Chamber Music Intensive: String Quartets

Devoted not only to performing traditional masterworks of the
string trio repertoire, the group has commissioned works by living composers and finds
great beauty in the compositions of the 20th century as well. The ensemble takes
special pleasure in collaborating with other performers to extend the range of its
programming. These three gifted instrumentalists, Victoria Parker, violin, Heather
Bentley, viola, and Rowena Hammill, cello, have been celebrated in their own careers
as soloists, chamber musicians, principal orchestral players and improvisers. The
performers, individually and as a group, are remarkable in their ability to connect deeply
and spiritually with audiences through their belief in music as a soul-nurturing and
transporting medium of expression. The trio has taken its name from the pardalote, a
tiny, rarely seen Australian songbird that visited Rowenaʼs mum on her birthday.

Victoria Parker began studying the violin at age two-and-a-half with her mother, Sharyn
Peterson, and was performing with her family quintet by age 5. She has been featured
both as soloist and concertmaster with numerous orchestras across the US, and
performs regularly as an extra musician with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera.
Victoria enjoys playing a diverse range of styles and can be heard on hundreds of
popular albums and motion picture soundtracks. Her love for collaboration and interest
in interdisciplinary arts helped to launch Gossamer Collective (Seattle), Parker Duo, and
Helix Series (New York), and continues to shape many of the projects in which she is
involved. Victoria holds degrees from Western Michigan University and Manhattan
School of Music.

Heather Bentley is Concertmaster of Scrape: an original music string orchestra, a
group that blends improvisation with chamber music; and is Principal Viola of the
Northwest Sinfonietta. She was Violist with odeonquartet for eight years and was
Director of the Seattle Conservatory of Musicʼs Chamber Music Program for nine years.
A graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, she holds degrees in Viola
performance and Chamber Music and was a Fellow of Indiana Universityʼs inaugural
Michael J. Kuttner Graduate String Quartet. She is on the music faculty at Seattleʼs
prestigious Lakeside School.

Rowena Hammill is Associate Principal Cello of the Los Angeles Opera. She divides
her time between LA and Seattle, where she is Co-Director, with her cellist husband,
Douglas Davis, of Vashon Chamber Music. A graduate of the Indiana University School
of Music, she was Teaching Assistant to the esteemed Janos Starker before being
appointed Professor of Cello at California State Northridge. Originally from Australia,
she returned to Sydney in August of 2010 for the first ever Australian World Orchestra