Quartinent

Quartinent is a new string quartet featuring violinists Noemi Miloradovic and Edgar Tumajyan, violist Victoria Miskolczy, and cellist Elizabeth Simkin. The group will present three masterworks including Beethoven’s third string quartet, Tenebrae (composed in 2002) by Osvaldo Golijov, and Bartók’s first string quartet.

Born in Belgrade, Serbia, violinist Noemi Miloradovic graduated with honors from the Longy School of Music in Boston. While pursuing her undergraduate diploma she won the honors and the concerto competition resulting in solo performance with the Longy Chamber Orchestra. Noemi obtained a Master of Music degree at the University of Kansas and Artist Diploma at Park University, studying with violinist Ben Sayevich.

She is a former member of the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra and the Kansas City chamber orchestra. She was a featured soloist with the Lawrence Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic, the Kansas University Orchestra, Endless Mountain Festival Orchestra, and the Binghamton Philharmonic orchestra.

Noemi is a member of Symphoria, previously known as Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. She serves as associate concertmaster of Binghamton Philharmonic, concertmaster of MostArts Festival orchestra, and is on a violin faculty at Binghamton University.

Edgar Tumajyan is a native of Yerevan, Armenia. He began his violin study at age 8, at the Tchaikovsky Specialized Music School.

His bachelor’s degree is from the Yerevan State Conservatory; his master’s degree from Syracuse University, where he worked with Symphoria Concertmaster Peter Rovit. He attended the Aspen Festival as a festival fellowship awardee. His past symphonic experience has been with the orchestras of Cheyenne, Fort Collins, Tuscaloosa, and Mobile. Mr. Tumajyan has served as Associate Concertmaster of the Armenian National Theater of Opera and Ballet for three years. His solo and chamber music touring ensemble travels have taken him to Russia, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, and to Bolivia as winner of the University of Wyoming concerto Competition. He currently is a member of the Allentown Symphony and Symphoria violin sections.

Australian-born Victoria Miskolczy joined the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra as their principal violist in 2014, and recently won the audition for principal viola with the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra. Victoria was previously a resident of Los Angeles, and recently resigned from her position of associate principal violist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in March of 2022; a position she had held since January 1989.

Her many other concert appearances include performances with the Oregon Bach Festival, Ojai Festival and Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Sydney Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, and the Long Beach Orchestra. Her many local chamber music credits include performances with Cayuga Chamber Orchestra members on their chamber music series, Capitol Ensemble, the South Bay Chamber Music Society, Pacific Serenades, Camerata Pacifica, Jacaranda Series, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on their A La Carte series and on Baroque Conversations, and In Focus (previously named Westside Connections) series.

On the 2007 tour with LACO, Victoria’s playing was highlighted in Steve Osborn’s April 27 Classical Sonoma review of Ginastera’s Variaciones Concertantes: “…but the real standout was violist Victoria Miskolczy, who made the most of her ‘Variacion dramatica’ by producing a full-bodied sound of searing intensity.” Victoria has been featured frequently in chamber music concerts on KMZT’s Sundays Live series from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and has also performed solo recitals in Australia, two of which were aired on national radio (Australian Broadcasting Commission FM).

In addition to her orchestral, chamber and solo work, Victoria has been in demand as a studio musician (from 1989 to 2019) and has played on hundreds of motion picture soundtrack scores for composers such as John Williams, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and Christof Beck, and on recordings with such popular artists as Barbra Streisand, Madonna, and Roger Waters.

A former adjunct viola faculty member at the University of Southern California, Victoria now teaches at Opus Ithaca School of Music.

She studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Music Academy of the West, the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California. Victoria was a prizewinner in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Festival at the Isle of Man and a finalist in the 1987 American String Teachers Association Competition. Her teachers have included Donald McInnes, Karen Tuttle, Raphael Hillyer and Alex Todicescu.

Now a US citizen (since 2004), Victoria lives in Enfield, New York with her husband, trumpeter David Wailes, and their American pit bull terrier, Chloe.

Elizabeth Simkin (cello, Jim Grochocinski & Emily Butler Chair) has been on the faculty at the IC School of Music since the fall of 1994.  She has been part of the Ithaca Music community for many years now and has been very happy to rejoin CCO in 2017.  She is a founding and continuing member of Ensemble X, the Mellits consort, and several chamber music groups with friends and colleagues.  Past projects include seven years on artist faculty at the Bowdoin International Music Festival, serving as US artistic ambassadors with her current dean, pianist Karl Paulnack, and return appearances at summer festivals such as Garth Newel, Olympic, Skaneateles, Heifetz, Chenango, Roycroft, Tanglewood, Spoleto, Chautauqua and others.

As a teacher, she strives to liberate her students towards ever deeper experiences of the magic of music.  She carries and passes on some of the wisdom of her own teachers such as Carla Lumsden via Shinichi Suzuki and Toby Saks in childhood and Steven Doane, at Eastman and Oberlin. Just before coming to Ithaca, she studied with and served as teaching assistant, her mentor the late master, Janos Starker.  Alumni from Elizabeth’s 25 years of professional teaching are now spread far and wide, carrying music in many ways; Orchestras, chamber music, conducting, composing, new music, improvising, playing in bands, teaching in public schools, and privately and frequently touching base back to Ithaca.  In addition to her work at Ithaca College, she enjoys working with younger students and leads the advanced cello program at the Ithaca Suzuki Institute each summer.

She has become increasingly interested in contemplative and service-oriented dimensions in music and has nurtured this interest through exploring playing at the bedside for health care residents and their families, providing music for spiritual occasions and life transitions, collaborating with a storyteller, Regi Carpenter, and a few years ago, lots and lots of lullaby-singing.  For five years now, in partnership with Jayne Demakos, she has taught a course, “Exploring Music as Medicine” at IC.

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CMM (Civic Morning Musicals) exists to support classically trained musicians and their audiences throughout the Central New York region. It is a non-profit, volunteer-run organization, which produces more than 30 concerts a year and sponsors activities for young musicians.