General admission tickets to Weill Recital Hall concerts are $35. Tickets may be obtained by calling CarnegieCharge at (212) 247-7800, by going online at www.carnegiehall.org, or by visiting the Carnegie Hall Box Office at 57th Street and 7th Avenue. $15 tickets for students and seniors (with proper ID) are available at the Carnegie Box Office. Weill Recital Hall is located at 154 West 57th Street. For more information, call MidAmerica Productions at (212) 239-4699 or visit our web site at www.midamerica-music.com.

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Since their New York debut in 2004, Serafin String Quartet has consistently received superlatives in the press and ovations in the concert hall. After their 2006 performance at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, they were lauded in the New York Concert Review for "excellent music making... uncommonly fine interpretation..." and "ensemble and intonation ... above reproach."

The scope of the Serafin's performance activity continues to broaden, and their recent engagements include appearances on Philadelphia's Chamber Music Now! series, Highlands Festival in North Carolina, Schwarz Center for the Performing Arts, University of Delaware, Rutgers University, and Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. Serafin Quartet has performed recently in New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Vermont, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Michigan, New Jersey, and Delaware. They have been guests at Classicopia (VT) and Fanfare festivals (LA), Dartmouth College, and Emory University. The Quartet has agreed to a recording project of selected works by award-winning composer David Laganella.

The Serafins interpret and perform traditional quartet masterworks and less familiar works from the 18th century to the present. Reflecting their egalitarian viewpoint, and following the model of the revered Emerson String Quartet, the violinists of Serafin Quartet share equally the responsibility for playing the first and second violin parts. Devoted to furthering new works for quartet, they have presented the world premiers of Green is the Night by Mark Hagerty (2007), "a fly is in..." by Richard Belcastro (2006), Four Movements for String Quartet by Drew Hemenger (2005), and String Quartet by David Laganella (2004). In 2008 they will share in premiering a new work by Richard Prior (along with the Vega String Quartet). Their repertoire includes recent works by Robert Maggio, Maurice Wright, and Peter Flint, and a special program of all American works.

In 2007, Serafin String Quartet was named Ensemble-In-Residence for Lehigh University, where they present a variety of performances and lectures. They appear annually on the concert series at First and Central Church in Wilmington (DE) where they were Ensemble-In-Residence for five years. The Serafins frequently present master classes and lecture recitals, including those on Beethoven, Mozart, Interpreting New Music, Chamber Music, The Voice of the American String Quartet, and The Development of the String Quartet.

For more information about MidAmerica Productions, please contact David Dutkanicz at 212-239-0205 or ddutkanicz@midamerica-music.com

General admission tickets to Weill Recital Hall concerts are $35. Tickets may be obtained by calling CarnegieCharge at (212) 247-7800, by going online at www.carnegiehall.org, or by visiting the Carnegie Hall Box Office at 57th Street and 7th Avenue. $15 tickets for students and seniors (with proper ID) are available at the Carnegie Box Office. Weill Recital Hall is located at 154 West 57th Street. For more information, call MidAmerica Productions at (212) 239-4699 or visit our web site at www.midamerica-music.com.

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Levon Ambartsumian, born in Moscow in 1955, began studying violin at the age of three. He attended the Moscow Central Music School and then graduated from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with a special Artist Diploma; his teachers there were Felix Andrievski, Yury Yankelevitch, Leonid Kogan, and Igor Bezrodny. In 1977 he was the first prizewinner of the Zagreb International Violin Competition headed by Henryk Szering. Two years later he garnered a prize at the Montreal International Competition, and in 1981 he won the All-Union Violin Competition in Riga. Mr. Ambartsumian was distinguished as Honored Artist of Armenia in 1988 and Honored Artist of Russia in 1997.

Since 1977 Mr. Ambartsumian has performed regularly in all the major cities of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as he was not permitted to accept invitations to travel to the West. He has appeared as a soloist and recorded for radio and television with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, Kirov Opera, and the Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, and Peking philharmonic orchestras, among many others. He has collaborated with conductors and composers such as Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Fedoseev, Maxim Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian, Tikhon Khrennikov, and Alfred Schnittke. In 1989 Mr. Ambartsumian founded the Moscow Chamber Orchestra ARCO, which regularly performed in Russian and abroad and now resides in Athens, Georgia.

Mr. Ambartsumian joined the faculty of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in 1978. For two years he was a visiting professor at Indiana University School of Music, and in 1995 he accepted the position of Franklin Professor of Violin at the University of Georgia School of Music in Athens. Mr. Ambartsumian devotes his time to contemporary Russian and American music and has made several important world premieres. He has released a number of CD's, including music by Wieniawski, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Shostakovich, and Schnittke. As a teacher, he has given master classes in Russia, Armenia, South Korea, Canada, Brazil, and France.

Evgeny Rifkin was born and educated in Russia, earning his master's and doctoral degrees at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He received many competition prizes and has appeared as a soloist, concerto artist and chamber musician in Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexico and Latin America. Mr. Rivkin has a vast repertoire including many of the most important concertos and pieces from the solo literature. Since 1995 he has been a professor of piano at the University of Georgia's Hugh Hodgson School of Music in Athens, Georgia.

A native of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Shakhida Ambartsumian began to study violin at the Special Music School under Tashkent State Conservatory with Professor Gulnar Suleimanova. She gave her debut with the Uzbekistan Symphony Orchestra when she was eleven and won the National Violin Competition in 1985. Ms. Ambartsumian graduated from Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory where she studied with Professor Irina Medvedeva and has since joined the violin faculty of the University of Georgia School of Music in 1995. Her recent performances include three appearances at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

For more information about MidAmerica Productions, please contact David Dutkanicz at 212-239-0205 or ddutkanicz@midamerica-music.com