The Red Violin
About the Artists
Violin virtuoso Elizabeth Pitcairn has earned a reputation as one of America’s most beloved soloists. She made her New York debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 2000 with the New York String Orchestra and appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. She made her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut with the California Philharmonic and at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. She returned to China to perform the Bruch Violin Concerto with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. This season Pitcairn gives recitals in New York and Pennsylvania with pianist Barbara Podgurski, in Hungary with Aniko Szokody, and in Mexico with Louise Thomas, and makes her Fisher Center recital debut with Cynthia Elise Tobey. She also performs in Bulgaria with the Classic FM Orchestra, and records the Bruch and Beethoven Violin Concerti, conducted by Maxim Eshkenazy.
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Cynthia Elise Tobey was accepted at the age of 10 to The Juilliard School of Music, where she studied piano with Herbert Stessin for six years. She made her orchestral debut at 14 with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Tobey is a native of Rhinebeck, New York, where she grew up and attended Dutchess Day School (2000) in Millbrook and Rhinebeck High School. Her piano studies began locally with Margaret Shafer of Annandale-on-Hudson and Blanca Uribe of Vassar College.
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Sara Carina Graef’s works have been performed throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Turkey, and the Czech Republic. She won the inaugural Northridge Prize for Composition for her orchestral piece night shows to my eyes the stars, and the Premio Citta’ di Pescara Composition Competition in Italy for her piano solo Nottanosti. Graef recently served as composer in residence at the Luzerne Music Center in New York, and has been an artist in residence at the Wurlitzer, Ucross, and Ragdale Foundations; the Oregon Bach Festival; the Ernest Bloch Festival; and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She received her B.M. in composition and flute performance from Southern Methodist University and her M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in composition from the University of Southern California. She is a professor of music at California State University, Los Angeles, where she teaches composition and theory and directs the Composer/Performer Collective.