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RAVINIA’S STEANS MUSIC INSTITUTE
Meagan Turner
, viola
Ravinia Women’s Board Program
for Piano and Strings Fellowship*
A violist with a powerful
imagination and natural instinct,
Toronto-native Meagan Turner
remains in high demand as a
soloist, chamber player, and orchestral musician.
A passionate chamber musician, she is two-time
winner of the Felix Galimir Award for Excellence
in Chamber Music and has performed throughout
Canada, the United States, Japan, Finland, and
Sweden. Meagan has appeared at the Toronto
Summer Music Festival, the St. Lawrence String
Quartet Seminar, the Luminato Festival, and at
the Orford Arts Center as a chamber music fellow,
and also served as the viola fellow in the Canadian
Opera Company Academy. As an orchestral
musician, Meagan has acted as principal violist of
the New York String Orchestra Seminar, the Spoleto
Festival Orchestra, and the Tanglewood Music
Centre Orchestra. Meagan received a Bachelor of
Music and Advanced Certificate in Performance
from the University of Toronto under the tutelage
of Erika Raum and Eric Nowlin and completed
her Master’s degree at The Juilliard School as a
scholarship student (Felix Galimir Scholarship and
Irene Diamond Graduate Fellowship) of Samuel
Rhodes. Meagan was recently selected as a recipient
of a Career Grant from the Rachel Barton Pine
Foundation.
Audrey Vardanega
, piano
Stepan Company Fellowship
Praised as a player “with the
kind of freedom, authority,
and strength…that one expects
from the world’s finest pianists”
(Berkeley Daily Planet)
, 22-year-
old Audrey Vardanega made her solo debut with
IMG Artists’ Festival del Sole at the age of 12 and
became the youngest soloist in the history of the
Midsummer Mozart Festival with Maestro George
Cleve at the age of 15. She has been featured
as a soloist at the Hangzhou Grand Theater, the
Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, Herbst Theater,
and the Crowden School, among others. Her past
primary instructors include Seymour Lipkin, Jeremy
Siepmann, Christopher Elton, Robert Schwartz,
and Victor Rosenbaum. Vardanega participated in
the Carnegie Hall Workshops with Jonathan Biss
in February 2017 and is a laureate of the 2017
Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute. After receiving
her B.A. from Columbia University in Political
Science in May 2017, she began her Masters in
piano performance in Fall 2017 under the tutelage of
Richard Goode at Mannes College The New School.
Luther Warren
, violin
Gene Witz Memorial Violin
Fellowship
Violinist and violist Luther
Warren enjoys an emerging
career as an active performer
internationally. He has received
numerous awards for his work and appeared as
soloist with several orchestras. His playing has been
featured multiple times on National Public Radio
and at such festivals as Perlman Music Program’s
Chamber Music Workshop, Norfolk Chamber Music
Festival, Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival,
Taos School of Music, the International Holland
Music Sessions, and Domaine Forget International
Music Festival. He has collaborated in performance
with such artists as David Shifrin, Ida Kavafian,
Steven Tenenbom, and Hsin-Yun Huang, as well
as substituted as violist with the Borromeo String
Quartet. During the summer of 2018, Luther will
also be heard at Thy Chamber Music Festival in
Denmark and Alderney Chamber Music Festival
in the United Kingdom. Luther recently completed
his undergraduate degree at the New England
Conservatory in Boston as a student of Miriam Fried
and with viola studies under Martha Katz.
Amarins Wierdsma
, violin
Grace E. Hokin Fellowship*
Amarins Wierdsma, Born in
Utrecht in 1991 to a musical
family, began playing the
violin at the age of two. Her
teachers have included Coosje
Wijzenbeek, Vera Beths and David Takeno. Amarins
has taken part in courses including: IMS Prussia
Cove, The International Holland Music Sessions
among several others. Amarins has won several
prizes at important violin events, such as the
“Iordens Viooldagen”, “Davina van Wely Violin
Competition”, “Princess Christina Competition”
Young Musician of the Year 2007 and, in 2013,
the national “Oskar Back Violin Competition”
in Amsterdam. Amarins is first violinist of the
Barbican quartet with whom she studies in Madrid
with Günter Pichler. The quartet recently won the
St Martin in the Field Chamber Competition in
London. Amarins plays on a Guadagnini violin built
in 1764 on loan from the Dutch National Instrument
Foundation.
Tom Zalmanov
, piano
Jim
Borowitz
Memorial
Fellowship, Mr. and Mrs. James
Doppke, Sr. Fellowship, Jeffrey
Kanne Memorial Fellowship,
Margaret Farr Wilson Memorial
Fellowship* from Mr. and Mrs.
Thomas B. Hunter III
Tom Zalmanov, born January 1999, Israel, is a
student at the piano department of the Buchman-
Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv University,
class of Prof. Emanuel Krasovsky. Graduate of the
Conservatory and High School of the Jerusalem
Academy of Music and Dance, Piano Class of Mrs.
Lea Agmon. Tom performs regularly in Israel and
abroad as a soloist and a as a chamber musician. Past
performances include: Amsterdam, Copenhagen,
Bangkok, Ho chi Min, Dresden, Moscow, Perugia,
Tbilisi, Geneva and more. Tom has collaborated as
a soloist with conductors such as Frederic Chaslin,
Uri Segal and Vakhtang Kakhidze, performing
with leading orchestras including the Jerusalem
Symphony Orchestra of the IBA, Tbilisi Symphony
Orchestra, among others. First prize winner of
the Voice of Music “Young Artist” competition
for soloists; ”Piano Forever” Competition 2013,
Ashdod, Israel. As a participant of the Goldman
Program of the Jerusalem Music Centre, Tom is a
frequent participant in master classes and intensive
piano studies with Maestro Murray Perahia and
with other world-acclaimed artists such as Emanuel
Ax, Angela Hewitt, Menachem Pressler and many
others. Recipient of the America-Israel Cultural
Foundation excellence scholarships (2006-present),
scholarships from “Tzfonot Tarbut” and from Dalia
Maroz Foundation of the IPO.
Stephanie Zyzak
, violin
Starling Foundation Fellowship
Violinist Stephanie Zyzak made
her first solo appearance with
the Starling Chamber Orchestra
at the age of seven in the Aspen
Music School and was the
youngest recipient ever of the Aspen Music School
New Horizon Fellowship. The following year, she
performed in Germany as an invited guest of
the Internationale Kunst – Akademie Liechtenstein
(IKAL). Since then, she has toured as a soloist with
orchestras in Germany, Russia, Austria, Sweden,
Spain, Italy, and France. A passionate chamber
musician, she attended the Taos School of Music
and has collaborated with artists such as Steven
Tenenbom, Robert McDonald, Hsin-Yun Huang,
Jamie Laredo, and Joshua Bell. She won 2nd prize
in the 2014 Hudson Valley Philharmonic String
Competition and has been invited to participate in
internationally renowned competitions including
the Shanghai International Isaac Stern Competition
(2016), the International Ima Hogg Competition
(2016 semifinalist), the Zhuhai International
Mozart Competition (2015 semifinalist), and the
Seoul International Music Competition (2018
semifinalist). She completed her Bachelor and
Masters degrees under Miriam Fried at the New
England Conservatory and is currently pursuing a
Doctorate of Musical Arts at the City University of
New York with Mark Steinberg.
RSMI
PIANO AND STRINGS FELLOWS
*
an endowed fellowship at
Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute