of Moscow Conservatory and student of Dmitry Shostakovich. She also creates original multimedia projects, featuring her poetry and artwork, for piano music by Liszt, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Schumann, and Mussorgsky. Her boundless virtuosity and profound interpretations captivate diverse audiences, leading to frequent return engagements.
Born to a musical family in Russia, Asiya made her orchestral debut at nine, playing Mozart’s Concerto No. 8 with her own cadenza. Since immigrating to the U.S. in 2012, Asiya has performed across the country at the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, in Phillips Collection, Newport Classical Festival, International Miami Piano Festival, and Grand Piano Series, to name a few. Her concerts have been broadcast on CNN, NPR stations, WFMT, and WETA.
In 2025-26 season, Asiya makes her debut at the Tippet Rise Art Center, returns to the San Francisco Piano Festival and Friends of Chamber Music of Miami series; premieres Amy Beach piano concerto in Argentina, making her debut with Buenos Aires Philharmonic; debuts with Alabama Symphony and Abilene Philharmonic; tours with the Balourdet Quartet and records her debut album with Reference Recording label. In June 2026, she directs the second season of her Flatiron Festival, a two-week chamber series on Manhattan, NYC.
GELI LI
With a deep enthusiasm for new music, an intense curiosity about the world of sound, and a rich multicultural background, Geli Li (b. 1992) is a Chinese-born American composer whose work bridges Eastern and Western musical traditions through a distinct personal idiom and contemporary musical vocabulary. She started her musical training at the piano at age five and began professional music composition and theory studies at twelve, later expanding her education through conservatories and universities in China, Germany, and the United States. Over the past two decades, her musical journey has taken her across Asia, Europe, and North America.
She received a rigorous and academically grounded education at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg under Elmar Lampson and at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing with Wenchen Qin and Weiya Hao. Li holds a doctoral degree in Music Composition with a concentration in Electronic Music from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied with Januibe Tejera and Yevgeniy Sharlat. Her artistic development has also been enriched by influential mentorships, including Augusta Read Thomas, Francesca Verunelli, and Chen Qigang.
Since 2020, Li has increasingly focused on sound exploration and timbre-driven approaches to musical creation. Her Breath series—seven works for diverse instrumentations—embraces both acoustic and electronic media. Highlights include Breath VI (2024) for amplified accordion, composed for Anthony Millet and premiered at IRCAM’s ManiFeste Academy, and Breath II (2021) for string trio, premiered by Hanatsu Miroir and later recorded by the Talea Ensemble. Additional recent works include Sleeping Light for chamber orchestra, commissioned by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and conducted by Brad Lubman; The Smell of Sunshine, commissioned by the Mizzou International Composers Festival and premiered by Alarm Will Sound under Alan Pierson in July 2025; Vertical Scaling, commissioned by Copland House’s CULTIVATE Institute and premiered in New York City in June 2025; and The Embrace of Wind and the Memories (2022) for cello and electronics, premiered and recorded by Jay Campbell.
In recent years, Li’s compositional philosophy has centered on expanding the sound-map, reimagining musical parameters with openness and curiosity, and positioning music as a medium for cross-cultural reflection. Her timbre-oriented practice engages with traditional Eastern instruments—such as the Chinese sheng, Japanese shō, and Korean gayageum—by uncovering distinct sonic qualities, reshaping them into newly articulated languages, and recontextualizing them within broader contemporary vocabularies. This process infuses these instruments with new vitality and sonic possibility, expanding their roles within contemporary practice and encouraging intercultural dialogue. She also views composition as an ecology of sound, where acoustic and electronic domains converge to generate new expressive potentials.
This aesthetic is central to Me and My Shadows, her concerto for Chinese sheng and Western ensemble, which brings the instrument into a contemporary new-music idiom. Continuing this direction, When My Eyes Closed—for accordion, Japanese shō, and alto saxophone—was premiered in June 2025 at the Valentiny Foundation in Luxembourg, commissioned by Ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin. She is also collaborating with the AsianArt Ensemble Berlin on a new work that explores Korean gayageum, violin, double bass, and percussion as an “inverted string quartet,” blending Eastern and Western instrumental voices; the work will be premiered in Berlin in August 2025.
Li’s music has been performed across three continents by more than thirty ensembles and orchestras, including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Talea Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Klangforum Wien, Copland House Ensemble, andPlay, Ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin, Hanatsu Miroir, Chamber Orchestra Jahrhundert-XX-Österreich, NOMAD Tokyo, Berlin Zafraan Ensemble, 4Sonora String Quartet, Switch~Ensemble, SoundMap Ensemble, Balance Campaign Ensemble, Tace t(i) Ensemble, Chartreuse Trio, Fear No Music Ensemble, Hub New Music, Beijing Modern Ensemble, Oregon Symphony Orchestra, China Broadcast Orchestra, Beijing Chinese Orchestra, and the Central Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. She has received more than forty-five international awards and honors, with her work featured at over thirty major festivals worldwide.
Most recently, she has received commissions from the Henri Lazarof Living Legacy at Brandeis University, the Museum of Contemporary Art Connecticut and Hub New Music, Ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin, Copland House’s CULTIVATE Institute, the Mizzou International Composers Festival, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s through the DeGaetano Composition Institute, and the Potries Composition Residency. Additionally, she also has upcoming commissions from TouchLab TERMINAL & the Gaudeamus Festival, and from the New York New Music Ensemble for their 50th anniversary in the 2026–2027 season.
Since 2024, Li has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Macalester College, where she teaches courses in music composition, theory, and new music.