David Salness
Professor, Violin
Phone: 301-405-8348
Artist Diploma, Curtis Institute of Music
Violinist David Salness has toured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, attaining wide recognition as a performer and teacher. A sought after soloist and ensemble player for over twenty years, Mr. Salness has appeared in such renowned venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center, Salle Pleyel, Teatro Colon, and Wigmore Hall. His performances are broadcast by National Public Radio, Radio France, Bavarian Radio, and the British and Canadian Broadcast Corporations. Mr. Salness' critically acclaimed recordings are found on the RCA, Telarc, and Centaur Labels.
An alumnus of the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Cleveland and Curtis Institutes, Mr. Salness' teachers have included David Cerone, Jascha Brodsky, Ivan Galamian, Joseph Gingold, Karen Tuttle, and Felix Galimir. Mr. Salness has collaborated with members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, and Cleveland Quartets. He has enjoyed a long association with New York's Chautauqua Festival and has participated in the Aspen Center for Advanced Quartet Studies and in the Ravinia, Newport, Banff, and Mostly Mozart Festivals. He has appeared with such noted ensembles as the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, Orpheus, and the Brandenburg Ensemble of New York.
A devoted chamber musician of acclaimed acumen and skill, Mr. Salness was for twelve years a member of the Audubon Quartet and won the Deuxieme Grand Prix as a member of Nisaika in the 1984 Evian International String Quartet Competition. Currently he is a member of the Left Bank Quartet and the historical Theater Chamber Players of Washington, D C. A guest artist with the 20th Century Consort and Smithsonian Chamber Players, Mr. Salness is also Concertmaster of the Fairfax Symphony.
A committed advocate of contemporary music, Mr. Salness is privileged to have worked closely with some of the most influential composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries including Luciano Berio, Leonard Bernstein, John Cage, George Crumb, Witold Lutoslawski, Gian-Carlo Menotti, and Krystof Penderecki. Mr. Salness has studied the music and performance traditions of Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Bartok, and Ravel under the direction of Szekely, Galamir, Lorand Fenyves, and Eugene Lehner, all of whom worked personally with the composers themselves. Mr. Salness has premiered works by many contemporary composers including Donald Erb and Peter Schickele.
A prominent performer in the Washington, D.C. area, Mr. Salness appears regularly at the Kennedy Center, the National and Corcoran Galleries, the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, and the Smithsonian, and Hirschorn Museums.
A highly effective teacher, lecturer, and clinician, Mr. Salness is Head of Chamber Music Studies and Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Maryland and a faculty member at the Meadowmount School in New York. He also teaches as a guest faculty member at Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory of Music. An accomplished and dedicated chamber music instructor, Mr. Salness has coached ensembles and individuals who have proceeded to garner top prizes at many international competitions. Mr. Salness performs on a violin built in 1687 that is a rare example of the work of the brothers Giovanni and Francesco Grancino of Milan.
James Stern
Associate Professor, Violin
Phone: 301-405-5530
B.M., M.M., D.M.A., The Juilliard School
James Stern is a multi-faceted musician whose violin playing has been heard worldwide and cited by the Washington Post for "virtuosity and penetrating intelligence." In addition he enjoys an ever-growing reputation as a violist, pianist, conductor, writer and speaker.
Stern is a member of two critically acclaimed ensembles, the Stern/Andrist Duo with his wife, Canadian pianist Audrey Andrist, and Strata, a trio in which the two of them are joined by clarinetist Nathan Williams. The duo has performed throughout the United States, Canada and China, with additional recitals in Munich and Paris, and has been on the touring rosters of both the California and the Saskatchewan Arts Councils. The trio is featured on a compact disc of new and standard repertoire on Arizona University Recordings, and has appeared in New York City under the auspices of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Strata has received enthusiastic repeat engagements at San Francisco Composers Inc (for which they were listed as one of San Francisco Classical Voice's "highlights of 2005"), the Piccolo Spoleto Festival and New York's historic Maverick Concerts. Both ensembles have performed numerous world-premieres of music written especially for them, including world-premiere recordings for CRI and Albany records.
Stern has served on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music and is now Associate Professor and Chair of the String Division at the University of Maryland School of Music. He has taught masterclasses throughout North America and in China, Norway and Italy, and has published numerous articles on violin pedagogy for such journals as American String Teacher.
He has performed at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Banff and Bowdoin festivals as well as at New York's Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall. From 1992 to 2001, while teaching at the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music in Stockton, California, he performed with the Sierra Chamber Society, the Gold Coast Chamber Players, the Yerba Buena Ensemble, and at California State University at Sacramento's Festival of the Arts, the Ralston Concert Series, Le Petit Trianon Theatre, and the Annenberg Theater Museum Concert Series, collaborating in chamber music with many of the west coast's most renowned musicians.
Since moving to the Washington, D. C. area he has performed with the 21st Century Consort, the Contemporary Music Forum, the Smithsonian Chamber Players and the Axelrod Quartet, at such venues as the Corcoran Gallery, the German and French Embassies, the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum, National Museum of American History, Renwick Gallery and American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, the National Gallery, the Phillips Collection, the National Museum of the American Indian, Strathmore Mansion and the White House. In his frequent appearances at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland he has brought innovative programming that includes performing in multiple capacities, composing and arranging, reciting poetry and distributing pre-concert essays via the Center's website.
Irina Muresanu
Assistant Professor, Violin
String Division
Romanian violinist Irina Muresanu has won the hearts of audiences and critics alike with her exciting, elegant and heartfelt performances of the classic, romantic and modern repertoire. The Boston Globe has come to praise her as "not just a virtuoso, but an artist" and the Los Angeles Times has written that her "musical luster, melting lyricism and colorful conception made Irina Muresanu's performance especially admirable" while Strad Magazine called her Carnegie/Weill Hall performance "a first-rate recital". Irina Muresanu's performances have been frequently cited as among the Best of Classical Music Performances by the Boston Globe, and her recital in the Emerging Artist Celebrity Series was named one of the Top 10 musical events by the TAB Magazine.
Early on, Ms. Muresanu achieved international acclaim as an outstanding young soloist, recitalist and chamber musician winning top prizes in several prestigious international violin competitions, including the Montreal International, Queen Elizabeth International, UNISA International String, Washington International, and the Schadt String Competition. She is the winner of the Pro Musicis International Award, the Presser Music Award, the Kate Kinley Fellowship Award from the University of Illinois and the Arthur Foote Award from the Harvard Musical Association.
Ms. Muresanu has performed in renowned concert halls throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Her recent solo engagements include concerts with the Boston Pops, the Miami Symphony Orchestra, the Williamsburg Symphonia, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Geneva), the Syracuse Symphony, the Metropolitan Orchestra (Montreal), the Transvaal Philharmonic (Pretoria, S. Africa), the Romanian National Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Radio Flamande (Brussels), the Boston Philharmonic, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the New England String Ensemble amongst others.
In 2013, Ms. Muresanu introduced her “Four Strings Around the World” project, a solo violin recital featuring works of composers inspired by various musical cultures around the world. An early reviewer of the project wrote that “[W]hen the D Major section moves into D minor [in Bach’s Chaccone], it seemed as if the violin had had its heart broken and was crying. Muresanu’s performance was simply spectacular.”
Her recent recording releases include the Thomas Oboe Lee Violin Concerto (dedicated to Irina Muresanu) on the BMOP label, works of Elena Ruehr (also dedicated to Irina Muresanu) on Avie Records label and the complete William Bolcom's Violin and Piano Sonatas on Centaur label (a recording that was funded by a Copland Recording Grant). In Europe, her recording of the Guillaume Lekeu and Alberic Magnard late Romantic Violin and Piano Sonatas with pianist Dana Ciocarlie for the AR RE-SE French label has sparked enthusiasm. Fanfare noted the recording with "singing and soaring...[a] sizzling performance". Ms. Muresanu has also recorded chamber music works of Gerhard Schedl with the Walden Chamber Players, the world premiere recording of Marion Bauer's Sonata for Violin and Piano with pianist Virginia Eskin on Albany Records, and a CD featuring chamber works of Erich Korngold released by the VPRO Radio Amsterdam. Adding to her other competition laurels, Ms. Muresanu was granted a Special Commendation award for her recording of Schoenberg's Fantasy for Violin and Piano at the 3rd International Vienna Modern Masters Performers Recording Competition.
An active chamber musician and recitalist, Ms. Muresanu has appeared in such festivals and venues as Bargemusic in New York, the Rockport Festival in Massachusetts, Bay Chambers concert series and Bowdoin Festival in Maine, the Strings in the Mountains and San Juan Music Festival in Colorado, Maui Chamber Music Festival in Hawaii, Reizend Music Festival in Netherlands, Festival van de Leie in Belgium, and the Renncontres des Musiciennes Festival in France. Ms. Muresanu has been a member of the Boston Trio since 2002 and she regularly performs with Mistral and the Walden Chamber Players.
Irina Muresanu has taught in the Music Departments of Boston Conservatory, Harvard and MIT. Her ensemble, the Boston Trio, is Ensemble-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory, the institution at which she received the prestigious Artist Diploma degree and a Doctorate in Musical Arts degree. A native of Bucharest, Romania, Ms. Muresanu resides in Boston, MA with her husband, son and dog. She plays an 1856 Giuseppe Rocca violin and a Charles Peccat bow courtesy of Mr. Mark Ptashne.
