CURRENT GUEST ARTISTS
Marcolivia
Marc Ramirez and Olivia Hajioff form the violin and violin/viola duo Marcolivia. The duo has performed chamber music at the Kennedy Center, the Ravinia Festival, Merkin Hall, Symphony Space in Manhattan, as well as Carnegie Hall. The artists were invited to perform at Chamber Music America’s Marathon Concert in New York alongside the Juilliard Quartet. In addition, Marcolivia was the only chamber music finalist in the 2000 Concert Artists Guild Competition.
The artists have performed and taught at festivals in the US, Japan, Italy and England and are on the roster of the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage Artists. In 2011, Marcolivia was invited to be founding members of the Phillips Camerata – a chamber ensemble in residence at the Phillips Collection and the National Gallery. They are regularly featured on NPR’s “Performance Today” and “Front Row Washington.” In addition, Marcolivia have performed double concertos with 30 orchestras, here and abroad.
Fotina Naumenko
Fotina Naumenko, soprano, has been praised for her “radiant voice” (Boston Globe), described as both “angelic” (MusicWeb International) and “capable of spectacular virtuosic hi-jinks” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). Fotina’s singing encompasses a wide variety of vocal genres including art song, oratorio, opera, choral and new music, both as a soloist and ensemble singer.
Festival appearances have included the Ravinia Festival (Considering Matthew Shepard), the Constella Festival (From Russia with Love), the St. Olav Festival in Trondheim, Norway (Kim Arnesen’s Wound in the Water) and the Tanglewood Music Festival (Soprano Fellow). Her performances of David Lang’s just and Castiglioni’s Cantus Planus at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music were hailed as “a beautiful performance” by the New York Times and “a stunner” by the Boston Globe. Recent oratorio solos have included the world premiere of Arvo Pärt’s O Holy Saint Nicholas (Artefact), Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy (Cathedral Choral Society), J.S. Bach’s Ascension Oratorio and B Minor Mass (Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and Vocal Arts Ensemble), Chesnokov’s My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord (Cappella Romana), Orff’s Carmina Burana (American University Chorus), Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor and Handel’s Messiah (Winchester Arts Chorale). Fotina was a featured soloist with the Boston Pops for the symphonic premiere of Sondheim on Sondheim, a Sondheim musical revue curated by James Lapine.
Ensemble credits include Grammy® award-winning Conspirare, Grammy® award-winning Experiential Chorus, Grammy® nominated groups Skylark, Clarion, the Saint Tikhon Choir, and PaTRAM, as well as Cappella Romana, Coro Volante, Alium Spiritum, The Thirteen, and the Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble, among others. Fotina has recorded with these groups on the Reference Recordings, Chandos, Delos, Ablaze Records, Naxos and Cincinnati Fanfare labels.
Fotina is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music (BM), the Cincinnati College-Conservatory (MM, DMA), and is a Fulbright scholar, having completed a post-graduate diploma specializing in Russian vocal music at the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory in St. Petersburg, Russia. The culmination of this work was the creation of www.RussianAriaResource.com, a lyric diction resource for Russian operatic arias. She is passionate about training and mentoring the next generation of singers and serves as Associate Professor of Voice at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA.
Karl Hempel
The American bass Karl Hempel performs oratorio works, requiems and masses as a member and soloist with the Washington National Cathedral Choir of Men. He also sings with several Washington, DC, and Baltimore area professional ensembles, including Cathedra, the Washington Bach Consort, the Baltimore Opera Chorus, and others. His operatic roles include Pistola in Verdi’s Falstaff, Bacchus in Purcell’s Masque in Dioclesian, Figaro in Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro, and Luther, Crespel, and Shlemil in Offenbach’s Les Contes D’Hoffmann.
Karl Hempel has toured and studied extensively throughout Europe and Russia, singing in celebrated venues such as the Great Hall at Moscow Conservatory, Capella Hall in St Petersburg, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Tirana Opera House in Albania, St John’s Smith Square, Westminster Abby, in London and many other notable halls and churches in the British Isles, Europe, Russia and Siberia.
He received his Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody Conservatory, and studied opera in the studio of Stanley Cornett. He has been coached and tutored extensively in vocal technique and performance style with such renowned professors as Dale Moore, Craig Timberlake, Dorothy Richardson, and Louise McClelland.
BRIAN GANZ, PIANIST
Brian Ganz is widely regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation. A laureate of the Marguerite Long Jacques Thibaud and the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Piano Competitions, Mr. Ganz has appeared as a soloist with such orchestras as the St. Louis Symphony, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the National Philharmonic, the National Symphony, and the City of London Sinfonia, and has performed with such conductors as Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop, Mstislav Rostropovich, Piotr Gajewski, and Yoel Levi.
The Washington Post has written: “One comes away from a recital by pianist Brian Ganz not only exhilarated by the power of the performance but also moved by his search for artistic truth.” For many years Mr. Ganz has made it his mission to join vivid music making with warmth and intimacy onstage to produce a new kind of listening experience, in which great works come to life with authentic emotional power. As one of Belgium's leading newspapers, La Libre Belgique, put it, "We don't have the words to speak of this fabulous musician who lives music with a generous urgency and brings his public into a state of intense joy."
In January of 2011, Mr. Ganz began a multi-year project in partnership with the National Philharmonic in which he will perform the complete works of Frédéric Chopin at the Music Center at Strathmore. After the inaugural recital, The Washington Post wrote: "Brian Ganz was masterly in his first installment of the complete works [of Chopin]." The next recital in the series will take place on February 26, 2022.
Mr. Ganz is on the piano faculty of St. Mary's College of Maryland, where he is an artist-in-residence and is also a member of the piano faculty of the Peabody Conservatory. He is the artist-editor of the Schirmer Performance Edition of Chopin’s Preludes (2005). Recent performance highlights include Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with the Waco Symphony Orchestra and Chopin's 2nd Piano Concerto at the Alba Music Festival in Italy and with the National Philharmonic at Strathmore.