This event is free and open to the public.
Kate Arndt, violin*
Beethoven Spring Sonata
Katherine Arndt, violin (Boston, Massachusetts), studies at New England Conservatory of Music with Miriam Fried. Her past teachers have included Yuri Mazurkevich, Kelly Barr and Lynn Basila. Kate has performed as a featured soloist with several orchestras and was in a master class at Jordan Hall with Midori Goto. Kate currently is a member of NEC’s Symphonic Orchestra, and is also an avid chamber musician. Her former group, the Back Bay Trio, was featured on NPR’s From the Top in February 2013, and was also a semi-finalist at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition held in May 2013. Kate has attended several summer music programs, including the Perlman Summer Music School, Heifetz International Music Institute, and Greenwood Music Camp. Past summer teachers have included Itzhak Perlman, Catherine Cho, Li Lin, Merry Peckham, David Cerone, Ani Kavafian, Alex Kerr, Philip Setzer, and Mihaela Martin.
Zachary Fung, cello
Brahms Symphony No. 2 Excerpts
Zachary Fung, 16, is a member of Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. He started learning the piano at age 4 and cello at 9. He has been studying the Cello with Eugene Kim and Thomas Kraines.
He was the winner of 2015 Bucks County Symphony Orchestra Youth Concerto Competition, First Prize winner of 2016 Caprio Young Artists Competiton, 2016 International Music Competition London Grand Prize Virtuoso and 2016 Old York Road Symphony Young Artists Competition. Zachary is also a Finalist of Boston Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition. He has attended Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, NC, Harpa International Music Festival in Iceland and Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, ME. He has performed in masterclasses for Christian Poltéra and Zuill Bailey.
Katharina Giegling, violin
Bach Partita II, BWV 1004, Allemande and/or Sarabande
The violinist Katharina Giegling, born in Heilbronn, Germany, in 1985, graduated from the master class of the Leipzig Academy of Music and Theater in July 2013.
She also holds an artistic performance degree from the Freiburg Music Academy, where she studied with Gottfried von der Goltz, and an artistic Master’s Degree dated 2011 from the Leipzig Academy of Music and Theater, where she studied with Friedemann Wezel. Katharina Giegling completed her diploma thesis in 2010 under the supervision of Anselm Ernst on the subject of “The Inner Mindset of Practicing and Performing”.
At the finale of the German Music Competition in April 2014 Katharina Giegling won a stipend for the Federal Selection of Young Artists’ Concerts as the violinist of Trio Pierrot, which she forms together with David Kindt (clarinet) and Helge Aurich (piano). She has been giving concerts as a fellow of “live music now” since 2010.
Katharina Giegling has performed freelance with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, the Leipzig Chamber Orchestra and the Treppenhausorchester Hannover.
Katharina Giegling taught at the Leipzig Music Academy as part of the Master Class program and at the Music Schools Johann Sebastian Bach and Clara Schumann. Since October 2013 she has been living and teaching in Hanover.
Until 2013 she was a member and concertmaster with soloist obligations of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, an orchestra with which she has given concerts throughout Europe, in the USA and Mexico under conductors including Kent Nagano, Christopher Moulds, Ivor Bolton and Susanna Mälkki.
In 2012 Katharina Giegling performed as a soloist in Bach’s Double Concerto with the Kammerakademie Halle; in 2011 as a soloist in the Master’s Project “Lifetimes – the Seasons by Vivaldi and Piazzolla”; in 2010 she was a soloist in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in Zurich. In 2008 she won the award of the Academy Council of the Freiburg Music Academy together with the Freiburg-based Amadeus Piano Quartet, a distinction that included a live broadcast on Deutschlandradio. In 2003 Katharina Giegling appeared as a soloist in the Beethoven Romances with the Romanian State Philharmonic Orchestra in Zurich. She also received a second prize at the Federal German competition “Jugend musiziert” together with the Aaron Katharina Giegling received musical impulses from Carolin Widmann, Friedemann Eichhorn, Heime Müller, Laurent Breuninger, Erich Höbarth, Susanne Scholz (baroque violin), Thomas Prokein (jazz violin), Birgit Erz, Julia Galic and Uwe Dringenberg, among others. Her chamber music partners include Helge Aurich, David Kindt and Nico Treutler as well as the jazz musicians Markus Ehrlich, Alexander Kuhn, Volker Engelberth and Robert Giegling, with whom she gives concerts as violinist of the ensemble “JAZZKLAZZ'EXPERIENCE”.
In October 2014 Katharina will perform as concert master with the ensemble Kapella 19.
Alan Toda–Ambaras, cello*
Brahms Sonata in F Major, Mvt. 1
Cellist Alan Toda-Ambaras, born in 1991, is the recipient of the Prize for Most Promising Contestant at the 2005 Rostropovich International Cello Competition in Paris.
Alan is active as both a soloist and a chamber musician. He has performed with Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble, the Borromeo Quartet, the Parker Quartet, the Boston Trio, and has appeared twice as a soloist with the North Carolina Symphony. Recent appearances include performances at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Taos Music Festival, the Diller Quaile School of Music in New York, Harvard University's Paine Hall, the Halcyon Festival, and the New England Conservatory, where his ensemble – The Frost Piano Quartet – made its Jordan Hall debut in May 2014. He has been featured on French television and in several European documentaries due to his participation in the Rostropovich Competition; he has also been heard on NPR's From The Top program and New York's WKCR Classical station.
Alan has participated in master classes and taken lessons with many of the world’s foremost artists, including Luis Claret, Philippe Muller, Ralph Kirshbaum, Gary Hoffman, David Geringas (at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, in Siena, Italy), Jens Peter Maintz, Frans Helmerson, Anner Bylsma (all three at the Kronberg Academy in Germany), Janos Starker, and Joel Krosnick. At Harvard, he enjoyed studying the evolving significance of human gesture and physicality in modern and postmodern painting. Alan has a B.A. in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Laurence Lesser.
Alan’s performances have gained enthusiastic reviews. In Paris, he “touched the public and the jury” (musique.france2.fr). The Washington Post noted that Alan “has the poise of a seasoned performer” and “showed off his strengths convincingly in the demanding repertoire.” And another critic declared that Alan’s playing “proved remarkable by any standard. . . . Toda-Ambaras is worth seeking out and hearing.”
Alan is passionate about engaging with communities through performances and discussions about the arts and humanities in modern society. He is the co-founder of the interdisciplinary music organization Project LENS (experiencelens.com). Alan is also currently serving his third year as Music Scholar-in-Residence in Harvard's Cabot House, and as the director and chamber coach for the Quad Chamber Program.
*Dina Vainshtein, Piano Accompanist
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