Audrey Vardanega & Friends – Friday, January 5, 2018 at 8 pm

Audrey Vardanega, piano
with special guests Gonzalo Martin Rodriguez, viola & Chase Park, cello

Sergei Rachmaninoff selections from Cello Sonata in G minor
Johannes Brahms Trio for Viola, Piano, and Cello in A minor Op. 114
Johannes Brahms Clarinet Sonata, Op. 120, No. 1 (arr. for viola & piano)

Praised as a player “with the kind of freedom, authority, and strength…that one expects from the world’s finest pianists” (Berkeley Daily Planet), 21-year-old Audrey Vardanega made her solo debut with IMG Artists’ Festival del Sole at the age of 12 and became the youngest soloist in the history of the Midsummer Mozart Festival with Maestro George Cleve at the age of 15. She has been featured as a soloist at the Hangzhou Grand Theater, the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, Herbst Theater, and the Crowden School, among others. Along with five other internationally selected pianists, Vardanega participated in the Carnegie Hall Workshops with Jonathan Biss in February 2017 and was selected as a fellow for the 2017 Ravinia Steans Music Festival. After receiving her B.A. from Columbia University in Political Science in May 2017, she plans to begin her Masters in piano performance in the Fall under the tutelage of Richard Goode at Mannes College The New School. For this concert she is joined by Spanish violist Gonzalo Martin Rodriguez and cellist Chase Park. Rodriguez has won top prizes at the 2017 International Anton Rubinstein Competition for Viola, the Concurso Jovenes musicos de Eusakdi, and is a two-time winner of the Ensemblewettbewerb HMT Leipzig. He has performed with the Bilbao Symphonic Orchestra and the Deusto Chamber Orchestra, and is currently completing his MM at the HMT Leipzig. Park has been featured on NPR’s From the Top, collaborated with the Shanghai Quartet, and was a finalist in Young Art’s National YoungArts Week in Miami. He is currently studying at the Curtis Institute of Music.