Evening Performances

Opening Session
Saturday, March 16, 7:30 p.m.
Transcontinental Saxophone Quartet

The Transcontinental Saxophone Quartet (TSQ) is comprised of musicians from Cyprus, Italy, and the United States. The quartet offers innovative programming with works that combine elements from classical, jazz, rock, ethnic and world music. Dedicated to promoting and developing the saxophone repertoire, the TSQ often collaborates with Greek, Cypriot, Italian and American composers.

Winners of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Music Teachers National Association Collegiate Chamber Music Competition, TSQ has appeared throughout Europe and North America. They have performed in music festivals such as the Ravenna Festival in Italy, the World Saxophone Conferences in Valencia, Spain and Montreal, Canada, at numerous universities and conservatories, and in a diverse array of community venues.

The original quartet was established in 1993 at Bowling Green State University under the supervision of John Sampen. Since then, its members have played valuable roles in the field of classical saxophone as winners in international music competitions, as composers, and as saxophone professors at universities and conservatories in Europe and the USA. Carrie Koffman joined the group in 2014.

The TSQ has released a CD entitled Mountain Roads with Albany Records which includes world premieres of works by David Maslanka, David Stock and Russell Peck.

Russell Peterson, Soprano Saxophone

Winner of numerous prizes, including the top prize at the 1995 International Geneva Saxophone Concours (Switzerland), and first place winner of the MTNA National Music Competition, Mr. Peterson has soloed with orchestras in the United States as well as Europe, including the Dana Chamber Orchestra (USA), Concordia Orchestra (USA), Bowling Green Philharmonic (USA), L'Orchestra de la Suisse Romande (Switzerland), Collegium Musicum (Basel, Switzerland), The Orchestra Conservatorio Superior De Música (Spain), and The St. Petersburg Philharmonic (Russia).

Peterson is an active chamber musician, performing extensively throughout Europe and the United States. As an orchestral player he has served as bassoonist with several symphony orchestras and is currently principal bassoonist with the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony, as well as bassoonist with the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Woodwind Quintet. He is also an active composer, having written and arranged hundreds of pieces for saxophone, orchestra, band and chamber ensembles. He is the alto saxophonist and arranger for the popular Midwestern 12 piece rock band, the Post-Traumatic Funk Syndrome.

Peterson has served on the faculty at Youngstown State University (Ohio), The University of Toledo (Ohio), Minnesota State University Moorhead, Interlochen Summer Arts Academy and is currently instructor of Saxophone, Bassoon, and Jazz Studies at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Marco Albonetti, Alto Saxophone

He is active in the performance of both traditional and contemporary music. For four years, he performed regularly with Luciano Berio. For five years, he was the saxophonist for the legendary Italian “diva” Milva, performing music of Astor Piazzolla and Kurt Weill in predominant European theaters.

He frequently performs as soloist with Italian and international orchestras and contributes to multiple international music festivals. He has been awarded first prize at several international solo and chamber music competitions, and has performed for radio and television: RAI 1, SABC, PIK1, CBS, LTV Lumier, Cypriot Radio, and Wisconsin Public Radio. He has recorded for Nar International, Albany Records, Abeat Records and ArteSuono.
He is the Artistic Director of the Faenza SaxArt Festival, Italy, and holds a tenured position as Professor of Saxophone at the Conservatory of Music “F.A. Bonporti” in Trento, Italy where he has a class of international students. He is also external examiner for Doctoral Studies at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

Carrie Koffman, Tenor Saxophone

Her recording projects include the recent CD’s Carillon Sky, Dialogues and Dragon Rhyme. One review in Fanfare Magazine calls her playing “suave, subtly nuanced, and technically secure in its every gesture,” while another refers to her “melting tone and touching sensitivity.” She also has an ongoing recording and performing series entitled Pink Ink that is dedicated to promoting the music of living women composers. Committed to new music, commissions and premieres include 47 compositions. Her saxophone students have placed in over 90 different performance competitions including winning 18 university concerto competitions at four different universities.

Koffman holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree from the University of North Texas. Koffman is a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher and teaches Yoga for Performers. She is also a Conn-Selmer artist/clinician, and performs exclusively on Selmer Paris saxophones.

Yiannis Miralis, Baritone Saxophone

As the first Cypriot classical saxophonist, he has performed numerous times with the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra and has extensive performing experience as a chamber musician in Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Canada and the USA. Apart from being a member of the TSQ, he is a member of the Mediterranean Trio (saxophone-violin-piano), and has also performed with the Macedonian and Athens Saxophone Quartets. He is instrumental in the commissioning of numerous chamber music works for the saxophone.

Miralis is also the conductor of the Symphonic Band of Strovolos Municipality-European University Cyprus. He is founding member of the Greek Saxophone Association, president of the Cyprus Saxophone Association, as well as board member of the European Chamber Music Teachers’ Association (ECMTA) and ISME’s Forum for Instrumental and Vocal Teaching. Miralis holds music education degrees from Lawrence University (BM) where he was a Fulbright scholar, Bowling Green State University (MM) and Michigan State University (PhD).

Evening Performance
Tuesday, March 20, 8:00 p.m.
Ingrid Fliter

Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter has won the admiration and hearts of audiences around the world for her passionate yet thoughtful and sensitive music making played with an effortless technique. Winner of the 2006 Gilmore Artist Award, one of only a handful of pianists and the only woman to have received this honor, Fliter divides her time between North America and Europe.

Fliter made her American orchestral debut with the Atlanta Symphony just days after the announcement of her Gilmore award. Since then she has appeared with the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the San Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, National, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Seattle, Vancouver, Puerto Rico and Utah symphonies and the National Arts Centre Orchestra among others, as well as at the Mostly Mozart, Tanglewood, Grant Park, Aspen, Ravinia, Blossom, Tippet Rise and Brevard summer festivals. She was also the featured soloist on the Youth Orchestra of the Americas Canadian tour in summer 2015. Equally busy as a recitalist, Fliter has performed in New York at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Metropolitan Museum and the 92nd Street Y, at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, and in Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver and Detroit, as well as for the Van Cliburn Foundation in Fort Worth.

In Europe and Asia, Fliter has performed with orchestras and in recital in Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Salzburg, Cologne and Tokyo, and participated in festivals such as La Roque D’Antheron, Prague Autumn and The World Pianist Series in Tokyo. Recent international engagements include appearances with the Rotterdam, Israel, Hong Kong, Monte Carlo, Osaka, Helsinki and Royal Stockholm Philharmonics, the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony and the Proms in London, as well as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Danish Radio and Danish National Symphony Orchestras and the Scottish and Swedish Chamber Orchestras; and recitals in Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Prague, Stockholm, Lisbon, Sydney and in London at both Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Recent and upcoming performance highlights include her debuts with the Boston, New Jersey and Quebec symphonies as well as with the Rochester and Louisiana Philharmonics; re-engagements with the Toronto, Dallas, St. Louis, Houston, Vancouver, New World, Oregon, Utah, North Carolina and Nashville symphonies; a tour of Spain with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra led by Peter Oundjian; and a fifth tour to Australia.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Fliter began her piano studies in Argentina with Elizabeth Westerkamp. In 1992, she moved to Europe where she continued her studies in Freiburg with Vitaly Margulis, in Rome with Carlos Bruno, and with Franco Scala and Boris Petrushansky at the Academy “Incontrui col Maestro” in Imola, Italy. Fliter began playing public recitals at age 11 and made her professional orchestra debut at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires at age 16. Already the winner of several competitions in Argentina, she went on to win prizes at the Cantu International Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni Competition in Italy, and in 2000 was awarded the silver medal at the Frederic Chopin Competition in Warsaw. She has been teaching at the Imola International Academy "Incontri col Maestro” since the fall of 2015.

In June 2013, Fliter recorded both Chopin concertos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Jun Maerkl for Linn Records, and in June 2014, she recorded the complete Chopin Preludes for the same label. Her two all-Chopin recordings for EMI earned her the reputation as one of the pre-eminent interpreters of that composer while her most recent EMI recording is an all-Beethoven CD featuring the “Pathetique” and “Appassionata” sonatas. Live recordings of Fliter performing works by Beethoven and Chopin at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam are available on the VAI Audio label. Her most recent recording for Linn Records features the first Mendelssohn and Schumann concertos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and her recording of the complete Chopin Nocturnes.