“Polished and superb”— SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS

Throughout his career Turkish-American violinist, Ertan Torgul hasenjoyed aneclectic and multi-faceted musical path. As a recitalist, chamber musician, soloist, concertmaster, and teacher he has toured around the world and collaborated with some of today’s most sought-after musicians and ensembles.

Currently serving as a Lecturer of Violin & Chamber Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Affiliate Artist in violin at the University of Houston, he has also been on faculties of the University of Texas, at San Antonio, and Florida International University. He has conducted masterclasses, lectures, and workshops across the U.S. as well as in Turkey, Iceland, and Italy.

 Mr. Torgul has been a member of the award-winning SOLI Chamber Ensemble since 1996 and until recently, had been serving as its Managing/Artistic Director since 2011. Specializing in contemporary repertoire, the Ensemble performs concerts and residencies on both the National and International stages. A strong advocate of contemporary music and living composers he has commissioned over 100 new works with SOLI and recorded six CDs, featuring commissioned works of American composers. Mr. Torgul is also a founding member of the critically acclaimed SUONO Trio, Quartet ES, and Quinteto Quilombo – a Tango Quintet specializing in Tango Nuevo – and has performed with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Michael Tilson Thomas, the Miami, Plymouth, Fry Street, Degas, and ROCO String Quartets, around the world.

He was in residence at the Ojai Festival, Mainly Mozart, Point Counterpoint, and the Internationale Quartett akademie Prag-Wien-Budapest, and was the recipient of Austria’s prestigious Prix Mercure, a prize winner in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and a laureate of the Paolo Borciani International Quartet Competition.

As a soloist, guest concertmaster, and orchestral musician he has performed with some of the most recognized conductors, soloists, and orchestras including San Francisco, Indianapolis, Houston, Sacramento, Phoenix, Tucson, Fort Worth symphonies, and Dallas Opera orchestra among others. Before deciding to leave his post in 2012, Mr. Torgul served as Associate and Acting Concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony for 17 seasons. He has recorded “Defining Dahl. The Music of Ingolf Dahl.” under the Argo Label with New World Symphony, under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas.

 Recent season highlights include performances with Quartet ES for Hartt School of Music’s “Uncertainty of Fate” virtual Festival, Beethoven Triple Concerto performance in Waynesboro and Staunton, Virginia with renowned cellist Jennifer Kloetzel and pianist Robert Koenig, under the Baton of Peter Wilson, performance with SUONO Trio on Four Seasons Arts series in Berkeley, CA, world premiere performance of composer Peter Lieuwen’s new work The QUAD Concerto with University of Houston Symphony Orchestra at Moores Opera House in Houston, TX, and a two-week tour to Northern Italy with SOLI Chamber Ensemble.

 Torgul started his violin studies at the Ankara State Conservatory at the age of twelve. Soon after he entered the “Special Status” program designed for gifted students where he studied with Prof. Suna Kan, one of Turkey’s premier soloists. In the U.S. Ertan continued his violin studies with Prof. William Barbini at California State University, Sacramento, and with Prof. Franco Gulli at Indiana University, and studied chamber music with Janos Starker, Menachem Pressler, Norbert Brainin, and members of Miami, Bartok, and Guarneri string quartets.

From the time pianist Aileen Chanco made her stunning debut with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of thirteen, she has continued to enthrall audiences and critics alike with her instinctive brand of virtuosity and sensitivity. She caught the notice of then up-and-coming conductor, Kent Nagano who chose her to solo with him during an engagement with the Boston Pops. After the success of this east coast debut, Aileen was named a Presidential Scholar of the Arts and presented with a medal at the White House by the President, following which she made her debut at the Kennedy Center.

Determined to pursue a career as a performing artist, Aileen immersed herself in musical studies with Herbert Stessin at the Juilliard School where she received both her Bachelors’s and Master’s degrees in Music. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Concerts have included performances in New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Cultural Center for the Performing Arts in the Philippines. She has performed with orchestras including the Shreveport, Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Albuquerque, York Symphony Orchestra, Lima Symphony Orchestra, and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra among others. Appearances with festival orchestras have included the Banff Festival Chamber Orchestra in Canada, the Desert Music Festival Orchestra of Arizona, and Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra in California.

In 2003, Aileen made a highly anticipated return to the Philippines, the land of her birth to debut with the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra. “We were unbelievably awed by her rare expressive musicality. Her performance is something the Manila audience at the Philam Life Theater will never forget – it was a shining moment for our country.” –THE MANILA TIMES. The collaboration was so successful that Aileen returned at the request of the Cultural Center of the Philippines to perform the Philippine premiere of John Adam’s “Century Rolls” with the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. Her performance was hailed as a tremendous achievement” and critics described her as an “astonishing pianist”.

Aileen has received numerous awards and honors including first place in the Young Keyboard Artist International Competition, the Pepsi-Cola Young Artist Competition, and the Seventeen Magazine-General Motors National Concerto Competition. She was recipient of the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts Award and she is an alumnus of the Aspen Summer Music Festival, the Banff Centre Resident Artist Program, the Moscow Conservatory in America and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. Aileen resides in California with her husband, double bassist Bill Everett. She is both founder and Artistic Director of Music at the Mission Concert Series whose performances are held in one of California’s famous historic missions, Mission San Jose. Her passions are traveling, hiking fencing.

Her most current CD was released in October of 2005 “Images of Three Centuries” and was recorded under the Con Brio Recordings label. American Record Guide wrote: Pianist Chanco makes her strongest and most convincing impression in Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which seems to be a temperamental fit. Her sound is beautiful and the music flows well.… Many of the details of Pictures have been imaginatively worked out and beautifully delivered…Chanco also gives a lovely reading of the opening piece of Images, “Reflects dans l’eau”. Her sound is right and she is fully engaged in this rapturous little piece. Mark Fish’s “Three Ages of Woman” a work of about six minutes, feels like three improvisations on moods. The pianist gives it an effective, involved reading; sympathetic to the composer…Chanco is a talented pianist…her career seems worth watching.