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Events |
Please join Mr. Almond in
the
Celebrity Chat Room
Monday,
April 3, 2006
at 7pm Eastern
Time |
 Frank
Almond holds the Charles and Marie Caestecker Concertmaster Chair at the
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. He returned to the MSO in the 03-04 season
after holding positions as Concertmaster of the Rotterdam Philharmonic
with Valery Gergiev in 02-03, and Concertmaster of the London
Philharmonic with Kurt Masur in 2001. He continues an active schedule of
solo and chamber music performances in the US and abroad including
recent appearances with the American String Project in Seattle, the Nara
Academy in Nara, Japan, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and various solo
appearances with orchestras. He is also a member of the chamber group An
die Musik in New York City, and is the Artistic Director of Frankly
Music, his highly acclaimed chamber music series based in Milwaukee.
At 17, he was one of the youngest prizewinners in the history of the
Nicolo Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy and five years later was one
of two American prizewinners at the Eighth International Tchaikovsky
Competition in Moscow, documented in an award-winning PBS film. Since
then he has kept up an eclectic mix of activities in addition to his
Concertmaster duties, appearing both as a soloist and chamber musician.
In addition to his work with An die Musik, Mr. Almond's has collaborated
with many of today's top institutions, including the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center, the Ravinia Festival, and the La Jolla
Summerfest. He appears regularly as a soloist with a wide range of top
orchestras both in this country and abroad, including frequent solo
appearances with the Milwaukee Symphony each season.
He has recorded for Summit, Albany, Boolean (his own label) Newport
Classic, Wergo and New Albion and has appeared numerous times on NPR's
Performance Today. In 2005 the An die Music CD “The Emperor’s New
Clothes” on Newport Classic was nominated for a Grammy, the second time
for the group. The rerelease of Mr. Almond's recording of the complete
Brahms Sonatas, performed in collaboration with pianist William Wolfram,
brought extraordinary critical acclaim, and was on the “Top Ten of 2001”
in the American Record Guide. A further CD with Mr. Wolfram is slated
for release in late 2005 on the London-based AVIE label.
Mr. Almond holds two degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied
with Dorothy Delay. He performs on the 'Dushkin' violin made by Antonio
Stradivari in 1701 and generously lent by a private donor through the
Stradivari Society at Bein and Fushi in Chicago. When he isn’t traveling
around playing the violin he lives in Milwaukee with his wife Kate and
daughter Tess, born in February 2004. |
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