On March 3, the program of the Free Admission Glendale Noon Concerts will be streamed. The program begins at 12:10 p.m.

Violist Jonah Sirota and oboist Regina Brady will perform works by Rodney Lister “Peaches and Penumbras,” Gilles Silvestrini “Etudes for Oboe” (based on Impressionist paintings), Jonah Sirota “Cinematic Studies for Solo Viola” and Claude Debussy from the preludes for piano, arr. for oboe and viola, on a Facebook stream and YouTube.

Composer and violist Jonah Sirota is a new breed of multi-talented musician. Equally at home writing concert music, performing as a soloist and chamber musician, scoring soundtracks for TV, film and videogames, and collaborating in improv and new music ensembles, Sirota creates and recreates vivid music for a wide variety of audiences. His debut solo recording “Strong Sad,” a 2018 National Sawdust Tracks release, features premiere recordings of new elegies for the viola by Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Arthur Joseph McCaffrey, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Robert Sirota, Kurt Knecht and Sirota himself. Recent compositions include “Grounded,” an orchestral work written for the Greenwood Music Camp Orchestra and premiered in the summer of 2018, and the viola sonata “Flutter Fingers.”

Sirota was the violist of the recently-disbanded Chiara String Quartet for its entire 18 years. With the Chiara Quartet, he toured internationally, recorded seven albums and played in numerous major venues worldwide. The Chiara Quartet performed much of the string quartet repertoire from memory including the complete string quartets of Béla Bartók, a recording of which was released in 2016 on Azica Records. The group was honored with a Grammy nomination (2011, Best Contemporary Classical Composition for Jefferson Friedman’s 3rd String Quartet on the New Amsterdam label), the ASCAP/CMA Adventurous Programming Award, the Guarneri Quartet Award, top prizes at the Paolo Borciani Competition and the Astral Artistic Services Audition, and a Gold Medal at the Fischoff Competition. Their albums have been featured on N.P.R., and in “Best of the Year” lists from the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. In the 2015-16 season, the group was in residence at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, a venue to which the group returned for its farewell New York concert in May 2018. As a concert violist, Sirota performed with pianist Molly Morkoski, with organist Kurt Knecht as the improv duo “Mondegreen,” and as a member of the revived California String Quartet. He is sought after as an session player and regularly plays with major orchestras, including the Long Beach Symphony, where he is assistant principal viola.

Equally adept on the oboe and English horn, Regina Brady is a member of The Orchestra Now at Bard College. She recently completed the Master of Music degree at the Colburn Conservatory of Music where she studied with Anne Marie Gabriele and Ariana Ghez. She played both oboe and English horn with the Colburn and Oberlin orchestras. On the Colburn Chamber Music Society series, Brady had the opportunity to perform with Jean-Yves Thibaudet.

Brady is a passionate advocate for new music, and has collaborated with Los Angeles based new music ensemble, wild Up. As a member of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, she was chosen to perform on a special concert series in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art. Brady has been a fellow at the Kent/Blossom Music Festival, the Texas Music Festival, and the Sarasota Music Festival. Prior to her studies at Colburn, she completed the double-degree program at Oberlin College and Conservatory, where she majored in neuroscience and oboe performance, studying with Robert Walters.

A native of White Plains, New York, she is also a graduate of the Juilliard Pre-College Division where she studied with Richard Dallessio. 

Brady is on the faculty of Greenwood Music Camp where she teaches oboe and coaches chamber music. https://reginabradyoboe.wordpress.com/