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Who We Are |
About the Guest Artists Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, cello
An avid chamber musician, Saeunn has collaborated in performance with Itzhak Perlman, Kim Kashkashian, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and the Cavani String Quartet in venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and her collaborative performances have been featured on WQXR New York and WCLV Cleveland as well as Icelandic National Radio. Starting in the fall of 2008, Saeunn is a member of Ensemble ACJW and a fellow of The Academy, a collaboration of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education, performing chamber music at Carnegie Hall and bringing classical music to students in the New York City Public Schools. An advocate of new music, Saeunn has premiered dozens of works, including most recently, commissioned works written for her by Daniel Bjarnason and Nicholas Csicsko. She frequently performs new music in New York City in venues such as The Stone and Le Poisson Rouge. Along with the masterpieces of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century, Saeunn is constantly inspired by works composed in our time. In 2006, Saeunn received a Bachelor of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music with the highest honors for accomplishments in both cello and chamber music, the Ellis A. Feiman Memorial Award in Cello and the Bennett Levine Memorial Award in Chamber Music. She continued studies at The Julliard School and completed a Master of Music degree in 2008. Her principle teachers include Richard Aaron, Tanya Carey and Joel Krosnick. Saeunn has performed in master classes for Zara Nelsova, Anner Bylsma, Bernard Greenhouse and Steven Isserlis and was a featured soloist on NPR’s “From the Top” and PBS’s “SundayArts”. She has been invited to festivals including the Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Kneisal Hall, Villefavard Masterclasses in France, Kronberg Masterclasses in Germany, International Musician’s Seminar in Prussia Cove, England as well as the Sarasota and Marlboro Music Festivals. A certified Suzuki teacher, Saeunn received her pedagogy training under Tanya Lesinsky Carey (former President of the Suzuki Association of the Americas), her longtime teacher and mentor. She has served as teaching assistant to Mrs. Carey at Meadowmount School of Music, Richard Aaron at ENCORE School for Strings, as well as having coached chamber music groups at the Chamber Music Connection, Columbus and CIM’s Summer Chamber Music Program. As part of Saeunn’s work through the Academy, she teaches regularly at P.S. 28 in Brooklyn. Born in 1984 in Reykjavik, Iceland, Saeunn now lives in New York City. She plays on a cello made in Milan, Italy circa 1790. Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco Awadagin Pratt, piano
Born in Pittsburgh, Awadagin Pratt began studying piano at the age of six. Three years later, having moved to Normal, Illinois with his family, he also began studying violin. At the age of 16 he entered the University of Illinois where he studied piano, violin, and conducting. He subsequently enrolled at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he became the first student in the school's history to receive diplomas in three performance areas – piano, violin and conducting. In recognition of this achievement and for his work in the field of classical music, Mr. Pratt recently received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Johns Hopkins. In 1992 Mr. Pratt won the Naumburg International Piano Competition and two years later was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant. He has played numerous recitals throughout the US including performances at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles and Chicago’s Orchestra Hall. His many orchestral performances include appearances with the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra and the Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, National, Detroit and New Jersey symphonies among many others. Summer festival engagements include Ravinia, Blossom, Wolftrap, Caramoor and Aspen, the Hollywood Bowl and the Mostly Mozart Festival in Tokyo. Mr. Pratt is also the Artistic Director of the Next Generation Festival, a two-week chamber music festival in Lancaster, PA and appears with cellist Zuill Bailey in duo recitals throughout the US. Recent and upcoming appearances include recital engagements at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark and in Baltimore, La Jolla, Savannah and at Duke University, as well as appearances with the orchestras of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Seattle, Colorado, Kansas City, Utah, Nashville, Memphis, Grand Rapids, Virginia, Winston-Salem, New Mexico and San Antonio. As a conductor, Mr. Pratt has participated in the American Symphony Orchestra League and Conductor's Guild workshops and the National Conducting Institute, where he worked closely with Leonard Slatkin and conducted the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center. He has also conducted the Toledo, New Mexico, Winston-Salem, Santa Fe and Prince George County symphonies, the Concertante di Chicago and two orchestras in Japan. A great favorite on college and university performing arts series and a strong advocate of music education, Awadagin Pratt participates in numerous residency and outreach activities wherever he appears; these activities may include master classes, children's recitals, play/talk demonstrations and question/answer sessions for students of all ages. Internationally, Mr. Pratt has toured Japan four times and performed in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Israel and South Africa. Awadagin Pratt has been the subject of numerous articles in the national press, including Newsweek, People Magazine, USA Weekend, New York Newsday, Emerge and Mirabella. He was named one of the 50 Leaders of Tomorrow in Ebony Magazine's special 50th anniversary issue and has been featured on National Public Radio's Performance Today, St. Paul Sunday Morning and Weekend Edition. On television, Mr. Pratt has performed on the Today Show, Good Morning America and Sesame Street, been profiled on CBS Sunday Morning and was one of the featured soloists on PBS's "Live from the Kennedy Center - A Salute to Slava." He also performed twice at the White House at the invitation of President and Mrs. Clinton. An Angel/EMI recording artist, Mr. Pratt’s debut album, A Long Way From Normal, was released in 1994. Subsequent recital discs include an all Beethoven Sonata CD, Live From South Africa, Transformations and an all Bach disc with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Mr. Pratt is currently an Associate Professor of Piano and Artist in Residence at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. Check out his website. Photo by Katharyn Havens |
Praised by the New York Times as “a charismatic cellist”, Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir has appeared as recitalist and chamber musician across the U.S., Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and her native Iceland and she has performed concerti with the Des Moines Symphony (Iowa) and the Silesian Philharmonic (Poland), among others. Saeunn has garnered numerous top prizes, including most recently, the Janigro Family and Romanini Foundation Awards at the 2008 Antonio Janigro International Cello Competition in Zagreb, Croatia and the Zara Nelsova Prize in the 2008 Naumburg International Violincello Competition in New York City.
Among his generation of concert artists, pianist Awadagin Pratt is acclaimed for his musical insight and intensely involving performances in recital and with symphony orchestras.