Nina Bernat & Friends

Double bassist Nina Bernat, a recipient of the 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the CAG Elmaleh Competition is acclaimed for her interpretive maturity, expressive depth and technical clarity. She was hailed by the Star Tribune as a “standout” for her recent concerto debut with the Minnesota Orchestra, praising her performance as “exhilarating, lovely and lyrical… technically precise and impressively emotive.” She is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program and has spent summers at Marlboro Music Festival, Verbier Festival, Music@Menlo and Chamber Music Northwest.

Pianist Colette Valentine has performed in national venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, and the Library of Congress, and internationally in Paris, Zurich, Florence, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, and Hong Kong. She has collaborated in chamber concerts with the New York Philharmonic Winds, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, the Washington Chamber Society, the Left Bank Concert Society, the Grand Teton Music Festival Players, and the Miró Quartet, among others. Valentine has served as assisting pianist for numerous National and International events, and has recorded for the Naxos, Albany, fontec, Antara, Well-Tempered, and CRI labels. In the fall of 2008, she joined the faculty of the newly created Collaborative Piano Department at the University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music, and was named Head of Collaborative Piano in 2017. 

Canadian violinist Patrice Calixte did most of his studies with Claude Richard at Université de Montréal, where he obtained Undergraduate and master’s degrees in music performance. He has worked with many orchestras in Canada, including the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. He then moved to Austin where he completed his Artist Diploma at the University of T exas with Daniel Ching as his mentor. He currently serves as Associate Concertmaster of both the Austin Symphony Orchestra and the Austin Opera as well as the first violin of the Austin-based Artisan Quartet. Patrice performs on a violin made in 1910 in Florence by Valentino di Zorzi, kindly on loan from Lorraine and John Wang.

Cellist Douglas Harvey was born in San Antonio, Texas and currently resides in Austin, Texas. He is the principal cellist of the Austin Symphony Orchestra, and Austin Opera Orchestras as well as a chamber musician and soloist. He has led a full career as a cellist performing as soloist, cellist of the Artisan Quartet, Principal of the Austin Symphony, Opera and Ballet, touring/recording with the Grammy Award winning Conspirare Choir, and touring/recording with David Byrne of the Talking Heads for two international world tours. He was featured prominently on Conspirare's Album, “The Singing Guitar”, in “The Dawns Early Light,” by composer Kile Smith, and “The Song That I Came to Sing” by Craig Hella Johnson, which earned a Grammy Nomination for Best Choral Performance. He has released two solo cello albums titled, Douglas Harvey - Works for Solo Cello, Volume 1 and Volume 2. Both are available wherever you stream your music online