WEDNESDAY DATE – Free Courtroom Concert featuring Classica Chamber Players (formerly Hill House Chamber Players)

Please Note: This concert will be held in the Landmark Center Cortile (1st floor).

About the Artists

Julie Ayer was Assistant Principal Second Violin with the Minnesota Orchestra for 36 years, and formerly a member of the Houston Symphony. She studied violin with world renowned Josef Gingold at Indiana University. She organized and participated in a musician exchange with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, was a member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and the Oregon Bach Festival. She was one of the founding members of the Hill House Chamber Players, former resident ensemble of the James J Hill House, a nationally important historical landmark in St. Paul, MN, owned by the Minnesota Historical Society. In May of 2015, she rejoined the Minnesota Orchestra on their ground-breaking tour to Cuba.

Cellist Tanya Remenikova has inspired critical acclaim during her 40-year international performing career. Reviews from around the world describe her “impassioned approach” to cello playing as having an “elegant, singing tone,” “expressive radiancy,” “sonority,” and “lustre.”

Performances have brought her to the major halls in music capitals around the world: London, Moscow, Jerusalem, Brussels, Bonn, Frankfurt, Florence, Taipei, Shanghai. Remenikova has been soloist with the Israel Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and Orchestre Nationale de Belgique, among others. In the United States, recital performances have taken her to New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Kansas City, Houston, San Francisco and the Aspen Music Festival.

Remenikova’s recordings of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Britten are on the DDF and Sound Star Tone labels. Her concert performances have been broadcast in several countries on networks such as the BBC in London, BRT-RTB in Brussels, WFMT in Chicago, WQXR in New York City, National Public Radio, and American Public Radio on such nationally broadcast programs as Saint Paul Sunday Morning.

Professor and chamber music coach on the faculty at the University of Minnesota School of Music since 1976, Remenikova has attracted students from all over the world. As a teacher, she relies on her own thorough training in music, both as cellist and pianist. Before she became a student of the world renowned Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatory in Russia, Remenikova studied with Valentin Berlinsky, a member of the renowed Borodin Quartet.

An avid chamber music player, she performs regularly with the Saint Paul-based Hill House Chamber Players. She also appeared in the Barge Chamber Music Series in New York and with the Karlsruhe Trio in Germany. She has given master classes in Europe, Asia and the U.S. and premiered a number of new compositions, including a work dedicated to her by Judith Zaimont, “Tanya” Poems for Cello Solo.

She is a recipient of 2007 Master Teacher Studio Award from the Minnesota Chapter of the American String Teachers Association.

Pianist Mary Jo Gothmann enjoys a varied career as a chamber musician, soloist, opera coach and organist. Her recent chamber music engagements have included performances with the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, Minnesota Orchestra Sommerfest, Hill House Players, Bakken Trio, Music at Trinity, Colonial Chamber Music Series, Lakes Area Music Festival, and the Taos Chamber Music Group. Mary Jo is the founder and Artistic Director of the JOYA Chamber Music Series at Zion Lutheran Church in Anoka. Mary Jo is the pianist for VocalEssence and performs frequently with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra. She has performed with EOS Orchestra in New York City, and as a piano soloist with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the St. Paul Civic Orchestra. She has worked for some of the most prestigious opera companies in the United States including the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and Minnesota Opera and has performed recitals with singers from the Metropolitan Opera as well as with instrumentalists from many of the country’s major symphony orchestras. Mary Jo is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Program, University of Minnesota, New England Conservatory and St. Olaf College.