String Faculty
Francsca Anderegg graduated from Harvard University in 2005. She holds a Master's degree from The Juilliard School, and was a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at Juilliard as a student of Ronald Copes. Her former teachers have included Robert Mann, Nicholas Mann, Naoko Tanaka, and Lynn Chang. She has participated in many music festivals, including Yellow Barn, The Lucerne Festival Academy, The Perlman Music Program, and the Tanglewood Music Center. Ms. Anderegg combines a commitment to the highest standards of classic repertoire with the intellectual breadth and eclecticism of contemporary music. She made her New York debut in February 2007, performing the Ligeti Violin Concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra under the baton of Diego Masson. The New York Times lauded her performance for its "dark, mournful tone" and "virtuosic panache." Often serving as concertmaster of the contemporary music ensemble AXIOM, she led Miller Theatre's performance of Elliott Carter's opera "What Next?," a performance that was rated one of classical music's top 10 events in 2007 by Time Out magazine. Her performances of contemporary music have led to collaborations with today's leading composers, both in Europe and in New York. At the Lucerne Festival in 2009, she performed Pierre Boulez's "Anthèmes II" for Solo Violin and Electronics, in collaboration with the Paris-based IRCAM studio. At the Lucerne Festival, she has had leading roles in works by Tristain Murail, Bruno Mantovani, Ivan Fedele, and Kaija Saariaho. At New York's Le Poisson Rouge, she performed "Shaker Loops" and "Road Movies" by John Adams in 2009, in a concert attended by the composer. She also worked with New York Philharmonic composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg, performing his Clarinet Quintet in several New York City venues in March 2010. A versatile musician, Ms. Anderegg is equally at home as a soloist and chamber music artist. Her chamber music credits include performances with Itzhak Perlman and members of the Perlman Music Program in major venues throughout the country, for which the Chicago Sun-Times praised her "astonishing assurance." In 2008, she had her Carnegie Hall debut, performing in Weill Recital Hall as a participant in the Carnegie Hall Professional Training Workshop series with Pamela and Claude Frank. In 2010, Ms. Anderegg was awarded the Lenore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing Arts, a major career grant. Her solo debut CD, containing music by Elliott Carter, George Perle, and Arnold Schoenberg, was released by Albany Records in July 2012. |
Dr. Carter can be heard on Centaur Records in “3 Pieces for Solo Cello” by Phillip Rhodes and works by Amy Beach, and on the Limestone label with the Melius Trio.
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Anna Clift studied at The Banff School of Fine Arts & Indiana University with legendary cellist and pedagogue Janos Starker. She received her M.M. degree in Music Performance from SUNY at Stony Brook where she studied with Beaux Arts Trio cellist, Bernard Greenhouse.
Other musicians and mentors have been Toby Saks, Gary Hoffman, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Josef Gingold, Paul Tortelier, and Menahem Pressler.
Currently on the faculty of St Olaf College she has taught at music schools and summer programs in the United States including, Gustavus Adolphus College, Carleton College, Artaria Chamber Music School, Stringwood, Taos International School of Music, & Madeline Island Music Camp.
Founder and Director of a new international summer academy for cellists, www.celloanamericanexperience.com, Anna will be returning to China this October and collaborating with teachers and students in Shanghai, Beijing and Wuhan, many of whom will be attending the academy during the summer of 2012.
She has played as a sub with the Minnesota Orchestra since 1989 and has extensive orchestral experience. As a professional cellist, she frequently collaborates with musicians from both the Minnesota Orchestra and St Paul Chamber Orchestras. She has appeared on radio with the Garrison Keillor Show and performed in chamber concerts with Gil Shaham, Sharon Isbin, the Artemis Trio and the Artaria String Quartet.
She has participated in many summer programs and festivals, Banff School of Fine Arts, Spoleto Festival, Washington Island Music Festival and the Britt Music Festival.
Dedicated to teaching and music education she has been a mentor and teacher to many young musicians in the Twin Cities area. As of 2012 Anna will be the new president of MNSOTA. |
Gray earned a B.M. from Wheaton College, an M.M. from the University of Michigan, and he received a chamber music certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he pursued additions study on viola. His principal study was with Paul Makanowitzky and Sylvia Rosenberg (violin), with Atar Arad (viola), and with the Cleveland Quartet (in chamber music). Gray was the violist of the Casella String Quartet, winner of the 1981 Cleveland Quartet Competition and the 1983 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. He has performed as a solo recitalist at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and as a chamber musician at the Aspen Music Festival and the Steamboat Springs Festival in Colorado. Previously a member of the Rochester Philharmonic (N.Y.) and the Grand Rapids Symphony (Mich.), and concertmaster of the Bloomington Symphony (Minn.), Gray is currently a substitute member of the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He is also employed on the music staff of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church, Mahtomedi, Minn. In recent years he has been featured as a violin and viola soloist on many occasions with the St. Olaf Choir, St. Olaf Cantorei, and St. Olaf Orchestra. In September 2008, he was awarded "2008 Minnesota Master String Teacher of the Year" by the American String Teachers Association. |
Kathy Kienzle, studied with Marcel Grandjany, Susann McDonald and Susanna Milldonian. She earned a B.M. from the Juilliard School and a M.M. from the University of Arizona. She place third in the Sixth International Harp Competition in Jerusalem, won second place in the American Harp Society National Competition (Young Professional Division) in 1969, and was a recipient of a 1991 Minnestoa State Arts Board Individual Artist Fellowship. Kienzle has been affiliated with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, the Oregon Bach Festival and the Peninsula Music Festival in Door County, Wisconsin. She has served on the faculties of Bethel and Macalester Colleges, the University of Kansas, the University of St. Thomas and the College of St. Catherine. Kienzel currently serves on the faculties of the University of Minnesota's School of Music, Augsburg College and the MacPhail Center for Music. |
Double bassist Connie Martin performs and teaches in Minnesota, where she |
Elinor Niemisto holds a BM and MM in Harp Performance from the University of Michigan, as well as Suzuki Harp Teacher Training units 1 through 4 and Practicuum. She is the Principal Harpist with the Rochester (MN) Symphony and the LaCrosse (WI) Symphony. Elinor is a Senior Lecturer in Harp at Carleton College as well as Adjunct Instructor at St. Olaf. She is serving on the American Suzuki Harp Curriculum Committee. She teaches harp lessons to students from age six to sixty and plays restful music to elderly and home-bound residents of the Northfield area. Elinor is a frequent performer with choirs and chamber groups in the SE Minnesota area and performs with "Harpourri", a quartet of professional harpists. |
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 Miriam Scholz-CarlsonInstructor of Music — String Methods, Liberating Performers: Beyond the Alexander scholzca@stolaf.edu |
Ray Shows received his M.Mus in violin performance from Boston University (magna cum laude) and his B.mus from Florida State University. He made his solo violin debut with orchestra in his native Atlanta. A McKnight Fellowship prizewinner in 2004, Ray is a founding member of the acclaimed Artaria String Quartet and has performed concerts in major concert halls in New York, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Atlanta, across the U.S. and in Europe. He has been a featured artist on ABC television, National Public Radio, Canadian Broadcasting and at the L'Epau Festival in France. An Artist/Teacher in Residence at the renowned Tanglewood Institute and at The Quartet Program, Shows is currently Artistic Director of the Artaria Chamber Music School, Stringwood Festival, and the prestigious Saint Paul String Quartet Competition. His students attend major conservatories, are Schubert Club prizewinners, and have appeared on National Public Radio's From the Top. Appointed to multi-year teaching residencies at Boston College, Viterbo University, Florida State University and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory, Shows is the recipient of prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chamber Music America, and the Heartland Fund. In 2010 he was awarded the MNSOTA Master Teacher Award. His principal teachers were Roman Totenberg and Gerardo Ribeiro. Eugene Lehner, Raphael Hillyer, and members of the Emerson, Cleveland, Budapest, Muir and La Salle Quartets have mentored him in chamber music. Ray plays on a rare French violin made by Andrea Castagneri, Paris 1735 and bow by French archetier Pierre Simon. He has been serving on the faculty of St. Olaf since 2000. |
Marybeth Stull holds a Bachelor of Music degree (cum laude) in violin performance from Illinois Wesleyan University and did graduate work at Indiana University. Violin teachers include Mario Mancinelli, Illinois Wesleyan, Daniel Guilet, Indiana University and Victor Aitay, Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She played nine years in the Kalamazoo (MI) Symphony Orchestra, for many years in several Twin Cities civic orchestras and was Concertmistress of Exultate. She performs in the Brightwood String Quartet, the Musica Piano Trio and regularly freelances on both the classical violin and hardingfele (hardanger fiddle). She studied the hardanger fiddle with Olav Jørgen Hegge of Valdres, Norway. As a member of the Twin Cities Hardingfelelag, she has performed on the NRK (Norwegian radio) program Alltid Folkemusikk, participated in the annual Landskappleik in Beitostølen, Norway, played for the Minnesota State Senate on Syttende Mai and Nisswa-Stämman Scandinavian Music Festival in Nisswa, MN. |
