Trio Navarro & Friends Two Russian Piano Quintet Masterpieces Sunday 24 July 2016 at 7:00pm The Berkeley Hillside Club is delighted to welcome Trio Navarro & Friends to our Concert Series. They will be performing a pair of wonderful Russian piano quintets by Arensky and Taneyev. And as a special treat, violinist Victor Romasevich will be joined by pianistLena Lubotsky in another rare Russian violin/piano masterpiece by Golubev. Don't miss these remarkable artists performing in our historic and acoustically-excellent hall. The Artists: Marilyn Thompson - piano Victor Romasevich - violin Philip Santos - violin Marcel Gemperli - viola Jill Rachuy Brindel - cello Lena Lubotsky - piano
About Trio Navarro: Co-founded in 1992 by pianist Marilyn Thompson and cellist Jill Rachuy Brindel, Trio Navarro celebrates its 24th season as chamber music artists in residence at Sonoma State. Comprised of violinist Victor Romasevich, cellist Jill Rachuy Brindel and pianist Marilyn Thompson, Trio Navarro has performed virtually the entire “standard” piano trio repertoire. They are advocates of out-of-print and rarely performed works by composers including Rebecca Clarke, Paul Juon, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, Clara Schumann and Sergei Taneyev. In the contemporary vein, they have performed trios by Chick Corea, Richard Danielpour, Brian S. Wilson, Kirke Mechem and Paul Schoenfeld. Their frequent collaborations with Bay Area musicians and instrumentalists from the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, and Ballet orchestras have brought a remarkable range of mixed ensemble repertoire that includes the String Quartets of Bernard Brindel and Iosif Andriasov; Piano Quintets of Schumann and Shostakovich; the Vaughan Williams Quintet in D; Piano Quartets of Catoire, Fauré, Mozart, Saint Saëns and Schumann, and the Horn Trios of Brahms and Brian S. Wilson.
The Program: Piano Quintet in D Major, Op.51 (1900) - Anton Arensky (1861-1906) 1. Allegro moderato, 2. VARIATIONS 3. SCHERZO. Allegro vivace 4. FINALE. Allegro moderato Sonata for Violin and Piano in D Major, Op.37 (1952) - Evgeny Golubev (1910-1988) 1. Allegro moderato 2. Andante 3. Allegro patetico Piano Quintet in g minor, Op.30 (1911) - Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915) 1. INTRODUZIONE (Adagio mesto) - Allegro patetico 2. SCHERZO. Presto 3. Largo 4. FINALE. Allegro vivace About the Artists:
Pianist Marilyn Thompson is Professor of Piano and Director of Chamber Music at Sonoma State. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she was a student of Adolph Baller. She was awarded a Fulbright grant to the Vienna Academy of Music, and subsequently received her Master’s Degree from Stanford University, where she studied under the Helen Evans Memorial Scholarship on a full-tuition grant. While at Stanford, she gave the West Coast Premier of Roger Sessions’ Piano Concerto. She has given countless recitals in the United States and abroad, and has been the featured soloist in concerti of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Martinu, Hindemith, Barber and others. She has performed virtually the entire standard chamber music repertoire. Her recordings include performances of the Thomas Beversdorf Cello Sonata, the Brahms Trio, Op. 87, and Ravel’s Violin-Piano Sonate. Miss Thompson has performed in chamber music concerts in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center; the 92nd Street “Y” in New York City; the Philip’s Gallery, Washington D.C.; Boston’s Symphony Hall; Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco; and in the Teatro Nacional, San Jose, Costa Rica. In the 1980s she was the pianist member of the Chamber Soloists of San Francisco and the San Francisco Trio. At the present time Miss Thompson is the pianist of the NAVARRO TRIO – which she co-founded in 1992 with cellist Jill Rachuy Brindel – a group that performs frequently throughout the Bay Area. Marilyn Thompson has taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; the College of Holy Names, Oakland, California; at the University of California at Santa Cruz; and is presently on the faculty of Sonoma State University where she has taught since 1976. Violinist and violist Victor Romasevich was born in Minsk, Belarus. His mother, Lena Lubotsky, began teaching him piano when he was four. At five, he started violin studies with Anna Silberstein. At six, he enrolled in the violin class of Mikhail Garlitsky and Lev Sharinov at The Gnesin Music School in Moscow. As a youth he studied violin with Rostislav Dubinsky of the Borodin Quartet. He continued his training at the Moscow Conservatory with Boris Belenky and Nadia Beshkina. Following his emigration to the United States in 1977, he studied at The Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian. In 1979 he became a violin and viola pupil of the composer and philosopher Iosif Andriasov. Winner of the Gina Bachauer Prize at the 1985 J.S. Bach International Competition, Mr. Romasevich joined the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra as Associate Principal Violist in 1990, and in 1992 moved to the First Violin section. He joined the Trio Navarro in 2013. He appears frequently in recitals and chamber concerts as a violinist, violist, and keyboard player. Jill Rachuy Brindel is Adjunct Instructor in Cello at SSU. She has been a cellist with the San Francisco Symphony since 1980 and a co-founder and member of NAVARRO TRIO, an ensemble hailed as “the premier trio of Northern California” by Classical Sonoma. Ms. Brindel studied at Indiana University and Chicago Musical College and was formerly Assistant Principal Cellist of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra, Principal Cellist of the Mendocino Music Festival for its first six years, cellist for the Navarro Quartet and a member of the Houston Symphony. She has performed chamber music at Kohl Mansion, the Russian River Chamber Festival, Old First Church, the Ralston Chamber Series and Chamber Music Sundaes. In 2006 she returned to the Mendocino Music Festival as Principal Cellist and chamber soloist and in 2009 she became co-director of the Emerging Artists Program at the festival. Ms. Brindel actively promotes the music of her late father, composer Bernard Brindel. She is a private instructor of cello as well as the coach for the cello section of the SFS Youth Orchestra. In 2015 she joined the faculty of Sonoma State University as studio cello instructor. Ms. Brindel has given seminars on audition techniques to students at the University of Nevada at Reno and the New World Symphony. Philip Santos discovered the violin in the Oakland public schools. He has performed extensively in many capacities throughout the Bay Area and across the country, and is a frequent performer on numerous chamber series, including the San Francisco Symphony's chamber music series, Chamber Music Sundaes, Old First Church Concerts, Composers Inc, Music on the Hill, as well as Carnegie Recital Hall in new York with the California Chamber Players. He has been a member of the Berkeley Symphony, Oakland Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony. He has also played with the Chicago Symphony. As a member of the Skywalker Symphony, he has recorded soundtracks for numerous major motion pictures and video games. Currently, Mr. Santos is concertmaster of Philharmonia Healdsburg, assistant concertmaster of Marin Symphony, and principal second violin of California Symphony. Mr. Santos served as concertmaster of the Fremont Symphony from 2002 to 2012. In addition to his performance schedule, Mr. Santos teaches violin and viola and conducts the string ensemble at California State University East Bay. He also teaches at Patten Academy and University, as well as many private students. Marcel Gemperli began studying the viola at the age of eight in his native New York State and continued his musical education while earning his B.A. at Harvard University. He spent two years continuing his viola studies in Germany and Switzerland before settling in the Bay Area. Marcel currently serves as Principal Viola of the California Symphony, and performs frequently with many orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet and Opera Orchestras, the San Francisco and New Century Chamber Orchestras, as well as the orchestras of Marin, Modesto, Santa Rosa and Silicon Valley. Marcel performs frequently in touring Broadway productions and also records numerous film and television soundtracks at the Skywalker Sound Studio. He has performed at the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, the Mendocino Music Festival, and as part of the Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra. Lena Lubotsky was born in Moscow, USSR, where she studied piano with professor Konstantin Igumnov and Tamara Bobovich at the Central Musical School, and later graduated from the department of musicology of the Tchaikovsky State Conservatory. She has taught piano, music theory, music history and ear training at various music schools in Russia and USA where she has lived since 1977. Ms. Lubotsky has also performed as choral accompanist and chamber music partner with many vocalists and instrumentalists, including her son, Victor Romasevich.