Deeply committed to teaching, cellist Kevin Hekmatpanah is an Associate Professor at Gonzaga University, where he has taught since 1994. He is currently a member of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra. His teachers have included such nationally renowned pedagogues as Stephen Kates, Fritz Magg, and Gabor Rejto, and he has received coaching from such internationally celebrated artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, and Janos Starker.

Mr.  Hekmatpanah is a conductor and seasoned artist and has presented hundreds of solo and chamber performances throughout the country, including locally with the Kirkland Performance Center in Seattle. He has also presented concerts of the complete works for Cello and Piano by Beethoven and over twenty cycles performing all Six Bach Suites. As a soloist he has performed with various ensembles, including the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Richmond Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs in Colorado, the Southern Arizona Symphony, Gulf Coast Symphony, and the Vashon Chamber Orchestra. He recently presented a recital in Tromsø, Norway. A full list of his performances and awards can be found on his website, www.kevinhekmatpanah.com

“Hekmatpanah held his own via his own distinctive features as an artist. His playing is very dramatic, often to extremes. He juxtaposes sensitivity with an almost reckless abandon, which gives his performance a gripping flair ... the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations [was] a piece which seems to have been written expressly for Hekmatpanah, as a vehicle for the expression of his impressive technical skills, with its virtuosic passage work and spectacular cadenza.”--- Sidelines; Murfreesboro, TN

His award winning sound has been released on a CD containing cello sonatas by Franck, Debussy, and Chopin. To request it please contact Mr. Hekmatpanah directly through email: hekmatpanah@gonzaga.edu

Our featured customer this month is fifteen year old cellist, Karissa Zadinsky. Karissa lives in Issaquah, and is an honors student at the Pacific Cascade Freshman Campus. She is the 2010 Performing Arts Festival of the Eastside Concerto Competition winner, and recently was a featured guest with Gerard Schwarz on King 5’s “New Day Northwest” morning television show.  She has served as principal cellist of the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra and has collaborated as a chamber musician with Mark O’Connor as part of the 2008 Seattle Symphony Summerfest. She studies with Dr. Leslie Hirt Marckx and Meeka Quan DiLorenzo, as well as participates in master classes and music festivals in the area.

Karissa is from a very musical family. Arthur, her father, is a first violinist with the Seattle Symphony, her mother Debra is a violin and viola private studio teacher, coach, and performer. Her older brother Derek is a double bassist studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. 

When it was time for Karissa to move to a larger instrument than her 3/4 size cello, Rafael Carrabba went well out of his way to help us find her current ideal 7/8 size cello, which she will be performing on with the symphony. He quickly made perfect tonal adjustments and changes suggested by her teachers and was very patient with us as we made this important purchase decision. Mr. Carrabba has always provided excellent service to serious Zadinsky studio students over the past 20 years and has always paid impeccable attention to detail. We are very fortunate to have such a fantastic luthier and his dedicated, highly talented team here in Seattle.

Karissa Zadinsky will be performing throughout May in Seattle, if you would like more details, please return to our front page.

Cellist and teacher, Mannfried Funk started the cello at the age of five at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and studied with Margaret Rowell, Barton Frank, Paul Olefsky, Ramy Shevelov and Zara Nelsova. He has won a number of solo competitions including the prestigious Pacific Musical Society award at age 11, the California cello club award, the Alameda music teachers award and, locally the Don Bushell Competition.

Mr. Funk came to Seattle as a member of the Seattle Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet and the Seattle Opera. Currently he has been active as a soloist, teacher and recording cellist for the movie industry. He has performed in the United States, Europe, Japan, South America, Middle East and former Soviet Union. He has also held various Principal Cello positions and was on the U.S. tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Music of the Night". Prior to arriving to Seattle he was Principal and Coprincipal Cello of several orchestras in South America and Coprincipal Cellist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. 

Sally Singer, Icicle Creek Piano TrioThe Icicle Creek Piano Trio is Ensemble-in-Residence at the Icicle Creek Music Center, a non-profit organization in Leavenworth, Washington. As well as offering year-round concerts in the Center’s picturesque Canyon Wren Concert Hall and an intensive International Chamber Music Festival and Institute each July, the artists maintain busy private studios and offer regular coaching sessions to local and visiting young ensembles. 

    "..exquisite sheen and vibrancy..." - Gramophone Magazine

The members of the Icicle Creek Piano Trio originated from the US, UK, and Russia. Together and as individuals, Jennifer Caine, Sally Singer, and Oksana Ezhokina have performed in such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall, the Philips Collection, and the Royal Albert Hall, and have toured in Austria, Germany, France, Italy, and the UK. Regionally and on the West Coast, they have performed at Pacific Lutheran University, the University of Puget Sound, Seattle’s Town Hall, the Seattle Sherman Clay Recital Hall, the Governor’s Mansion in Olympia, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, the University of Santa Barbara, Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and Davies Hall in San Francisco. Collectively, they have earned academic and performance degrees from Harvard

University, Oxford University, the Royal College of Music, State University of New York at Stony Brook, University of Texas at Austin, the Royal Northern College of Music, Northern Illinois University, Walla Walla College, and the Ryazan School of Music in Russia.  

    "The performance of the Icicle Creek Piano Trio comes a close to being 'definitive' as any I expect to hear in my lifetime." - Fanfare Magazine 

    "They catch all the subtle, shimmering shades.....free of mannerisms." - The Strad

The Icicle Creek Piano Trio has collaborated with such noted artists as Ian Swensen, Nathaniel Rosen, Karen Dreyfus, Anthony Elliott, Steven Doane, and the Avalon String Quartet.

2009/2010 season highlights include an invitation to perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra in Russia in March 2010. The Icicle Creek Piano Trio is also planning to record a second CD to follow up the brilliant success of their debut CD of Schubert and Ravel Piano Trios, released in 2008 on the Con Brio label.

For further information, please contact Rachal Karnofski, ICPT Booking Agent.

Email: rkarnofski@icicle.org Phone: 509-548-6347 ext. 408

Website:www.iciclecreekpianotrio.com

Biography, taken from her website www.helencallus.com

Helen Callus, viola has been described by critics as “a player with impeccable sensibilities and a beautiful sound, infinitely malleable into all kinds of musical subtleties”. The Seattle Times.

Her debut recording for ASV, “Portrait of the Viola” with Robert McDonald – piano released in 2002, was met with the highest of critical acclaim. Strings magazine described Ms. Callus as a “violist of the highest caliber.”The American Record Guide wrote "The night I wrote this review, I found her performance so moving, so addicting, that I kept listening to it over and over before I could bring myself to finish the review. Very rarely have I felt a need to listen to a recording over and over. Only really great artistry can hold a listener in thrall like that, and that is the artistry of Helen Callus."

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As a recitalist, chamber music collaborator and concerto soloist, Ms. Callus has delighted audiences in major cities around the world including those of Russia, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and Canada and extensively throughout the US. In 2003, whilst a guest at Brigham Young University for the Primrose Memorial Recital, Ms. Callus performed with the world renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City to an audience of 4,000 and broadcast to over 2,000 television stations around the world. A busy chamber music artist, Ms. Callus has performed at many chamber music festivals such as the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Palaces of St. Petersburg (Russia) Chamber Music Festival and the Dilijan Chamber Music Series at Zipper Hall, Los Angeles to name a few. Ms. Callus has performed at several major international viola congresses since 2001, including those of New Zealand, Seattle (of which she was the host-chair), Kronberg in Germany and Minnesota.

Ms. Callus is a regular solo artist on radio and TV and can be heard regularly on such programs as Performance Today and in interviews on National Public Radio, Public Radio International and Radio New Zealand. She was heard for the second time on National Public Radio’s broadcast Saint Paul Sunday in 2005 as solo guest with pianist Phillip Bush in a program called ‘Hidden Treasures’, a compilation of beautiful previously unknown works for viola and piano. The show broadcasts to over 1 million listeners around the globe.

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We found this youtube video of Ms. Callus playing the viola. While there is no video stream in this youtube clip, there is the beautiful sound of her viola, enjoy.