The Santa Barbara Music Club presents more exquisite classical music on
Saturday, January 13, 2024, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 4575 Auhay
Dr., Santa Barbara. Pianist and composer Eric Valinsky will perform Claude
Debussy’s Suite bergamasque and the concert premiere of the “Summer” and
“Spring” movements from his own work Wisperfal (2010), a piece based on
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Violinist Sofia Malvinni and pianist Betty Oberacker
will perform Reinhold Glière’s opulent Romance, Op. 3 and Serge Prokofiev’s popular Sonata in D major, Op. 94.
Admission is free; parking is ample and convenient. For more details, go to
BIOS
Sofia Malvinni, violinist, stems from a musical family. She started violin lessons
at age three with her mother, a Curtis Institute of Music and UCSB alumna. A
Santa Barbara Music Club scholarship awardee, Sofia has won numerous prizes
and awards, including First Prize in the 2019 Performing Arts Scholarship
Foundation Junior Competition. She is a three-time winner in the Santa Barbara
Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition, where she has served as concertmaster for
the last four years. At age 11, she performed the Bach Double Concerto with the
Santa Barbara Symphony under the direction of Nir Kabaretti at the Granada
Theater. In May of 2022, she was invited by Maestro Kabaretti to play in the first
violin section of the Santa Barbara Symphony.
She has performed in numerous masterclasses and received lessons with renowned
violinists, including Benjamin Beilman, Martin Beaver, Nathan Cole, Jennifer
Koh, and Kirill Troussov, and artists such as Eliot Fisk from top conservatories
(Hans Eisler Hochschule für Musik-Berlin, Colburn Music School, Curtis Institute,
New England Conservatory of Music, Royal College of Music) in the US and
Europe. She has spent three summers at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and
was also chosen for a masterclass at the Steinway House in Munich in May 2022.
Sofia graduated a year early from Dos Pueblos High School, having fulfilled her
degree requirements as a dual enrollment student at SBCC. Always challenging
herself, she excels at academics and sports. While in high school Sofia thrived as a
member of the Engineering Academy and was also on the Varsity Girls Soccer
team while continuing to play on the Central Coast Academy soccer team.
As a community service, Malvinni has given numerous performances to help bring
aid to the people affected by the crisis in Ukraine. She has become an ambassador
for Direct Relief and was honored in May of 2022 for her “extraordinary
commitment to the health and lives of people affected by the humanitarian crisis
caused by the war in the Ukraine.” Since the crisis in the Ukraine is still ongoing,
you may contribute to her fundraiser online here.
Sofia is currently attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as an
undergraduate violin major in the studio of Professor Simon James. She plays on a
1741 Guarneri copy by renowned German maker Bernd Dimbauth and is striving
to win a competition where she can receive the loan of an old Italian instrument to
further her career ambition to be a soloist.
In addition to all things musical, Sofia is a lover of nature, animals, soccer and
sunsets. When not practicing she enjoys her time with friends and the outdoors.
She thanks the Santa Barbara Music Club for the many scholarships she has
received over the years and for the opportunity of this solo recital. She is grateful
for the support from the Santa Barbara community.
Betty Oberacker, pianist, is internationally acclaimed for her interpretations of
both traditional and contemporary solo and chamber music repertoire, and has
toured throughout Europe, Israel, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the
U.S., including performances at Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin
Philharmonic Hall and Vienna Musikverein. She has been Artist-in-Residence at
55 universities, conservatories and music festivals worldwide, and many important
composers have dedicated their compositions to her. Her musical gifts were
evidenced at three, when she began to play the piano and compose entirely by ear.
Piano lessons started at age seven, and at nine she was accepted on scholarship as
the only child student of the noted pianist Beryl Rubinstein. Her BM/MM Degrees
are from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and her DMA Degree is from Ohio State
University, where she was concomitantly a member of the piano faculty. Her
discography includes Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Clavier Records), A Bach
Commemorative Recital (MIT Great Performances Archives), Chamber Music of
Emma Lou Diemer (Orion), Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (Century), John Biggs’
Variations on a Theme of Shostakovich (VMM), and Diemer’s Piano Concerto
(MMC), the latter two works composed for Oberacker. Honors accorded her
include a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Italy and the University of California
Distinguished Teaching Award, and her students hold important positions as
performers and teachers in the U.S., Asia and Europe. Dr. Oberacker is UCSB
Professor Emeritus, and enjoys an active performing, teaching and chamber music
coaching schedule.
Eric Valinsky, native Manhattanite, has, for more years than he would like to
admit, maintained dual careers in computer systems architecture and music. He
was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Illinois,
finally achieving his DMA in music composition from Columbia University. He
studied composition with Walter Aschaffenburg, Salvatore Martirano, Jack
Beeson, and Darius Milhaud; piano with Sara Crawford Drogheo and Emil
Danenberg; and conducting with Harold Farberman. While living in Los Angeles,
he became music director and composer-in-residence for The Storie-Crawford
Dance Theatre Ensemble. Returning to New York, he served in a similar capacity
for Danny Buraczeski’s Jazzdance, Uris Bahr and Dancers, and The New
American Ballet Ensemble as well as composer-in-residence for The Rachel
Harms Dance Company, Opera Uptown, and the Dance Department at City
College of New York. He is currently Music Director for the American Dance &
Music Performance Group and moonlights as founder and partner of Inlineos LLC,
a strategic Internet consulting company.
Santa Barbara Music Club concerts display a wonderful diversity of historical
musical periods and compositional styles, including beloved masterworks and
exciting new and seldom-heard repertoire.
Of the series, the Santa BarbaraIndependent exclaimed: “A beautiful day, a beautiful room, beautiful music … whocould ask for more?” and Gerald Carpenter in Noozhawk.com declared, “EverySanta Barbara Music Club concert that I have ever attended has been a sensory joy
as well as a consciousness expansion.”
A valued cultural resource in the community since 1969, the Music Club’s mission is threefold:
(1) Presentation of an annual series of concerts, free to the public.
(2) Aiding and encouraging musical education by the disbursement of scholarships to talented local music students.
(3) Presentation of community outreach activities, including bringing great music to residents of area retirement homes.
For information on this or other Santa Barbara Music Club programs and performing artists, visit SBMusicClub.org.
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