The chairperson's speech 2006

Yael Acher - Musician/Composer
Award Recipient 2006

Yael Acher from Tel Aviv and Copenhagen graduated with a BA in Music, Classical Flute Performing Arts from the Rubin Academy for Music & Dance, Jerusalem. She is currently sharing her time between Copenhagen and New York City where she is taking an MA in Contemporary Composition while performing as an instrumentalist/composer.

Her art stretches from the classical through modern, free-improvisation, contemporary and progressive, jazz and beat, Latin and electronics. She has performed in as a soloist, in multi performance productions and in concerts in Scandinavia, Israel, Romania, France, and New York.

Yael also co-operates with choreographers and dancers as an electro acoustic composer/performer and as such has traveled extensively with modern dance productions.

Her latest CD, “La Belle Ombre” with music composed in Copenhagen, was created with the help of a grant from the Danish Art Council

The Danish daily, Berlingske Tidende calls her music, “Colorful, flying flute tones…”, and “Spell-binding, action packed and deeply original.”

For more information, go to her website: www.modianomusic.com

Kirsi-Marja Alanen is a native of Hämeenlinna, Finland.

She has been studying violin at the Juilliard School since 2003 under Professor Lewis Kaplan.  Prior to that she studied at the Sibelius Academy in Finland.  Kirsi-Marja has participated in various master classes taught by great violin virtuosos.  She has competed in many national and international violin contests.

To quote Professor Kaplan “Kirsi-Marja plays with intelligence, passion and great imagination.  She is truly dedicated to her art and has great potential.”    

Kirsi-Marja is grateful for American Scandinavian Society for the grant. 
This will enable her to continue her studies. After graduation in 2007  she plans to continue with her Masters perhaps at Juilliard or other conservatories in the New York area.

Margret Arnadottir - Musician
Award Recipient 2006

Cellist Margret Arnadottir of Reykjavik, Iceland, received her Masters from The Juilliard School in New York in May of 2006.

Professor David Soyer of The Juilliard School recommended her highly and said: "She is a very gifted young cellist posessed with ample technique, lovely tone and musical sensitivity and intelligence."

Tavros records released a CD recording in 2004 - Rachmaninoff's Eligiaque for trios, performed by Margret Arnadottir, Julia Sakharova and Yung Wook Yoo, reviewed by Nathan A Abbookire who said: "This is the performance that Rachmaninoff could only have dreamed of."

Margret Arnadottir will be performing in the New York area this coming season.

Anne Katrine Senstad - Photographer
Award Recipient 2006

Anne Katrine Senstad is a Norwegian photographer who lives in New York. She spent her formative years in South East Asia, while the developing years were spent in her
native Norway. In 1990 she came to New York to study at Parsons School of Design
where she graduated with a BFA/Fine art of Photography  -w/Honors.

She has exhibited internationally, including at the Architectural Museum in Sao Paulo, Stichting Noorderlicht, The Netherlands, and Gary Snyder Fine Art in New York. Her first major solo show was held at Galleri JMS in Oslo, Norway, 2002 where she showed the Light and Color series, a photographic investigation of color, sound and light fields. She has been honored by Her Majesty the Queen of Norway on several occasions, and the Queen also opened Senstad's exhibition at the Trygve Lie Gallery in NY, Febuary 2005.

Her first artist book " The Norwegians" was released in December 2005, with essays by Gerhard Sander, founder of The Sander archives in Cologne, and Thure Erik Lund, prizewinning Norwegian author. The book contains 50 portraits of Norwegian men ranging from explorers to artists to everyday people.

In 2000 the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. made a portrait documentary on Anne Katrine Senstad as a Norwegian artist and photographer living in New York. The film aired in 8 European countries, and was viewed as an important informative document for young aspiring Scandinavian artists and photographers.

Anne Katrine Senstad has received grants from the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs and The Norwegian Photography Foundation for the Arts.
Her work appears in private, corporate and gallery collections internationally.

For more information, go to her website: www.annesenstad.com

Anders Cato - Director
Award Recipient 2006

Anders Cato was born in Sweden and moved to New York in 1987.

He has directed a long list of plays in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, besides Europe, among them several Scandinavian production: Ibsen, Strindberg and Noren.  In 2005 he directed two critically acclaimed productions at the Berkshire Theatre Festival: David Mamet’s American Buffalo and his own adaptation of Strindberg’s The Father.

In 2002, Cato directed the world premiere of an adaptation by Craig Lucas of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, based on Cato’s own translation, also at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, and in 2005 presented at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in New York.

Cato has collaborated in various capacities, director, producer, stage manager, with many of America’s finest playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, and Sam Shepard. He has written and recorded over 100 programs about American culture for Swedish National Radio. He recently produced a documentary film about Joseph Chaikin and his work with actors with disabilities.

This summer Anders Cato has been busy directing Garret Dillahunt, Robin Weigert and Linda Hamilton in The Night of the Iguana at the Berkshire Theatre Festival.

Arthur Shen is an American singer with a great love for Scandinavia in general and Finland in particular.  His repertoire includes Sibelius, Kuula, Merikanto and Grieg, and among his ambitions is a plan to learn the new opera, “Adriana Mater” by Finnish composer, Kaija Saariaho.

With a formal training in opera from the Mannes College of Music, and ongoing voice lessons with Mignon Dunn, he has sung in several operas and choirs.  His career highlights include Rodolfo in La Bohème, Ruggero in La Rondine, Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly, besides performances in Handel’s Messiah and Coronation Anthem, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater.

Arthur is the winner of the Richard F. Gold Career Grant for 1999, and a scholarship recipient of both the Tanglewood Institute and the Mannes College of Music.

Along with his Finnish wife, he has traveled extensively in Finland and sung at music festivals and in recitals there, thus developing a special bond with the Finnish spirit as reflected in its music.

For more information, go to his website: www.arthur-shen.net