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Press Releases
Candlelight Series by Fever features Moriah Trenk/Kinga Augustyn this Friday!
Upcoming concerts to check out! BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!! This Friday, May 12th Moriah Trenk & Kinga Augustyn perform in the Candlelight Concerts by Fever at the Church of the Heavenly Rest - 1085 5th Avenue. Shows are 6:30 pm & 9:00 pm. Don't miss this amazing performance!
Moriah Trenk currently works as a full-time Company Pianist at Philadelphia Ballet. Previously, Moriah held a position at Boston Ballet School and as a staff pianist at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She was recently featured in a solo performance at The Villages, Florida, as a prizewinner of the 2018 Enchanted Evening concert series, where she performed for a packed audience of over 850 people. Pauline Pan, director of the Opera Club at the Villages said, “Moriah Trenk’s playing was out of this world. Her performance is indelibly etched in my memory. Bravo!” In a concert review by Tony Violanti of the Villages-news.com, Moriah was praised for her “fluid and graceful style” in performance of Chopin and Rachmaninoff.
As a versatile musician and collaborator, Moriah enjoys a busy schedule working as an accompanist for various instrumental and vocal studios, dance classes, musical productions, and choruses. She completed her Master's Degree in Collaborative Piano at New England Conservatory of Music, where she received a merit scholarship to study with Cameron Stowe and Jonathan Feldman. As a recipient of New England Conservatory's Community Performances and Partnerships Fellowship, Moriah performed interactive music programs throughout Boston. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from New York University where she was a student of Seymour Bernstein and Grant Wenaus.
Other recent engagements have included performances as a soloist and with ensembles at Jordan Hall, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, Wagner College of Music in Staten Island, Loewe Theater, Merkin Concert Hall, Hunter College, and Queensborough Community College, among other venues. Moriah has been a featured performer at events honoring Alan Gilbert and members of the NY Philharmonic. She has performed outreach concerts with Boston's Volunteer Musicians for the Arts, and was accompanist for The Woman’s Chorus; a social initiative launched by Eureka Ensemble that enables women experiencing homelessness and poverty the opportunity to rehearse and perform in a chorus.
In recent summers, Moriah received full scholarships to study chamber music at The National Music Festival at Washington College, Manchester Music Festival's Young Artist Program in Manchester, Vermont and the Emerging Artists Fellowship Program at Garth Newel Music Center in Hot Springs, Virginia. Moriah is a prizewinner of various competitions; including the Hudson Valley Music Club competition, the NYU Art of Solo and Collaborative Piano Award, the Yonkers Concerto Competition, the YWCA and Korean Daily News Piano Competition, the International Concert Alliance Piano Competition, and runner up in the Westfield Concerto Competition. Moriah has been selected to perform in masterclasses with leading performers such as Vladimir Feltsman, Alexander Kobrin, and Carter Brey. She previously studied with Paul Ostrovsky and Sara Davis Buechner.
Polish-American Kinga Augustyn is a versatile New York City-based virtuoso concert violinist and recording artist. “Stylish and vibrant” (The Strad Magazine), and “beyond amazing, one hell of a violinist!” (The Fanfare Magazine), Ms. Augustyn has performed as a soloist with orchestras in the United States, Europe and Asia, and they include the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, Queens Symphony Orchestra, Catskill Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Kammerorchester Berlin, Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum, and the Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra. She has toured China and performed at China’s most prestigious venues such as Beijing Poly Theater and Shanghai Oriental Art Center. As a recitalist and chamber musician Kinga has appeared at the Stern Auditorium and the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Aspen Music Festival, the Chicago Cultural Center, Teatro Ristori and Gran Teatro La Fenice. In addition to concerti with orchestras and recitals with piano, Ms. Augustyn frequently performs unaccompanied solo violin recitals and is also a member of the Baroque Virtuosity trio with lutist Christopher Morrongiello and harpsichordist Rebecca Pechefsky.
Kinga Augustyn is often praised for her musical interpretations, profundity, deft phrasing, beautiful tone, mastery of the bow, perfect intonation, and for unique programming ideas. “With completely secure technical control, she couples a tapestry of tone color to her innate musicality” (The Fanfare Magazine). Music Web International describes her recording of the Bruch Violin Concerto with Janacek Philharmonic as “extremely moving and expressive,” characterized by “beauty, richness and smoothness of her tone,” and as “music she responds to on a deeply personal and emotional level.”
Ms. Augustyn’s repertoire includes music both standard and lesser–known, stylistically varied and ranging from early baroque to contemporary. Kinga is an advocate of new music and has performed and recorded multiple world premieres of works written especially for her. She also researches and brings awareness to lesser-known composers, including those of her native Poland. Up to date, Augustyn has recorded three albums of Polish music. Grazyna Bacewicz: A Portrait was released in 2022 on Centaur Records. The other two albums, released on Naxos, are world premieres by the contemporary Polish composer Romuald Twardowski (b. 1930), recorded with the Torun Symphony Orchestra and Mariusz Smolij, and the Polish Violin Music, a highly praised, “fascinating” (The Strad) album of lesser-known Polish works.
In 2021 Augustyn released on Centaur Records Turning in Time, a critically acclaimed album featuring 20th and 21st Century unaccompanied solo violin works by Krzysztof Penderecki (world premiere of Capriccio), Debra Kaye (world premiere of Turning in Time), as well as other works, significant in the violin repertoire, by Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio, Isang Yun and Grazyna Bacewicz. Gramophone calls the album “remarkable” and praises Augustyn for “vibrant intensity, caressing the phrases and bringing bold focus to the electric unfolding of creativity”.
Augustyn’s expanding discography also includes the Paganini Caprices, which music critics consider as convincing as Perlman’s or Midori’s, and an “an enduring benchmark” (Classical Net); La Pasión, featuring 6 Tango-Etudes for Solo Violin by Astor Piazzolla; Telemann 12 Fantasias for Solo Violin (Centaur Records), in which “her interpretations are convincing in every piece here, and the Baroque spirit of the violin and Telemann’s mastery abiding throughout” (Music Web International); and Glen Roven’s Runaway Bunny Concerto performed with Catherine Zeta-Jones as a narrator and featuring Kinga Augustyn’s Solo Violin Cadenza (GPR Records).
Ms. Augustyn has won international awards, including First Prizes at the Alexander & Buono International String Competition (USA), Artist International Presentations (USA), and the J. S. Bach String Competition (Poland), as well as other top honors that include prizes at the Johannes Brahms International Competition (Austria), the Kloster Schoental International Young Artist Competition (Germany), Michael Hill International Violin Competition (New Zealand), and the Kosciuszko Foundation Wieniawski Violin Competition (USA).
Ms. Augustyn studied at The Juilliard School with Dorothy DeLay, Cho-Liang Lin, and Naoko Tanaka, and earned there both the Bachelor and the Master degrees as a full tuition scholarship recipient. She holds a doctorate from the Stony Brook University, where she was also awarded a full-tuition scholarship and assistantship and worked with Phil Setzer and Pamela Frank.
On a regular basis Kinga Augustyn plays a violin made by Joseph Gagliano in 1774, generously on loan to her from a private collector. When playing early music in a historically informed style, she plays Lukas Wronski’s uniquely designed violin inspired by the famed statue Venus de Milo.
Dr. Augustyn currently serves as Violin Faculty at Queens College Aaron Copland School of Music.
For concert bookings contact FeinerEnt@gmail.com/914/725-0200
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