Catherine Manoukian
violin


Catherine Manoukian's professional career began at the age of twelve when she won the grand prize at the 1994 Canadian Music Competition. She was born in Toronto, began violin studies with her father, and made her first stage appearance at the age of four. From 1994 to 2000, Catherine studied with the late, world-renowned violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay in New York. Catherine's orchestral debut was with the Vancouver Symphony in 1994, playing Paganini's first violin concerto. In subsequent years, she has soloed with many major North American and international orchestras, including, among others, the CBC Radio Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Osaka Century Orchestra, and the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, all received to great critical acclaim. She has collaborated with such conductors as Mario Bernardi, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Keith Lockhart, Roy Goodman, Peter Oundjian, Tomomi Nishimoto, Seikyo Kim, Eduard Topchjan, and Jonas Alber. As a recitalist, she has appeared on major stages of such cities as New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto, Paris, Tokyo, and Osaka, and has appeared as a chamber musician at the Aspen, Caramoor, and Newport International Festivals. Catherine has released four CDs. “Elegies and Rhapsodies”, a debut recital collection, “Chopin on Violin”, consisting of transcriptions for violin of works by Chopin, “Lyricism”, a collection of encores, and “Catherine Manoukian, Violin”, featuring the Shostakovich A minor and Khatchaturian Violin Concertos, recorded with the Armenian Philharmonic under Eduard Topchjan. Her fifth CD, a pairing of the Franck and Strauss E-flat major sonatas, with pianist Xiayin Wang, will be released in September 2008. Catherine's extra-musical education includes undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in history and philosophy. She is currently on leave from the PhD programme in philosophy at the University of Toronto. Her research has been on the nature of rationality and she's worked on giving an account of deviant belief-forming processes. (This means that she's secretly a neuroscientist.) Catherine currently holds a doctoral research grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

www.catherinemanoukian.com

David Jalbert
piano

Pianist David Jalbert, with his warm and communicative style, incomparable stage presence and refined ear, has made himself one of the flag-bearers of the new generation. Mr. Jalbert has several solo and chamber music recordings to his name, including internationally acclaimed renditions of modern American piano music, the complete Fauré Nocturnes and the 24 Preludes and Fugues opus 87 by Shostakovich. David Jalbert plays regularly in North America and Europe, both as a soloist and chamber musician, has performed with several great orchestras and collaborates regularly with violinist Jasper Wood and cellist Yegor Dyachkov (under the name Triple Forte) as well as with cellist Denise Djokic. A national and international prize-winner, he was awarded the prestigious Virginia Parker Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts in 2007 and is now Piano Faculty at the University of Ottawa.

www.davidjalbert.com