SHLOMO MINTZ
Violin

Critics, colleagues and audiences regard Shlomo Mintz as one of the foremost violinists of our time, esteemed for his impeccable musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique alike. Born in Moscow in 1957, he immigrated to Israel and studied the violin with Ilona Feher. At the age of 11, he made his concert debut with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and at the age of 16 he made his debut in Carnegie Hall with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, under the patronage of Isaac Stern.

Since then he is a celebrated guest with orchestras and conductors on the international music scene, and has appeared with historical musicians like Sergiu Celibidache, Pablo Casals, Eugene Ormandy, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Mistislav Rosptropovich and Carlo Maria Giulini. In the 2012/2013 Season, he celebrated his 50th anniversary with the National Orchestra of France in a special concert at the Champs Elysées Theatre as a conductor and a soloist.

A regular President of Jury (Wieniawski, Sion, Buenos Aires and Munetsugu violin competitions) and Artistic Director of many International Music Festivals, he is currently sought after to conduct Master Classes all over the world. Mintz is also a co-founder of Violins of Hope, a project that aims to promote peace through music.

He has won several prestigious prizes including the Premio Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Diapason D’Or, the Grand Prix du Disque, the Gramophone Award and the Edison Award. In 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Degree from the Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel.

In 2015 and during two years Mintz was named the soloist in residence of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

In Autumn 2016 Shlomo Mintz has been awarded with the Cremona Music Award 2016. Next season includes performances in Europe, North and South America and Asia.

THE VIANO QUARTET

Praised for their “virtuosity, visceral expression, and rare unity of intention”(Boston Globe), the Viano String Quartet are First Prize winners of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Formed in 2015 at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, where they were Ensemble-in-Residence through the 2020-21 season, the quartet has performed in venues such as Wigmore Hall, Place Flagey, Konzerthaus Berlin, and Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The quartet is in residence at the Curtis Institute of Music as well as Meadows School of Music at the Southern Methodist University through the 2022-23 season.

Summer of 2022 brings re-invitations to Great Lakes and Rockport Music Festivals, as well as performances at Chamber Music Northwest (Protégé Project 3-week residency), Tannery Pond under the auspice of Capitol Region Classical, Victoria Summer Music Festival, Bard Music Festival finished with a residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. In the fall Viano will be making their Lucerne Festival and Wigmore Hall debuts followed by performances in Oklahoma, California, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Delaware, Tennessee, Washington DC and Canada. March 2023 marks the beginning of their three year residency with Music in the Morning in Vancouver where they will create programming to include artist collaborations, extensive community engagement and masterclasses.

Recent highlights include performances on three continents, including debuts in Berlin, Paris, Bremen, Brussels, Vancouver, and Beijing, among other cities. They have collaborated with world-class musicians such as pianists Emanuel Ax, Marc-André Hamelin and Elisso Virsaladze, violists Paul Coletti and Paul Neubauer, violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, vocalist Hila Plitmann and clarinetist David Shifrin.

The quartet achieved incredible success in their formative years, with an unbroken streak of top prizes at Osaka, Fischoff, Wigmore Hall, Yellow Springs and ENKOR chamber music competitions.

The name “Viano” was created to describe the four individual instruments in a string quartet interacting as one. Each of the four instruments begins with the letter “v”, and like a piano, all four string instruments together play both harmony and melody, creating a unified instrument called the “Viano”.

THE MILL AVE CHAMBER PLAYERS

For the past fifteen seasons, the Mill Ave Chamber Players have been dedicated to bringing engaging concerts to communities in the greater Phoenix area. Starting with our original series in Sun City, Arizona, MACP has partnered with libraries, public and charter schools, community organizations, and bookstores to hold concerts in unique settings, averaging 50 concerts a year. MACP has received local and national recognition for their work: City of Phoenix Mayor's Arts Awards nominee, Governor's Arts Awards nominee, and Chamber Music America recognition for work in community building at the annual national conference.

The ensemble is featured in a permanent exhibit at the Musical Instrument Museum, on KBAQ’s Arizona Encore, and is currently ensemble-in-residence at Phoenix College. The Mill Ave Chamber Players have performed in the Walled City Music Festival (Derry, Northern Ireland), the FAOT Festival Alfonso Ortiz Tirado (Alamos, Mexico), the Downtown Chamber Series (Phoenix, Arizona), and the International CALA (Celebración Artística de las Américas) Festival, as well as given recitals and masterclasses at universities including Universidad de Sonora, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, and the University of the Pacific.

The Mill Ave Chamber Players has recorded three albums: Impressions (2018) with commissions by John Steinmetz, Kerry Turner, Thomas Breadon, Jessica Meyer, and Robert Springer; What the Birds Said (2016) with the music of John Steinmetz; and Mill Ave Chamber Players (2014).

DAVID AMRAM
Multi-instrumentalist Musician

David Amram is a pioneer multi-instrumentalist musician (35 instruments, so far), singer, improvisational rapper and scat singer, symphonic conductor, author, and a composer of Classical, Jazz, Latin, Afro-Cuban, and Global Folk music, along with composing for Opera, Film and Broadway. Over a career, that began more than seventy years ago in Washington, DC, where he played French Horn with the National Symphony Orchestra, he has composed more than 110 orchestral and chamber music works. He also pioneered the improvisational French Horn into Jazz, and has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Dylan, Arthur Miller, Charles Mingus, Elia Kazan, Jack Kerouac, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Willie Nelson, Lionel Hampton, Joseph Papp, Allen Ginsberg, Stan Getz, Langston Hughes, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Patti Smith, Paquito d’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Thelonious Monk, Woody Guthrie, and Johnny Depp. In 2011, his docu-bio film DAVID AMRAM: the First 80 Years was released. In 2014, his album THIS LAND: Symphonic Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie, which he composed and conducted with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, was released. In 2019, his five CD box set release, DAVID AMRAM’s Classic American Film Scores (1956 – 2016), includes his music from The Manchurian Candidate, Splendor in the Grass, and Pull My Daisy.

As the first Composer in Residence of the New York Philharmonic, the Lincoln Center Theatre Company, and Joe Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park, Amram is also the author of a 1968 autobiography, Vibrations; in addition to Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat; and Offbeat: Collaboratin’ with Kerouac. Routledge Publishing Co., will be releasing The Many Worlds of David Amram: Renaissance Man of American Music in August, 2023, while his forthcoming memoire David Amram: @ 90: Promising Young Composer, will be released in 2024.

Amram’s latest jazz album DAVID AMRAM Live in Germany (1954 – 2013) was released in January, 2023. He holds many Lifetime Achievement Awards and eight Honorary Doctorates. As he approaches 93, he maintains a non-stop schedule traveling the world -- performing, conducting, teaching and lecturing in five languages.

Among Amram’s many honors and eight honorary doctorates, includes the New York’s “Highlight in Jazz Lifetime Achievement Award”; the “Jay McShane’s Lifetime Achievement Award” from the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame; the “Pete Seeger Power of Song Award”, and the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from Folk Alliance International.

ELMIRA DARVAROVA
Violin

GRAMMY®-nominated, award-winning (Gold Medal at the Global Music Awards in 2017 and 2018), a concert violinist since the age of 4, and hailed by American Record Guide as “a marvelous violinist in the tradition of Heifetz”, Elmira Darvarova caused a sensation, becoming the first ever (and so far only) woman-concertmaster in the history of the Metropolitan Opera.

With the MET Orchestra she toured Europe, Japan and the United States, and was heard on the MET's live weekly international radio broadcasts, television broadcasts and CDs for Sony, Deutsche Grammophon and EMI. As concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra she has performed with the greatest conductors of our time, including the legendary Carlos Kleiber.

She studied with Yfrah Neaman, Josef Gingold and Henryk Szeryng. She can be heard on numerous CDs (including the world-premiere recording of Vernon Duke's violin concerto with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, and a CD with music by René de Castéra, named a RECORD OF THE YEAR 2015 by MusicWeb International). Her latest Ysaÿe album (praised by Chicago Tribune music critic Henry Fogel) was sold-out on the first day, and her album based on Indian Ragas debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Charts and was hailed by the prestigious world-music magazine Songlines as one of the best East-Meets-West albums in the long tradition espoused by some of the greatest violinist such as Yehudi Menuhin.

Her recording of Brahms’ Horn Trio with the former Principal Horn of The New York Philharmonic Philip Myers has been described as belonging in the same league with the iconic Myron Bloom/Michael Tree/Rudolf Serkin album from Marlboro. She has appeared on the stages of five continents, and has performed concertos with numerous European and American orchestras. She has given master classes worldwide and has performed chamber music with Janos Starker, Gary Karr, Pascal Rogé, Vassily Lobanov and Fernando Otero.

A documentary film about her was shown on European television. She performs with the New York Piano Quartet, the Delphinium Trio, the Quinteto del Fuego, the Amram Ensemble, and in a duo with Fernando Otero. She is Jury President of several international chamber music competitions in Europe, and Director of the New York Chamber Music Festival.

Praised by The Strad for her “intoxicating tonal beauty and beguilingly sensuous phrasing" and "silky-smooth voluptuous tone”, she was featured in a Gramophone Magazine article about her world-premiere recording with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony of Vernon Duke's concerto (written for Heifetz in 1940).

HOWARD WALL
Horn

Howard Wall was a long-time member of The New York Philharmonic (holding The Ruth F. and Allan J. Broder Chair), where he joined the horn section in 1994, after having been a member of The Philadelphia Orchestra for almost 20 years, and a former member of the Phoenix and Denver Symphony Orchestras. Howard Wall also performs and records with the All-Star Orchestra. Mr. Wall has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic in Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns multiple times in New York, as well as on New York Philharmonic tours in Europe and South America.

An avid chamber musician, he was a member of the Philadelphia Chamber Brass, and appeared regularly at the New York Philharmonic Ensembles series and the Very Young Composers series throughout his New York Philharmonic tenure. He currently performs regularly at the New York Chamber Music Festival, the Red Rocks Music Festival, with the Delphinium Trio, the Amram Ensemble, and tours internationally in a duo with his wife, former MET Opera concertmaster Elmira Darvarova.

Howard Wall has recorded chamber and solomusic for several labels, including Philips, Cala Records, Urlicht AudioVisual, Navona and Affetto. Howard Wall recorded Poulenc’s Elégie for Horn and Piano with world-renowned French pianist Pascal Rogé. Mr. Wall has also recorded (twice) David Amram’s Blues and Variations for Monk for Solo Horn, and gave its European Premiere in Paris. Among Howard Wall’s most recent CD albums is the highly-praised Astor Piazzolla - Genius of Tango (a double-CD album presenting the world premiere recordings of many duo and trio arrangements by Mr. Wall, and remaining for many weeks on Spotify’s selections’ list), as well as Music From Five Centuries, Phillip Ramey: Music for French Horn (which climbed to No. 23 on the BILLBOARD Charts, and reached Amazon’s No.1 best-seller status in Chamber Music), American Music for Violin and Horn, Music by Women, and two albums of works for Solo Horn: Horn Monologues, and Music for One Horn (all released on Affetto/Naxos).

Mr. Wall’s newest albums are Horn Trios by Brahms, Kahn, Koechlin and Dubois and Chamber Music by José Serebrier. In 2020 the Horn Call Magazine praised Howard Wall’s “legendary low register” in his recent recordings, noting his ”impeccable intonation and stellar virtuosity”, mentioning that “every note is a gem”. Howard Wall performed chamber music in sold-out concerts on three separate occasions at Carnegie Hall, as well as at venues in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom.

Howard Wall began playing the horn at age ten and earned his bachelor’s degree in music performance at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He made his Carnegie Hall debut at age 19 performing Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns. He performed the same work again as soloist with orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2012 (under the baton of the late Dale Clevenger), and in London at the 2015 International Horn Society Workshop. Howard Wall was among the performers awarded Gold Medal and Top Honors at the 2018 Global Music Awards.

THOMAS WEAVER
Piano

Thomas Weaver is an American pianist and composer currently on faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music and Boston University Tanglewood Institute. His active solo and chamber career has brought him to prominent concert halls of many cities including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Diego, Washington DC, Nashville, Dallas, and Berlin, in addition to festival appearances at Tanglewood Music Festival and Red Rocks Music Festival.

Weaver has performed with a number of eminent musicians such as Jess Gillam, Elmira Darvarova, Kenneth Radnofsky, Philip Myers, Eric Ruske, Jennifer Frautschi, Gene Pokorny, and members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Boston Symphony Orchestra. Weaver is currently a member of the Amram Ensemble, Trio Ardente, and New England Chamber Players and is the Music Director of the Marian Anderson Historical Society.

A champion of new music, Weaver has premiered many new compositions, including works by David Amram, Reena Esmail, David Loeb, Anthony Plog, John H. Wallace, Francine Trester, and Christopher LaRosa. His playing and arrangements can be heard on the albums David Amram: So In America and Astor Piazzolla - Genius of Tango, both released by Affetto Records.

As a composer his music has been performed across four continents, including countries such as the United States, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Australia. His works have been commissioned by a number of organizations and musicians including Boston University, Penn Museum, The New York Chamber Music Festival, Elmira Darvarova, Kenneth Radnofsky, Pharos Quartet, Alea III, and the Daraja Ensemble. Weaver’s works have been performed by large ensembles such as the Boston University Symphony Orchestra and Mannes American Composers Orchestra. For more information please visit www.thomaseweaver.com.

VITALY SEREBRIAKOV
Piano

Described as “thoughtful artist with a firm technique, a gorgeous tone, and a sensitive touch” (Fanfare Magazine) Vitaly Serebriakov is a critically acclaimed pianist, teaching artist, and recording engineer.

Vitaly has performed in leading venues around the world and has won prizes in numerous international piano competitions. His latest CD “Infinitude”, a collection of piano music by Scriabin, Medtner, and Prokofiev has been highly praised by music critics. James Harrington from Fanfare Magazine writes: “…Serebriakov plays this set as well or better than the many recordings I have of them. He lets the music speak for itself, paying very close attention to the details, but never losing sight of the overall flow of each piece…”

Together with his wife Svetlana, Mr. Serebriakov has co-founded Ostinato Conservatory of Music in Verrado, Arizona, and a non-profit organization The Gift of Music Arizona, to help promote classical music and nurture excellence in music education. The couple also serve as Artistic Directors for Desert Hills Community School of Music in Scottsdale Arizona. Vitaly is an Artist-In-Residence for the Scottsdale Philharmonic and performs with the orchestra on a regular basis. Highlights of past seasons include performances of Tchaikovsky and Grieg Piano Concertos. Mr. Serebriakov is a Yamaha Artist.