Schubert Club Concerts

Artist Information

BIOS:

Minneapolis composer Abbie Burt Betinis will be writing her sixth annual Christmas carol this year, and like two generations before her, will be sending it out as her holiday card for the year.  She is carrying on the tradition begun in 1922 by her great-grandfather, Rev. Bates Burt, and continued by his son Alfred Burt, who wrote 15 now famous Christmas Carols before his early death in 1954.
 
Abbie took up the family tradition in 2001, and since then Minnesota Public Radio has invited Abbie to MPR’s studios to premiere her latest carol on the air with the quartet we now call The MPR Carolers. Three members of the group met while at St. Olaf College, then, while singing with The Dale Warland Singers, decided to start singing as a quartet with tenor Justin Karch.

Abbie Betinis is a graduate student in music composition at the University of Minnesota. Originally from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, Betinis holds a B.A. from St. Olaf College, and has also studied in Paris, France on scholarship from the European American Musical Alliance.  She has received the Mention Excellent in composition (EAMA), the Mention Tres Bien in counterpoint (EAMA), the Craig and Janet Swan Composer Prize (University of Minnesota), grants and awards from ASCAP and the American Composers Forum, and, most recently the Polyphonos Composition Prize in the Young Composers division (2006).  In the last four years, she has written 25 commissioned works, including new work for the American Suzuki Foundation, Cantus, Dale Warland Singers, The Rose Ensemble, University of Minnesota Men’s Choir, and Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, among others.  Abbie lives in St. Paul, where she is Composer-in-Residence for The Schubert Club, The Rose Ensemble, and The Singers—Minnesota Choral Artists.

Mary Sorlie received a Bachelor and Master of Music in violin performance from the University of Minnesota.  Widely active as a free-lance violinist, she currently performs with the Minnesota Sinfonia and the WolfGang.  She currently is on the conducting staff of the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, where she is the conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Dick Hensold (B.M., Oberlin Conservatory) is a free-lance musician specializing in three genres: early music, traditional music of Great Britain and Ireland, and Cambodian traditional music. He performs on Northumbrian small-pipes (a quiet bagpipe), recorder, Medieval great pipes, Swedish bagpipes,  traditional Cambodian reed instruments, seljefløyte, and low whistle.   He is currently one of the foremost Northumbrian small pipers in North America, and has performed in both Scotland and Northumberland, and has taught Northumbrian small pipes at workshops in the United States, Canada, and Northumberland.  He is principal composer and arranger for the Celtic-oriented quartet Piper's Crow, and also performs with several other folk groups and as part of a 4-piece traditional Cambodian ensemble.  His artistic diversity tends to show up in unusual programming. He is a 2006 Bush Artist Fellow.