Weekend chamber music at Chautauqua is back this summer, with a new name and many familiar faces. The School of Music Faculty Spotlight Series kicks off at 4:15 p.m. Saturday in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall with the MSFO Faculty Chamber Players — all resident instructors for the Music School Festival Orchestra.
The afternoon’s program features nine faculty members and the works of three composers. First is Bruch’s Selections from Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola, and piano, Op. 83, performed by clarinetist Eli Eban, violist Lynne Ramsey and pianist Shannon Hesse — and dedicated to viola faculty member Karen Ritscher.
Next is Basewicz’s Quartet for Four Violins (1949), performed by violinists Aaron Berofsky, Almita Vamos, Nurit Pacht, and Kathryn Votapek. Finally, Arensky’s Trio No. 1, Op. 32 for violin, cello, and piano closes out the program, performed by violinist Almita Vamos, cellist Felix Wang and pianist Akiko Konishi.
Berofsky has toured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, gaining wide recognition as a soloist and chamber musician. As soloist, he has performed with orchestras in the United States, Germany, Italy, Spain and Canada. He has performed the complete cycle of Mozart violin sonatas at the International Festival Deia in Spain and all of the Beethoven sonatas at New York’s Merkin Concert Hall. He served as first violinist of the Chester String Quartet for 15 years, and has been concertmaster of the Ann Arbor Symphony since 2003.
An alumnus of the Juilliard School, Berofsky is known for his commitment to teaching and is Professor of Violin at the University of Michigan and served as visiting professor at the Hochschule fur Musik in Detmold, Germany and has taught at the Meadowmount School of Music for many summers, in addition to being on the violin faculty at Chautauqua.
Eban was appointed principal clarinetist of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra under Lukas Foss immediately after graduating from the Curtis Institute of Music. Shortly thereafter he joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the invitation of Zubin Mehta. During 13 seasons with the Israel Philharmonic, he performed and recorded all the major orchestral repertoire with the world’s leading conductors. Eban was a visiting professor at the Eastman School of Music for two years before joining the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he holds a distinguished ranks’ Rudy professorship. He divides his time between teaching at the Jacobs School of Music, touring as a soloist and chamber musician, and serving as the principal clarinetist of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. His summers are spent performing and teaching at the Sarasota Music Festival and playing principal clarinet in the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.
Hesse is a staff pianist at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the University of Houston Moores School of Music; plays with Cantare Houston and the Young Texas Artists Music Competition; and is a member of the collaborative piano faculty at Chautauqua.
Previously, she served on the faculties of Houston Baptist University, Texas Southern University and Valdosta State University, and spent summers teaching at Westminster Choir College’s High School Piano Camp and at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she served as Coordinator of Collaborative Piano. She is a long-standing member of Music Teachers National Association, where she is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music.
Now an assistant professor of music at Washington and Lee University, Konishi received her early musical training in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and completed her undergraduate studies at Rice University as a double major in music and English. She continued her graduate studies at Yale University and the University of Houston, under the guidance of renowned pianists Peter Frankl and Abbey Simon. She performs extensively in guest artist venues across the United States, and recent notable engagements include a recital at Oberlin College as well as repeat concerto appearances with the Chicago Federation of Musicians Orchestra. Honors include finalist prizes in the Ima Hogg Houston Symphony Concerto Competition and the F. Awerbuch International Piano Competition (New York), as well as grand prizes in the Entergy Young Texas Artists Competition and the Rio Hondo Symphony Concerto Competition (Los Angeles). She received the Jury Discretionary Award at the Texas Steinway Society’s Career Development Award Competition.
Critically acclaimed modern and baroque violinist Pacht has been a top prize winner in the Irving Klein International Music Competition in California, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition in Switzerland and the Kingsville International Music Competition in Texas. As concertmaster, Nurit led NY Baroque Inc, Music of the Baroque (in Chicago) and plays concertos annually with Newburyport Chamber Music Festival’s Winter Baroque. She has been invited to tour as soloist with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Young Israel Philharmonic — throughout China — and the Houston Symphony. Pacht teaches in the summers with her mother-in-law, the renowned violin pedagogue Almita Vamos, and she has been a visiting professor at Mount Holyoke College since 2022.
Violist Ramsey has been first assistant principal violist of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1989, where she holds the Charles and Janet Kimball Chair. She has also been principal violist of the Saint Paul and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras, and has appeared as soloist with the Cleveland, Saint Paul Chamber, and Air Force String Orchestras; as well as the North Carolina, Baltimore, and Arlington Symphonies. Ramsey was invited to perform the Walton Viola Concerto with the Beijing Philharmonic in China in December 1985 and was the first foreigner to perform in Beijing’s new concert hall. She has performed chamber music concerts throughout the United States and previously taught at Oberlin Conservatory and the Aspen Music Festival. She was appointed to the CIM faculty in 2001.
Vamos, who has served on the violin faculty of Western Illinois University, University of Minnesota, the Oberlin Conservatory, and Northwestern University, has won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching six times, and has been honored with the ASTA Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award. Vamos is currently on the faculty of the Music Institute of Chicago and spends summers teaching at Chautauqua.
A member of the Chester String Quartet for 15 years, violinist/violist Votapek now maintains an active career as a soloist and guest artist at chamber music festivals throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Along with pianist Ralph Votapek and clarinetist Paul Votapek, she is the violinist and violist of the Votapek Trio. Additionally, she performs with husband Aaron Berofsky and sons Charles and Sebastian Berofsky in the Berofsky Piano Quartet. Votapek is currently on the faculty at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. She serves as the chair of chamber music at Chautauqua’s School of Music, and is the Associate Concertmaster of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.
In addition to being the cellist of the Blair String Quartet, Wang is a founding member of the Blakemore Trio and co-principal cellist of the IRIS Orchestra. He has been the winner of several esteemed competitions, including the National Society of Arts and Letters Cello Competition, where he appeared with the Phoenix Symphony. Wang is professor of cello at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. During the summer, he is on the faculties of the Chautauqua Music Festival and Madeline Island Chamber Music, and is co-artistic director of the Hilton Head Chamber Music Institute. He was also a recipient of the prestigious Frank Huntington Beebe Grant for study abroad, using it to study in London with William Pleeth.
