Sundays @ Four

Cellist Eugene Sor has been a familiar face to Bay Area audiences and students for over 25 years. His background in the art of ensemble playing has led to collaborations with esteemed artists such as the Alexander String Quartet, Baumer Quartet, Fry Street Quartet, Aizuri Quartet, Telegraph Quartet, cellist Bonnie Hampton, and pianist Jeff LaDeur.
A passionate music educator, Mr. Sor serves as the Artistic Director at Crowden Music Center in Berkeley and as Resident Conductor for Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, two organizations rooted in the rich tradition of playing chamber music. As a conductor, he has led premieres of pieces by renowned composers Samuel Adams and Gabriella Smith, and he has toured with The Crowden School throughout the US and abroad, including performances in Washington DC, Chicago, Cleveland, Honolulu, Pittsburgh, Seattle,
Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Stockholm, and Copenhagen.

Violinist, conductor, arranger, and San Francisco Bay Area native, Zakarias Grafilo has been the first violinist of the Alexander String Quartet since 2002. With the ASQ, Mr. Grafilo has performed all over the world and has recorded extensively, releasing works by Dvořák, Mozart, Ravel and Schumann as well as complete string quartet cycles of Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich, Bartók, and Kodály.  

Mr. Grafilo received critical acclaim for his arrangements for string quartet and mezzo-soprano of works by Gustav Mahler (Rückert-Lieder, Kindertotenlieder, and Songs of a Wayfarer), Richard Wagner (Wesendonck-Lieder) and Richard Strauss (Four Last Songs). The Mahler arrangements were featured in the recording, In meinem Himmel – The Mahler Song Cycles (FoghornClassics), with mezzo soprano Kindra Scharich and the Alexander String Quartet. These highly sought after arrangements of Mahler have also been featured in various music festival and chamber music performances in the United States and in Europe.

Zakarias Grafilo holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies from San Francisco State University. He is currently on faculty at SFSU where he coaches chamber music, co-directs the University Orchestra and maintains a studio of violin students. In addition, Mr. Grafilo coaches chamber music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Pre-College Division.

Violist Nao Kubota is an active chamber and orchestral musician in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. A passionate chamber musician, Nao has worked closely with many of the leading string quartets of the generation, including the Juilliard, St. Lawrence, Pacifica, Escher, Borromeo, Cavani, and Danish String Quartets. Nao was the Gold Prize Winner of the 9th International Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition, and has attended summer festivals such
as the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, Aspen Music Festival Center for Advanced Quartet Studies, St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, Sarasota Music Festival, Encore Chamber Music String Quartet Intensive, and Bowdoin International Music Festival.

As an orchestral musician, Nao has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, California Symphony, and Ojai Music Festival, among others. Nao received her Bachelor of Music from New England Conservatory, where she studied with Dimitri Murrath, then her Master's and Graduate Certificate from the USC Thornton School of Music, where she studied with Karen Dreyfus.

Nao is a member of the award-winning chamber ensemble, Delirium Musicum, whose debut album "Seasons" was released with Warner Classics. She spends her summers at the Mendocino Music Festival, where she is Assistant Director of the Emerging Artists Program. Nao is a faculty member at the Crowden Music Center. 

Praised as a “[musically] eloquent” (San Francisco Classical Voice) player “with the kind of freedom, authority, and strength…that one expects from the world’s finest pianists” and a “bewitching musical presence” (The Piedmont Post), American pianist and arts entrepreneur Audrey Vardanega (b.1995) has performed as a solo and collaborative pianist across Europe, China and America.

She has appeared at venues such as Merkin Hall at The Kaufman Music Center, Hangzhou Grand Theater, Princeton University Concerts,Tippet Rise Arts Center, Festival Napa Valley, Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, Teatro del Libertador San Martín, The Ravinia Festival, Gordon Music Series, San Francisco’s Old First Concerts, Herbst Theater, Festival Napa Valley, Rockefeller University, Valley of the Moon Music Festival and more.

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Audrey began her piano studies at the age of six with Araks Aghazarian. She began formal piano training with Robert Schwartz at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 2002 to 2013 as well as formal composition training with Arkadi Serper at the Berkeley Crowden School from 2004 to 2013. Her past instructors include Seymour Lipkin, Jeremy Siepmann, Christopher Elton and Victor Rosenbaum.

Audrey earned her B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University in May 2017 and received her Masters in Music in May 2019 from Mannes The New School under the tutelage of Richard Goode. Upon graduation, she founded Musaics of the Bay, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting musicians, composers, and visual artists for collaborations, residency programs, mentorship, and the creation of new work in the Bay Area and beyond.