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Featuring Thursday Musical Members Holly Ager, violin (not pictured) accompanied by Kristine West Denton, piano; Thursday Musical Members Elizabeth Woolner, soprano accompanied by Jim Reilly, piano; Thursday Musical Member Koki Sato, piano*.
*denotes Artist Series debut
Click the photo on the left for artist and program information.
For everyone’s safety, Thursday Musical strongly recommends all audience members to wear a non-cloth mask such as a N95, KN95, KF94, or surgical mask inside of the recital hall.
Violinist Holly Ager is originally from Seattle, where she studied with Emanuel Zetlin, professor emeritus of the Curtis Institute.
She has a Bachelor of Music degree in violin performance from the University of Michigan, as a student of Paul Makaowitzky and Jacob Krachmalnick, and a Master of Music degree from Yale University, where she studied with Koichiro Harada and Szymon Goldberg. She was concertmaster of the Yale Philharmonia under the direction of Otto Werner Mueller, and studied chamber music with members of the Tokyo String Quartet.
Summer festivals include the Aspen Festival, where she was concertmaster of the conducting symposium orchestra, and the Grand Teton Music Festival, where she played both in the orchestra and performed chamber music for many seasons.
Ms. Ager has played regularly with several symphonies; Seattle Symphony, Atlanta Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra She currently free-lances in the Twin Cities.
Ms. Ager plays on a violin made for her by Keisuke Hori in Chicago.
Kristine West Denton has performed across the country, in Canada, and Germany as a soloist and collaborative pianist. She recently retired from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Previously, she taught at Grinnell College, Coe College and Fort Hays State University.
She was a frequent soloist with the Erie Philharmonic and played keyboards for the Erie Philharmonic, Erie Chamber Orchestra and the Bemus Bay Pops. She performed on live broadcasts from WKSU (Kent, OH), WCLV (Cleveland) and WQLN (Erie) in collaborative performances. She administered and performed in a free concert series at the Erie County Public Library and served on the Arts Council of Erie.
A concert review from the Badische Zeitung (Freiburg, Germany) called her “an excellent soloist and an intelligent and sensitive accompanist” while a recipient of a Collaborative Fulbright Grant.
She attended the vocal accompanying program at the Music Academy of the West and the vocal and instrumental programs of the Blossom Festival School, studying with Martin Katz, Warren Jones and Cleveland Orchestra members.
A native of Minnesota, Kristine received degrees from the University of Iowa (DMA), Kent State University, and Augsburg College (Mpls). Her principal teachers were Kenneth Amada, Margaret Baxtresser and Jim Johnson.
Elizabeth Woolner has kept a long membership with Thursday Musical since the early 1980’s. She received a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance from the University of Toronto in 1971. In 1977 she completed a Master of Music Degree in Voice from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD. While living in Minneapolis she became an
active church section leader and soloist with a number of Twin Cities churches including Westminster Presbyterian and the Cathedral of St. Paul. She sang with the Minnesota Chorale for ten years from 1998 – 2008. She was initiated into the Alumni Chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon of Mpls.-St. Paul in 1981 and has continued active membership since then. She and accompanist Jim Reilly have appeared together on many venues over the years. She currently resides in Rochester, MN.
Jim Reilly has performed for Thursday Musical over the years as an organist, pianist, tenor, but most often as a vocal accompanist. He has also been on these programs as a composer. Recent performances have been for the Leif Eriksson International Festival (as a tenor), The Danish American Center (as a tenor, pianist, and accompanist), The American Swedish Institute (accompanist) and the Alliance Francaise (solo pianist and tenor). He has performed in twenty states as well as Norway and Holland.
Versatile in the repertoire across different styles, Koki Sato is a classical pianist with interdisciplinary interests: as an advocate of contemporary music and its potential in expanding the boundaries of classical music, for instance, he presented programs featuring post-1945 modern composers with differing identities for the Out and About Outreach Program at the Saint Paul Conservatory of Music; his passion for community engagement through music, furthermore, led him to such collaborative projects as Music under the Dome Concert Series at Coca-Cola Space Science Center and the opening performance at the Japanese Society of Pediatric Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
A first prize winner of national and regional competitions including the Schubert Club Competition, Atlanta Music Club Scholarship Audition, and Student Music Competition of Japan, Sato has performed with several orchestras, most notably Toho Gakuen Orchestra conducted by Leon Fleischer. Equally experienced in chamber music, Sato recently appeared at Klangspuren Schwaz in Austria as a member of the Klangspuren International Ensemble Modern Academy.
Born in Tokyo, Sato received the prestigious Woodruff Award for his undergraduate studies with Alexander Kobrin and Tatiana Muzanova at Columbus State University. Sato currently pursues a doctoral degree with Alexander Braginsky at the University of Minnesota.
