OUR MISSION
Phoenix Chamber Ensemble has been dedicated to making classical music highly accessible to all residents of the New York area, regardless of their financial limitations. The ensemble continuously strives to enrich lives by presenting world-class concerts in an intimate setting, nurturing a vibrant and inclusive community of concertgoers at the Center for Jewish History.
Meet the Founders
Vassa Shevel
Inessa Zaretsky
Vassa Shevel, piano
Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, Vassa Shevel won the Cappella Competition at age eleven performing the Bach Double Concerto and later began her undergraduate education at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, where she studied with Galina Orlovskaya. Immigrating to the U.S. with her family in 1978, she continued her studies at the New England Conservatory and SUNY Purchase and earned her master’s degree at the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Oxana Yablonskaya. She has studied piano with Jacob Maxin, Russell Sherman, Jerome Loewenthal, Gregory Haimovsky, and Karl Schnabel, and chamber music with Yehudi Wyner Jennifer Langham, Lawrence Lesser, Nancy Cirullo, Paul Doctor, and Robert Levin.
A finalist in the Murray Dranoff International Competition, Ms. Shevel has performed at Alice Tully Hall, Symphony Space, Symphony Hall (Boston), as well as major venues and festivals in Europe. In addition to being artistic director of the Phoenix Chamber Ensemble, she is a member of the Philadelphia Piano Duo with Claire Belkovsky, and also maintains an active private teaching practice. Ms. Shevel is the Artistic Co-Director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Series in New York and Co-Artistic Director of the recently relaunched Incontri di Canna Festival in Calabria, Italy.
Inessa Zaretsky, piano
Inessa Zaretsky, winner of Mannes Concerto Competition, Frina Auerbach International Piano Competition, Moscow Conservatory College Contemporary Music Competition, Gnesin School Concerto Competition, and Moscow Young Artists Piano Competition, has received scholarships from Mannes College, Yale, and the Exxon Corporation. Born in Russia, Ms. Zaretsky studied with Richard Goode at the Mannes College of Music in New York. She studied chamber music with Felix Galimir, Julius Levine, and Claude Frank, and composition with Robert Cuckson.
As a pianist, her performances have been broadcast on WQXR, WNYC, and WNPR. Ms. Zaretsky performs extensively across the United States and around the world, including a special Millennium Concert in Havana, Cuba. As a chamber musician, she collaborated with the Miro, Cavani, Cassat, Phedrus, Parker, and Claring String Quartets. Known for her interpretation of Scriabin, she has recorded many of this composer's works.
As a composer, Ms. Zaretsky's music has been performed by many notable musicians, such as the Miro, Clarin, Phedrus and Cassat String Quartets, Paganini Duo, Kent/Blossom Festival Orchestra, Antara Chamber Orchestra, Lincoln Center Chamber Music II, Chamber Music Series of the St Luke's Orchestra, members of the Boston, Chicago, City Opera, Orpheus Orchestras, members of the Metropolitan Opera, and many others. "Fireoptics," a CD of her music for viola, was released in 2005. Several commissions premiered over the last couple of seasons including a trio for voice, violin, and piano at Weill Hall and a Russian Song cycle on the poetry of Robert Rozhdestvensky in Princeton and New York. Her Piano and Wind Quintet was performed at the Swannanoa Chamber Music Festival. A one-act operetta commissioned as an opener for a rock group "Drozdy" premiered in December 2009 at Symphony Space. Ms. Zaretsky has received the ASCAP Annual Composition Awards for 1999 through 2004. She is the recipient of the "Commission: USA - 2000" grant from the Meet the Composer Foundation and was chosen as one of the composers for the Vocal Essence "Essentially Choral" Readings in 2006.
Ms. Zaretsky is on the piano faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York. She is the Artistic Director at the Chamber Music Society of the Carolinas and the Artistic Co-Director of the Phoenix Chamber Music Series in New York.
Upcoming Guest Artist
Ellen Braslavsky, piano
Dr. Ellen Braslavsky is an American pianist of Russian birth who has had an active international performance career in both the concert and chamber music repertoire since the early 1980s. She currently serves on faculty of the Mozarteum University of Salzburg and is a former faculty member of the Juilliard School and Mannes College The New School for Music.
Braslavsky has appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the New Jersey Symphony, the Salzburg Chamber Soloists, the Cracow Philharmonic, the Warsaw Camerata, and the North Czech Philharmonic among others. As a recitalist and chamber musician she has performed at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Konzerthaus Berlin, and Alice Tully Hall in New York City's Lincoln Center among others.
Braslavsky began studying the piano in Moscow when she was five years old. She graduated from the Gnesin School of Music in 1979. She later pursued studies at the Juilliard School with Leonard Eisner, Nadia Reisenberg, and Oxana Yablonskaya, earning a Doctor of Music from Juilliard in 1991. As a DAAD and Fulbright Scholar, she studied at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and at the European Mozart Academy.
Phoenix Chamber Ensemble 2023 ©