Salon Series Performers

Pavel Gintov

Pianist Pavel Gintov was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1984. He started his musical education at Kiev Central Music School and continued it at the Moscow State Conservatory, where he was a student of the legendary teacher Lev Naumov. In 2008 he received a Master of Music Degree at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with Nina Svetlanova.

As the first prizewinner in the fist Takamatsu International Piano Competition, Mr. Gintov performed recitals and concertos with orchestra in Teatro Verdo Nationale (Milan), Kioi Hall (Tokyo), and Moscow Conservatory. In 2007 he performed Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall.

Among the grants received my Mr. Gintov are the Shevchenko Scientific Society Grant (New York 2008), the Full Scholarship and Stipend at the Manhattan School of Music (2006), and the Grant of the Scriabin Foundation (Moscow, 2000).

Pavel Gintov lives in New York, where he is working on his DMA degree at the Manhattan School of Music.

Hélène Jeanney

Born in Paris, H&eactue;lène Jeanney graduated from the Paris Conservatory at the age of 17 with First Prize in Piano and Chamber Music. She studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Indiana University, where she became Assistant Professor to her teacher, Menahem Pressler, and received a Professional Studies Degree from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Jerome Lowenthal. She also studied at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg and at the Banff Center of Fine Arts, and with such artists as Germaine Mounier, Yevgeni Malinin, Gaby Casadesus, Nikita Magaloff, Gyorgy Sebok, and Isaac Stern.

Ms. Jeanney has appeared as soloist with the Paris National Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the New World Symphony, and with the New England Symphonic Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. She has performed recitals throughout Europe, Australia, and the U.S. and regularly performs at Weill Hall with her Chamber Music group "Elysium." Ms. Jeanney's partnership with cellist Hai Ye Ni has led to recitals in London, Boston, and Washington, D.C. She is part of a piano duo with David Oei and also appears frequently with the New York Philharmonic Ensembles at Merkin Concert Hall. In France she has appeared at the Chopin Festival, the Paris Summer Festival, the International Festival of Radio France and Montpellier, the International Festival of Young Soloists in Bordeaux, and in recitals sponsored by the Phillip Morris Association in Salle Gaveau, the Opera Comique, the Bosendorfer Center, and UNESCO.

Ms. Jeanney won top prizes in the Robert Casadesus Competition, the Thomas Richner Competition, the Chopin National Competition, and the New York Chopin Association, and First Prize in the East and West Artists Competition. She is a faculty member at the French-American Conservatory and at the Hoff-Barthelson Music School. Ms. Jeanney can be heard in recordings on the Naxos and Accord labels.

Abbe Rose Krieger

Listeners around the globe have consistently praised the richness and beauty of flutist Abbe Rose Krieger's playing. In addition to performing at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Paul Hall, and the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, she has appeared at music festivals including Tanglewood, Bowdoin, and Chautauqua. Ms. Krieger's solo and chamber recitals have included performances in Los Angeles, Vermont, and Paris, and she has been featured on WQED radio's "Young Artist Showcase." Currently, Ms. Krieger is in the planning stages of a project to record the complete set of Bach Sonatas for flute and harpsichord.

Ms. Krieger's musical training includes degrees with honors from The Juilliard School, Carnegie Mellon University, and Brandeis University, where she also served as a flute instructor.

A native New Yorker, Abbe Rose Krieger currently resides there and is devoted to making classical music accessible to the broadest audience possible. When not performing or teaching, she loves to run (marathons) and bake, and she is in the process of completing her first novel. A longtime student and friend of Julius Baker, Ms. Krieger considers Mr. Baker and Glenn Gould (one of Mr. Baker's favorite musicians) to be among her strongest musical influences. She currently studies with Keith Underwood.

John McDowell

Musician and film composer John McDowell achieved worldwide recognition with his soundtrack to the Academy Award winning documentary Born Into Brothels. Winner of Best Musical Score at the Bend Film Festival, the score blends Western and Indian music in a mesmerizing mix. Subsequent film scores by McDowell include the upcoming documentary film Stolen which will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2009.

Known for much more than just his film scores, McDowell is also a highly gifted pianist, percussionist, producer, commissioned composer and conductor. McDowell served as founder, artistic director and leader of several musical projects including The Born Into Brothels Ensemble and the world music band Mamma Tongue. He has toured and recorded with Rusted Root and Krishna Das and has produced several albums including his solo CD Speaking the Mamma Tongue.

McDowell's formal education and subsequent informal global training has made him a self-taught ethnomusicologist of widely-ranging scale. After receiving music composition degrees from DePaul and Northwestern Universities, McDowell lived in Europe and Africa. His research took him to Senegal, Gambia, India, and to work with Native American drummers and singers from the Tuscarora and Oglala tribes. In Europe, his dance scores have been featured at the Brussels Dance Festival, the Holland Festival, and the Berlin-Amsterdam Festival.

His work over the past 25 years draws on classical, jazz, pop, and world music. He has written over 100 pieces ranging from solo flute music to dance scores, a requiem, and works for a world music ensemble and orchestra. He has performed at major venues and festivals including the Montreal Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and the United Nations.

He has recently begun a piano/violin duo with Canadian violinist and composer Emmanuel Vukovich.

Andriy Milavsky

Andriy Milavsky holds a Master's Degree in music from the Kyiv State Conservatory in Ukraine. An accomplished clarinetist, he has toured Eastern and Western Europe with State Orchestras such as the Kyiv, Moscow, Tartu, and Lviv, performing classical and folk repertoires at major concert halls. Since his arrival in the United States in 1991, Mr. Milavsky has appeared with the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, the Amato and Riverside Operas; has worked on experimental projects produced Off Broadway; and taught music privately and institutionally. His teaching experience abroad, as well as Stateside, has set a precedent among educators in music. Currently, Mr. Milavsky performs regularly as a B-flat, A, E-flat, and bass clarinetist with opera and symphony orchestras, woodwind and string quartets, and clarinet duets. Volodymyr Sirenko, Principal Conductor of the National Symphony of Ukraine, says, "Andriy Milavsky is a sophisticated musician and a brilliant soloist. He brings a profound contribution to the orchestral palette."

Mr. Milavsky is also an Eastern European folk musician par excellence. His experience in Carpathian folk music spans 20 years as a performer, soloist, and orchestra leader/arranger with some of the top traditional state collectives in Ukraine. Today, Mr. Milavsky is actively involved in promoting Ukrainian music, conducting Carpathian folk seminars, arranging and recording melodies for Ukrainian dance companies, lecturing at universities, giving radio interviews with the BBC and WNYC, acting as a consultant to record producers working on Eastern European projects, and more. His Carpathian folk ensemble, Cheres, based in Manhattan, is renowned as the best ensemble of this genre in the United States. The group's renditions of centuries-old folk hits can be heard on six CDs to date, including Cheres: From the Mountains to the Steppe (Village Music of Ukraine), available online at www.cheres.net.

Anna Shelest

Ukrainian born pianist Anna Shelest made her international debut at age eleven at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris as the youngest prize winner of the Milosz Magin International Piano Competition.

At age twelve Ms. Shelest appeared with the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra, playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 1. Since then she has been a soloist with some of the world's most renowned orchestras, such as the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. She has performed on some of the world's greatest stages. such as Carnegie Hall, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Ms. Shelest has won top prizes at such international piano competitions as the Bradshaw-Buono International Piano Competition, Louisiana International Piano Competition, the Third Netherlands International Piano Competition for Young Musicians, the Corpus Christi International Competition for Piano and Strings, Ludmila-Knezkova Hussey International Piano Competition.

Her discography includes an all-Rachmaninoff CD featuring Etudes-tableaux op. 39 and Moments-musicaux op. 16, and a collaborative recording with Cristian Ganicenco, principal trombonist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, featuring music for trombone and piano.

Ms. Shelest resides in New York City, where she is pursuing a graduate degree at the Juilliard School in the class of Jerome Lowenthal.

To learn more about Anna Shelest, please visit her website at www.AnnaShelest.com.

Emmanuel Vukovich

Canadian-born violinist and composer Emmanuel Vukovich has performed across Europe, the United States, Australia, and Canada. Born in 1980, he received the Golden Violin Award from McGill University's Schulich School of Music and the Canada Council for the Arts Orford String Quartet Scholarship.

Mr. Vukovich left home at sixteen to study with Dorthy Delay and Masao Kawasaki at the Juilliard School in New York City. Between 2003 and 2007 he completed his music studies at McGill University in Montreal working with Denise Lupien and André Roy at the Schulich School of Music, while also completing a minor in Environmental Studies. During this time, he was a member of the Lloyd Carr-Harris String Quartet, which won several national and international awards, including the Grand Prize at the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition in 2005.

Mr. Vukovich has performed with Ida Handel, Anton Kuerti, and Matt Haimowitz, and has been featured as soloist with the I Medici and McGill Symphony Orchestras. He has performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Orford Arts Centre Festival, Banff Center, and the Montreal Chamber Music Festival.

During his early years in New York Mr. Vukovich developed a serious interest in farming and served as co-director and concertmaster of Symphony in the Barn—an international summer music festival held on an operating bio-dynamic farm in Durham, Ontario. He has since become devoted to uniting his twin passions of music and agriculture, and recently organized and performed a series of solo violin recitals on organic farms entitled "Bach in a Barn." In 2008 he began "Agri-Culture"—a project involving organizing, performing, and documenting a series of benefit concerts on Community Supported Agriculture farms across Canada and the United States. His aim with this project is to create a foundation that connects world-class music-making and culture with local organic agriculture.