“Soirée: Shaken, Not Stirred,” October 21

Saturday, October 21, 5:30 p.m.

Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA

A special fundraising event designed to benefit the Quad City Symphony Orchestra's educational programs, the October 21 Soirée: Shaken, Not Stirred will treat guests to an elegant evening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, the night boasting a cocktail hour, dinner, paddle raise, and live auction with QCSO Maestro Mark Russell Smith, plus performances by symphony members Emily Nash, Hannah Holman, and Marian Lee.

Emily Nash graduated with her MM in violin performance while studying with Almita and Roland Vamos at Northwestern University, graduating early and with high honors. She received her BM in violin performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign while studying with Simin Ganatra, and she has has participated in master classes with the Silk Road Ensemble, the Turtle Island String Quartet, Wendy Sharp, Roland and Almita Vamos, John McGrosso, Kurt Baldwin, Rebecca Henry, and the Parker Quartet. Nash has spent years performing with both the Quad City Symphony Orchestra and the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, where she serves as Associate Concertmaster and Assistant Principal Second, respectively. Nash also performs with the Milwaukee Symphony, Hawaii Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Illinois Philharmonic, Lake Forest Symphony, and the Midwest Mozart Festival.

An Assistant Professor of Piano at St. Ambrose University who received her Doctor of Musical Arts at Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, Marian Lee made her New York debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as the 1995 winner of the Artist International Award. She went on to serve as a soloist and chamber performer in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Poland, Russia, Thailand, and Hong Kong, as well as in major cities throughout the United States. Lee has made numerous appearances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and performed an exclusive recital in the Hermitage Theater at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, and also played piano in a nationally televised broadcast from Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow. Additionally, Lee helped develop Moscow Nights, a first-time collaboration between the music and Russian-language departments at the University of Delaware, and served as president of the Delaware Music Teachers Association.

An active chamber musician, Hannah Holman studied at the Eastman School of Music and Michigan State University, where she completed her Bachelor of Music degree, and obtained her Master of Music Degree with Fritz Magg at the New England Conservatory. A founding member of the Beaumont Piano Trio, which performed around the United States and England, Holman was also a founding member of Quadrivinium, a music ensemble-in-residence at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. From 2002 to 2011, she was a member of the Maia Quartet, the University of Iowa's quartet-in-residence, which toured China, Japan, and throughout the United States, including teaching residencies at Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Great Wall International Music Academy in China, and the Austin Chamber Music Center. Holman regularly performs in chamber ensembles with musicians from throughout the United States, and Fanfare magazine raved that “her tone and technique are the stuff that cello legends are made of.”

Soirée: Shaken, Not Stirred will begin at the Figge Art Museum on October 21 with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner, the paddle raise and auction, and the classical-music performance starting at 6:30 p.m. Black tie is optional, admission is $150, and more information and tickets are available by calling the Quad City Symphony Orchestra at (563)322-7276 and visiting QCSO.org.