Official Website: www.quartettogelato.ca

• Peter De Sotto, tenor, violin, mandolina
• Alexander Sevastian, accordion
• Carina Reeves, cello
• Kornel Wolak, clarinet

Please note this concert performs at this venue:
Central United Church - 54 Ross Street

Map & Driving Location

Virtuosic showpieces, romantic tenor arias, gypsy pyrotechniques and a World Accordion Champion – this is Quartetto Gelato. Where music meets theatre and audiences are taken on an unforgettable musical journey!

For over a decade, this dazzling ensemble has enchanted audiences and critics worldwide with their exotic blend of musical virtuosity, artistic passion, and charismatic anecdotes. Classical in training – eclectic by design – Quartetto Gelato (QG) not only thrills its audiences with its multi-instrument mastery, but also offers the bonus of a brilliant operatic tenor. With a performance repertoire that travels the globe including classical masterworks, operatic arias, the sizzling energy of tangos, gypsy and folk songs, the group’s theatrical stage presence and relaxed humor establishes an intimate rapport with audiences worldwide.

QG established themselves as dominant forces on the music scene early in their career by winning the coveted title of NPR Performance Today’s Debut Artist of the Year. The selection panel concluding the quartet was “an amazing ensemble that achieves the nearly impossible: they play salon music with real style and classical music with real precision; Great chops and a commitment in all that they play.” In 2007, the group’s first DVD Quartetto Gelato: A Concert in Wine Country! was picked up by PBS throughout the U.S. for broadcast. Recent concerts have included performances with the Toronto and Quebec symphonies, as well as prestige engagements including the Toronto Luminato Arts Festival, the Calgary Moziac Festival, and the “4X4” Festival in Binghampton, NY.

QG is regularly heard on CBC, Classical 96.3 FM, NPR, PRI, and NUR networks. Their Concert in Wine Country DVD is seen regularly on PBS. Their seven CDs have sold over 150,000 units to date and they have been featured on the Hollywood soundtrack “Only You.”

Always active in the recording studio, the quartet has just recorded its seventh CD “Musica Latina” featuring music of Latin America. The public release is scheduled for the spring of 2009. Previously, QG released “Quartetto Gelato Travels the Orient Express” celebrating the original journey of the famous luxury train and featuring music from London to Istanbul. Since the release in spring of 2004, the recording has met with extensive critical and public acclaim. The previous recordings, which have played a significant role in the group’s increasing popularity, are “Neapolitan Café”, “Aria Fresca”, “Rustic Chivalry”, and their debut recording, simply entitled “Quartetto Gelato”. The latter two CDs have literally been heard around the world, since they accompanied Canadian astronaut, Dr. Robert Thirsk, during his NASA flight on board the space shuttle Columbia in 1997.

Peter De Sotto, tenor, violin, mandolin

Peter is a remarkable talent who possesses the ability to perform not only as a classical musician but also as a spirited gypsy virtuosowith the added bonus of a brilliant operatic tenor. His voice repertoire ranges from light pop, to authentic Irish folksongs to the great Italian operatic arias including Turandots “Nessun Dorma”. De Sotto has been referred to as “a credible Pavarotti stand-in” (Stereo Review). De Sotto has recently performed the role of Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata, and just played a starring role in the Canadian Musical “Heartstrings”.

“Whenever Peter De Sotto (tenor, violin, mandolin) released his natural, Italianate tenor – usually in Sicilian and Neapolitan folk Songs – I found tears springing to my eyes. It hardly seems fair that he’s also a violin wiz who tossed off a gypsy number at dizzying speed.” (National Post)

Not only is Peter “an amazing violinist capable of playing any style of music convincingly” but he has “one of the most gorgeous voices I have ever heard. I couldn’t believe any one person could possess that much talent.” (Glenn Dicterow, Concert Master, New York Philharmonic)

Alexander Sevastian, accordion

Alexander Sevastian joined Quartetto Gelato in 2002. Alex (accordion, piano, bandoneon) has won four International Accordion Competitions including the Oslofjord in Norway (1998), The Cup of the North in Russia (2000), the Anthony Galla-Rini Accordion Competition in the U.S.A. (2001) and The Coupe Mondiale in the U.S.A. (2007).

Alex was born in Minsk, Belarus and began his studies on the accordion at the age of seven. In 1991 he attended the Glinka Musical College in Minsk. His advanced studies took him to the Gnessin Academy of Music in Moscow where he received his Masters in Performance degree in 2002, studying with renowned performer and pedagogue, Friedrich Lips.

Alex began his professional career in Moscow in 1996, performing with the Russian Radio Orchestra, which he toured with as a soloist throughout Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Alex also was a very active recitalist and chamber musician. Highlights of his career include appearances in the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, Glinka Capella Hall (St.Petersburg), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Minato Mirai Hall (Yokohama), Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto), Jack Singer Hall (Calgary) and Metropolitan Museum (New York). Recent solo engagements include recitals in Mexico, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, U.S.A. and Canada as well as appearances with several symphony orchestras.

Alex and his family moved to Canada in April 2001. In May 2003 he completed the Advanced Certificate in Performance program at the University of Toronto where he studied with Joseph Macerollo.

Alex made his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under a baton of Peter Oundjian in April 2008 playing Malcolm Forsyth Accordion Concerto at the New Creations Festival. One of the highlights of 2008-09 season is Alex’s Debut Atlantic tour in Eastern Canada in February 2009.

Alex lives in Toronto with his wife Anna and son Vladimir. In the fall of 2005 he became a Canadian Citizen.

Carina Reeves, cello

Carina Reeves (Cello) received both her Bachelor and Master’s Degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston studying with Colin Carr, Carter Brey, and Benjamin Zander. Originally, from Vancouver she has played at music festivals all over Canada, the US, and Europe, and her love of contemporary music has seen her perform in the Prague Summer Festival and premiere string quartets at the Enchanted Circle Series in Boston. She has worked with the Juilliard String Quartet and Peter Serkin in Tanglewood, where she was the recipient of Tanglewood’s 1998 Karl Zeise Memorial Cello Prize. As a member of the Bomari Quartet, she was in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts International Summer Festival, where she performed with Laurence Lesser and Grammy-nominee Gilbert Kalish.

In Toronto, Carina is leading a busy freelance life. She has performed with contemporary ensembles Soundstreams, Continuum, Numus, and Esprit, and theatre productions with the Art of Time Ensemble, Patria Music Theatre Projects and the Shurum Burum Jazz Circus. She has worked with such orchestras as the Toronto Symphony, the Boston Philharmonic, the Canadian Opera Company and Seiler Strings. Carina can frequently be heard on the CBC for such programs as Music Around Us, and also with jazz musicians such as Phil Dwyer, Kenny Wheeler and Juno Award winning Guido Basso.

Bitten by the early music bug many years ago, Carina has trained at the Tafelmusik Summer Institute and with Christina Mahler. Relishing the use of her baroque bow and gut strings has rewarded her with concerts with Furiosi Baroque Ensemble, Toronto’s Bach Consort and countertenor Daniel Taylor. She has also had the privilege of performing in a period style for romantic music with the Orfeo Duo of New York at the Frederick Collection of Historic Pianos in Massachusetts. In addition to being the cellist of the popular Kirby String Quartet, Carina is part of a revolutionary string trio called “Coyote”. Working in a self-titled style affectionately called “improvised Zen classical”, the group was recently chosen to be a part of ARCfest, Toronto’s Social Justice Arts Festival, and has also performed in the Toronto Jazz Festival and venues around Toronto.

Kornel Wolak, clarinet

Highly praised on two continents for his glorious tone, precise technical control and musical imagination, KORNEL WOLAK is well on his way to a major career as a clarinetist in chamber, solo concerto and “cross-over” repertoire. In recent performances, critics thought that Wolak’s playing showed “admirable calmness and patience in shaping beautiful sonorities… full of energy” (Andrzej Chylewski, Glos Wielkopolski), [his playing was] “beautiful in the lyric selections… a lot of imaginative colors, dynamics and rubato” (Jolanta Brozda, Gazeta Wyborcza), and “Control and a smooth, elegant expressivity are what make Wolak shine” (John Terauds, Toronto Star). Beginning in 2007, as a member of the eclectic Quartetto Gelato, his artistry – in music ranging from covers of operatic and classical “standards” to tangos, gypsy melodies and folk songs from many lands – has been enjoyed by audiences at over 90 concerts in North America alone.

In addition to his work with Quartetto Gelato, during the 2007-2008 season Wolak has performed with the Québec Symphony, Charleston (S.C.) Symphony, Toronto Sinfonietta (at the Royal Ontario Museum), Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and at the inaugural concerts of the Jozef Zeidler Festival of Sacred Music “Sacromontana” and the Tadeusz Szeligowski Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra’s 60th concert season. He has broadcast on Classical 96.3 FM, Public Radio International, National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He toured and recorded (Karol Kurpinski’s Clarinet Concerto in B-flat Major) with the Poznan Philharmonic under Lukasz Borowicz. In summer, 2008, he performed three times at the Niagara International Chamber Music Festival. Future engagements include: solo performance with Toronto Sinfonietta in November 2008, substituting with Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a “Rising Stars” solo recital at the Canadian National Exhibition’s Markham Theatre for the Performing Arts in May, 2009, and solo performances with the Poznan Philharmonic in Poland in 2010.

Born in Bialystok, Poland in 1979 into a musical family (his father was a trumpeter and his mother a violist), Wolak began piano lessons when he was six and took up the clarinet six years later. His early music education was under Professor Zdzislaw Nowak, first at the Music Academy of Poznan and, subsequently, at the Musical Lyceum, where he completed high school studies and earned his Bachelor’s degree. Beginning in 2001, he was a scholarship student at Indiana University (U.S.), where he earned his performance certificate and, two years later, his Master of Music degree while studying with Eli Eban. He put his doctorate on hold in order to pursue advanced orchestral studies at the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto, Canada in the fall of 2005, where he earned an Artist’s Diploma.

Wolak won the Royal Conservatory Concerto Competition in 2006, the Glenn Gould School’s 2005 Concerto Competition, the Presser Music Award from the Presser Foundation (to further develop his interest in the design and making of clarinet reeds, 2003-2004) and was a semi-finalist in the Concertartists Guild Competition (2002). In his student days, he was first prize winner in the Poznan Clarinet Wind Instruments Competition, the Polish All-Wind Instruments Competition, and the Indiana University Clarinet Department Competition. He has appeared with numerous orchestral and chamber ensembles, including the Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra “Amadeus,” Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra, Poznan Music Academy String Orchestra, Indiana University Chamber Orchestra, Royal Conservatory Orchestra, Saskatoon Symphony, the Wieniawski String Quartet, the Glenn Gould String Quartet, and the Lodos Wind Quintet.

Ever interested in increasing the repertoire for his instrument, Wolak has premiered in Canada John Adams’ “Gnarly Buttons” Clarinet Concerto on CBC radio, and Marc Neikrug’s “Though Roses” at the CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio. His recording of the Kurpinski Clarinet Concerto was released by Polish Radio’s Channel 2 (and nominated for Poland’s equivalent of a Grammy), and he appears on the soon to be issued “Musica Latina” CD by Quartetto Gelato, the group’s seventh.

Besides reed making, his interests include poetry (he is a published poet in Poland), art history, religion and philosophy.

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