Karen Bentley Pollick has performed as a violinist with Paul Dresher’s Electro Acoustic Ensemble since 1999 and performs a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano, and Norwegian hardangerfele. A native of Palo Alto, California, she studied with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco and with Yuval Yaron, Josef Gingold, and Rostislav Dubinsky at Indiana University where she received both Bachelor’s and Master of Music Degrees in Violin Performance. She has several recordings of original music, including Electric Diamond,  Konzerto & Succubus, and Ariel View, for which she has received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song. On her record label Ariel Ventures she has produced Dancing Suite to Suite,  <amberwood>, Homage to Fiddlers, Russian Soulscapes, and Peace Piece.  She filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for violin & piano in Shoal Creek, Alabama, in June 2009.

Pollick was the New York String Orchestra Concertmaster at Carnegie Hall in 1983 and 1984 and participated in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences. She has appeared as a soloist with the Redwood Symphony in the world premiere of Swedish composer Ole Saxe’s Dance Suite for violin and orchestra, the Alabama Symphony, and orchestras in Panama, Russia, Alaska, New York and California. She has performed in recital with Russian pianist/composer Ivan Sokolov at the American Academy of Rome, Seattle, and New York City, throughout the Czech Republic with cellist Dennis Parker at the American Spring Festival, and in England at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.  Along with choreographer Teri Weksler and percussionist John Scalici, Pollick received a Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham 2008 Interdisciplinary Grant to Individual Artists. Pollick received a grant from the Alabama State Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for her March 2010 Solo Violin & Alternating Currents concerts in Birmingham, Seattle, and at Music Olomouc 2011.  She launched Violin, Viola & Video Virtuosity with New York video artist Sheri Wills in November 2012 in Brooklyn and Seattle. She has toured with the Paul Dresher Double Duo since 2009. Pollick performs on a violin made by Jean Baptiste Vuillaume in 1860 and a viola made in 1987 by William Whedbee.

Since moving to California 30 years ago, British-born harpsichordist Jonathan Salzedo has become a popular collaborator with leading Bay Area orchestras (Jubilate, San Francisco Symphony, Monterey Symphony), choruses (Soli Deo Gloria, California Bach Society, Coro Hispano) and ensembles (Whole Noyse, Santa Cruz Chamber Players, Momsemble). With his wife Marion Rubinstein, he co-directs the Albany Consort, now in its 37th year, which tackles the entire spectrum of baroque music from duos to opera. He performs new music (Richard Worn Ensemble, Latin American Chamber Music Society) and works with innovative soloists (Karen Bentley, Viviana Guzman) creating varied programs using the harpsichord in new contexts (tango, new age). Once a maker of instruments, Jonathan still enjoys the challenges of moving harpsichords (generally single-handedly) and tuning them (he is an expert on early tuning systems). Jonathan has two grown-up children who are both fine musicians. In his spare time, he sings at Congregation Etz Chayim, Palo Alto, teaches Alexander Technique, and runs a software consulting business.

Jonathan first took up harpsichord while a mathematics student at Oxford, England. Before that, he had been an active and occasionally prize-winning pianist throughout his youth. After graduating, he intended to study harpsichord seriously with someone really famous but ended up learning most of what he knows from careful listening and from working with terrific soloists.

The San Jose Mercury News said of Daniel Glover, “Glover is an incisive, exciting, and apparently tireless player…a natural for hyper-virtuosic challenge.” He has been hailed for his “extraordinary technique, analytical understanding, and determined phrasing from the first to the last bar.” (Südhessische Post, Germany) 

The San Francisco Classical Voice remarked, “Brilliant, tender, whimsical, sparkling…Glover brought everything together into a well-balanced, evenly measured medium.”  “The elegance and civility of Glover’s approach was musically unimpeachable.”   “Dazzling…golly can he play!  I kept expecting smoke to emerge from the interior of the instrument…a flawless sense of Lisztian style incorporating its emotional depth.”

Monterey Peninsula Reviews said, “He is a master of intricate detail and can produce truly magical sounds.”

Mr. Glover has trained with such luminaries as Eugene List, Abbey Simon, Jerome Lowenthal, Nancy Bachus, and Thomas LaRatta. He holds a master’s degree from New York’s Juilliard School, where he was a scholarship student. Among his numerous competition awards is first prize in the prestigious Liederkranz Competition in 1990.

His successful 1992 Carnegie Hall recital in New York was a result of winning the Artist’s International Competition. Mr. Glover also appeared in Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery and at the St. Petersburg Palaces Festival in Russia.

With a repertoire of over fifty-five concerti and other works for piano and orchestra, Mr. Glover has appeared regularly with eighteen Bay Area orchestras, as well as numerous orchestras nationally and internationally.

Recent appearances include the critically acclaimed “World Premiere” performance of Eric Zeisl’s Concerto in C major (1952) in May 2005 with the Saratoga Symphony, Brahms’ Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, and Ravel’s Concerto in G with the Tulare County Symphony, Mozart’s Concerto in C minor, K. 491 with the Szeged Philharmonic (Hungary), Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with the North Bay Philharmonic, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 2 in G with the Nova Vista Symphony, Bartok’s Rhapsody, Opus 1 with the Kensington Symphony, Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 3 with the Redwood Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with the Palo Alto Philharmonic, Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 2 with the Mission Chamber Orchestra and Messian’s massive Turangalila Symphony.

Daniel Glover has served on the faculties of New York University, the University of the Virgin Islands, the University of San Francisco, Notre Dame de NamurUniversity, and the Summer Piano Workshop of Kent State University.

Mr. Glover has recorded eight CDs on the DG2 label, including Franz Liszt, The Profound and the Profane (2008), Spanish Impressions (2006), Romantic Russian Encores (2005), and a recording of live performances of works for piano and orchestra by Mozart, Strauss, and Prokofiev (2005). Previous recordings include the complete solo piano music by Ravel (2003), the Brahms Sonatas for Violin and Piano with New York violinist Matthew Reichert (2001), Russian Romantics (2000), and an all-Chopin concert recorded live in 1999.