STEPHANIE SANT'AMBROGIO joined the Argenta Trio in the fall of 2007 as she began her new position as Assistant Professor of Violin & Viola and Director of the Orchestral Career Studies graduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Founder and Artistic Director of Cactus Pear Music Festival, Stephanie was the Concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony for thirteen years, appearing annually as a soloist. Formerly First Assistant Principal Second Violin of The Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi, she recorded and toured internationally with this acclaimed ensemble for eight seasons. Ms. Sant’Ambrogio has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and in the countries of Canada, Estonia, Sweden, Ghana, Italy, Peru, Chile and Mexico. In addition to her active performing career over two decades, she is devoted to teaching serious young violinists, many of whom have successfully chosen careers in music. Ms. Sant'Ambrogio is currently working on three CD projects. Going Solo: Unaccompanied works for violin & viola; Late Dates with Mozart: Three Late Sonatas for piano and violin by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with pianist James Winn; and Cactus Pear Music Festival's Klassics 4 Kids: Chamber Music for Children are expected to be released in 2009/10.
With her passion for chamber music, in 1996 Ms. Sant’Ambrogio founded Cactus Pear Music Festival, ( HYPERLINK "http://www.cpmf.us" www.cpmf.us) which presents chamber music performances, Young People’s Concerts, Kinder Konzerts, a Young Artist Fellowship Program, American composer commissions and master classes in the South Texas region. In 2004, she was named a Ford Salute to Education Award winner for her outstanding contributions to music education through her creation of Cactus Pear Music Festival and her life’s dedication to private teaching. In addition to her performances as violinist, violist and Artistic Director of Cactus Pear Music Festival, Ms. Sant’Ambrogio has performed and taught at various festivals including: Bach, Dancing and Dynamite Society (WI); Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival (WA); Nevada Chamber Music Festival (NV); Music in the Vineyards (CA); Round Top Festival Institute (TX) and Tuckamore Festival (Newfoundland, Canada).
Her chamber music activities have included performances and recordings with such noted artists as William Preucil, James Buswell, Ron Leonard, Richard Goode, David Schifrin, Walter Trampler, Anne Epperson and Gunther Schuller. She is featured in chamber music recordings under the Arabesque label, her live concert performances are frequently heard on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, and in 2006 she produced her third Cactus Pear CD entitled A Passion for Baroque. Ms. Sant’Ambrogio has performed as first violinist with the Miami String Quartet and has been a guest artist with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at both the Lincoln and Kennedy Centers. She toured Italy with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, toured extensively throughout Ohio with Cleveland’s Myriad, and for ten years performed with the Amici String Quartet, of which she was a founding member. Ms. Sant’Ambrogio studied with and was the graduate assistant to Donald Weilerstein at The Eastman School of Music, where she received her Master of Music degree. Previously she received her Bachelor of Music degree with distinction from Indiana University as a scholarship student of Laurence Shapiro and James Buswell.
The name Sant’Ambrogio is frequently found in concert programs throughout America. John Sant’Ambrogio, former Principal Cellist of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, gave his daughter Stephanie her first violin lessons at the age of five. Her sister Sara is a cellist with the Naumberg Award-winning Eroica Trio. For thirty years the Sant’Ambrogio family directed Red Fox Music Camp, which was founded by grandmother Isabelle, a concert pianist. The legacy of teaching music has been passed down in the Sant’Ambrogio family for four generations. Stephanie continues this love and dedication with her own students. Ms. Sant’Ambrogio plays a violin crafted in 1757 by J.B. Guadagnini of Milan, Italy and a viola by William Whedbee of Chicago, 1986. In the moments when one of these instruments is not nestled under her chin, she and her husband Gary Albright enjoy life with their daughters, ten-year-old Isabel and eight- year-old Gabrielle, who have started taking music lessons as well.
Acclaimed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as "a commanding solo player, the most supportive of accompanists, and a leader in chamber music," pianist JEFFREY SYKES has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe. The San Francisco Examiner praised his appearance with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players as "a tour-de-force performance [that was] the evening's major delight."
Recent activities include a Carnegie Hall recital with flutist Stephanie Jutt under the auspices of the Pro Musicis Foundation and a live broadcast over WGBH, Boston Public Radio. His performances have been frequently broadcast over National Public Radio's Performance Today, and he has a discography including eleven CDs published by various labels. Together with Ms. Jutt, Dr. Sykes is the founder and artistic director of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society of Wisconsin, a highly-acclaimed and innovative chamber music festival now in its seventeenth season. The festival is noted for integrating dance, drama, and visual art into the concert setting and creating an approach to chamber music that makes it more easily accessible to audiences. He is a regular guest artist in the Cactus Pear Music Festival in San Antonio and a founding member of the Painted Sky Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona. In 2007, Dr. Sykes served as the guest artistic director of Music in the Vineyards, a chamber music festival in Napa Valley, California. This year, Dr. Sykes has joined with violinist Axel Strauss and cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau to form the San Francisco Piano Trio. For the last ten years, Dr. Sykes has served as the Music Director of Opera for the Young, a professional opera company that gives more than 200 fully-staged performances a year to schoolchildren throughout the upper Midwest. He works extensively as a vocal coach throughout the United States.
Dr. Sykes joined the faculty of California State University, East Bay in the fall of 2008 where he coaches, accompanies, and directs the piano accompanying class. Dr. Sykes holds degrees with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Franz-Schubert-Institut in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria. He continued his studies in musicology at the University of Pennsylvania as a William Penn Fellowship recipient, and then was a Fulbright scholar at the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. A recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship from the United States Department of Education, he completed his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Read more...