Summer Concerts: Ambassador Trio

Program:

The Ambassador Trio gave it's first performance at the new Steinway dedication concert in November 2007. This newly formed group serves as an educational ambassador of the festival bringing classical music experiences to audiences of all ages.

Violinist Ray Shows made his solo debut with orchestra in his native Atlanta. As a founding member of the ARTARIA STRING QUARTET, he has performed in major concert halls in New York, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Minneapolis across the U.S. and in Europe. A 2004 winner of a prestigious McKnight Performing Artist Fellowship, Shows is a highly regarded chamber musician who has concertized with many renowned artists including Arnold Steinhardt (Guarneri Quartet), Eugene Drucker (Emerson Quartet), Paul Katz (Cleveland Quartet), and Raphael Hillyer (Juilliard Quartet). He was featured as a concerto soloist with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, where he served as interim Concertmaster and Principal Second Violin. Other professional performance engagements include the Boston Ballet, Boston Pops Esplanade and the Boston Opera Company. Shows is passionate about 20th century music and has performed and recorded music of today's leading composers, including Gunther Schuller, Augusta Read Thomas, Marjorie Merryman and Thomas Oboe Lee, commissioning solo and chamber works for his own New Music Festivals. An Artist/Teacher in Residence at the Tanglewood Institute and a 3-time recipient of prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ray has held teaching residencies at Boston College, Viterbo University, Florida State University and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory. He received the coveted Director's Award and graduated with distinction from Boston University with his Master's Degree in Violin Performance under the tutelage of Carl Flesch protege Roman Totenberg. His BM Magna Cum Laude was received from Florida State University studying with Gerardo Ribeiro. Studies in Chamber Music were mentored by Eugene Lehner (Kolisch Quartet) and members of the Budapest, Juilliard, Emerson, Cleveland, LaSalle, Muir, and Colorado Quartets. Since 2000 Shows has been a member of the faculty of St. Olaf College and co-directs the Artaria Chamber Music School in St. Paul. He plays on a rare Italian violin made in Rome by David Tecchler in 1726.

Cellist Kirsten Whitson plays regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. She also performs with the Milwaukee Symphony and the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra in Jackson, Wyoming. Whitson maintains a private teaching studio in St. Paul and has taught at McPhail Center for the Arts, Indiana University, Carroll College and in a fishing village in Norway. She has performed throughout the US, Europe, Japan and Cuba with Minnesota Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony and the Bergen Philharmonic. As a chamber musician she played with the Koan Quartet in Minneapolis from 2000-2003 and the Morini String Quartet in Milwaukee from 1994-1999. She has a Bachelor of Music and an Artist Diploma from Indiana University where she was awarded a coveted Performer's Certificate. Her principal teachers were Fritz Magg, Wolfgang Laufer and Janos Starker. Whitson studied chamber music with Leonard Hokanson, Menahem Pressler and the Fine Arts Quartet. She was a recipient of a 2002 Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship to study improvisation and has collaborated in this field with dancers from the James Sewell Ballet. The exploration into improvisation let to my commissioning a cello and piano piece by McKnight winning composer Carl Witt. It will premiered in 2008.

Pianist Ned Kirk, artistic and managing director of the Minnesota Beethoven Festival, is a native of Redding, California, where he received his early musical training. He has performed extensively as a piano soloist and chamber musician. Recent concert engagements have included the Phillips Collection and Polish Embassy in Washington D.C.; the Governor's Mansion and Second City Chamber Series in Washington State; the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin; the University of Minnesota; Community Concerts Inc. in California; and concerto performances with the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra in Wisconsin. Kirk has collaborated with numerous outstanding musicians, many of whom serve as conductors and principles in orchestras around the world - Michael Christie, Kevin Kenner, Charles Kavalowski, Glenn Einschlag, Olav Van Hezewijk, Ron Ephrat, Jeffrey Work, David Jones, Lisa-Maree Amos, Daniel Rothmuller and Donald McInnes. In 2007, guided by the vision of Hugh Miller and with the collaboration of board members Ken Lanik and Julie Smith, Kirk helped create the Minnesota Beethoven Festival; the festival enjoyed a resoundingly successful inaugural season featuring both regional, national and international artists. Kirk is also a founding member of the Minnesota Beethoven Festival Trio, along with Ray Shows, violin, and Kirsten Whitson, cello. The MBF Trio's primary mission is to act as an educational ambassador within the region and beyond, bringing classical music experiences to audiences of all ages. From 2002-2004, Kirk served as orchestral pianist for the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder. Over the course of three summers, he performed 25 concerts on piano, harpsichord and celesta including Stravinsky's Petrouchka, Piazzolla's Three Chamber Pieces for piano and string orchestra, a complete baroque program with Michala Petri (recorder), various chamber music concerts, and Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals for two pianos, with his wife, Caroline. Kirk earned his Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music as a student of Walter Hautzig and his Master of Music degree in piano performance from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, studying under Nigel Coxe. He earned his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance as a student of Craig Sheppard at the University of Washington. Additional piano and chamber music coaches have included Earl Carlyss, Tinka Knopp, Lillian Freundlich, Estela Olevsky, Charles Treger and Yefim Bronfman. Kirk has been a faculty member at the Marrowstone Music Festival and spent four summers teaching piano masterclasses to students from rural Alaska at the Sitka Fine Arts Institute in Sitka, Alaska. Before moving to Minnesota in 1999, he served for seven years on the piano faculty at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. In addition to his involvement with the Minnesota Beethoven Festival, Kirk is also an associate professor of piano and chair of the music department at Saint Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota.