David Alexander Rahbee conducts the University Symphony in Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante Op. 84, with faculty guests Mary Lynch, oboe, Seth Krimsky, bassoon, Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, cello, and Rachel Lee Priday, violin. Guest conductor Michael Jinbo conducts the orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Op. 74, B minor, “Pathétique.”
PROGRAM
Haydn: Sinfonia concertante, op.84, Hob.I:105, B-flat major
Mary Lynch, oboe
Seth Krimsky, bassoon
Rachel Lee Priday, violin
Saeunn Thorsteinsdottir, cello
David Alexander Rahbee, conductor
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.6, op.74, B minor Pathétique
Michael Jinbo, guest conductor
Artist Bios
Michael Jinbo, guest conductor
Michael Jinbo is the Music Director of the Pierre Monteux School and Music Festival, with whom he has enjoyed a long affiliation. For 24 years, he has served as only the third music director in the 76‑year history of the school, following his mentor Charles Bruck and the school's founder, eminent French-American conductor Pierre Monteux. Serving as the school's master teacher, he directs an orchestra comprised of musicians from around the world and teaches a class of 15‑20 conductors each summer. Jinbo is also in his 30th season as Music Director and Conductor of the Nittany Valley Symphony. For four seasons, Jinbo served as the Assistant Conductor of the North Carolina Symphony, a full-time professional orchestra with whom he performed 60-75 concerts each season, including classical, ballet, pops and educational programs. He has performed with a wide range of artists, including pianist Garrick Ohlsson, violinist Kyoko Takezawa, prima ballerina assoluta Galina Mezentseva and the St. Petersburg Ballet of Russia, and the legendary Cab Calloway.
Jinbo received a B.A. in Music from The University of Chicago, concentrating in the areas of music history and musicology, and an M.M. in Conducting from the Northwestern University School of Music, where he was the winner of the Honors Conducting Competition and selected for induction in the national honorary music society Pi Kappa Lambda. He received further conducting training at The Pierre Monteux School (Hancock, ME), the Herbert Blomstedt Institute (Loma Linda, CA), the Scotia Festival of Music (Halifax, Nova Scotia), and at workshops of the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Conductors Guild. In 1991, Jinbo was selected by the Conductors Guild as a nominee for their biennial Robinson Conducting Award.
Michael Jinbo made his European debut in 1999, appearing as guest conductor with the Sinfonieorchester Basel in concerts in Switzerland and Germany. He has also appeared as guest conductor with the Orquesta Sinfónica Carlos Chávez in Mexico City and with the Quebec Festival of Youth Orchestras. Other guest engagements have included programs with the Altoona Symphony, the Bangor Symphony, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Erie Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, and the orchestra of the Longy School of Music in Boston. In November 2016, Jinbo appeared as guest conductor in two concerts of the combined orchestras of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and the Escuela Superior de Música y Danza in Monterrey, Mexico. In December 2016, he appeared as conductor of the New York All-State Symphony Orchestra in Kodak Hall of the Eastman Theatre (Rochester, NY).
Jinbo participated in the 2000 Annual Conference and 25th Anniversary Celebration of the Conductors Guild in New York City, where he served as guest speaker in a session entitled “The Education of Conductors.” He has served twice as a member of the instrumental music panel of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Jinbo is also a violinist. He has appeared as soloist with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Bassoonist and composer Seth Krimsky joined the Seattle Symphony in 1986, and was appointed to the position of principal in 1990. He has also appeared as principal bassoonist with the Mostly Mozart Orchestra of Lincoln Center and the Waterloo Festival Orchestra.
As a soloist, Krimsky has performed with orchestras and as a recitalist in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Capetown, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Talahassee, Kalispell (Mont.), and San Diego.
Krimsky received his bachelor of music degree in 1983 from the University of Southern California, where he studied bassoon performance with Norman Herzberg. He continued postgraduate studies at USC, with a special emphasis in baroque performance, under the guidance of Michael O'Donovan. During his studies, Krimsky was an active freelance musician, performing with such ensembles as the Santa Monica Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Glendale Symphony, Pasadena Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He also performed in summer festivals, including the Ojai Festival, the Bakersfield Music Festival, the Academy of the West, and the Tanglewood Festival. Krimsky also worked as a session player in Los Angeles recording studios and was the bassoonist in the Aleja Woodwind Quintet, award winners at the Coleman Chamber Music Competition and the Carmel Chamber Music Competition.
In 1984, he became the principal bassoonist for the Cape Performing Arts Board Orchestra of Capetown, South Africa, an opera and ballet orchestra that served the entire Cape Province. While in Capetown, Krimsky won the National Young Artists Competition and appeared as a soloist in Capetown, Johannesburg, and Durban, in addition to recording a series of performances for the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
Oboist Mary Lynch joins the School of Music faculty in Fall 2015 as a part-time artist in residence in the instrumental performance program.
Principal oboe with the Seattle Symphony, she previously performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, holding the position of Second Oboe. She has toured internationally with both The Cleveland Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Originally from Washington, D.C., Lynch earned her M.M. at The Juilliard School, where she studied with Elaine Douvas and Nathan Hughes, and her B.M. from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with John Ferrillo.
Her awards include The Juilliard School’s William Schuman Prize and the Boston Woodwind Society’s Ralph Gomberg Oboe Award. During recent summers, she has performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, Music Academy of the West and Tanglewood Music Center. Her performances at Marlboro have been heard across the country on American Public Media’s Performance Today.
Violinist RACHEL LEE PRIDAY (PRY-day) is a passionate and inquisitive explorer in all her musical ventures, in search of contemporary relevance when performing the standard violin repertoire, and in discovering and commissioning new works. Her wide-ranging repertoire and eclectic programming reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives.
Rachel Lee Priday has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, including the Chicago, Saint Louis, Houston, Seattle, and National Symphony Orchestras, the Boston Pops, and the Berlin Staatskapelle. Recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues including the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Musée du Louvre, Verbier Festival, Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series in Chicago, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany, and tours of South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Committed to new music, and making enriching community and global connections, Rachel takes a multidisciplinary approach to performing that lends itself to new commissions organically merging poetry, dance, drama, stimulating visuals and music. Recent seasons have seen a new Violin Sonata commissioned from Pulitzer Prize Finalist Christopher Cerrone and the premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s “The Orphic Moment” in an innovative staging that mixed poetry, drama, visuals, and music. Rachel has collaborated several times with Ballet San Jose, and was lead performer in “Tchaikovsky: None But The Lonely Heart” during a week-long theatrical concert with Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Her work as soloist with the Asia America New Music Institute promoted new music relationships and cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining new music premieres and educational outreach in the US, China, Korea and Vietnam.
Rachel began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York to study with iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay, and continued her studies at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division with Itzhak Perlman. Rachel holds a B.A. degree in English from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried. Since Fall 2019, she serves as Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Washington School of Music.
Recent and upcoming concerto engagements include the Pacific Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, and Bangor Symphony. Since making her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997, she has performed with numerous orchestras across the country, such as the symphony orchestras of Colorado, Alabama, Knoxville, Rockford, and New York Youth Symphony. In Europe and in Asia, she has appeared at the Moritzburg Festival in Germany and with orchestras in Graz, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where she performed with the KBS Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Russian State Symphony Orchestra on tour.
Rachel has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, and The Strad. Her concerts have been broadcast on major media outlets in the U.S., Germany, Korea, South Africa, and Brazil, including a televised concert in Rio de Janeiro, numerous radio appearances on 98.7 WFMT Chicago radio, and American Public Media’s Performance Today. She been featured on the Disney Channel, “Fiddling for the Future” and “American Masters” on PBS, and the Grammy Awards.
Praised by the Chicago Tribune for her “irresistible panache,” Rachel Lee Priday enthralls audiences with her riveting stage presence and “rich, mellifluous sound.” The Baltimore Sun wrote, “It’s not just her technique, although clearly there’s nothing she can’t do on the fingerboard or with her bow. What’s most impressive is that she is an artist who can make the music sing… And though her tone is voluptuous and sexy where it counts, she concluded the ‘Intermezzo’ with such charm that her listeners responded with a collective chuckle of approval as she finished.”
She performs on a Nicolo Gagliano violin (Naples, 1760), double-purfled with fleurs-de-lis, named Alejandro.
David Alexander Rahbee is currently Senior Artist in Residence at the University of Washington School of Music in Seattle, where he is Director of Orchestral Activities and Chair of Orchestral Conducting. He is Music Director and Conductor of the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra and founder of the UW Campus Philharmonia Orchestras. He is a recipient of the American-Austrian Foundation's 2003 Herbert von Karajan Fellowship for Young Conductors, the 2005 International Richard-Wagner-Verband Stipend, a fellowship the Acanthes Centre in Paris (2007), and is first prize winner in conducting from The American Prize national non-profit competitions in the performing arts for 2020. His work at UW has earned national recognition. In 2021 he was praised by The American Prize as “Consistently one of the most courageous and comprehensive [orchestral] programmers working in higher education in the U.S. today…”
Dr. Rahbee has appeared in concert with orchestras such as the Seattle Symphony, RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Kammerphilharmonie Berlin-Brandenburg, Guernsey Symphony Orchestra, Chattanooga Symphony, National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, Orchestre de la Francophonie, Orchesterakademie der Bochumer Symphoniker, the Dresden Hochschule orchestra, Grand Harmonie, the Boston New Music Initiative, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Loja (Ecuador), Savaria Symphony Orchestra (Hungary), Cool Opera of Norway (members of the Stavanger Symphony), Schönbrunner Schloss Orchester (Vienna), the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra, the Kennett Symphony, and the Divertimento Ensemble of Milan. His collaborations with the Seattle Symphony include assistant conductor for the performance and recording of Ives’ Fourth Symphony, and as guest conductor for their Native Lands project and the North American premiere of Páll Ragnar Pallson's Quake with faculty cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir. He has collaborated with several prominent soloists such as Sarah Chang, Jon Kimura Parker, Yekwon Sunwoo, Glenn Dicterow and Jonathan Biss. He has been a guest rehearsal conductor for numerous young orchestras, such as the New England Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, The Symphony Orchestra of the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music at Chapman University, and the Vienna University of Technology orchestra. He has served on faculty of the Pierre Monteux School as Conducting Associate, has been resident conductor of the Atlantic Music Festival and guest conductor at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival.
Dr. Rahbee was an assistant at the Vienna State opera from 2002-2010. As part of his fellowship and residency at the 2003 Salzburg Festival, Dr. Rahbee was assistant conductor of the International Attergau Institute Orchestra, where he worked with members of the Vienna Philharmonic. He has been selected to actively participate in masterclasses with prominent conductors such as Kurt Masur, Sir Colin Davis, Jorma Panula, Zdeněk Mácal, Peter Eötvös, Zoltán Peskó and Helmut Rilling, and counts Nikolaus Harnoncourt to be among his most influential mentors. From 1997-2001, David Rahbee was founder and conductor of the Fidelio Chamber Orchestra in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dr. Rahbeeʼs principal conducting teachers were Charles Bruck and Michael Jinbo at the Pierre Monteux School. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in violin and composition from Indiana University, a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory in orchestral conducting, and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Montreal in orchestral conducting. He has also participated in post-graduate conducting classes at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Vienna. His brass arrangements are published by Warwick Music, and his articles on the music of Mahler have appeared in journals of the International Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft, among others.
In addition to being awarded first prize in conducting from The American Prize for 2020, he was awarded 2nd place in 2019. He has also placed among winners for five consecutive years for The American Prize Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award for Orchestral Programming, recognizing his programming with the UW Symphony and its affiliated ensembles for every season since he joined the faculty. The UWSO has also been a finalist in the category of orchestral performance in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
Dr. Rahbee is co-editor of Daniels’ Orchestral Music (6thedition) and Daniels’ Orchestral Music Online (DOMO), the gold standard among conductors, orchestral administrators, orchestra librarians as well as other music professionals and students researching for orchestral programming.
Icelandic-American cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir enjoys a varied career as a performer, collaborator and educator. She has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony, among others, and her recital and chamber music performances have taken her across the US, Europe and Asia. Sæunn has performed in many of the world’s prestigious halls including Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Barbican Center and Disney Hall and the press have described her as “charismatic” and “riveting” (NYTimes) and praised her performances for their “emotional intensity” (LATimes).
An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated in performance with Itzhak Perlman, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode and members of the Emerson, Guarneri, St. Lawrence and Cavani Quartets and has performed in numerous chamber music festivals, including Santa Fe, Seattle, Stellenbosch, Orcas Island, Bay Chamber, Prussia Cove and Marlboro, with whom she has toured. She is cellist of the Seattle-based group, Frequency, and cellist and founding member of Decoda, The Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall.
In the 2018-2019 season, Sæunn makes her debut with the BBC and Seattle Symphonies performing the award-winning cello concerto,Quake, written for her by Páll Ragnar Pálsson. Chamber music appearances take her to Carnegie Hall in New York City, Glasgow, and Los Angeles, as well as recitals in Reykjavík, Seattle and Chicago following the Spring 2019 release of “Vernacular”, her recording of Icelandic solo cello music on the Sono Luminus label.
Highlights of the 2017-2018 season included the US premiere of Betsy Jolas’ Wanderlied and the Hong Kong premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Canticle of the Sun, as well as recitals and chamber music appearances in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Glasgow, London and Reykjavík. In addition to collaborating with Daníel Bjarnason on his award-winning composition Bow to String, Sæunn enjoys close working relationships with composers of our time such as Páll Ragnar Pálsson, Halldór Smárason, Melia Watras, Jane Antonia Cornish and Þuríður Jónsdóttir.
Sæunn has garnered numerous prizes in international competitions, including the Naumburg Competition and the Antonio Janigro Competition in Zagreb. She received a Bachelor of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master of Music from The Juilliard School and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from SUNY Stony Brook. Her teachers and mentors include Richard Aaron, Tanya Carey, Colin Carr and Joel Krosnick.
Born in Reykjavík, Iceland, Sæunn serves on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle, teaching cello and chamber music. For more information, please visit www.saeunn.com