Eliot Trio - SOLD OUT

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT.

 

Tickets are on sale December 19: HERE
$30 general admission; $25 WU Faculty/Staff/Seniors; $5 students (with ID).

Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Trio in D major, opus 70, no.1 ("Ghost")
Max Bruch Piano Trio in C minor, Opus 5
                         intermission
Felix Mendelssohn Piano Trio no.2 in C minor, opus 66
 

David Halen is living a dream that began as a youth the first time he saw the St. Louis Symphony perform in Warrensburg, Missouri. Born in Bellevue, Ohio, he didn’t have to look far for his musical influences: his father, the late Walter J. Halen, was also his violin professor at Central Missouri State University; his mother, a former member of the Kansas City Symphony; and his older brother, the Acting Concertmaster of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Halen began playing the violin at the age of six, and earned his bachelor’s degree at the age of 19. In that same year, he won the Music Teachers National Association Competition and was granted a Fulbright scholarship for study with Wolfgang Marschner at the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik in Germany, the youngest recipient ever to have been honored with this prestigious award. In addition, Halen holds a master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, studying with Sergiu Luca.

Halen served as Assistant Concertmaster with the Houston Symphony Orchestra under Sergiu Comissiona and Christoph Eschenbach until 1991. He then came to St. Louis, where he was permanently named Concertmaster in September 1995, without audition, by the Orchestra, and with the endorsement of then Music Directors Leonard Slatkin and Hans Vonk. He has soloed with the orchestra in much of the major concerti in the violin repertoire. In addition, he has soloed with the Houston, San Francisco and West German Radio (Cologne) symphonies.

During the summer he teaches and performs extensively, serving as Concertmaster at the Aspen Music Festival and School. He has also soloed, taught and served as Concertmaster extensively at the Orford Arts Centre in Quebec, the Manhattan School of Music, Indiana University, the National Orchestra Institute at the University of Maryland, the Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, and the New World Symphony in Miami Beach. In 2007 he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Artist at Yale University, and at the new Robert Mcduffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. In the fall of 2012, Halen join the string faculty of the University of Michigan.

As cofounder and artistic director of the Innsbrook Institute, Halen coordinates a weeklong festival, in June, of exciting musical performances and an enclave for aspiring artists. In August, he is artistic director of the Missouri River Festival of the Arts in Boonville, Missouri. His numerous accolades include the 2002 St. Louis Arts and Entertainment Award for Excellence, and an honorary doctorate from Central Missouri State University and from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

David Halen plays on a 1753 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin, made in Milan, Italy. He is married to Korean-born soprano Miran Cha Halen and has a teenage son.

Cellist Bjorn Ranheim was appointed to the St. Louis Symphony in September of 2005, holds the principal chair of the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and is a member of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in Idaho. Prior to these appointments, Ranheim served as associate principal cellist of the Fort Worth Symphony. He has performed and toured with the orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit; collaborating with Michael Tilson Thomas, David Robertson, Robert Spano, and Bernard Labadie. Ranheim has held principal and assistant principal cello positions with the New World Symphony, National Repertory Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra and, at the invitation of the music director, Quebec City’s critically acclaimed Le Violons du Roy.

Ranheim made his concerto debut with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1996 as winner of the Young Peoples Symphony Concert Association Competition and has since appeared as soloist on multiple occasions with the Colorado Music Festival, New World Symphony, Columbia Civic Orchestra, and the National Repertory Orchestra. Upcoming concerto highlights will include Brahms’ Double Concerto with STL Symphony violinist, Shawn Weil and the Washington University Orchestra in December 2013 as well as Saint-Saens’ Cello Concerto with the St. Louis Symphony on a special event performance in May 2014.

Actively performing in chamber music, Ranheim has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Central America, with performances at Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Gardner Museum, El Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. He has participated in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Seminar, Costa Rica International Chamber Music Festival, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, Audubon Quartet Seminar, and has been a frequent guest artist at the National Flute Association Convention. Ranheim is highly visible throughout the St. Louis region presenting recitals, chamber music performances, and educational concerts, and is a member of Washington University’s Eliot Piano Trio with STL Symphony Concertmaster David Halen and pianist Seth Carlin. In the spring of 2011, Ranheim was featured on the famed radio program A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, performing alongside jazz vocalist Erin Bode, with whom he tours regularly. Ranheim has shared the stage with jazz greats Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride, and Peter Martin, and is a founding member of the 442’s, an exciting acoustic string group exploring the boundaries of jazz, folk, and classical styles.

A committed advocate of contemporary solo and chamber music, Ranheim has premiered works by Stephen Paulus, Paul Schoenfield, Steven Heitzig, Peter Martin, Stefan Freund and William Beckstrand. As a mentor, coach and performer, Ranheim has been invited to work with the New World Symphony, Indiana University Summer Music Festiva,l and the STL Symphony Youth Orchestra.

Bjorn Ranheim studied at The Cleveland Institute of Music under the tutelage of Stephen Geber, retired principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Seth Carlin's career began at the age of nine with a broadcast performance over radio station WNYC, performing a work written especially for him. Since then Carlin has been soloist with orchestras such as the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Philharmonia Baroque and Boston "Pops", with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, Nicholas McGegan and Roger Norrington, in recital with performers such as Pinchas Zukerman and Malcolm Bilson, and in performances at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, the Marlboro Music Festival, and the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Great Performers at Lincoln Center Mozart Marathon, Cambridge Society for Early Music in Massachusetts, and "On Original Instruments" at Merkin Hall in New York. In addition he has made appearances on French, Swedish, German and mainland Chinese national television and radio, and recorded for Titanic and Naiad records. Recent concerts have taken him to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Mr. Carlin performed the cycle of complete Schubert fortepiano sonatas, including the "Wanderer" Fantasy, in New York City during the 1991-92 season. The concerts were broadcast nationally on National Public Radio's Program "Performance Today." Seth Carlin was a prizewinner in the International Busoni Competition, a recipient of a special scholarship from the French government, and one of only two fully funded National Endowment for the Arts recitalist grant winners in the United States in 1989. He holds degrees from Harvard University (B.A. in music, cum laude), the Juilliard School (M.S. in piano) and the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris (Licence de Concert, premier nommé à l'unanimité), and has studied piano with Rosina Lhevinne, Jules Gentil and Morton Estrin, as well as interpretation with Wilhelm Kempff. His CD recording of Sonatas and Bagatelles by Beethoven was named "Recording of the Month" by Alte Musik Actuelle magazine. Carlin is Professor of Music and head of the piano program at Washington University in Saint Louis.