Artists
Quartet
Music Video
Residency
Project
Program
Performances
Budget
Opportunity
Recognition
Bios
Artists
Aniela Eddy, Violin & Viola
Majka Demcak, Violin & Viola
Natalie Rose Kress, Violin & Viola
Cullen O’Neil, Cello
The Quartet
Acclaimed for their spirited, engaging, and highly original performances, New York City-based Quartet Salonnières is devoted to performance practices of the Baroque through contemporary time periods. Founding members Majka Demcak, Aniela Eddy, Natalie Kress and Cullen O’Neil met during their studies in the Historical Performance program at The Juilliard School. They have toured nationally and internationally, performing together on stages across New Zealand, and with Les Arts Florissants in Paris, Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco, Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland, Handel and Haydn Society in Boston, and Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver, Canada.
Highlights of the quartet’s 2019/2020 season include concerts presented by Early Music America, San Francisco Early Music Society, Knox Instrumental Measures, Musicivic Musicast and Berkeley Early Music Festival. Additionally, they were awarded the position of Quartet in Residence at the Carmel Bach Festival and were featured on New York’s WQXR radio station and Michigan’s WMUK “Let’s Hear It!” program. Quartet Salonnières recently made their New York City debut as part of the Midtown Concert Series hosted by Gotham Early Music Scene. Their first album, to be released in spring of 2021, features works by Mozart, Haydn and Boccherini.
Quartet Salonnières is the recipient of the George J. Jakab Global Enrichment Grant and is currently ensemble-in-residence with Musicivic, Inc.
Music Videos
In Creative Residency with Musicivic
In Creative Residency with Musicivic, Quartet Salonnières has been preparing for a live tour in Tanzania, Covid permitting, beginning on February 8, 2021 through March 6, 2021. They are preparing programs that blend their typical period repertoire with arrangements of popular Tanzanian music (See youtube cover above). Major funding for their tour comes from a grant from the US Embassy in Tanzania.
They also hope to be proceeding with the production process from the CD which they recorded during their Fall Residency.
The Project
Performance ready program
Two Musicast episodes
Tanzanian Tour (February 8 – March 6, 2021, partially funded by a US Embassy grant)
Performances
The Budget & Target
Artist Stipends
Production Costs
Musicast Performance Fees
Campaign Objective >= $6000.00
Amounts in excess of objective will support additional production costs, stipends and future residencies.
Support Circle >= 120 Members
The Opportunity
Become a vital support partner, a “producer” enabling Quartet Salonnières to allocate valuable time and energy to developing, curating, preparing, producing and delivering a performance experience expressing their creative vision and sensibility.
Through your advocacy, support, and celebration, you are a contributor to the vitality and enrichment, the “uplift of the human condition” that these musicians art will create for its audiences.
Your own enjoyment of their work will enrich and delight you personally!
Recognition
We want to honor your participation & support.
For a Donation of | Recognition & Benefits (cumulative) |
Any Amount ”Community” | Invitation to Celebratory Online Concert |
$9 or More ”Core” | Recognition on Musicast Credits & Program Notes Digital Poster from Tanzanian Tour |
$15 or More ”Prime” | Musicast OnDemand Access – QS & Select |
$30 or More ”Sustaining” | Musicast OnDemand Access – All Musicivic |
$75 or More ”Advocate” | Online Invite to After Concert Party & Q&A Premium Recognition on Credits & Notes |
$150 or More ”Patron” | Personalized Musicast Video Download |
$300 or More ”Producer” | TBD |
Artist Bios
ANIELA EDDY, Violinist/Violinist
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Swiss – American violinist Aniela Eddy has performed throughout the United States and Europe. Her broad and varied interested in music of all eras has led her to perform in concerts spanning the baroque through contemporary time periods in some of the world’s most prominent concert halls. Recent collaborations include performances with CityMusic Cleveland and Terence Blanchard at the Tri-C Jazz Festival, Ensemble LPR, Apollo’s Fire, All of the Above Ensemble, Five One Experimental Orchestra, One Found Sound and the Knights Chamber Orchestra. In addition to performances broadcast on Cleveland’s WCLV and New York City’s WQXR, Aniela has appeared live on NPR with A Prairie Home Companion and Garrison Keillor. Festival appearances include the Lucerne Festival Academy, the American Bach Soloists Academy, Caroga Lake Chamber Music Festival, Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, the National Repertory Orchestra and Festival Internacional de Música Sacra de Quito.
Passionate about music education, Aniela has performed numerous educational chamber music programs in the Cleveland Public Schools as a member of the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s ArtsConnect outreach program. In addition to coaching the Kosovo Youth Orchestra and frequently appearing as a guest teacher at El Sistema programs throughout South and Central America, Aniela has toured India, performing concerts to promote and sponsor various organizations.
Aniela is a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in historical performance at The Juilliard School. She is a recipient of the Avanti Award of the Joseph and Francis Brucia Foundation.
MAJKA DEMCAK, Violinist/Violist
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Majka Demcak is a violinist from Surrey, BC, whose interests and experiences span different musical genres and styles. With a Bachelor’s Degree in violin performance from the University of British Columbia, she performed with local orchestras including Kamloops Symphony Orchestra and Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra. She was an integral part of the Slovak community in Vancouver, recording an album of traditional Slovak folk music for the folk dancing and singing group, “Slavik.” In 2015, Majka discovered the Baroque violin through the Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Program in Vancouver and has been in love with it since. In the mentorship program she played alongside her esteemed teachers, Chloe Meyers and Alexander Weimann. She is currently studying with Cynthia Roberts, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Robert Mealy, and Rachel Podger in the Historical Performance program at The Juilliard School.
Some of Majka’s collaborations include performing with Pacific Baroque Orchestra from Vancouver, Les Arts Florissants in Paris through the Juilliard 415 orchestra, and was featured as an emerging artist in Vancouver’s Bach Festival in 2017. She is the recipient of the Phyllis and Charles Rosenthal Fellowship and the Early Music Vancouver Scholarship.
Majka is a founding member of Gallo Chamber Players, a Vancouver-based early music ensemble, whose mission it is to bring an appreciation and love for baroque music to local communities. Majka is excited to be a founding member of the historically informed classical string quartet, Quartet Salonnières, who perform on period instruments. The quartet embodies the spirit of the women who hosted salon evenings in the 17th and 18th centuries, bringing education, creativity and inclusivity to audiences through music.
NATALIE ROSE KRESS, Violinist/Violist
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Praised by the New York Times for her “splendid playing,” Natalie Rose Kress enjoys a varied career as both a modern and Baroque chamber musician based in Washington, D.C. Following three summers as a Tanglewood Fellow, working closely with Boston Symphony members, she was awarded the Jules C. Reiner Violin Prize from the Tanglewood Music Center and performed with Yo Yo Ma and Pamela Frank at the Kennedy Center Honors.
Natalie is co-founder, director and executive advisor of Musicivic Inc., a national non-profit arts network supporting local chamber music residencies in towns nationwide.
With a wide-ranging chamber and orchestral repertoire, Natalie performs frequently with Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society; Shanghai Camerata; and La Grande Bande in Minnesota; and is a founding member of Quartet Salonnières. She has most recently collaborated with William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco.
Natalie received her Bachelor of Arts in Music and Psychology and Master of Music from Stony Brook University where she studied violin performance with Soovin Kim and Philip Setzer and chamber music with the Emerson String Quartet.
She is currently a full-tuition scholarship student at The Juilliard School studying Historical Performance with Rachel Podger, Cynthia Roberts, and Elizabeth Blumenstock, and tours extensively with Juilliard415.
In her free time she enjoys attempting to cook, drinking tea, going on walks, and imagining her next project!
CULLEN O’NEIL, Cellist
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Cullen O’Neil is a cellist originally from Kalamazoo, MI. Performances have brought her across North America and Europe to venues such as the Kennedy Center, Mariinsky II in St. Petersburg, Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms, the Helsinki Musiikkitalo, and the Philharmonie de Paris alongside Les Arts Florissants. She is the winner of several competitions including the Louis Potter Cello Competition, the Mary Alice Cox Cello Competition, and the MASTA Solo Competition. Cullen has performed as a baroque and classical cellist under the direction of artists such as Masaaki Suzuki, Nicholas McGegan, John Butt, and William Christie, and as a modern cellist under Valery Gergiev, Johannes Meissl, and Timothy Muffitt, among others.
Cullen is currently pursuing a master’s degree in historical performance at the Juilliard School where she studies with Phoebe Carrai. In 2019 she graduated summa cum laude with degrees in modern cello and music theory from the University of Michigan, where she was a James M. Angell scholar, Albert E. Hoffmann scholar and recipient of the Branstrom Freshman Prize. Her principal cello teachers have been Grace Field, Bruce Uchimura, Raimo Sariola, and Richard Aaron. She has freelanced as both a baroque and modern cellist across Michigan, performing as a continuo cellist and in regional orchestras, and since 2014 has frequently taught at Kids in Tune, an El Sistema-based program in Kalamazoo.