About the Musicians of Accordo

Rebecca Albers
Violist Rebecca Albers has performed throughout North America, Asia and Europe. Her performances have been seen on national television in the United States and China and heard on National Public Radio and French National Radio. A native of Longmont, CO, Rebecca currently resides in Saint Paul, MN as the Principal violist of the Minnesota Orchestra. Rebecca made her concerto debut at Lincoln Center, performing the New York premiere of Samuel Adler’s Viola Concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra. She made her European recital debut at the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris. She has also toured extensively with the Albers Trio, a group formed with her two sisters. Rebecca is a Distinguished Artist faculty member at Mercer University’s Robert McDuffie Center for Strings. She previously taught at the University of Michigan, in collaboration with Heidi Castleman in the Juilliard School’s college and precollege divisions, and at such summer festivals as the Perlman Music Program and the North American Viola Institute. Rebecca received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard school where she studied with Heidi Castleman and HsinYun Huang. Past teachers include James Maurer and Ellie Albers LeRoux.

Ruggero Allifranchini
Ruggero Allifranchini is the Associate Concertmaster of the SPCO. He was born into a musical household in Milan, Italy, and raised on a diverse musical diet, ranging from Beethoven to John Coltrane. He studied at the New School in Philadelphia with Jascha Brodsky and later at the Curtis Institute of Music with Szymon Goldberg and, for chamber music, Felix Galimir. He was the recipient of the Diploma d’Onore from the Chigiana Academy in Siena, Italy. In 1989, he cofounded the Borromeo String Quartet, with which he played exclusively for eleven years. He is the violinist of the trio Nobilis, with pianist and former SPCO Artistic Partner Stephen Prutsman and cellist Suren Bagratuni. Nobilis has performed chamber music and solos with orchestras in Europe, South America, and South Africa as well as in North America. Over the past few seasons he has played as Guest Concertmaster with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, and the Minnesota Orchestra.

Stephen Copes
A native of Los Angeles, violinist Steven Copes leads a diverse and enthusiastic musical life as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral leader and teacher. He joined the SPCO as concertmaster in 1998 and has led the orchestra from the chair in several highly acclaimed, eclectic programs and performed solo works by Berg, Brahms, Hindemith, Kirchner, Lutoslawski, Mozart, Piazzolla, Prokofiev, and Weill. A zealous advocate for the music of today, he gave the world premiere of George Tsontakis’ Grammy-nominated Violin Concerto No. 2 (2003), which won the 2005 Grawemeyer award, and has been recorded for KOCH Records. Copes was co-founder of the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival in Colorado, and is a member of the Twin Cities chamber group Accordo, now in its fifth season. A frequent guest concertmaster, Copes has recorded and toured extensively in Europe and Asia with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and has performed in the same capacity with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Baltimore Symphony. He holds degrees from The Curtis Institute and Juilliard.

Erin Keefe
Violinist Erin Keefe, who became concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra in September 2011, has established a reputation as an artist who combines exhilarating temperament and fierce integrity. Keefe has been awarded many major distinctions, including, in 2006, the Avery Fisher Career Grant. Among the leading chamber musicians of her generation, Keefe joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as an Artist during the 2010-2011 season; previously, from 2006 to 2009, she had been a member of the Chamber Music Society Two program. A native of Northampton, Massachusetts, Keefe earned a master of music degree from the Juilliard School and a bachelor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music. Her teachers included Ronald Copes, Ida Kavafian, Arnold Steinhardt, Philip Setzer, Philipp Naegele, Brian Lewis and Teri Einfeldt.

Maiya Papach
Violist Maiya Papach is the principal viola of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, having been a member of the orchestra since 2008 and serving as acting principal since 2009. She has made solo appearances with the SPCO in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with concertmaster Steven Copes, and will appear again this season as soloist in Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae. Papach has made frequent national and international appearances as a chamber musician, with a versatile profile in her performances of both traditional and contemporary repertoire. She is a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom she has performed frequently at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and dozens of experimental venues. Papach is a 2013 recipient of the McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians administered by the MacPhail Center for Music, and is looking forward to commissioning a new work for solo viola and ensemble with the award. She is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Juilliard School, and her principal teachers include Roland Vamos, Karen Tuttle, Benny Kim, and Hsin-Yun Huang. She performs on a 19th century Turinese viola by Annibale Fagnola.

Anthony Ross
Principal Cello Anthony Ross has been a soloist many times with the Minnesota Orchestra, performing concertos by Schumann, Dvořák, Victor Herbert, James MacMillan, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, Elgar and Shostakovich, as well as many chamber works. In recent seasons he has performed Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante for Cello and Orchestra, the Walton Cello Concerto and the Brahms Double Concerto, the latter alongside former First Associate Concertmaster Sarah Kwak. In March 2012 he was featured on the Orchestra’s Chamber Music at MacPhail series, performing Schubert’s Octet for Winds and Strings. Ross was principal cello of the Rochester Philharmonic in New York before joining the Orchestra in 1988; he assumed his current position in 1991. A graduate of Indiana University, Ross earned a master’s degree at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. In 1982 he was awarded the bronze medal at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition, and he received McKnight Fellowships in 2001 and 2005. Together with his wife Beth Rapier, the Minnesota Orchestra’s assistant principal cello, Ross produces the annual “Harmony for Habitats” benefit concert at St. John’s Episcopal Church in south Minneapolis.

Ronald Thomas
Former principal cellist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Ronald Thomas sustains one of the most active and varied careers in today’s music world as performer, teacher and artistic administrator. Thomas is the co-founder and artistic director of the Boston Chamber Music Society with whom he appears regularly and has produced a number of highly acclaimed recordings. Thomas is the artistic director of Chestnut Hill Concerts and has been involved at Bargemusic in New York City. While he was a member of the Boston Musica Viva and the Aeolian Chamber Players, he premiered countless new works. Thomas has taught at M.I.T., Brown University, Boston Conservatory and Peabody Conservatory. Prior to winning the Young Artists International Auditions at the age of nineteen, he attended the New England Conservatory and the Curtis Institute. His principal teachers were Lorne Munroe, David Soyer, and for early studies, Mary Canberg.

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