Violinist Leslie Shank and guitarist Joseph Hagedorn have been performing as duo all over the United States. Their concert at the Artget Gallery is organized in cooperation with belgrade Guitar district.
Biographies:
Praised by the New York Times as “an impressive violinist, playing intimately and sweetly at one moment and with fearless enthusiasm at the next,” Leslie Shank leads a busy musical life as soloist and chamber musician. She was a member of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for 30 years, 24 of them as assistant concertmaster. Soloing frequently with The SPCO, she also performed with the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, the Seattle Symphony, and the National Orchestral Association, among others. She has performed at leading festivals, including Aspen, Grand Teton, Mainly Mozart, and Marlboro, and has served as concertmaster at Music in the Mountains (CO) and Britt (OR). She toured the East Coast with the prestigious Musicians from Marlboro, and was for four seasons a member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. Ms. Shank is a founding member of the Isles Ensemble, composed of many of the Twin Cities’ foremost chamber musicians; she plays both violin and viola in the group. In addition to two CDs with the Shank-Hagedorn duo, Ms. Shank has recorded Bartók’s sonatas for violin and piano with pianist Heather MacLaughlin on the Centaur label. Leslie Shank earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School. Her teachers were Shirley Givens, Felix Galimir, and Dorothy Delay. In 2014-15 she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A founding member of the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet, Joseph Hagedorn performed with the group from 1986 until 2023, touring to some 30 states, Mexico, China, Germany, Serbia, and Montenegro, Bulgaria, Northern Macedonia and recording six CDs. The Shank-Hagedorn duo has recorded two CDs on the innova and Centaur labels and performed concerts in Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Oregon, California and Mexico. Hagedorn earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Cornell College and a Master of Music degree from the University of Minnesota, studying with Richard Stratton, Christopher Carrington, Nelson Amos, and Jeffrey Van. In 1990, he was the first prize winner at the Guitar Foundation of America International solo competition. Hagedorn has served on the music faculty of the University of Wisconsin-River Falls since 1988, and his solo and concerto appearances have taken him to more than 25 American cities and Canada. He has been heard twice on the nationally broadcast radio program Saint Paul Sunday, once with the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet and once with the Shank-Hagedorn Duo.