Adagio for Strings

Thursday, November 21, 2024 | 7p - 8:30p

The first collaborative concert of the Water Music season will entertain with elation and elegance. Paired with a new museum exhibition titled A Nation Takes Place, musicians from the Apollo Music Festival in Houston, MN, will present a program that takes the audience through a complex and nuanced history of the United States. Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, arriving with the genesis of World War II and the eve of the Great Depression, coupled with an exhibit that explores the role of water and race in the rise of the country, invites the audience to examine a larger frame to experience the connection between art and history.

BARBER: STRING QUARTET
BARBER: DOVER BEACH (FEATURING ALAN DUNBAR, BARITONE)
GEORGE WALKER: STRING QUARTET
Hillary Kingsley and Erik Rohde, violins, Valerie Little, viola, Ruth Marshall, cello

About the Musicians

Alan Dunbar

Bass-baritone Alan Dunbar is a versatile performer, lauded for his beautiful tone and his nuanced musical and textual interpretation. Spanning repertoire from the 17th to 21st centuries, his performances include premieres of solo works by Libby Larsen, Justin Merritt, and Elliot Carter; as bass soloist in Bach’s passions and cantatas with Voices of Ascension, Bach Society of Minnesota, Bach Roots Festival, and Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra; numerous principal roles with Madison Opera (Magic Flute, Salome, Fellow Travelers, La Bohème, Barber of Seville, Dead Man Walking, She Loves Me); the title role of Britten’s Noye’s Fludde at Santa Fe Opera; and countless solo recitals across the US. Alan holds a BA in music theory/composition from St. Olaf College, and an MM and DM in vocal performance from Indiana University. Alan was a founding member of the Minnesota-based internationally acclaimed chamber vocal ensemble Cantus. He serves as Associate Professor of Voice at Winona State University.

Hillary Kingsley

Hillary Kingsley joined the Winona Symphony as Concertmaster in the fall of 2018. Based in the Twin Cities, she has performed in orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States on both violin and viola. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Hillary completed her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia, where she studied violin with Michael Heald and viola with Maggie Snyder. She continued graduate studies on violin with Sally O’Reilly at the University of Minnesota. Hillary now delights in teaching her own students and has a particular fondness for teaching adult amateurs. She has also cultivated a passion for gardening, martial arts, and paragliding. She likes to think that the attention to beauty and the intensity in these hobbies add inspiration (and a little kick) to her musical performances.

Erik Rohde

Dr. Erik Rohde maintains a diverse career as a conductor, violinist, and educator, and has performed in recitals and festivals across the United States and in Europe and Asia. He is the Director of Orchestral Activities at the University of Northern Iowa and the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Winona Symphony Orchestra (MN). Prior to his appointment at the University of Northern Iowa, Rohde served as the Director of String Activities and Orchestra at Indiana State University where he conducted the Indiana State University Symphony Orchestra and taught violin, chamber music, and Suzuki pedagogy. In Indiana, he also founded the Salomon Chamber Orchestra, an orchestra dedicated to promoting the works of living composers and of Haydn and his contemporaries.

A committed advocate for contemporary music, he has premiered and commissioned many new works by both established and young composers, and is constantly seeking to discover new compositional voices. In addition to regularly bringing new orchestral works to programs each season, he is the violinist of the new music duo sonic apricity, which is dedicated to uncovering and commissioning new works by living composers for violin and viola. The duo released their first recording on the Navona label in December of 2022. At Indiana State University he helped to host the annual Contemporary Music Festival – now running for over 50 years. He has worked with Libby Larsen, Joan Tower, Augusta Read Thomas, Pierre Jalbert, Chen Yi, Elliott Miles McKinley, Christopher Walczak, Michael-Thomas Foumai, Meira Warshauer, James Dillon, David Dzubay, Marc Mellits, Carter Pann, Narong Prangcharoen and countless others. In 2019 he released two recordings with composer Elliott Miles McKinley, conducting his percussion concerto Four Grooves and performing on his eighth string quartet.

In his native Minnesota, Rohde has served as the Music Director of the Buffalo Community Orchestra, conductor and violinist for the Contemporary Music Workshop, Camarata Suzuki orchestra conductor for the MacPhail Center for Music, String Ensemble conductor at the Trinity School, and first violinist of the Cantiamo and Enkidu String Quartets. Rohde holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Conducting from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, where he studied with conductors Mark Russell Smith, Kathy Saltzman Romey, and Craig Kirchhoff and violin pedagogue Mark Bjork. He also holds degrees in Violin Performance and Biomedical Engineering.

Rohde lives in Cedar Falls, IA with his wife Erin and their children. More at erikrohde.com.

Valerie Little

Pennsylvania native Valerie Little enjoys a varied musical life as an orchestra librarian and violist. She became a tenured member of the Minnesota Orchestra in September 2015 after serving six seasons as acting assistant principal librarian. When she's not in the library, she has enjoyed serving on various orchestra committees and hosting pre-concert talks.

Dr. Little has often performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, Orchestra Iowa, Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra, York Symphony, Florestan Chamber Music, and on the Schubert Club’s Courtroom Concerts series. She is an artist in residence for over ten years at the annual Apollo Music Festival in Houston, Minnesota. She is also a eight-time MPR Class Notes Artist, and a past teaching artist for Schubert Club, Chamber Music Society of St. Cloud and Britt Festival in Jacksonville, Oregon. Little co-founded Ninebark Ensemble, a mixed chamber ensemble that just finished a successful first season of performing and coaching at fourteen area school districts, as well as appearing on several regional recital series.

Little holds Bachelor’s degrees in viola performance and English from Penn State University, a Master of Music degree in viola performance from the University of Texas-Austin, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in viola performance from the University of Minnesota.

Little also studied creative writing at Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania. Two of her non-fiction pieces were nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. In 2022, her debut chapbook, Little Blue Primer, was one of seven finalists for the 16th Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Poetry. Always interested in serving and learning new skills that pair well with her strengths, Valerie is assisting at a Twin Cities area funeral home and will start Mortuary Science studies this coming fall.

Ruth Marshall

Cellist Ruth Marshall (she/her/hers) enjoys a varied career split evenly between teaching and performing. She is the cellist of Artu Duo, a collaborative ensemble with pianist Garret Ross, which has performed extensively across the United States, including a debut at Carnegie Hall in 2016. Ruth is also active as a soloist, and has played concertos with the Wartburg Community Symphony, Winona Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Wind Ensemble Society of New York City, and the Kokomo Symphony Orchestra. From 2012 to 2016, she performed extensively as an orchestra player, simultaneously playing as principal cello of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, as an associate member of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra in Ohio, and as a permanent sub in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. From 2015-2022, she was the cellist of the Mill City String Quartet, during which time she performed for thousands of students through multiple residencies with Minnesota Public Radio. She is currently a member of Ninebark Ensemble, a flexible-sized chamber group with a string trio at its core, and is an active freelancer in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Ruth is equally committed to, and delighted by, her work as a cello instructor, working with students of all ages and levels at her home studio, and teaching cello students at Winona State University and Hamline University. She holds graduate degrees in cello performance from DePaul University in Chicago, and undergraduate degrees in Comparative History of Ideas and Music Theory & History from the University of Washington in Seattle. In the summers, she performs as part of the Britt Festival Orchestra in southern Oregon, and as an artist-in-residence at the Apollo Music Festival in southeast Minnesota. She lives in St. Paul, MN, on Dakota land, with her husband and two children. Please visit ruthmarshallcello.com for more information.