Collaborators

Klaus received an Artist Diploma (flute) from Städtische Akademie für Tonkunst, Darmstadt, Germany, and a M.M. and B.M. in flute-performance from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. His studies with Marcel and Louis Moyse have had a deep impact on his development as a flutist. 

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 Having resided in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for six years, Klaus Liebetanz worked in an ensemble for traditional Latin American music led by Néstor Villaseñor and played flute in the Orquesta Sinfónico de Puerto Vallarta. He is former flute faculty, Staatliche Musikschule, Koblenz, Germany, Kreismusikschule Bad Ems, Germany, University of Hawaii/Leeward College, Pearl City, Hawaii and Hilo, HI, Bellevue College as well as Musicworks Northwest. Klaus's main focus has been playing, recording and touring the U.S., Europe and Asia as a chamber musician with the Liebetanz-Kolb Duo and Duo Cantico, as well as various ensembles such as the former Turkish National Wind Quintet and several small string groups, among others. He has recorded for Eroica Classical Recordings, Present Sounds Recordings, Seattle, Albany Records and Burning Petals Recordings, United Kingdom and has been heard on KING-FM Seattle, the Northwest Public Radio Network, Hawaii Public Radio, CBC and Southwest German Radio Network. 

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Klaus was a member of the Darmstadt State Opera, Orchestra for Europe, the Bendorf Chamber Orchestra, Germany, Honolulu Symphony, Seattle Philharmonic, Northshore Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre Phiharmonique de Besançon and other European and North American Orchestras. Presently he also works with the Orquesta de Flautas de Málaga  and as session/studio musician, recording in-studio as well as at his home for clients worldwide.

Karen Bentley Pollick is a leading contemporary musicians performing a wide range of solo repertoire and styles on violin, viola, piano and hardingfele (Norwegian Hardanger fiddle) to extend the boundaries of the concert experience, from the Baroque to cutting-edge contemporary music and live improvisations. 

A native of Palo Alto, California, she began piano lessons at age 5 with the Armenian pianist Rusana Sysoyev. During high school she studied violin with Camilla Wicks in San Francisco. She performed in the master-classes of Nathan Milstein, Jean-Jacques Kantorow, and Glenn Dicterow, and studied with Rostislav Dubinsky, Josef Gingold and Yuval Yaron at Indiana University, where she received both Bachelors and Masters of Music Degrees in Violin Performance with a cognate in Choral Conducting.

Her recordings include Electric Diamond, Angel, Konzerto and Succubus and Ariel View, for which she received three music awards from Just Plain Folks, including Best Instrumental Album and Best Song.  On her own record label, Ariel Ventures, she has produced music featuring chamber works by Russian pianist-composer Ivan Sokolov on <amberwood>, Homage to Fiddlers and Russian Soulscapes; solo violin music by the Swedish composer Ole Saxe on Dancing Suite to Suite and Peace Piece; and filmed Dan Tepfer’s Solo Blues for violin and piano for one performer simultaneously.  She has recorded extensively.

Karen’s debut recording  for Toccata Classics presents Hermann Graedener’s two violin concertos with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, recorded with Maestro Gottfried Rabl in Kiev in June 2018, and winner of a Silver Medal in the 2019 Global Music Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the album and instrumental solo performance categories. Chamber Music of Ivan Sokolov, recorded in Wuppertal, Germany in September 2019 and released by Toccata Classics in August 2020, received a Gold Medal for Best Composer and a Silver Medal for Instrumental/Instrumentalists in the December 2020 Global Music Awards.  Just Plain Folks honored Ole Saxe’s Peace Piece in their 2020 Music Awards in the Best Solo Instrumental Album and Best Solo Instrumental Song categories.

She has served as concertmaster of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie Kammerorchester and the New York String Orchestra, and performed in the June in Buffalo and Wellesley Composers Conferences, and at numerous music festivals globally. She has toured with the New York Philharmonic, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, Erick Hawkins Dance Company, and the Bolshoi Ballet. She was a guest artist with Tatiana Grindenko’s contemporary-music group Opus Posthumous from Moscow, Seattle Chamber Players in their Icebreaker II:  Baltic Voices Festival, and with the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in New York. She premiered the Dance Suite by the Swedish composer Ole Saxe with the Redwood Symphony.

Dennis Parker was born in New York City and began his cello studies at the age of six. He received his early training with Channing Robbins of the Juilliard School, and later earned degrees from Indiana University and Yale University, where he worked with Janos Starker and Aldo Parisot, respectively. Inspired by a variety of musical activity, Parker appears frequently as soloist, recitalist, collaborator, and guest professor at universities and festivals worldwide. He is actively involved in the expansion of the existing cello repertoire, and has transcribed many important works for his instrument, including Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, K364, and Mozart’s Concerto No. 5 A Major, K219, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and Brahms’s Sonata for Viola and Piano in E Flat Major, to name but a few.

 

 

CDs released with the Centaur label include Cello Matters, which features crossover music for cello and piano by Liduino Pitombeira, Daniel Schnyder, David Baker, and Astor Piazzolla and Uplifting Discoveries from a Generation Lost, a recording of chamber music by composers who perished in the Holocaust (Erwin Schulhoff, Gideon Klein, Viktor Ullmann and Hans Krasa). Other recordings include Stolen Sonatas, with pianist Jennifer Hayghe, presenting original transcriptions of Debussy’s “Violin Sonata,” Poulenc’s “Flute Sonata,” and Georges Enesco’s Sonata No.3 for Violin; The Lone Cello, featuring solo cello works by Scott Howard Eggert, George Crumb, Viktor Kalabis, and György Ligeti; and Homage To Fiddlers, with violinist Karen Bentley Pollick and pianist Ivan Sokolov, with Russian and Czech duos and trios by Ivan Sokolov, Viktor Kalabis, and Jan Vičar. Walter Burle Marx includes the composer’s complete works for cello, including his Cello Concerto, Sambatango for Cello and Piano, Divertimento a Tre for Flute, Oboe and Cello, and the Casanova Fantasy Variations for Three Celli. In 2003 he recorded  the first complete performance of David Popper’s High School of Cello Playing and wrote the accompanying manual, The Popper Manifesto.

Puerto Vallarta and Instituto de Artes Musicales Puerto Vallarta (IAMPV) are honored to host the distinguished and prolific composer in February, 2023,  John Robertson. John has traveled from Toronto to his former home to hear one of his compositions performed. From 2006-2008 John composed Vallarta Suite, a four movement orchestral piece.  The Puerto Vallarta Chamber Orchestra originally performed it in 2009 at the American School, conducted by the late Nick Salmans. Since then, John has made some revisions and the Orquesta Sinfonica Vallarta (OSV) will perform it at the concerts Sunday, February 19 (Hotel Melia, Marina Vallarta, 5 pm) and Monday, February 20 (Salon Paraiso, Paradise Village, 5 pm). The 4 movements of Vallarta Suite are I. El Malecon (the Malecon), II. Las Ballenas (the whales), III. Excursion para Hacer Compras (shopping excursion), IV. La Noche en la Zona Romantica (night in the Romantic Zone).

 

Ironically there is another John Robertson who is also a composer. "Our" John Robertson is actually E. John Robertson, the E standing for Ernest.

John has generously donated gratis his compositions to the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP.org), making scores and parts available free to musicians around the world, including over 50 works such as 5 symphonies composed between 1986 and 2018, an opera, duos, quartets, sonatas, sonatinas, suites, concerti, nocturnes, variations, and marches.

 

E. John Robertson was born in New Zealand 21 October 1943 and is a long time resident of Canada. His secondary school offered music as a full time subject and so he acquired a grounding in the subject. Upon leaving school he went into the insurance business where he spent his working life. Having immigrated to Canada in 1967, in the mid-1970s he embarked on a 3-year course of private study in composition and counterpoint with Dr. Sam Dolin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Continuing to compose, his entry in the 1987 Composers’ Competition sponsored by the Nepean Symphony won him his first major public performance. Entries in the Canadian Contemporary Music Workshops in the late ‘80s and early 90's achieved 3 performances of his entries, notably Variations for a Small Orchestra Op. 14,  including at the final gala concert. After retirement he has concentrated on getting his work heard more broadly and now his compositions have been played in Canada, Mexico, Sweden, the UK, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and China. In 2014 the Rusé Philharmonic of Bulgaria gave two concerts of his music and subsequently the State Opera Rusé commissioned an opera from him, Orpheus - a Masque. One hour long, it premiered in 2015, with revivals in 2016 and 2017 when it was one of the test pieces in the Blue Danube Opera Conducting competition. A companion piece for Orpheus, Lady Jane is a dance piece with actors that was presented in 2017. His output covers most genres and 3 of his 5 symphonies have been recorded and released on the Navona label. These recordings include other works, including concertos for trumpet and for clarinet.