Café String Quartet presents Canções da América, $20

Sunday, June 25
5:30 doors/food/drinks 6:30 music
Citizen Vinyl, 14 O’Henry Avenue, Asheville
The Café String Quartet + Jorge Fuentes, percussion

Purchase tickets here.

Music with roots deep in the Americas, by Piazzolla, Gardel, Jobim, Joplin, Foster, Dvorak, and Bennett, plus à la carte food + wine pairings from the Session Cafe and Bar.

Tickets $20
50% of ticket sales will support Hola Carolina

Purchase tickets here.

The Asheville-based Café String Quartet has performed for public and private events for over 15 years. Multi-year winners of the Wedding Wire Couple’s Choice awards, they have performed and recorded on series including Bach to Bluegrass, Smoky Mountain Performing Arts Center, the Hendersonville Symphony’s Up Close and Personal series and have self-produced twelve annual community benefits.

Purchase tickets here.

Program:

Dvorak, American String Quartet 6, mv’ts 1 and 2 Hard Times Come Again No More – Foster/Scheider Mark O’Conner string quartet no 1, mv’t 1
Folk Song – Frank Bennett
Solace – Joplin
Tango Chromatique – McClean

Danzas Argentinas – Ginestera/Naughtin Chador – Astor Piazzolla, arr by Solda Por Una Cabeza – Gardel
Girl from Ipanema – Jobim

Tico-Tico – Abreu
La Bamba – Mexican Traditional Evil Ways – Santana
Smooth – Santana
Oye Como Va, Puente

Monique Pinelli, violin

Monique Pinelli loved growing up in a musically diverse home, her father played trumpet and flugelhorn in funk and rock bands, Greek bands, Mariachi bands and jazz groups and her mother passed on her love of traditional Swiss music by singing to her children and in addition, all of her 6 siblings grew up learning how to play dierent instruments. Monique continued her love of music after leaving home, studying with Leopold LaFosse at the University of Iowa School of Music where she earned her Bachelor of Music degree and with David Moskovitz at UNC-Greensboro where she earned her Master of Music. Monique has played with the Tri-Cities IA, Greensboro, Salt Lake, Asheville and Hendersonville Symphonies, Brevard Philharmonic, and Asheville Lyric Opera. In 2018, Monique also toured China and Inner Mongolia with South Shore Orchestra.

Paula Akbar, violin

Paula Sisson Akbar, a native of Dee Flat, Oregon, attended Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and received her Master of Violin Performance degree from the Yale Graduate School of Music. Prior to joining the National Symphony Orchestra in 1991, she was a first violinist in the Oregon, New Haven, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. Ms. Akbar has since performed with the 20th/21st Century Consort, the Library of Congress Summer Chamber Players, the Sunrise String Quartet, the National Chamber Players, and the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and is a founding member of the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra in Washington DC. She has performed with Mexican musicians in San Miguel de Allende’s Angela Peralta Theatre, toured to Costa Rica and Buenos Aires (and recorded a CD entitled “To Buenos Aires With Love”) with the WAMMIE award-winning group QuinTango, in 2010 completed a two week cruise to the Caribbean as a member of the Symphonic Voyages Orchestra, and, with her Viva Violins/Fiddle Sessions NSO colleagues, participated in almost every NSO United States Residency since 1992. Ms. Akbar is the creator of Madame Mavis Pugh’s School of the Violin/Viva Violins Kinderkonzert, and Bears, Bears, Everywhere, NSO Teddy Bear programs which have been presented in the KC Family Theater for three seasons. Locally, Ms. Akbar is current Concertmaster of the Blue Ridge Orchestra and is a member of the Four Seasons Chamber Orchestra. Her violin is crafted by Black Mountain luthier Kate Rickenbacker.

Vivian Torres, viola

A classically trained musician, experienced educator and Alexander Technique teacher, Vivian has a Bachelor’s, Master’s and Artist Diploma in Music Performance from Florida International University and the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Vivian has performed with the Miami Symphony, South Florida Symphony, Dominican Republic Sinfonia, the Latin billboard awards and has performed alongside well-known artists such as Bjork, Usher and Pitbull. She is a founding member of the ensemble Musical Fairytales that is a mashup of popular classical repertoire performed alongside a narration of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. She is currently performing with the Blue Ridge Orchestra. She is also a certified Alexander Technique teacher from the Philadelphia School for the Alexander Technique where she learned how to help performers relieve chronic pain and performance anxiety.

Eric Scheider, cello

Eric Scheider is the director of the Four Seasons Chamber Orchestra in Hendersonville, NC and recently served in interim music director appointments with the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra and the Converse University Symphony Orchestra. He founded and directed the Echo Early Music Festival in Asheville, directed the Hendersonville Symphony Youth Orchestras, and has guest conducted for orchestral and musical theater ensembles at all levels, including the Greenville County Youth Orchestras, Symphony Tacoma (WA), and the Spartanburg (SC)Philharmonic as a cellist, Scheider has performed across the Western Carolinas and East Tennessee with regional orchestras (Hendersonville, Spartanburg, Asheville, Brevard, Johnson City, Piedmont Chamber, Greenville), theaters (Flat Rock Playhouse, Asheville Lyric Opera, HART, ACT), and beyond, including tours of Italy and China. He also performs and records for a variety of film, folk, and rock projects, including for MTV Films, NPR Music, WNCW radio, the National Parks Service, the Lake Eden Arts Festival, and Echo Mountain Studios. An active arranger and award-winning composer, Scheider has performed over 100 works and arrangements for orchestral and chamber ensembles and has co-written numerous plays, musicals and films for student actors. An avid educator, Scheider is the upper school performing arts teacher at Fern Leaf Community Charter School in Fletcher, NC, where he also coordinates the mindfulness programming. He is a current national finalist for the American Prize in Orchestral Programming.