Mara Kronick
Cellist Mara Kronick was born in 1978 in Palo Alto, California, and has lived in Vienna, Austria since 2003. Ms. Kronick received her Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance in New York City at Mannes College of Music, studying with Irene Sharp and Paul Tobias, and her Master of Music from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston with Desmond Hoebig, former principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra. While still a graduate student she was a frequent substitute in the Houston Symphony Orchestra and held a position at the Austin Symphony Orchestra. She participated as a fellow in the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado and the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts. Ms. Kronick performed in master classes of Lynn Harrell, Joel Krosnick, Paul Katz, David Geber and Timothy Eddy and has performed with such conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Charles Dutoit, Roberto Abbado, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kurt Mazur and David Zinmann, among others.
In 2007 Ms. Kronick became the cellist of the Vienna-based ensemble LUX, a string quartet dedicated to the performance and promotion of contemporary chamber music. She played for three seasons with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and performs on a regular basis with the Vienna Volksoper, the stage orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Wien and the Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower Austria. She is also a frequent guest with Ensemble Kontrapunkte and Ensemble die Reihe. In 2008 she was appointed principal cellist of the Vienna Opera Ball Orchestra and has toured extensively with them in Japan, Germany, the former Yugoslavia, Switzerland and Tunisia. The Music Information Center Austria said of Ms. Kronick's performance of Julia Purgina's ''Lunarium for Solo Violoncello'': ''Her performance was outstanding – the composition, characterized by huge leaps and technical challenges, was executed effortlessly.'' She is also the cellist of Amber Vienna String Quartet, a group specializing in works of composers from the English-speaking world.
Ms. Kronick performs on a cello made by Joseph Grubaugh and Sigrun Seifert in 1998 in Petaluma, California.