Laura Kobayashi is a violinist. She has performed in orchestras, chamber groups, and as a soloist. Formerly of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, she has taught at several universities and currently leads a varied career as a performer and pedagogue, having performed as a soloist with the Seattle, Spokane, and Grand Junction symphonies.
Kobayashi earned her Bachelor of Music from The Juilliard School, having studied under the renowned Dorothy DeLay. She went on to the Yale School of Music for her Master of Music then received her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan in 1995, studying under Paul Kantor and Andrew Jennings. [1]
Kobayashi has been a part of many chamber groups, most notably the Kobayashi/Gray Duo with pianist Susan Keith Gray and the Main Street Chamber Players. In 1993, the Kobayashi/Gray Duo won the USIA Artistic Ambassador audition, which led them touring through South America and the West Indies. [2] They have also performed in South Africa, Thailand, Norway, and Wales. The duo focuses on music by women composers of the 19th-21th centuries, having recorded two albums featuring works by women composers under Albany Records. They have shared their experiences at American String Teachers Association conventions, the International Festival of Women Composers, the First International Conference on Women's Work in Music, and various other conferences. [3]
Kobayashi is one of the founding members of the Main Street Music Studios in Fairfax, Virginia, where she maintains a private studio of violin students and won the 2012 VASTA Outstanding String Teacher Award. She previously served on the faculties of West Virginia University (having won the 2002 “Excellence in Teaching” Award by the School of Music and College of Creative Arts), University of Nebraska Omaha, University of Georgia, and the Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. [4]
The Kobayashi/Gray Duo released Boldly Expressive! on April 21, 2000, an album featuring six works by Rebecca Clarke, Marie Grandval, Johanna Senfter, Serra Miyeun Hwang, Barbara Heller, and Grażyna Bacewicz. The CD includes four premier recordings: Clarke's Midsummer Moon, Grandval's Grande Sonate, Op.8 which Kobayashi edited for publication by Hildegard Publication Company in 1998, Senfter's Sech kleine Stücke für Violine mit Klavierbegleitung, Op. 13: Melodie and Elegie, and Hwang's Allegory. The disc was a culmination of ten years of joint research and performances by the Duo of music for violin and piano by women composers. [5]
The Kobayashi/Gray Duo released Feminissimo! on December 1, 2008. The album consists of nine works by Meira Warshauer, Grażyna Bacewicz, Florence Price, Signe Lund, Anna Priscilla Risher, Emma Lou Diemer, Pauline Viardot, Vítězslava Kaprálová, and Elisenda Fábregas. The CD includes four premier recordings: Lund's Barcararolle, Op. 33, No. 1, Risher's Mazurka Brilliante, Diemer's Before Spring, and Fábregas' Sonata No. 1. The disc is a mixture of Romantic and contemporary character pieces and sonatas written by composers of Spanish, French, Norwegian, American, African-American, Polish, Czech and Jewish-American heritages. [5]
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, born Elizabeth Penn Sprague, was an American pianist and patron of music, especially of chamber music.
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany.
Grażyna Bacewicz Biernacka was a Polish composer and violinist of Lithuanian origin. She is the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.
Robert Marcel Casadesus was a renowned 20th-century French pianist and composer. He was the most prominent member of a distinguished musical family, being the nephew of Henri Casadesus and Marius Casadesus, husband of Gaby Casadesus, and father of Jean Casadesus.
Ruth Laredo was an American classical pianist.
Johanna Senfter was a German composer.
Renate Eggebrecht was a German violinist and record producer.
Friedemann Kupsa is an Austrian Cellist.
The Munich Fanny Mendelssohn String Quartet, Renate Eggebrecht 1st violin, Mario Korunic 2nd violin, Stefan Berg viola, Friedemann Kupsa violoncello, was founded in 1989 in the occasion of the performance and publication of Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel's String Quartet in E-flat major and Piano Quartet in A-flat major at the Gasteig/Munich.
Valerie Tryon, is an English classical pianist. Since 1971 she has resided in Canada, but continues to pursue an international performing and recording career, and spends a part of each year in her native Britain. Among her specialisms is the music of Franz Liszt, of which she has made a number of celebrated recordings. Currently 'Artist-in-Residence' at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Tryon is active as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, accompanist and adjudicator.
Emma Lou Diemer was an American composer.
Wanda Wiłkomirska was a Polish violinist and academic teacher. She was known for both the classical repertoire and for her interpretation of 20th-century music, having received two Polish State Awards for promoting Polish music to the world as well as other awards for her contribution to music. She gave world premiere performances of numerous contemporary works, including music by Tadeusz Baird and Krzysztof Penderecki. Wiłkomirska performed on a violin crafted by Pietro Guarneri in 1734 in Venice. She taught at the music academies of Mannheim and Sydney.
Piotr Janowski was a Polish violinist and first Polish winner of the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition.
Matthew Jones is a British violist, violinist and composer primarily known for his international performance work as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. He also holds a Viola Professorship and is Head of Chamber Music at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and runs an in-demand performance health consultancy practice. He is fluent in Italian.
Laura Constance Netzel was a Finnish-born Swedish composer, pianist, conductor and concert organizer who sometimes used the pseudonym N. Lago. She was born in Rantasalmi, Finland, and was proud of her Finnish heritage throughout her life, even though she was just one year old when she moved permanently to Stockholm. Netzel studied piano with Mauritz Gisiko and Anton Door, voice with Julius Günther and composition with Wilhelm Heinze in Stockholm and Charles-Marie Widor in France.
Carmen Petra Basacopol was a Romanian composer, pianist, musicologist and academic teacher. She taught at the National University of Music Bucharest, between 1962 and 2003, and at the Rabat Conservatoire in Morocco in the 1970s. As a musicologist, she achieved a PhD from the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1976, with a dissertation about three Romanian composers who had influenced her, George Enescu, Mihail Jora and Paul Constantinescu, composers representing essential features of Romanian music.
Maria Louise Newman is an American composer of classical music, as well as a violinist and pianist. She is the youngest child of Alfred Newman, a prominent Hollywood film composer. Maria holds the Louis and Annette Kaufman Composition Chair and the Joachim Chassman Violin Chair at the Montgomery Arts House for Music and Architecture in Malibu, California. She is also a founder of the Malibu Friends of Music.
Lionel Sainsbury is an English pianist and classical composer, noted for his stylistic combination of South American music, jazz blues and flamenco with the Western classical tradition.
The Lark Quartet was a New York-based, all female string quartet that operated from 1985 to 2019. It is acknowledged for its distinguished contribution to the string quartet repertoire, commissioning new works from some of America's most celebrated composers. Most notably, Aaron Jay Kernis' two string quartets: Quartet no. 1 Musica celestis and Quartet no. 2 Musica instrumentalis, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. The Lark Quartet served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2004 to 2008 and has recorded numerous albums on multiple labels including Decca/Argo, Arabesque, Bridge, ERI, Endeavor and Koch.
Anna Priscilla Risher was an American composer, organist, pianist, later a painter as well.