JASON VIEAUX, CLASSICAL GUITAR

SPANISH BRASS

With a 35-year trajectory in the world of chamber music, Spanish Brass is one of the most dynamic and established groups on the international musical stage.

In 1996 the ensemble won First Prize in the 6th International Ville de Narbonne (France) Brass Quintet Competition, considered the most prestigious in the world for this formation. In 2017 Spanish Brass received First Prize in the Bankia Awards for Musical Talent of the Comunitat de Valencia, and in 2019 they received the Espai Ter de Música Award. They were also honored with five Carles Santos Awards for their CDs XXX,Mira si hem corregut terres… (2019), Les Aventures de Monsieur Jules (2020), Spanish Brass (a) Live(2021) and Resurrección (2022).

In 2020, Spanish Brass was honored by receiving the National Music Prize from Spain’s Ministry of Culture, the country’s highest musical honor.

In addition to participating in some of the most important music festivals around the world, Spanish Brass performed at the Prince of Asturias Awards Gala in 1995, recorded the music for the theatrical work “La Fundación” by Buero Vallejo for the National Dramatic Center, and composed the soundtrack for the film “Descongélate” by Felix Sabroso for the production company El Deseo.

In addition to their activities as performers, Spanish Brass organises two festivals devoted to brass instruments: SBALZ – Festival Spanish Brass Alzira (www.sbalz.com) and Brassurround (www.brassurround.com), where some of the most prestigious international brass soloists, ensembles and teachers gather each year.

Spanish Brass is supported by the Institut Valencià de Cultura and the Ministerio de Cultura-INAEM.

BEO STRING QUARTET

The eclectic and highly polished Beo String Quartet, founded in 2015, has created a niche for itself as a daring, genre-defying ensemble. Rigorously trained in the classical tradition, violinists Jason Neukom and Andrew Giordano, violist Sean Neukom, and cellist Ryan Ash also know their way around contemporary expression, including the use of electronics, live sound processing, and spatial audio manipulation. Their performances of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, or Shostakovich have been compared to those of the best among 21st century international string quartets.

With 65 world premieres to its credit and 150 concert works played throughout the United States, South America, and Europe, the iconoclastic Beo String Quartet does what it loves best: playing classical repertoire, contemporary, rock, and experimental music. From the Latin “to make happy,” Beo started out as a lark. Two Mexican-American brothers, Jason Neukom and Sean Neukom, decided to record a song entitled “Happy, Happy,” composed by Sean, but for that they would need two more players. And so in 2015 the Beo String Quartet was formed. Touring the world, composing, performing, recording, teaching, and having fun, Beo has since then founded Beo Publishing, built a recording studio, and started its own recording label, NeuKraft Records.

ALISA SADIKOVA, HARP

Alisa Sadikova is a prodigy classical harpist from Saint Petersburg, Russia. From 2010 to 2018, she studied at the Special Music School of Saint Petersburg Conservatory, with Karina Maleeva; during 2018–2021, she attended Cambridge Musica Mundi High School in Waterloo, Belgium, with Catherine Michel; from August 2021 to the present, she started her bachelor’s degree at the Juilliard School in New York, USA, with Nancy Allen. Alisa is a winner of many international competitions: Absolute First Prize at the International Youth Contest in New York, USA (2010); First Prize at the International Competition of Music Talent in Hanstätten, Germany (2011); Absolute First Prize at the International Competition in Helsinki, Finland (2011); The Yuri Temirkanov Prize (2012); Scholarship holder and owner of an Individual Grant from the Vladimir Spivakov Foundation (2015); 3rd Prize at The Young Talents of Russia (2017); 4th Prize at The 20th International Harp Contest in Israel (2018); First Prize at The Scandinavian International Instrumental Music Competition (2023); Absolute First Prize at the World Grand Prix International Music Contest (2023); First Degree Winner at the Eleventh Sibelius International Instrumental Music Competition (2023); First Degree Winner at the Clara Schuman International Competition (2023); recipient of a Study Grant from the Guzik Foundation (2021–2022), (2022–2023), (2023-2024);  A soloist of the World Harp Congress in Australia (2014), and in Hong Kong (2017); participated as a soloist in the international tour with Sarah Brightman (26 concerts in 16 countries) “Royal Christmas Gala”.

Alisa Sadikova is the official representative and an ambassador of the Lyon & Healy Harps and Salvi Harps Foundation.

SIMONE DINNERSTEIN, PIANO

REBECCA FISCHER, VIOLIN

Grammy-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, described by The New Yorker as an artist of “lean, knowing, and unpretentious elegance,” and violinist Rebecca Fisher, described by the Boston Music Intelligencer as having “beautiful tone and nuanced phrasing,” will perform in the Myra Foundation Presents: Concerts in the Galleries series at the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Dinnerstein and Fischer will collaborate on a program of stylistically diverse and intricate works by several different composers, including Dissolve, O My Heart (2010) by Missy Mazzoli; Sonata for Violin and Keyboard No, 4 in C Minor by J.S. Bach; Encore from Tokyo (1975; transcribed by Uwe Karcher) by Keith Jarrett; and Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 10 in G Major, Op. 96 by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Each a celebrated and prolific performer in her own right, Dinnerstein and Fischer have a well-established connection through musical collaboration, which spans many years. Most notably, Fischer is the concert master of Baroklyn, a string ensemble Simone Dinnerstein founded and directs – often conducting from the piano – which specializes in the music of Bach. The two musicians will share the galleries of the North Dakota Museum of Art for a performance that features their unified musicianship in classic works by Bach and Beethoven, as well as polished displays of their solo artistry through the modern day works of Missy Mazzoli and Keith Jarrett. Strings Magazine has described Fischer’s performance of Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart as “quite beautiful.” Dinnerstein’s performances of Jarrett’s Encore from Tokyo – a work that was originally an improvisation – have earned her lively standing ovations, with Dinnerstein noting that she finds Jarrett’s music “fascinating” as she has reflected on “how to make this piece [her] own” over time.

About Rebecca Fischer: Violinist Rebecca Fischer is a highly expressive, intuitive performer of solo, chamber music and chamber orchestra repertoire. Fischer has premiered solo works by new composers Lisa Bielawa, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Mathew Fuerst, Augusta Read Thomas, Byron Au Yong, Pierre Jalbert and others. Recent solo recital engagements include Columbia University’s Miller Theater Pop-Up series, The Stone, and the University of Oregon. Fischer is also a member of The Afield, a multidisciplinary collaboration with visual artist/writer Anthony Hawley combining new and original compositions for violin, voice, and electronics with video and other media. The Afield has performed at the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe, Carnegie Hall, North Dakota Museum of Art, and the Atlanta Contemporary Museum, and has published work in Art Papers.

First-violinist of the Chiara String Quartet for eighteen years until the group’s final season in 2018, Fischer recorded and performed numerous works by heart, held residencies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Harvard University, and premiered many major new works by composers such as Gabriela Lena Frank and Philip Glass. Performance highlights include the complete Bartók Quartets by heart at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, several complete Beethoven quartet cycles, and collaborations with such artists as the Juilliard and Saint Lawrence Quartets, Roger Tapping, Robert Levin, and the electronic duo Matmos. 

Rebecca Fischer has recorded for Azica Records (the complete string quartets of Brahms and Bartók) and New Amsterdam Records (the string quartets of Jefferson Friedman, a Grammy-nominated album). She is the Executive Director and Director of Senior Camp at Greenwood Music Camp, where she has been on the faculty since 2006. During the year she teaches violin and chamber music at the Mannes School of Music and serves as co-chair of the string department. She. holds degrees from Columbia University (B.A.) and The Juilliard School (M.M., A.D.). Her book of personal essays The Sound of Memory: Themes from a Violinist’s Life (Mad Creek Books, the Ohio University State Press) was released in April 2022. The “intimate and vulnerable” (Strings Magazine) collection has been featured on WNYC, and  Fischer has given readings of her “personal, absorbing response to the author’s practical and creative journey” (Strad Magazine) at Rice University and the New School. 

Along with other members of the Chiara Quartet, Becca lived and worked in Grand Forks from 2000 to 2002 through a Rural Residency Grant from Chamber Music America awarded to the Greater Grand Forks Symphony. During that period, Becca served as adjunct faculty in the Music Department at UND, played with GGFSO, taught many students in the community, performed at the North Dakota Museum of Art, coached in the Red River Chamber Music Camp, a GGFSO summer program for student musicians and, with other quartet members, left an enduring legacy in the Grand Forks area. In the years following the Chiara residency, UND added two tenure track positions for strings in its music department (there had been none), the Grand Forks Public Schools significantly increased its music faculty, and the community as a whole benefitted from increased interest in and support for chamber music.

About Simone Dinnerstein: American pianist Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.”  

Dinnerstein has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts and were recorded by GRAMMY Award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a GRAMMY.

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour’s An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard’s Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein’s unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.

The Concerts in the Galleries and Monday Music in the Schools are underwritten by the Myra Foundation

with additional support from organizations and individuals in the community.

UNDERWRITER

GRANTORS

Arts Midwest 

Myra Foundation

Neel Family Fund of the Community Foundation of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, & Region

Northern Valley Youth Orchestras

Women’s Fund of the Community Foundation of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, & Region

DIRECTORS

Anonymous

Trudy and Gordon Iseminger

Nancy and Glen Yoshida

FRIENDS

Ellen S. Erickson

Ron Franz

Carol Geiszler

Deborah and Brad Lachance

Nancy Hadlich

Dave and Cec Lambeth

Dr. Douglas Munski

John and LeAnn Rindt

Nikki Seabloom, in memory of Phyllis Trelfa

Alice R. Senechal

Jerry Lynn Severson

Susie Shaft

Round Table, in memory of Phyllis Trelfa