Gabriela Lara, violin; Casey Rafn, piano

About this event

Venezuelan-American violinist Gabriela Lara, winner of the Robert Frederick Smith Prize and 1st Place Senior Laureate of the 28th Annual Sphinx Competition, will make her Music in the Park Series debut in March 2026. Her program includes J.S. Bach’s profound, architecturally masterful Partita No. 2 for solo violin, as well as works by Amy Beach, Pablo de Sarasate, and Jenő Hubay de Szalatnya. Originally from Barquisimeto, Venezuela, Lara began her violin studies at age 8 and later became a member of the Latin American Violin Academy, where she was a student of Jose Francisco del Castillo and Francisco Diaz. She was also a member of El Sistema in Venezuela and, as part of that ensemble, had the opportunity to make a 2014 Europe Tour with the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra. She also performed with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra as part of a 2016 European tour that included a concert at the Berliner Philharmonie and performed with Sir Simon Rattle as part of a tour that included concerts at the Salzburg Festival. Casey Rafn is a Minneapolis-based pianist, recording artist, and music director whose work spans the worlds of collaborative piano, musical theater, as well as contemporary music and beyond. In recent seasons, he has performed as a member of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and also appeared in concert with Cantus. For his performances with Cantus, the Star Tribune praised his playing as “having done extraordinary things with the music all evening.” As a collaborative pianist, he has toured the United States, Latin America, and Europe. As a member of the saxophone-piano trio “Trés,” their album Romance al Campesino Porteño received a Latin GRAMMY nomination. The trio has collaborated with internationally acclaimed saxophonist Miguel Zenón, and also recently premiered Angélica Negrón’s Pedacito De Tierra, a work that interweaves music with spoken testimony from members of the Puerto Rican diaspora in…

Description from schubert.org