About The Artists
Tina Seligman
Tina's passion for art, dance, theatre, and film was inspired by her mother Irene and by working with her father Maxwell, a film editor for cel animation, live action documentaries, experimental films, and commercials in the heyday of 16mm and 35mm film. Solar-Lunar Suite for Four Seasons, her video collaboration with photographer Dan Rubin, was chosen as an Experimental Short for the 2016 New York Independent Film Festival and their short video, Chromatic Suite: Prelude with David Witten's recording of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's music was included as part of his Parallel Worlds exhibit at The Garage Art Center in Bayside, Queens. As a mixed media artist, she had solo exhibits at The Garage Art Center, Bayside, NY and Flushing Town Hall, Flushing, NY and group exhibits at Cheryl McGinnis Gallery; Southold, LI; and in Saratoga Springs. In 2028, Tina curated Dan Rubin's solo photography exhibit Tribal Baroque: Moments and Metamorphoses at Flushing Town Hall where she has also been a Teaching Artist-in-Residence since 2000. As an art journalist, she regularly contributed to Art of the Times magazine 2005-2013 and has written essays for books including Duoling Huang: The Cultural Landscape in 2014. Tina's poetry has been published by the Feral Press, Cicada Haiku Quarterly, and Onionhead among other periodicals.
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Dan Rubin
​Photographer Dan Rubin began working with black and white 35mm film and is currently focused on digital photography including infrared. With New York as his palette, Dan’s rich range of subjects and themes has been exhibited in Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island, including solo exhibits at The Garage Art Center, Bayside, NY and Flushing Town Hall. His images can be seen at danrubinphoto.com, https://www.tribal-baroque-photographs-by-dan-rubin.com/, and on Vimeo through his video collaborations with Tina Seligman.
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Alicia Mugetti
Born in Argentina, Alicia Mugetti is a New York couture designer with an atelier in Manhattan. Her background in dance, myth, literature and art history contributes to her knowledge of how fabrics, textures and colors react to light as they move, transform and enhance the body as well as the mind and spirit. Each unique garment is dyed and produced by hand, often with painted designs. "Through waves our presence reveals itself. Colors, perfume, sounds...they all dance in waves. They move us, we breathe them. Our dresses follow, flowing in perfect harmony." In addition to fanciful casual clothes, hats and scarves, Mugetti specializes in wedding and evening dresses. Celebrity clients have included performers Emma Thompson, Isabella Rossellini, Rachel Ray, Claire Bloom, and Eugene Zuckerman, as well as numerous opera singers and dancers. She designed costumes for several Dicapo Opera productions including The Magic Flute and Side by Side by Sondheim, and for Pablo Aslan's Avantango production of New York Tango. For film, she designed costumes for Trifling with Fate and several of Tina Seligman's short art videos. Please visit www.aliciamugetti.com for more information.
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Quan Yuan
Violinist Quan Yuan was awarded first prizes in the 2000 Denmark International Young Artist Competition, the China International Young Artist Competition in 2006 and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition, also in 2006. He has performed as a soloist and chamber musician across the United States, Europe and Asia in venues including the Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall in Boston, Merkin Hall in Manhattan, Sanders Theater in Cambridge (Mass.), in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Concert Hall and the Concert Hall of the National Library of China, both in Beijing, and in the Xinzhuang Culture and Arts Center in Taipei. He has played concertos throughout Europe and Asia. He gave master-classes in Taipei and Beijing in 2006, and he has been a judge of the ‘Golden Beijing’ Violin Competition since 2012. He was also a faculty member of Focal Chinese Music in Boston. Since 2012 he has been a member of the prestigious Beijing Musicians Association and has made over 80 recordings. Born in Beijing, he began his violin studies at age four with Muyun Yang. At age thirteen he studied with Wei Zhao in the Beijing Central Conservatoire of Music. After graduating with special distinction, he travelled to the United States to study with Joseph Silverstein at the Curtis Institute of Music. After graduating from Curtis, he continued his studies with Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston from 2008 to 2015. During that period, he received a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree and a Graduate Diploma with academic honors from the New England Conservatory of Music, and also served as a teaching assistant to Donald Weilerstein. He then performed for five years as a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York. In 2021, he was appointed Concertmaster of the Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra in China. (From CD cover information, Toccata Next, London).
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Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin
First appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra as solo flute at the age of sixteen, and has subsequently performed throughout Europe, Latin and South America, Africa, Russia, China and the United States, as both soloist and recitalist. She has performed as a duo with the pianist David Witten since 1981, and has been the flautist with the Dinosaur Annex Contemporary Music Ensemble since 1985. She is a founding member and flautist of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and has performed with the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Boston Lyric Opera Company, New England Ragtime Ensemble, Portland (Maine) and Springfield (Mass.) Symphonies, and in Broadway productions in the musical theatres of Boston. Performing often with contemporary-music ensembles, she has given many world premieres, among them flute concertos by Tom Flaherty and William Eldridge, the latter written in memory of her late husband, Ivan Tcherepnin. Committed to teaching, she has been a visiting artist at universities and conservatoires around the world, including the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Shanghai Conservatoire and the Porto Alegre Conservatoire in Brazil. In Massachusetts, she has taught at South Shore Conservatory, New School of Music, New England Conservatory and Tufts University. Since 1991 she has served as principal adjunct flute instructor of the Music and Theater Arts Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she founded and directs the MIT
Flute Ensemble, The Institooters. (From CD cover information, Toccata Next, London).
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David Witten
David's international career has included numerous concert tours in Ireland, Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, in Mexico and South America, and in China. As the recipient of a 1990 Fulbright Scholar award, he spent five months teaching and concertising in Brazil, and he is frequently invited back to give concerts and master-classes. Closer to home, his performances have included solo appearances with the Boston Pops Orchestra and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and various chamber-music collaborations with members of the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has also been active in contemporary music. He has recorded piano music of Nicholas Van Slyck (Titanic Records) and commissioned over a dozen new works for Soli Espri, a chamber trio he founded in Boston with the clarinettist Chester Brezniak and the mezzo-soprano D’Anna Fortunato. With the flautist Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin, he formed Dúo Clásico, and their recording, Flute and Piano Music of Latin America, was released on the Musical Heritage Society label. His solo album, Piano Music of Manuel M. Ponce, was issued by Marco Polo. More recently, Albany Records released his Eclectic Piano Music of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. His recordings of the piano music and, with the soprano Elena Mindlina, the songs of Nikolai Tcherepnin (both on Toccata Classics), were made as Artist Laureate of the Tcherepnin Society; he currently serves as Vice-President of the Society. His involvement in music has not been limited to performance. He is the editor of Nineteenth-Century Piano Music: Essays in Performance and Analysis (Garland Publishing, New York, 1997), which includes his landmark analytical study of the Chopin Ballades. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, David Witten received his early training at the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. His undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University led to a degree in Psychology. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Piano at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He then graduated with high honours from Boston University, earning the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance. His most influential teachers were Anthony di Bonaventura, Walter Hautzig, Tinka Knopf, Benjamin Oren, Reynaldo Reyes, Leo Smit and Dorothy Taubman. After twenty years as an active recitalist, chamber-music pianist and teacher in the Boston area, he accepted a position at Montclair State University, New Jersey, where he is currently Coordinator of Keyboard Studies. As an enthusiastic photographer, he has won top prizes in several international photography competitions. He had solo photography exhibitions in Budapest and Milan, and his photographs may be seen on www.davidwitten.com. (From CD cover information, Toccata Next, London).
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Ian Greitzer
Principal Clarinetist with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and the Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms Society. He is a former member of the Boston Conservatory Chamber Players, Boston Musica Viva, Dinosaur Annex Contemporary Music Ensemble, Extension Works and the Boston Conservatory Faculty Wind Quintet. He has also performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Ballet, the Opera Company of Boston and the Pittsburgh Symphony. His recordings have appeared on the Philips, Koch International, CRI and Northeastern labels. He is a former faculty member of the Boston Conservatory, Boston University School of Fine Arts, Atlantic Union College and UMass-Dartmouth. He is currently a full-time faculty member at Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode Island. (From CD cover information, Toccata Next, London).
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Donald Berman
Pianist Donald Berman is recognized as an important exponent of new works by living composers and has performed music by twentieth-century masters and given recitals that link classical and modern repertoires. His principal teachers were Mildred Victor, George Barth, John Kirkpatrick and Leonard Shure. His The Unknown Ives, Volumes 1 and 2, and The Uncovered Ruggles (New World) represent the only recordings of the complete short piano works of Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles. His recordings on Bridge Records include the four-disc set Americans in Rome: Music by Fellows of the American Academy in Rome, The Piano Music of Martin Boykan and Scott Wheeler: Tributes and Portraits. He has also recorded The Light That Is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives (with the soprano Susan Narucki on New World), Wasting the Night: Songs of Scott Wheeler (Naxos) and Christopher Theofanidis’ Piano Concerto (Summit), as well as music by Su Lian Tan (Arsis), Arthur Levering (New World), Martin Boykan (New World and Bridge), Tamar Diesendruck (Centaur) and Aaron Jay Kernis (Koch). Recent performances include solo recitals at Bargemusic, National Sawdust and (Le) Poisson Rouge, all in New York. He has also been a featured soloist at Zankel Hall and Rockport Music Festival, as well as abroad in Beijing, Belgrade, Rome and Israel. He has been the pianist of the Dinosaur Annex Contemporary Music Ensemble since 1987. A 2011 Radcliffe Institute Fellow, Donald Berman is currently President of The Charles Ives Society. He teaches at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and at Tufts University. (From CD cover information, Toccata Next, London).