"If there were more Cynthia Phelpses around, there might be more viola recitals…she is a master of her instrument -- remarkable technique and warm, full sound." – THE WALL STREET JOURNAL "Not only does CYNTHIA PHELPS produce one of the richest, deepest viola timbres in the world, she is a superb musician" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). Principal Violist of the New York Philharmonic, Ms. Phelps has distinguished herself both here and abroad as one of the leading instrumentalists of our time. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Pro Musicis International Award and first prize at both the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and the Washington International String Competition, she has captivated audiences with her compelling solo and chamber music performances. She is "a performer of top rank...the sounds she drew were not only completely unproblematical --technically faultless, generously nuanced-- but sensuously breathtaking" (The Boston Globe). Ms. Phelps performs throughout the world as soloist with orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra, Shanghai, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Eastern Music Festival and Vermont Symphonies, Orquesta Sinfonica de Bilbao, and Rochester and Hong Kong Philharmonic among others. World-wide, her electrifying solo appearances with the New York Philharmonic garner raves; they have included Berlioz's Harold in Italy, the Bartok Viola Concerto, Strauss's Don Quixote, the Benjamin Lees Concerto for String Quartet, the premiere of a concerto written for her by Sofia Gubaidulina and most recently, the premiere of a new concerto by the young composer Julia Adolphe written for her. She has appeared as soloist with the orchestra across the globe, including Vienna’s Musikverein, London’s Royal Festival Hall, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam among others. She has become a familiar and much-admired figure at the world's foremost concert venues, appearing in recital in Paris, Rome, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, at New York's Alice Tully Hall, London's Wigmore Hall, St. David's Hall in Cardiff, Wales, as well as in jails, hospitals, and drug rehab centers worldwide. A compelling performer of traditional works, she’s also an advocate of the music of our time, including premieres by Larry Lipkis, for piano quintet and solo viola, and two works by Stephen Paulus, one solo and one commissioned for her by the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival for viola and the American String Quartet and for piano quintet. She has collaborated with such artists as Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, and Yefim Bronfman, among others. A much sought-after chamber musician, she performs regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and collaborates with the American, Brentano, St. Lawrence and Prague String Quartets, and the Kalichstein-Robinson-Laredo Trio. She has appeared at the Mostly Mozart, Marlboro, Ravinia, La Jolla, Bravo! Colorado, Santa Fe, Moab, and Seattle Festivals, as well as in Europe at the Naples, Cremona, and Schleswig-Holstein Festivals. She is a founding member of the chamber group Les Amies, a flute-harp-viola trio formed with harpist Nancy Allen and flutist Carol Wincenc, and a member of the newly-formed New York Philharmonic String Quartet. She has also been heard on National Public Radio's St. Paul Sunday Morning, Radio France, and RAI in Italy, and has been featured on The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Live from Lincoln Center, and CBS Sunday Morning. A devoted educator, Ms. Phelps is on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Shanghai Academy, and the Music Academy of the West. Her most recent album, for flute, viola, and harp, on Telarc, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Her debut solo recording is on Cala Records, and she can also be heard on the Marlboro Recording Society, Polyvideo, Nuova Era, Virgin Classics, and Koch, and New York Philharmonic labels. Photo: Richard Bowditch PRESS THE NEW YORK TIMES "Her sound was everywhere lush and lovely -- the lullaby [of Schumann's ["Märchenbilder"] has never sounded more meltingly beautiful than it did here." THE BOSTON GLOBE "A performer of the top rank ... the sounds she drew were technically faultless, generously nuanced, and sensuously breathtaking." THE LOS ANGELES TIMES "Phelps is one of the more persuasive violists on the solo circuit. She tossed off all technical challenges with ease, and her richness of tone radiated an almost palpable warmth….she exhibited spellbinding pianissimos and unshakable accuracy" THE TIMES (London) "Her warmth of tone as well as flexibility of phrase comprised an affecting performance. Beneath the unassuming platform manner was a skill and sensitivity that should ensure her continuing success." THE CLASSICAL SOURCE “Cynthia Phelps's brief but extraordinarily heartfelt viola solos invariably got to the heart of the matter and pointed up what was lacking elsewhere.” THE NEW YORK TIMES "She shapes the viola line as though it were written for voice, not for an instrument ...with a lush tone, and phrasing that was carefully nuanced." SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE “Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy,” with viola soloist Cynthia Phelps, was a tour de force.” MUSICAL AMERICA WORLDWIDE “Adolphe has crafted a poetically haunting meditation that leaves a lasting impression [unearth, release]. Phelps was a deeply involved protagonist, giving eloquent voice to the concerto’s rhetorical spectrum, from the theatrical declamation of the opening movement to the kinetic accents of the energetic second and the liberating lyrical serenity of the finale.” THE NEW YORK TIMES “The soloist [Unearth, Release]” was Cynthia Phelps, the Philharmonic’s impressive principal violist. Ms. Phelps conveyed the emotional nuances and mood shifts of the music in a commanding and plush-toned performance.” NEW YORK MAGAZINE “Adolphe has written a concerto [Unearth, Release] that captures the fragile clarity of twilight…the viola must achieve prominence through charm and negotiation…That’s a job for Cynthia Phelps, the New York Philharmonic’s stupendous section leader, and Adolphe helps her by threading the dark, velvety viola through a shadowed orchestral landscape. The soloist flaps like a bat against a window in the first movement and skips lightly over the waves in the second. But it’s the final movement that lingers longest in the mind, the viola curling softly on a vaporous pillow of strings.” FINANCIAL TIMES “Cynthia Phelps, the splendid first viola player of the local band, performed Unearth, Release, a new, almost hummable concerto by Julia Adolphe. Adolphe’s 20-minute contribution…bright and breezy at first, then meditative, it made fine use of Phelps’s lush tone and virtuosic technique.” On the cover of … Cynthia Phelps, the principal violist of the Philharmonic, premières a new concerto by Julia Adolphe. Illustration by Wesley Allsbrook When New York Philharmonic audiences hear the first performances of Julia Adolphe’s viola concerto “Unearth, Release” (Nov. 17-19), they may not realize the amount of labor that goes into creating an orchestral piece from scratch: the concerto lasts approximately nineteen minutes and took about a year to compose. Adolphe, who is twenty-eight years old and is completing a doctorate at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, received the commission in late 2014, after winning a competition at the American Composers Orchestra. She met with Cynthia Phelps, the Philharmonic’s principal violist, who will be the soloist in the première, and studied her sound. Adolphe began sketching, on paper and on the computer; she went through various drafts, tried out the piece in a viola-and-piano version, and, this past summer, had run-throughs with orchestras at U.S.C. and in North Carolina. “This was going to be my first piece out of school,” Adolphe told me, at her home, in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. “In fact, I’m still in school, technically. It’s an intimidating place to start—the New York Philharmonic!—but everyone has been incredibly helpful all the way through the process.” She consulted with Alan Gilbert, the orchestra’s current music director, and with Jaap van Zweden, Gilbert’s successor, who will conduct the première. “I’m grateful I had the opportunity to basically workshop the piece in different stages. The piece is at its full potential, I think.” She began not with notes but words: a page of adjectives and images, indicating moods that she wanted to capture. They range from “claustrophobic, contagious, cyclical, vivid, fiery,” at the beginning, to “deep breaths, peace and calm,” at the end. “It might be my theatre background,” she told me, “but I tend to think of orchestra players as characters with intentions, and plot a narrative arc for them. It’s not about the audience needing to have these exact same emotions—they might feel something very different. It’s that my music will communicate more effectively if I’m as specific with myself as possible.” The narrative proceeds from relative darkness to relative light—from “drowning in uncertainty,” Adolphe writes in a program note, to “embracing ambiguity.” She made some extensive changes in the process. Originally, the piece ended with a fast, bustling movement; later, she moved that music to the middle, to create a more meditative close. At first, she gave the viola some lengthy solos with little or no accompaniment, but Gilbert advised her to add more activity to the supporting parts. In the final stages, she thinned out textures so that the viola would always be audible. The challenge of writing a viola concerto is that the instrument can easily be overpowered. “I learned so much along the way,” she said. “In a way, the story I wrote—of the viola starting enmeshed in the orchestra and then asserting her expressive identity—is my own story, too. I found my own voice in the course of the year.” ♦ Classical Music | Entertainment Seattle Chamber Music Society marks its 35th Summer Festival Cynthia Phelps is a regular participant in the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival.