Karen Burgman, pianist, has performed
coast to coast in the USA, and in Canada and Europe. She has performed as a soloist and
accompanist in Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, the National Gallery of Art, and the Toronto Center
for the Performing Arts where she performed works commissioned in her honor. She has premiered
several works, including the USA premier of "Five Short Preludes" by Anthony Hopkins. Karen
has also performed on early pianos at both the Finchcocks Estate Piano Collection in England
and the Frederick Early Piano Collection in Massachusetts. A graduate of the Oberlin
Conservatory, 2005, Karen is also certified in Dalcroze Eurhythmics. Her principal teachers
and mentors include Sandra Carlock and Sanford Margolis.
A committed chamber musician, Karen was a semi-finalist in the National Fischoff Chamber Music
Competition in 2004. She received the distinguished Louis and Annette Kaufman prize at Oberlin
for excellence in chamber music. She was also awarded the Faculty's Choice Award for best
accompanist at Oberlin for both vocalists and instrumentalists in 2005. Karen was the
recipient of the Steinway Scholarship to study at the Credo Chamber Music Festival in the
summer of 2004, where she now continues to coach chamber ensembles.
In addition to performing chamber music with The Credo Trio, Karen serves as Outreach
Coordinator for Credo Chamber Music. She is also Artistic Director and Conductor for "Sola
Gratia Musicians" choirs in Hatfield, PA, maintains a private teaching studio at the Hilltown
Creative Arts Academy, and directs the "Cantabile Concert Series of International Performing
Artists" in Hilltown, PA. She serves as a composer and arranger for the musical "Amazing
Grace: The True Story" by Chris Smith, and is a recording artist of "Lifespring Music, LLC."
• • •
Elizabeth Ann Larson, violinist, gave
her solo debut with the Boston Pops at age 11. Since then, her solo tours have brought her to four
continents in concerts throughout the U.S., Japan, England, Switzerland, Canada, Taiwan, South
Korea, Estonia and India. The Boston Globe has praised her playing as having "great charm and
refinement…and capable of breathtaking virtuosity." She has performed at Symphony Hall, Boston
with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Weill Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
and Victoria Hall, Geneva, as the featured soloist honoring Lord Yehudi Menuhin on the day of his
death, and has been featured on National Public Radio.
Elizabeth has performed with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and has been a Resident Artist at
festivals including the Banff Festival, Caramoor Festival, New York, and the Verbier Festival,
Switzerland, collaborating with Joseph Kalichstein, Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, and Eugene Istomin.
For two years, she was invited to join Yehudi Menuhin's prestigious chamber ensemble, the Camerata
Lysy, Switzerland, performing as soloist and in chamber ensembles throughout Europe. Elizabeth
pursued her musical training at New England Conservatory, Indiana University, Yale University (MM),
and the Guildhall School of Music in London. Principal teachers include James Buswell and Peter
Oundjian.
This season Elizabeth will be performing as recitalist and chamber musician in concert series
throughout the U.S. and Europe. A strong proponent of outreach and education, she will also
continue to bring live presentations to places such as hospitals, prisons, and special schools.
In the summer, she will return to the festivals of Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Credo
Festival and Masterworks. She also serves as Director and Instructor at the Geneva Conservatory
of Music, a music school in New York City, which she founded in 2002.
• • •
Steuart Pincombe received his training
at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied modern cello with Darrett Adkins and
baroque cello and viola da gamba with Catharina Meints. Prior to his studies at Oberlin,
Steuart was a member of the Springfield (MO) Symphony and electric cellist of the Humours
(an experimental music ensemble). As soloist, Steuart has performed with five orchestras
including the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble with which he performed Alfred Schnittke's
Dialog for Solo Cello and Seven Instruments in 2007.
He has also collaborated in chamber concerts with several renowned artists including violinist
Mark Peskanov, pianist Jeffrey Biegel, organist Matti Pesonen, guitarist Dusan Bogdanovich,
and oboist Alex Klein. He has appeared in solo and chamber music performances in Sheldon
Concert Hall in St. Louis, BargeMusic, Riverside Cathedral, the Kennedy Center, Avery Fischer
Hall, and Festwhoche Attersee in Seewalchen, Austria. In the summer of 2008, Steuart studied
modern cello with Jean-Guihen Queyras in Freiburg, Germany and appeared in chamber and
orchestral concerts in Poland, Germany, and Austria. Steuart was a recipient of the
Conservatory Initiative Grant Supporting Imagination and Excellence from the Oberlin
Conservatory for his project of recording the complete cello suites by Bach and performing them
in different venues across the U.S.
A proponent of new music, Steuart has premiered compositions by both student and faculty
composers and has recorded new music for the Oberlin Conservatory's Aural Capacity series and
the Centaur label. Steuart's most recent performance project, SILENCE/noise: an unconventional
approach, is a series of concerts designed to inform the audience of the concepts behind
21st-century solo cello music.