Intersections: Music, Longing, and Displacement

Domenic Salerni

Violin

Domenic Salerni is a violinist, composer, arranger, and teacher. A member of the multiple GRAMMY© Award-winning Attacca Quartet, Domenic is based in Brooklyn, NY. As a musician with wide-ranging interests, Domenic is always excited to collaborate with creatives from all walks of life. 

Recently, Attacca Quartet was featured on Sylvan Esso’s “Live from Electric Lady,” playing arrangements by Gabriel Kahane including “Will the Night,” a tune by the late Mimi Parker of the band Low. In addition to a busy touring schedule including appearances at Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, Kings Place, London, the Amsterdam Strijkkwartet Biënnale, the Sociedad Filarmónica de Bilbao, and the Petit Palau de la Musica, Barcelona this season, Attacca looks forward to performing this summer at the Ojai Festival, Kronos Quartet Festival in San Francisco, and an appearance at Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center made possible by Carnegie Hall.

Last summer, Domenic and the rest of his quartet mates were asked to compose original music for the podcast “The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome” produced by Project Brazen and Goat Rodeo Productions.

Domenic looks forward to the premiere of his Piano Trio No. 2 “Elegiac” based on Ukrainian themes at Richmond, Virginia’s newest chamber music series, The Belvedere Series, in April. In August, he will join the Palaver Strings at the Screen Door Festival in Maine, where he will perform his own original arrangements of 60s Civil Rights Era protest songs (The Freedom Singers, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Pete Seeger, and more) with tenor Nicholas Phan. This set of songs will be recorded by Palaver with engineer Alan Bise on Azica Records in September.

In the summer of 2021, Domenic’s first string quartet, “Trilobites,” after a short story by Breece D J Pancake, was premiered at the inaugural Appalachian Chamber Music Festival in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Domenic was the first violinist of the Dalí Quartet from 2016-2020, where he collaborated extensively with musicians like Ricardo Morales and Olga Kern. The Dalí Quartet recorded the Brahms and Shostakovich piano quintets with Kern for Delos Records in 2019. With the Dalí Quartet, Domenic was a recipient of the Atlanta Symphony Talent Development Program’s 2019 Aspire Award.

As a guest artist of the Chiarina Chamber Players, Domenic was a recipient of a 2020 Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant for the song cycle “The Best Cuisine” by Carlos Simon, which was premiered with guest bass-baritone Carl DuPont in 2021.

In 2020, as part of his response to the COVID-19 outbreak, Domenic helped set up the Philadelphia Musicians Relief Fund which has since raised over $100,000 in aid and continues to provide support for Philadelphia area musicians.

In 2010, while a graduate student at the Yale School of Music, Domenic composed and performed an original film accompaniment to the first full-length Italian feature film, Giuseppe De Liguoro’s “Dante’s Inferno” (1911). Domenic holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Yale School of Music, where he was a winner of the 2010 Yale Chamber Music Society Award.

Domenic can be found on albums released by Nonesuch Records, Sony Classical, Better Company Records, Loma Vista Recordings, Delos Music, Artek and his more experimental projects can be found on Bandcamp.

Paul Cigan

Clarinet

Appointed to the National Symphony Orchestra clarinet section by Maestro Leonard Slatkin in 1999, Paul Cigan enjoys a career as an orchestral clarinetist, chamber musician, teacher, and soloist. In addition to the NSO, Cigan can frequently be heard performing with the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, 21st Century Consort, and the Smithsonian Chamber Players, as well as on recordings with those ensembles on the Dorian, Bridge, and Naxos labels. In 2012, Cigan premiered Donald Crockett's Dance Concerto with the 21st Century Consort and performed a special wind ensemble version of the piece with the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra in 2015. Prior to the NSO, Cigan held principal posts with the San Antonio Symphony, Colorado Symphony, and Virginia Symphony.

An active teacher in the Washington, D.C., area, Cigan is currently on the faculty of The University of Maryland at College Park. He is also active in the NSO education department, instructing members of the Youth Fellowship Program and Summer Music Institute.

Other activities include performing at the Halcyon Music Festival and Grand Teton Music Festival and teaching at the University of Maryland National Orchestral Institute and the Philadelphia International Music Festival. Cigan studied with Anthony Gigliotti, former principal clarinetist of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and David Breeden, former principal clarinetist of the San Francisco Symphony. Cigan is a graduate of Temple University.

Daniel Foster

Viola

Violist Daniel Foster’s varied career encompasses orchestral, chamber and solo playing, as well as teaching. After capturing the First Prize in both the William Primrose and Washington International Competitions, Mr. Foster became a member of the National Symphony’s viola section in 1993, and was appointed Principal by Music Director Leonard Slatkin in 1995. Mr. Foster has appeared frequently as soloist with the National Symphony since his appointment.

Mr. Foster is a member of the critically acclaimed Dryden Quartet, along with his cousins Nicolas and Yumi Kendall and National Symphony Concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef, and is also a founding member of the Kennedy Center Chamber Players.

Mr. Foster is on the faculty at the University of Maryland and has given master classes at Oberlin and Peabody Conservatories, the University of Michigan and the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has been a faculty member for the National Orchestral Institute, and is a member of the “International Principals” faculty at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.

Regino Madrid

Violin

Regino Madrid is an active soloist, concertmaster, and chamber musician throughout the Washington, D.C. area. Regino is the concertmaster of The American Pops Orchestra and The Tysons McLean Orchestra. He currently plays in the first violin section of the National Symphony under the baton of Maestro Gianandrea Noseda and has toured with the NSO to Moscow, St. Petersburg Russia, and Carnegie Hall. Mr. Madrid was the Assistant Concertmaster of “The President’s Own” Marine Chamber Orchestra and retired this past June after 20 years of service. He has appeared as guest concertmaster for the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, National Gallery Orchestra, National Philharmonic, New Orchestra of Washington, Chesapeake Orchestra at St. Mary’s River Concert Series, the Alexandria Symphony, and the Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio. He is a founding member of the critically acclaimed Teiber Trio and has played in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, and the Phillips Collection.

Carrie Bean Stute

Cello

A versatile and promising performer bringing “sonorous life” to the stage [Cleveland Plain Dealer], cellist Carrie Bean Stute’s musical endeavors cover the span of solo, chamber, and orchestral playing. Since 2014 she has held a position with “The President’s Own” Marine Chamber Orchestra in Washington, DC, where she performs in such diverse settings as the White House, State Department, area public schools, and the Phillips Collection. She is co-founder and co-artistic director of the Capitol Hill-based chamber music seriesthe Chiarina Chamber Players. Appearing on most of Chiarina’sconcerts alongside leading regional players, she also manages programming and outreach for a growing audience base.

Carrie was a fellow at the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida, and at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was recipient of the Karl Zeise Memorial Cello Award. As a soloist noted for her “style and virtuosity” [ClevelandClassical], Carrie has performed with the Florida Orchestra and the Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra of Cleveland. She appeared at the Norfolk (CT) and Sarasota (FL) chamber music festivals, and at the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme in Aldeburgh, England. While living in New York, she performed in such notable venues as Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, and an in-house educational residency at the 92nd Street Y. She has collaborated with such artists as Jaime Laredo, Sarah Chang, Charles Neidich, and Rolf Schulte. Her work with small ensembles and orchestras can be heard on the Albany, Avie, BSO Classics, and GlorClassics recording labels.

As a performer who seeks out the work of today’s composers, Carrie was a member of the New York-based ensemble Hotel Elefant and participated in the 2013 Carnegie Hall workshop "New Voices, New Music," led by David Lang and the International Contemporary Ensemble. She has collaborated with DC’s Inscape Chamber Orchestra and with such diverse composers as John Adams, Oliver Knussen, Michael Gordon, Richard Carrick, SahbaAminikia, and Mary Kouyoumdjian. She took part in Tanglewood’sElliott Carter Centennial celebration and was soloist in a premiere reading of Fang Man’s Tao for Sheng, Cello, and Orchestra at the Aldeburgh Festival.

Carrie is currently an instructor at the DC Youth Orchestra Program and the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop’s Suzuki program. Sheserved as an adjunct instructor at CUNY Queens College, where she taught cello and chamber music. In 2016 she was a teaching artist and performer at the Alonso Marín National Music Festival in Caldas, Colombia. In 2014 and 2012 she served as a guest teaching artist for the National Youth Orchestra of Honduras, in an initiative sponsored by the U.S. Embassy. Carrie taught previously at the Harlem Opus 118 School in New York and at the Eastman Community Music School in Rochester. With the Atlas Piano Trio, she held a two-year residency at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. At the Bowdoin Music Festival, she was a teaching assistant to Professor Steven Doane. In her earlier collaborations with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, she took part in toursto Central America, South America, and Europe, interacting with local youth orchestras in projects designed to mentor young musicians. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of YOA’s expanding pilot program, the Global Leader Program, which offers fieldwork opportunities for teaching artists and a related curriculum.

Carrie holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Indiana University, where she was also a recipient of a faculty-awarded Performer’s Certificate (ESM), Arts Leadership Certificate (ESM), and Jacobs Scholar Award (IU). She was recipient of an Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellowship from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where she is completing doctoral studies. Her teachers include Steven Doane, Janos Starker, Marcy Rosen, Sharon Robinson, and Scott Kluksdahl. She studied chamber music with members of the Tokyo, Artis, and Ying Quartets, and with the Kalichstein–Laredo–Robinson Trio. She has performed in master classes for such cellists as FransHelmerson, Paul Katz, and Timothy Eddy.

Ning Yu

Piano

​​Praised for her “taut and impassioned performance” by the New York Times, pianist Ning Yu performs with vigor and dedication for traditional and repertoire of the 20th and 21st century on stages across the United States, Europe and Asia.  Working at the forefront of the current creative music scene in the US, she has given dozens of world premieres by composers from around the world. She has performed with ensembles such as Bang on A Can All-Stars, ICE, Talea Ensemble  and she is a member of piano/percussion quartet Yarn/Wire, counter)induction and Signal Ensemble.

Ning has performed in concert halls, international festivals, universities, and other non-traditional performance spaces around the world. These venues include Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Museum of Modern Art , Miller Theater, Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, Library of Congress, Issue Project Room, Pioneer Works, Contempo Concert Series at University of Chicago, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, Köln Philharmonie in Germany, Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, Kwe- Tsing Theater in Hong Kong, Spoleto Festival, Rainy Day Festival in Luxembourg, Ultima Festival in Norway, Transit Festival in Belgium, Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, Singapore International Arts Festival. 

In theater, Ning performed with Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse — a critically acclaimed production directed by Lee Breuer. She can be seen in the production’s feature-film version, produced by ARTE France. Ning has also collaborated with director Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project on the development of the Tony Award–nominated play 33 Variations.

Ning is a YAMAHA Artist, and she is an assistant professor of piano and chamber music at the George Washington University.