Two graduates of the doctoral program at Stony Brook University's Department of Music will be performing.
PROGRAM:
VIOLIN/VIOLA
Duo in C Major by Jean Sibelius
Embraceable Duo by Paul Chihara/George Gershwin
Three Latin Duets by David McKeown
Dr. Joenne Dumitrascu, violin; Dr. Stephen Gorgone, viola
VIOLA/PIANO
Romanze in F Major, Op. 85 by Max Bruch
Sonatina in E Minor, Op. 5, II. Delicato ("Triolet érotique") by Alexei Gantsher
Romance by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Dr. Stephen Gorgone, viola; Dr. Joenne Dumitrascu, piano
VIOLIN/PIANO
Prayer by Yovcho Krushev
Dr. Stephen Gorgone, violin; Dr. Joenne Dumitrascu, piano
Méditation from Thaïs by Jules Massenet
Romance, Op. 23 by Amy Beach
Dr. Joenne Dumitrascu, violin; Dr. Stephen Gorgone, piano
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS
Dr. Stephen Gorgone is a professional violist, violinist, piano accompanist, music teacher, NYSSMA Adjudicator, and Feldenkrais Practitioner based on Long Island. As a violist, he has played in the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes, and the Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra. He was a winner of the SUNY Orange Concerto Competition and a Finalist in the Ithaca College Concerto Competition. A founding member of the Whitman String Quartet, he has participated in the Emerson String Quartet Institute and the Philip Setzer String Quartet Intensive while performing throughout Long Island as part of North Shore Pro Musica and the Three Village Chamber Players. As a freelance musician, he has also played violin and viola with Viva Strings NY, Consonance Music Ensembles, West Islip String Ensemble, Ithaca Free Concerts, the Dorian String Quartet, and more. In addition to accompanying student recitals, he is a Piano Accompanist at the Middle Country Central School District (MCCSD). Throughout his career, he has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Kodak Hall, Corning Museum of Glass, and other venues.
He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Viola Performance from Stony Brook University and has Masters and Bachelors degrees in Viola Performance (summa cum laude), as well as a Bachelors in Mathematics (summa cum laude and the Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for the highest GPA) and Suzuki Violin training from Ithaca College. He was also a participant in the Karen Tuttle Coordination Conference in New York City and a Teacher Assistant, Orchestra Librarian, and Counselor at the New York Summer Music Festival in Oneonta, NY.
In addition to maintaining a private studio of violin, viola, cello, and piano students, he is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Hofstra University where he teaches violin lessons, viola lessons, and coaches piano/string chamber music. He has also taught undergraduate chamber music and technique lessons, music theory, and music education classes both at Stony Brook University and at Ithaca College. Stephen Gorgone is also a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner and teaches the only weekly Awareness Through Movement classes based in Suffolk County while offering private Functional Integration lessons throughout Long Island. He also teaches Feldenkrais for Musician workshops through Stony Brook University and New York State Council of Administrators of Music Education (NYSCAME).
Professional memberships include the Feldenkrais Guild of North America, National Association for Music Education, New York State School Music Association, Suffolk County Music Educators Association, Suzuki Association of the Americas, Pi Kappa Lambda (music honor society), Phi Kappa Phi (honor society), Pi Mu Epsilon (mathematics honor society), and Oracle Honor Society.
Joenne Dumitrascu began her musical studies in Europe and continued in the pre-college division of the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) in Toronto, pursuing both violin and piano training. She pursued college training at the RCM’s Glenn Gould Professional School (B. Mus., A.D.), The Boston Conservatory at Berklee College (M.M.), and furthered her training with additional studies at the the Hochschule für Muzik und Theater München, the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, as well as the Royal College of Music in London. Additionally, she was admitted to several prestigious summer academies including Meadowmount School of Music, the RoundTop Festival-Institute, the Banff Centre, the Summit Music Festival, and the Casalmaggiore International Music Festival in Italy. Dumitrascu recently completed her doctorate in music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNY Stony Brook), where she was a violin major. While a doctoral student, she completed the newly-established Emerson String Quartet Institute program. Her principal teacher was Philip Setzer of the nine-time Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet, and she trained with the rest of the Emerson Quartet and David Finckel.
Dumitrascu was invited to make her orchestral debut at the age of 14 with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and appeared on CBC Radio a year later performing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor. She was on the competition circuit and appeared at Johansen, Marteau, Enescu, Stulberg, Glenn Gould Chamber Competition, and Canadian Nationals amongst many others, several of which she was laureate of. Dumitrascu is a former scholarship and grant recipient of Kiwanis International (Canada Region), Ontario and Canada Arts Councils.
Dumitrascu has toured regularly throughout Europe, Asia, and North America, and performed at such venues as the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s Glenn Gould Studio, Koerner Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and Stern Auditorium, the Four Seasons Center’s Richard Bradshaw Amphitheater, Boston’s Jordan Hall, and the Romanian Atheneum in Bucharest, Romania. She has regularly recorded for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and CityTV in Toronto, WGBH in Boston, WFMT Chicago, NBC, ABC, and many others. She has performed frequently in the Noon Hour Concert Series at the National Ballet of Canada/Canadian Opera Company’s Four Seasons Center and has made guest appearances for The Boston Conservatory’s strings faculty chamber series, String Masters, the Aulos Ensemble (one of America’s top early music ensembles), and during Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall’s visit to the Royal Conservatory in 2009. She was recently a guest artist on WFMT’s Relevant Tones with Seth Boustead: Discovery Series, with performances at National Sawdust and (le) Poisson Rouge. She has collaborated with members of the Emerson String Quartet (ESQ) on several chamber music projects, including the New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark. During the festival’s 2017 visit to New York, she appeared with members of ESQ in a gala concert at Carnegie’s Weill Hall where she also performed acclaimed American composer Joan Tower’s quintet Rising, with the composer in attendance. As an orchestral player, she has performed in the orchestra of the National Ballet of Canada and the Canadian Opera Company, Oakville Chamber Orchestra, Boston Civic Orchestra, and Boston Opera Collaborative of which she was also concertmaster.
As a collaborative pianist, Dumitrascu has worked as an audition coach for opera and musical theater. Formerly, she worked with the pre-college vocal students at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto as well as vocal diction classes in the undergraduate vocal program at the Glenn Gould School.
Additional studies in music production, composition, film, and business have followed alongside music. Outside of classical music, Dumitrascu has worked on several film and TV projects, including Atom Egoyan’s 2009 film ‘Chloe’, the TV show ‘Nikita’, the History Channel, as well as recording work with the Screen Composers' Guild of Canada.
As a music coach, Dumitrascu was a chamber music coach in the undergraduate program at SUNY Stony Brook and is currently a faculty chair at New York-based pre-college music program, Herald School of the Arts, in Queens, NY. She is also a jury member of the New York International Music Competition for young artists, held annually at Carnegie Hall. Other industry credits include editorial work for Taiwanese guitarist Ming-Jui Liu's new work, Morning of the Sunshine, published through Canadian publishing house Les Éditions Doberman-Yppan. Dumitrascu has two albums currently in the works, with the first one set to be released towards the end of 2023.