On March 2, 2018, Kevin Hekmatpanah, cello, and Paulina Zamora, piano, will present a concert at 7 PM at the Harrington Opera House. Admission will be by donation.

Kevin Hekmatpanah

This will be Keven's second appearance at the Harrington Opera House. In April 2017, he performed a concert of Russian masterpieces with pianist, Darin Manica.

A native of Chicago, cellist Kevin Hekmatpanah has presented hundreds of solo and chamber performances throughout the country, including concerts at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center, the Society of the Cincinnati Artist Series in Washington D.C., the Sitka Music Festival, the Lower Makefield Performing Arts Society in Pennsylvania, the Camerata Musica Concert Series in Salem, Oregon, the Russian Chamber Music Foundation and the Kirkland Performance Center in Seattle. Additional recitals include appearances at the Princeton Music Club, the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville, the Hornby Island Recital Series in Victoria, B.C., the Bing Performing Arts Center in Spokane, the John Addison Cultural Arts Recital Series in Washington D.C., Daniels Recital Hall in Seattle, the Duck Creek Cello Festival in Utah, the Lake Chelan Bach Feste, the Cutter Theatre, the Battelle Auditorium as well as the Merc Playhouse Theatre.  He has also presented concerts of the complete works for Cello and Piano by Beethoven and over twenty cycles performing all Six Bach Suites.  He has made over one hundred and twenty solo concerto appearances with various ensembles, including the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Richmond Philharmonic, the Pueblo Symphony, the Kingsport Symphony Orchestra, the Middle Tennessee Symphony, the Oregon East Symphony, the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs in Colorado, the Southern Arizona Symphony, Gulf Coast Symphony, and the Vashon Chamber Orchestra.  Additional concerto engagements have been with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Coeur d’Alene Symphony, the Grande Ronde Symphony, the Timberline Symphony, the Berrien Springs Symphony, the Cascadia Summer Festival Orchestra, the Mc Call Chamber Orchestra, Spokane Falls Orchestra, the Woodlands Orchestra and the Okanogan Valley Orchestra. 

Outside North America, he has performed concertos in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, in Stockholm, Sweden, and at the home of Edvard Grieg in Bergen, Norway.  He also appeared as soloist with the Vidin Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria.  He has also presented recitals in Costa Rica, Norway, and the Para XXV International Music Festival in Brazil.  This past summer he performed at St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna and the Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt, Austria.

Mr. Hekmatpanah has released a compact disc recording containing cello sonatas by Franck, Debussy, and Chopin.  He has won several competitions and awards, including prizes in the Beethoven Club Young Artists’ Competition, the Virginia Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters Competition, the Brentwood-Westwood Concerto Competition, the Fort Collins Concerto Competition, and the Montpelier Cultural Arts Solo Competition.

Deeply committed to teaching, Mr. Hekmatpanah is a Professor of Music at Gonzaga University, where he has taught since 1994. He recently received an Exemplary Faculty Award for his Academic Citizenship. He is currently a member of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra.  He has previously served on the faculty of Middle Tennessee State University and has taught cello at the Governor’s School for the Arts. He has served on competition juries, and he has presented master classes and clinics throughout the country.  In addition to being the first cellist to earn a DMA from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, he also holds a MM from Indiana University and a BM from the University of Southern California.  His teachers have included such nationally renowned pedagogues as Stephen Kates, Fritz Magg, and Gabor Rejto, and he has received coachings from such internationally celebrated artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, and Janos Starker.  For more information, visit his web site at http://www.kevinhekmatpanah.com

Paulina Zamora
Chilean-American pianist Paulina Zamora was born in Antofagasta, Chile.  She was educated at the University of Chile (BM), the Eastman School of Music (MM), and Indiana University (DM). Her main teachers have included Rebecca Penneys, Gyorgy Sebok and Janos Starker. Her solo, concerto and chamber music appearances have taken Paulina throughout the Americas, Europe and the Middle East.

A recipient of first prizes in the Primer Concurso Latinoamericano in Chile, the Indianapolis Matinee Musicale and the Chautauqua Piano Competition, Paulina was also awarded the prestigious Performer's Certificate of the Eastman School of Music.  She has appeared in festivals such as the Ernen Musikdorf and Lausanne Music Festival in Switzerland, the Banff Music Festival in Canada and the Chautauqua Music Festival in New York.   She has performed live on National Public Radio and the Swiss-French Radio. She is a sought after collaborative pianist and has concertized with distinguished cellist Janos Starker, with violinists Corey Cerovsek and Annette-Barbara Vogel, with violist Atar Arad, with pianists Rebecca Penneys and John Milbauer, with tenor Alan Bennett and flutist Jacques Zoon, among others.

Paulina's recordings include two CDs of chamber works with the Felici PianoTrio; a solo CD with works of Twentieth-Century Latin American Composers, sponsored by Indiana University; a chamber CD of American composers with the Montecino Trio, released by Eroica Classical Recordings.  Her three most recent CDs, released by Eroica Classical Recordings are:  ‘Richter 6.2’, with pianist John Milbauer, ‘Beethoven Plus’ with violinist Annette-Barbara Vogel and ‘Trío Montecino’ with cellist Pablo Mahave-Veglia and clarinetist David Shea.

She taught at the Valencia Conservatory in Spain and was Associate Professor of Piano and Theory at EAFIT University in Medellín, Colombia, from 1999 to 2001.  Beginning September of 2001 through August of 2005, she was a member of the Felici Piano Trio in residence in Mammoth Lakes, California, an integral part of Chamber Music Unbound, a non-profit organization.  From 2006 to 2010, Ms. Zamora  was professor of Piano and Theory and Coordinator of the Theory Department at the ‘Instituto Profesional Escuela Moderna de Música’ in Santiago, Chile.

At present she is an Associate Professor of Piano at the University of Chile School of Music.  Recent master classes in the United States have included the Boston Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, Carleton College in Carleton Minnesota, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, Wisconsin, University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.