Arnie Tanimoto & Kenneth Slowik

ARNIE TANIMOTO
Gold medalist and first-ever American laureate of the 7th International Bach-Abel Competition Arnie Tanimoto has quickly established himself as one of the foremost viol players in the United States. He has performed and recorded in venues across North America and Europe with the likes of Barthold Kuijken, the Boston Early Music Festival Ensemble, and the Smithsonian Consort of Viols. Arnie was the first-ever viola da gamba major at the Juilliard School, where he soloed on both viola da gamba and baroque cello. In 2017 he was awarded with a Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Fellowship and subsequently finished his studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. His principal teachers include Paolo Pandolfo, Sarah Cunningham, Christel Thielmann, and Catharina Meints. Arnie serves on the faculty at Princeton University and regularly teaches at workshops like the Mountainside Baroque Summer Academy and the Viola da Gamba Society Conclave.

KENNETH SLOWIK
Kenneth Slowik, artistic director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, was a founding member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Axelrod and Smithson quartets, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and the Castle Trio, and appeared frequently in performance sand recordings with the Amsterdam-based ensemble L’Archibudelli. He has been a featured instrumental soloist and/or conductor with numerous orchestras, among them the National Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Vancouver Symphony, the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic, the Polska Orkiestra Sinfonia Iuventus, and the Cleveland Orchestra. His extensive discography, spanning composers from Monteverdi and Bach to Schönberg and Mahler, includes more than eighty recordings—many of them international prize winners—featuring him as cellist, conductor, viola da gamba player, and collaborative keyboardist. Artistic Director of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, he serves on the faculties of the University of Maryland and the American Bach Soloists Academy, and is a recipient of the Smithsonian Secretary’s Distinguished Scholar Award.