Gabrielle Monachino, an Eastman Community Music School student, is heading to Washington, D.C., to present a 90-minute concert of Christmas music at the White House Holiday Open House on Monday, Dec. 15. The 16-year-old violinist was selected based on a DVD of a performance she presented in Eastman’s Kilbourn Hall which she submitted to the White House.
A junior at Allendale-Columbia School, Monachino will be accompanied on the piano by Jeffrey Lawlis, chair of the school’s science department. The two will present a concert of such traditional pieces as “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night” as well as works by Austrian-born American violinist/composer Fritz Kreisler and then will be treated to a tour of the White House.
Monachino began playing the violin when she was four years old. Her current teacher at the Eastman Community Music School, where she has been studying for the past four years, is Jeremy Zhu.
At Eastman, Monachino plays first violin in the Eastman Youth Violin Ensemble and is also a member of the Allendale Columbia Violin Ensemble. In 2007, she traveled with the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra on a concert tour of Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. This year, she has also performed in Carnegie Hall during the American Fine Arts Festival and in Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo and Artpark in Lewiston prior to Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra concerts, and was a soloist in the Vio-Piaguitello Honors Recital for Strings, which features the top 10 high school string musicians in western New York.
Most recently, Monachino played first violin with the 2008 Conference All-State Symphony Orchestra, a 146-piece orchestra of musicians from throughout New York State and Long Island, which performed in the Eastman Theatre on Dec. 7 as part of the New York State School Music Association’s Winter Conference.
Monachino is the daughter of Charles and Sondra Monachino and lives in Brockport.
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