March 20, 2016 - 3:00pm
Herbst Theatre

Wagner: Overture to Die Meistersinger

Sibelius: Symphony No. 7 in C major

DvORák: Cello Concerto in B minor
elena Ariza, soloist
Winner, Parnassus–SFCM Competition

About our soloist...

Elena Ariza, 17, who lives in Cupertino, with her family, is a senior at Menlo School in Atherton. Born into a musical family, Elena started piano lessons at age 3 and cello lessons at 4. She currently studies cello with Eric Sung at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) Pre-College Division.

In 2015, Elena was featured as both soloist and chamber musician on NPR’s “From the Top” radio program. She performed in the Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall twice as the winner of both the American Fine Arts Festival and the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition in 2012.

Elena has won numerous solo and concerto competitions, such as the Music Teachers National Association’s California State Competition, the Menuhin- Dowling Competition, the Pacific Musical Society Annual Competition, the Mondavi Young Artists Competition, all three age categories in the Chinese Music Teachers Association’s International Youth Music Competition, and the Diablo Valley Orchestra and South Valley Symphony Concerto Competitions, among others.

As a chamber musician, Elena has participated in SFCM’s Chamber Music Program since 2008, and currently plays in the Cambiata String Quartet. She won first place in the Sacramento State Chamber Music Competition in 2015. She has also played in the AYE Piano Trio since 2013 in the Young Chamber Musicians program, led by Susan Bates.

Recently, the AYE Trio won first place in the Galante Prize Chamber Music Competition, and second place in the ENKOR International Chamber Music Competition. In addition, Elena was named as the winner of Ensemble San Francisco’s Chamber Music Student Competition and she got to perform with the ESF members. She has been an active participant in master classes, summer programs like Aspen Music Festival and School, the Music@Menlo chamber music festival and institute, and the Yellow Barn chamber music festival and school, and in organizing concerts for charity.

About the artist...

Deborah Bell attended art school in both New York and Seattle, graduating from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle in 1981, where she has lived and worked since. Deborah has always worked with a variety of materials, having a lifelong practice of combining and layering, using drawing and collage in the weave with paint. Nature, in its broadest sense, is her recurring theme, and how we humans are not separate from it in any way but are connected by the layers of our intelligence and awareness.

She uses fundamental, universal forms, exploring a multitude of inherent meanings and connections. A recurring interest lies in observing systems in nature; observing how one entity is like, or mirrors, another, for example: microbiology and celestial bodies, music and words and biological patterns. A playful term used by Deborah to occasionally describe her work is “invented science.”

“My process is intuitive and immediate. My themes (or obsessions) arise from observing what is in the world, both environmentally and socially.”