CLASSICAL ENCOUNTERS presents Harout Senekermian, Pianist and Victor de Almeida – Viola

Donations:
$40 Reserved, $30 General, $20 Students
Food: A
Delicious Buffet with Wine will follow the concert

 


Program:Stravinsky – Suite Italienne from the Ballet Pulcinella
arranged by Victor de Almeida/Nick
Gianopoulos - Hatzlacha Rabbah/Stravinsky
– The Rite of Spring arranged by Victor de Almeida

 

For
more Info visit: www.classicalencounters.org

 



Background    Harout Senekeremian began
playing the piano at the age of 4 with the encouragement of his father. His
first teacher was Vatche Mankerian, who studied at the USC. At age nine, he
began studying under the tutelage of Dr. Louise Lepley at the prestigious
Colburn School of Performing Arts. There he played in many master classes with
pianists Yefim Bronfman, Robert Levin & Earl Wild among others. In 1997,
Senekeremian performed Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Glendale
Symphony. He also actively collaborated in chamber music groups including a
live performance of Brahm’s C Minor Quartet on 91.5 KUSC.

 

Upon high school graduation, Harout entered the Oberlin
Conservatory of Music studying piano with Alvin Chow. In his freshman year at
Oberlin he had played all of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes and his sophomore
year he held a two-night concert performing all ten Scriabin Sonatas. At
Oberlin, he performed Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in C Minor, Op. 18
with the conservatory orchestra. Upon graduation, Harout began his masters
under Arkady Aranov at the Manhattan School of Music.

 

Harout has taken a keen interest in non-traditional
repertoire with a specialization in the solo piano music of French composer
Charles-Valentin Alkan playing in concert all of the composers major works. He
is also an eager participant in the performance of new music.

 



Victor de Almeida, violist, was a double prize winner of the
2008 Primrose International Viola Competition, and performs regularly as a
soloist and chamber musician throughout Southern California and the
world.  He has most recently been the Principal Violist of the Cincinnati
Symphony Orchestra, the Associate Principal Violist of the Indianapolis
Symphony Orchestra, and the guest Principal Violist for the Los Angeles Opera.
While studying at the Peabody Institute of Music of the Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, he was the Principal Violist of the Annapolis Symphony
and a regular substitute violist with the Baltimore Symphony.
Mr. Almeida was born into a Brazilian
and American musical family in Adelaide, Australia where his parents were the
Principal and Assistant Principal cellists of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra,
and began playing violin and piano at the age of three.  He is completing
his debut recording of his arrangement of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of
Spring” and “Suite Italienne” for Viola and Piano with pianist Harout
Senekerenian with the sponsorship of the Stravinsky Foundation. He is also an
avid collector of viola music and takes pride in performing those rare
selections.