Santa Barbara Music Club Concert

The Santa Barbara Music Club presents more exquisite classical music on

Saturday, January 13, 2024, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 4575 Auhay

Dr., Santa Barbara. Pianist and composer Eric Valinsky will perform Claude

Debussy’s Suite bergamasque and the concert premiere of the “Summer” and

“Spring” movements from his own work Wisperfal (2010), a piece based on

Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Violinist Sofia Malvinni and pianist Betty Oberacker

will perform Reinhold Glière’s opulent Romance, Op. 3 and Serge Prokofiev’s popular Sonata in D major, Op. 94.

Admission is free; parking is ample and convenient. For more details, go to

www.SBMusicClub.org.

BIOS

Sofia Malvinni, violinist, stems from a musical family. She started violin lessons

at age three with her mother, a Curtis Institute of Music and UCSB alumna. A

Santa Barbara Music Club scholarship awardee, Sofia has won numerous prizes

and awards, including First Prize in the 2019 Performing Arts Scholarship

Foundation Junior Competition. She is a three-time winner in the Santa Barbara

Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition, where she has served as concertmaster for

the last four years. At age 11, she performed the Bach Double Concerto with the

Santa Barbara Symphony under the direction of Nir Kabaretti at the Granada

Theater. In May of 2022, she was invited by Maestro Kabaretti to play in the first

violin section of the Santa Barbara Symphony.

She has performed in numerous masterclasses and received lessons with renowned

violinists, including Benjamin Beilman, Martin Beaver, Nathan Cole, Jennifer

Koh, and Kirill Troussov, and artists such as Eliot Fisk from top conservatories

(Hans Eisler Hochschule für Musik-Berlin, Colburn Music School, Curtis Institute,

New England Conservatory of Music, Royal College of Music) in the US and

Europe. She has spent three summers at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and

was also chosen for a masterclass at the Steinway House in Munich in May 2022.

Sofia graduated a year early from Dos Pueblos High School, having fulfilled her

degree requirements as a dual enrollment student at SBCC. Always challenging

herself, she excels at academics and sports. While in high school Sofia thrived as a

member of the Engineering Academy and was also on the Varsity Girls Soccer

team while continuing to play on the Central Coast Academy soccer team.

As a community service, Malvinni has given numerous performances to help bring

aid to the people affected by the crisis in Ukraine. She has become an ambassador

for Direct Relief and was honored in May of 2022 for her “extraordinary

commitment to the health and lives of people affected by the humanitarian crisis

caused by the war in the Ukraine.” Since the crisis in the Ukraine is still ongoing,

you may contribute to her fundraiser online here.

Sofia is currently attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as an

undergraduate violin major in the studio of Professor Simon James. She plays on a

1741 Guarneri copy by renowned German maker Bernd Dimbauth and is striving

to win a competition where she can receive the loan of an old Italian instrument to

further her career ambition to be a soloist.

In addition to all things musical, Sofia is a lover of nature, animals, soccer and

sunsets. When not practicing she enjoys her time with friends and the outdoors.

She thanks the Santa Barbara Music Club for the many scholarships she has

received over the years and for the opportunity of this solo recital. She is grateful

for the support from the Santa Barbara community.

Betty Oberacker, pianist, is internationally acclaimed for her interpretations of

both traditional and contemporary solo and chamber music repertoire, and has

toured throughout Europe, Israel, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the

U.S., including performances at Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin

Philharmonic Hall and Vienna Musikverein. She has been Artist-in-Residence at

55 universities, conservatories and music festivals worldwide, and many important

composers have dedicated their compositions to her. Her musical gifts were

evidenced at three, when she began to play the piano and compose entirely by ear.

Piano lessons started at age seven, and at nine she was accepted on scholarship as

the only child student of the noted pianist Beryl Rubinstein. Her BM/MM Degrees

are from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and her DMA Degree is from Ohio State

University, where she was concomitantly a member of the piano faculty. Her

discography includes Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Clavier Records), A Bach

Commemorative Recital (MIT Great Performances Archives), Chamber Music of

Emma Lou Diemer (Orion), Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (Century), John Biggs’

Variations on a Theme of Shostakovich (VMM), and Diemer’s Piano Concerto

(MMC), the latter two works composed for Oberacker. Honors accorded her

include a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Italy and the University of California

Distinguished Teaching Award, and her students hold important positions as

performers and teachers in the U.S., Asia and Europe. Dr. Oberacker is UCSB

Professor Emeritus, and enjoys an active performing, teaching and chamber music

coaching schedule.

Eric Valinsky, native Manhattanite, has, for more years than he would like to

admit, maintained dual careers in computer systems architecture and music. He

was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Illinois,

finally achieving his DMA in music composition from Columbia University. He

studied composition with Walter Aschaffenburg, Salvatore Martirano, Jack

Beeson, and Darius Milhaud; piano with Sara Crawford Drogheo and Emil

Danenberg; and conducting with Harold Farberman. While living in Los Angeles,

he became music director and composer-in-residence for The Storie-Crawford

Dance Theatre Ensemble. Returning to New York, he served in a similar capacity

for Danny Buraczeski’s Jazzdance, Uris Bahr and Dancers, and The New

American Ballet Ensemble as well as composer-in-residence for The Rachel

Harms Dance Company, Opera Uptown, and the Dance Department at City

College of New York. He is currently Music Director for the American Dance &

Music Performance Group and moonlights as founder and partner of Inlineos LLC,

Santa Barbara Music Club concerts display a wonderful diversity of historical

musical periods and compositional styles, including beloved masterworks and

exciting new and seldom-heard repertoire.

Of the series, the Santa BarbaraIndependent exclaimed: “A beautiful day, a beautiful room, beautiful music … whocould ask for more?” and Gerald Carpenter in Noozhawk.com declared, “EverySanta Barbara Music Club concert that I have ever attended has been a sensory joy

as well as a consciousness expansion.”

A valued cultural resource in the community since 1969, the Music Club’s mission is threefold:

(1) Presentation of an annual series of concerts, free to the public.

(2) Aiding and encouraging musical education by the disbursement of scholarships to talented local music students.

(3) Presentation of community outreach activities, including bringing great music to residents of area retirement homes.

For information on this or other Santa Barbara Music Club programs and performing artists, visit SBMusicClub.org.