Music from 1818: Celebrating Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Nicole McKenzie, violinist, has performed widely as soloist and chamber musician. The Santa Barbara Independent declared, “McKenzie made a splash… she performed with gorgeous musicality.” Winner of the Sutton Chamber Music Award, she graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy, earned a BM degree from Oberlin Conservatory, an MM degree from Florida State University, and studied with Gary Kosloski at the Music Academy of the West. She has studied improvisation with Christian Howes. Ms. McKenzie is concertmaster of the Santa Barbara Folk Orchestra, and performs in the accordion/violin duo Continental Cafe. She played electric violin in M.O.B. Jazz Ensemble, and regularly concertized with renowned pianist, Betty Oberacker. She has taught music to students of all ages, and is currently the elementary music teacher for the Carpinteria School District. She has worked at UC Santa Barbara as a lecturer and as a music director and music performer in the Theater and Dance Department. She has created a collaborative dance and music improvisation group and has performed in various music styles including classical, jazz, folk, klezmer, and musical theater. She performs on a violin created for her by Michel Eggimann of Rome, Italy.

Betty Oberacker, pianist, is internationally acclaimed for her interpretations of both traditional and contemporary solo and chamber music repertoire, and has toured throughout Europe, Israel, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the U.S., including performances at Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonic Hall and Vienna Musikverein. She has been Artist-in-Residence at 55 universities, conservatories and music festivals worldwide, and many important composers have dedicated their compositions to her. Her musical gifts were evidenced at three, when she began to play the piano and compose entirely by ear. Piano lessons started at age seven, and at nine she was accepted on scholarship as the only child student of the noted pianist Beryl Rubinstein. Her BM/MM Degrees are from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and her DMA Degree is from Ohio State University, where she was concomitantly a member of the piano faculty. Her discography includes Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (Clavier Records), A Bach Commemorative Recital (MIT Great Performances Archives), Chamber Music of Emma Lou Diemer (Orion), Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (Century), John Biggs’ Variations on a Theme of Shostakovich (VMM), and Diemer’s Piano Concerto (MMC), the latter two works composed for Oberacker. Honors accorded her include a Fulbright Research Fellowship to Italy and the University of California Distinguished Teaching Award, and her students hold important positions as performers and teachers in the U.S., Asia and Europe. Dr. Oberacker is UCSB Professor Emeritus, and enjoys an active performing, teaching and chamber music coaching schedule.

Tyler Reece, baritone, is in his final year as a doctoral candidate at UCSB. He earned his BM Degree at Luther College (Iowa), and did graduate study with Dr. Linda Di Fiore at both the University of North Texas and UCSB. In February Tyler made his role debut as Count Almaviva in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro; other recent operatic engagements include the title role in Pasatieri’s comedy, Signor Deluso, as Malvolio in the West Coast premiere of Joel Feigin’s setting of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and as Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy. Tyler sings professionally at Old Mission Santa Barbara and with the Santa Barbara Choral Society, and in accordance with his passion for education, he has served as Teaching Assistant at UCSB.

Mandee Sikich completed her MM degree in Collaborative Piano in 2014 with Robert Koenig at UCSB where she was the recipient of a full-tuition music department fellowship. She also studied chamber music with Yuval Yaron. Mandee is the recipient of various awards including the Musician of the Year award (The Master’s College), the Christopher Parkening Scholarship for Excellence in Musical Performance, and the Estella Mays Memorial Award for Piano Performance. She has toured extensively to Italy, Germany, Israel, and Russia as a choral accompanist and served as the Westmont College Choir pianist from 2011 to 2014. She has maintained a private teaching studio in Santa Barbara since 2010 and is serving as the vice-president of the Santa Barbara Branch of the MTAC for the 2015-2016 season. Mandee has also worked as a music director for various theater companies in Santa Barbara including Elements Theatre Collective and Out of The Box Theatre Co. Her music direction credits Tom Greenwald Andrew Lippa’s John and Jen, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and Duncan Sheik’s and Steven Sater’s Spring Awakening for which she received an Indy Award for Music Direction in May 2012. She has spent the past eight years accompanying various opera productions in the Los Angeles area and has also collaborated with numerous vocalists and instrumentalists for recitals, competitions, and recordings. This summer she studied for six weeks in Austria as a Lieder Studio pianist for the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz.

A native Manhattanite, Eric Valinsky has, for more years than he would like to admit, maintained dual careers in computer systems architecture and music. He was educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Illinois, finally achieving his DMA in music composition from Columbia University. He studied composition with Walter Aschaffenburg, Salvatore Martirano, Jack Beeson, and Darius Milhaud; piano with Sara Crawford Drogheo and Emil Danenberg; and conducting with Harold Farberman. While living in Los Angeles, he became music director and composer-in-residence for The Storie-Crawford Dance Theatre Ensemble. Returning to New York, he served in a similar capacity for Danny Buraczeski’s Jazzdance, Uris Bahr and Dancers, and The New American Ballet Ensemble as well as composer-in-residence for The Rachel Harms Dance Company, Opera Uptown, and the Dance Department at City College of New York. He is currently Music Director for the American Dance & Music Performance Group and moonlights as founder and partner of Inlineos LLC, a strategic Internet consulting company.