| Monika Gruber Monika Gruber and Hillary Nordwell formed the Eusebius Duo in 2005, shortly after graduating from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. They have performed chamber music together, both as a duo and in the formation of a piano trio, since the Fall of 2004. In May 2006 the Eusebius Duo performed in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as 1st Prize winners of the 2nd International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition in Boston, MA. Their recent engagements include concerts through the Noontime Concert Series of San Francisco, Trinity Chamber Concerts in Berkeley, the Bing Concert Series at Stanford University, Festival del Sole in Napa, and the ‘Summer Matinees for Young Artists’ concert series in Dortmund, Germany. They have toured in Germany, Sweden, and Washington State, where they were also featured on KONP Radio's Art Beat show and were honored to appear in Northwest on Tour, the juried roster of artists sponsored by the Washington State based agency ‘Arts Northwest’. Both members of the Eusebius Duo teach and perform extensively throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and the duo is an affiliate of the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the service of chamber music in California. A native of Germany, Monika Gruber graduated from the ‘Hochschule fuer Musik’ in Weimar in 2003 with an Artistic Diploma and a Teaching Diploma. She spent the Academic Year 2000/01 as a recipient of the European “Erasmus” Scholarship at the ‘Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique’ in Lyon, France, studying violin with Stephane Tran Ngoc. In 2003 she won the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship Award, which enabled her to come to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Ian Swensen and completed her Masters Degree in May 2005. After having served as 1st violinist of the SF Conservatory’s New Music Ensemble, Monika currently pursues her passion for New Music as concertmaster of the SF Composers Chamber Orchestra. A dedicated teacher, she was a faculty member of the SF Conservatory’s Preparatory Division in 2005/06 and currently teaches at the SF Community Music Center, where she won last year’s Faculty Concerto Competition and performed the Sibelius Concerto in June of 2007. O1C Performances: The Eusebius Duo |
