Nordic Chamber Music: Sweden – Seriously Swedish
$30 ($10 child/student)
- Miolina, violin duo
New York City based violinists Mioi Takeda and Lynn Bechtold, also known as Miolina will bring new works by Swedish composers to life on the Nordic Chamber Music 2023 stage. This forward-thinking duo has been described as possessing "aggressive and virtuosic prowess" and “brilliance of sound, technical mastery, an stunning expressivity.” Combining those impressive skills with new Swedish compositions and you'll seriously be amazed.
The 2023 Season of the newly rebranded and reimagined Nordic Chamber Music Series will be produced and underwritten by the Northwest Edvard Grieg Society. If you would like to support this series and ensure its future, please donate here: https://nwegriegsociety.org/donate/
About Miolina, violin duo
Called "talented and dedicated" by Arts Birmingham, and described as displaying "aggressive and virtuosic prowess" with "brilliance of sound, technical mastery, and stunning expressivity" by I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, violin duo Miolina has been attracting audiences since their inception in 2012. Mioi Takeda and Lynn Bechtold are creating and shaping the violin duo repertoire of the 21st Century and have premiered 50 duos and counting. To date, the duo has had successful performances in NYC at venues such as Brooklyn College, Culturelab LIC, Gallery MC, Greenwich House Music School, KGB Espionage Museum, (le) Poisson Rouge, The Morbid Anatomy Museum, National Opera Center, National Sawdust, Parsons School of Design, Queens College LeFrak Hall, Queens Library, Rockwood Music Hall, Scholes Street Studio, Spectrum, and Tenri Cultural Institute. Outside of NYC, they’ve performed at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, NY; Hoover Library, St. Paul United Methodist Church, and the University of Alabama in Birmingham, AL; Scandinavian Cultural Center in Boston, MA; Rutgers University in Camden, NJ; Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, IL; UC Irvine, in Irvine, CA; Monk Space in Los Angeles, CA; Pensacola State College in FL; Center for New Music in San Francisco, CA; University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL; Corner Store Arts and Rhizome in Washington, DC; Koncertkirken in Copenhagen, Denmark; Cité Internationale des Arts, La Fine Gueule, and l'Institut Finlandais in Paris, France; Koendori Classics and Monten Hall in Tokyo, Japan; and Galleri Sagoy in Malmö, Sweden. In 2017, they premiered Victor Kioulaphides' double concerto with the North/South Consonance Chamber Orchestra in NYC, with Max Lifchitz, conductor. In addition, they have performed on series and festivals such as Birmingham New Music Festival, Circuit Bridges, Composers Concordance, COMPOSERFest, Concrete Timbre, C-Y Series, Electronic Music Midwest, Infuse Présente, JUMP, NWEAMO, and Sonic Circuits, and have presented masterclasses and worked with composition students at CUNY Queens College, The Juilliard School, Rutgers University, and UC Irvine. They have also done outreach concerts at The Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind, the Friendly Kitchen in Concord, NH, and at Greenwich House Senior Center and Southbridge Senior Center, both in Manhattan.
Miolina specializes in violin duo music that employs the natural beauty and sound of the instruments, with or without electronics and video. They enjoy collaborating on new compositions with composers, as well as discovering hidden gems of the past. Their future productions include performances of the whole cycle of 34 violin duets by Luciano Berio; a new double concerto by composer Takuma Itoh; a program of works by all-Scandinavian composers, featuring premieres by composers Mauro Godoy Villalobos, Ann Rosén, and Tomi Räisänen. Recent recordings include 'à la BAMA,' featuring 6 new works by Alabama composers from the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, and the track 'Kirlian' on Flower Cat's recent album 'Symbolic Gesture.' Their self-titled debut album was released on Composers Concordance Records, distributed by Naxos, in 2018, and they can be heard on 2020's 'Le Passager,' performing Jean-Baptiste Favory's UNISONO V, released on ACEL Records. All are available on iTunes, Amazon, Bandcamp, Spotify, or YouTube. In June 2017, they were chosen to join New Music USA's Impact Cohort. Support through New Music USA's NYC New Music Impact Fund was made possible with funding from The Scherman Foundation's Katherine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund. They are also recipients of 2021 and 2015 grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; 2019 grants from Adami Foundation, and the American-Scandinavian Foundation; a 2018 grant from the Queens Council on the Arts; a 2017 Japan Foundation NY grant; and 2016 and 2014 grants from New York Women Composers. In 2017, 2019, and 2021, they were chosen for artist residencies at Avaloch Farm Music Institute in New Hampshire. Miolina is a 501(c)3 non-profit.
https://www.miolinanyc.com/