Icelandic-Slovenian violinist Rannveig Marta Sarc and pianist Victor Asunción perform works of Lili Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade, and Maurice Ravel on this Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert live from the Cultural Center.
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Icelandic-Slovenian violinist, Rannveig Marta Sarc, was born into a family of musicians and has performed throughout Europe, North America and Asia. She has received numerous awards, including the first prize at TEMSIG National Music Competition of Slovenia and third prize at New York International Artists Competition. She is also a recipient of the Jean Pierre Jacquillat and the American Scandinavian Society Cultural grants. She has appeared as soloist with the Iceland Symphony, Slovene Philharmonic and Iceland Youth Symphony Orchestras, among others. As a chamber musician, she has performed with Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and been invited to festivals including Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Taos School of Music, Prussia Cove and Kneisel Hall. Other festival appearances include Aspen, Sarasota and the Moritzburg Festival Academy in Germany, where she was concertmaster.
Rannveig is an avid performer of contemporary music and recently commissioned six duos for violin and viola by six Icelandic women with her mother, Svava Bernharðsdóttir. For 2 years, Rannveig was part of Juilliard’s Gluck Community Service Fellowship, bringing the arts into community centers and health-care facilities in New York in collaborations with dancers and actors.
Rannveig holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, where she was a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship. Her teachers were Catherine Cho, Laurie Smukler and Donald Weilerstein, as well as Robert Mealy on baroque violin.
Hailed by The Washington Post for his “poised and imaginative playing,” pianist Victor Santiago Asunción has appeared in concert halls in Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, Spain, Turkey and the USA, as a recitalist and concerto soloist. He played his orchestral debut at the age of 18 with the Manila Chamber Orchestra, and his New York recital debut in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall in 1999.
A chamber music enthusiast, he has performed with artists such as Lynn Harrell, Zuill Bailey, Andres Diaz, Antonio Meneses, Joshua Roman, Cho-Liang Lin, and many others. He was on the chamber music faculty of the Aspen Music Festival, and the Garth Newel Summer Music Festival. He was also the pianist for the Garth Newel Piano Quartet for three seasons. His recordings include the complete Sonatas of L. van Beethoven with cellist Tobias Werner, Sonatas by Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff with cellist Joseph Johnson, and the Rachmaninoff Sonata with the cellist Evan Drachman. He is also featured in the award-winning recording “Songs My Father Taught Me” with Lynn Harrell, produced by Louise Frank and WFMT-Chicago.
He received his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in 2007 from the University of Maryland at College Park under the tutelage of Rita Sloan. Victor Asuncion is a Steinway artist. www.victorasuncion.com