The Isles Ensemble String Quartet - Musician Bios
Stephanie Arado
Violinist Stephanie Arado’s career encompasses a wide range of performance and teaching experience. She most recently completed a year of teaching at the Interlochen Arts Academy, an institution she graduated from in 1982. She occupied the Loring M. Staples Chair as Assistant Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1991 to 2013. During the 1995/96 season, Ms. Arado served as Concertmaster of The Colorado Symphony under the baton of Marin Alsop. While in Minneapolis, she maintained a private teaching studio and was a founding member of the Bakken Trio, a premier chamber music organization in the Twin Cities. Through her work with the Bakken Trio she has collaborated with many living composers and commissioned numerous chamber compositions. Ms. Arado continues to serve as a Co-Artistic Director of the Bakken.
Ms. Arado played her first solo recital at the age of eight. She went on to debut with the Chicago Symphony as a 12 year old; following that she has performed as a soloist with symphony orchestras throughout the US, including the Detroit, St. Louis, and Minnesota Orchestras. As a 21-year-old Ms. Arado was the first American ever invited to play with the European Union Youth Orchestra led by Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein. She was also invited to perform as a part of the prestigious chamber music festival Musiktreffen in St. Moritz, Switzerland with Paul Tortelier and Yuri Bashmet, two of the most renowned chamber musicians of the century.
She was born and raised in Chicago. She began playing the violin at the age of five using the Suzuki method with Sister Mary Ricardo of La Grange. She was fortunate to have worked with many fine violin pedagogues in her youth including Paul Rolland, Eugene Gratovich and David Cerrone at the famous Meadowmount School. She spent five summers as a Fellowship student at the Aspen Music School. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music at Western Illinois University (Macomb, IL) studying with Almita and Roland Vamos, and completed her Masters Degree at Juilliard in New York City under the tutelage of Dorothy Delay and Paul Kantor.
Leslie Shank
Described by the New York Times as “an impressive violinist [who plays] intimately and sweetly at one moment and with fearless enthusiasm at the next,” Leslie Shank leads an active musical life as a soloist and chamber musician. She was a member of the St Paul Chamber Orchestra for 30 years, 24 years as assistant concertmaster. Ms. Shank gave her New York recital debut at Carnegie's Weill Hall as a winner of the Artists International Competition, and was twice re-engaged to perform on its Special Presentation Series. A frequent soloist with The SPCO, Shank has also performed with the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, the Seattle Symphony, the National Orchestral Association (also serving as concertmaster), and the Racine Symphony. Her recital at the celebrated Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago was broadcast on WFMT radio.
Ms. Shank served as concertmaster of the “Music in the Mountains” Festival in Colorado for eleven years, and has performed at numerous other festivals including the Aspen, Grand Teton, Mainly Mozart, Marlboro, and the Britt Festival, where she served as concertmaster of the festival orchestra. As a member of the prestigious Musicians from Marlboro, she toured the East Coast. She was a member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra for four years, and served a one-year appointment as Visiting Assistant Violin Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for 2014-15.
Ms. Shank is a founding member the Isles Ensemble, which has as its core, a group of the best chamber musicians from The Twin Cities. Founded in 2005, the Isles Ensemble performs regularly in Minneapolis with varied guest artists in a wide range of repertoire. Leslie plays both violin and viola as a member of The Isles Ensemble.
On disc, Shank can be heard on a Centaur release, Recital for Violin & Guitar, with her husband, classical guitarist Joseph Hagedorn. The Shank-Hagedorn Duo has performed on Minnesota Public Radio’s “St. Paul Sunday." Also on the Centaur label, Ms. Shank has recorded Bartok's Violin Sonatas with pianist Heather MacLaughlin. In 1997, the Shank-MacLaughlin Duo received the McKnight Artist Fellowship for Performing Musicians. Ms. Shank's interest in Bartok's Violin Sonatas resulted in a trip to Hungary with pianist Heather MacLaughlin to study those works through a grant from the General Mills, Dayton Hudson and Jerome Foundations.
Leslie was awarded both a Bachelor and Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School. Her teachers were Shirley Givens, Felix Galimir, and Dorothy Delay.
Johanna Torbenson
Johanna Torbenson has given many solo and chamber music performances throughout the United States and Europe, and has performed with National Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and Key West Symphony. Torbenson was assistant principal violist of the Washington Chamber Symphony in Washington, D.C., where she appeared as a soloist at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She toured Europe as principal violist with the German Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra.
Johanna won first prize in the Louisville Orchestra Young Artist’s Competition at the age of 13. Torbenson was a finalist in the XXXIII International Primrose Competition. She was also a prizewinner in the Mary Graham Lasley Competition and won the University of Maryland’s School of Music Concerto Competition. Torbenson studied the viola with Roland Vamos, Donald McInnes and Roberto Diaz.
Washington Post reviewer Alan Greenblatt wrote, “Torbenson fully exploited her chance to shine… She was terrifically expressive…” describing a performance at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Johanna has appeared locally as a soloist with Bloomington Symphony and Minnesota State University Mankato Orchestra, and has performed as a chamber musician with Trio Sorelle, The Schubert Trio, Hill House Chamber Players, Isles Ensemble, and Artaria Quartet.
Tom Rosenberg
Thomas Rosenberg is nationally known as a dynamic performer, teacher and chamber coach. He has been Artistic Director of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition since 1981, teaches cello and chamber music at Carleton and Macalester Colleges and maintains a pre-college home studio. As well as regional and national awards for teaching, he has been presented in masterclasses at music schools throughout the United States. His students have won many awards, regularly gain acceptance into top music schools, and over thirty students from his studio have performed on NPR’s “From the Top”. They are in major symphonies, chamber music ensembles, Managing Director of the NY Philharmonic, Director of Education for Jazz at Lincoln Center and successful in countless other professions. Tom is recipient of the 2003-4 “Master Studio Teacher Award” from the Minnesota chapter of the American String Teachers Association and has also been named "Arts Educator of the Year" by the Michigan-Indiana Arts and Sciences Council. Tom is a featured “blogger” and host of Live Internet “CelloChats” on www.cellobello.com
A prize-winner at the Munich and Portsmouth International Quartet Competitions and three-time Naumburg Award finalist, Tom performs with the Isles Ensemble and has been a frequent substitute player in both the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra. He has performed with jazz greats Charlie Hayden and Al Foster in Carnegie Hall, performed in all of the major concert venues in NYC as solo cello of the New York Chamber Ensemble and was the founding member of the highly acclaimed Chester String Quartet with whom for twenty years he toured internationally and made numerous recordings. Tom is a graduate of Oberlin as a student of Richard Kapuscinski and The Eastman School of Music where he was teaching assistant to both Paul Katz and Laurence Lesser. His chamber music studies have been with the Budapest, Cleveland, Juilliard, Guarneri and Tokyo quartets. www.tomrosenbergmusic.com