As a member of the Opus 76 Quartet, Keith performs over 50 concerts a year, and has recently recorded all eighteen Beethoven String Quartets, two Quartets by living composers David Izzard and Mike Moreland, as well as a Quartet by Franz Josef Haydn. Recordings of the "Six Quartets Dedicated to Haydn" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, will take place in 2020.
Outside of the Quartet, Keith has recorded Mozart Violin Concertos 3 & 4 and works by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo violin (available on iTunes). Concerto performances with orchestra for the 2021 violin concertos by Paganini and Beethoven. Keith has won positions at a number of orchestras. He is currently Concertmaster of the Kansas City Civic Orchestra and the Kinnor Philharmonic Orchestra.
Keith also presents a recital series annually, consisting of 5 performances. This year’s series will feature all 10 of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin & piano. Recent series have featured works by Clara & Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. A recent performance was reviewed in K.C. Arts Beat as “full of romantic passion..played with intensity..conveyed with authority.. [Brahms’s 3rd Sonata was] lovingly played, a sense of nostalgia and heartache convincingly portrayed.. an exciting and convincing performance.”
Keith is a former soccer player, who represented Western Samoa in the 2010 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers. He played five matches for the country (scoring two goals) before retiring to focus on the violin. He has coached soccer in the UK and the USA.
Founding the Opus 76 Quartet in 2017, he joined The Friends of the Opus 76 Quartet Foundation's administration as Executive Director in 2021.
He is the main host of the Opus 76 Quartet's "Keeping Score" podcast, and makes Art & Culture documentaries for obliviology.com. He has written for a number of publications including The Strad, The Catholic Herald, Adamah Media and The Shawnee Mission Post.
Keith lives in the United States of America in Kansas City, teaches a small number of students privately, and coaches The Opus 76 Sunrise Quartet - one of the Foundation's free mentoring initiatives for talented young high school musicians from the local area.
He started playing the violin with Alison Apley aged 3 and is an alumni of the Purcell School of Music (UK), the Royal Academy of Music and CU Boulder (USA - 2021) where he will graduate with a certificate in Arts Administration. Violin coaches included the late Erik Huston, Remus Azoitei and Karoly Schranz.
Hungarian violinist Zsolt Eder has established himself as a versatile and engaging performer and teacher. A founding member of the Opus 76 Quartet, he is the newly appointed Professor of Violin and Viola at Washburn University and has been Concertmaster of the Topeka Symphony Orchestra since 2011. He is a frequent soloist with the TSO, and was featured again in 2019 with the Brahms Double Concerto. Zsolt will also make his masterworks series debut with SoNA (Symphony of Northwest Arkansas) in 2019 with Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins. He has been a Sunflower Festival Artist since 2011 and launched a new chamber music series in Topeka called Zsolt Eder and Friends in 2018.
Based in Kansas City, Zsolt maintains a busy schedule of concerts that includes solo, chamber music and orchestral work. In 2017 Zsolt appeared as guest Concertmaster of the National Symphony of Colombia (South America) and was soloist with the Washburn University Orchestra in Arturo Cardelus' Con Aire de Tango. In 2016 he premiered a Violin Concerto by Joseph Kern, written for him and the Midwest Chamber Ensemble, and performed Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Medical Arts Symphony of Kansas City. Zsolt also has ongoing collaborations with Ensemble Iberica, Spire Chamber Ensemble, the Kansas City Baroque Consortium, jazz group Alaturka, and performs frequently as part of the Kansas City Symphony.
Zsolt has performed extensively in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Highlights include performing in the first Canadian Ring Cycle (Wagner) with the Canadian Opera Company, at the Beijing Modern Music Festival in China, IMS Prussia Cove in England, and at the International Classical and Folk Music Festival in Kyrgyzstan. He has performed as a soloist with the Cleveland Institute of Music Symphony Orchestra, the Topeka Symphony, the City of Asuncion Symphony Orchestra (OSCA) in Paraguay, the Parlando Chamber Orchestra (Hungary), the Via Salzburg Chamber Orchestra (Toronto, Canada) and the Midwest Chamber Ensemble (Kansas City). He has appeared live on Hungarian National Radio and ABC Australia.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Zsolt spent most of his childhood in Perth, Australia. College studies brought him first to Toronto, Canada, where he studied with Lorand Fenyves. Zsolt then continued with Paul Kantor at the Cleveland Institute of Music, earning his Bachelors and Masters Degrees there. He also studied baroque violin with Jeanne Lamon (Toronto). In Kansas City he studied with Benny Kim and Noah Geller at the UMKC Conservatory.
In addition to Washburn, Zsolt teaches at the UMKC Academy’s Musical Bridges Program, providing free lessons for kids in Kansas City, Kansas. He is passionate about education and has worked for social projects CityMusic Cleveland and Harmony Project KC. Zsolt is also the creator of the Mozart Project: a research based lecture and performance series to be launched in 2018 that focuses on the violin works of W. A. Mozart. He graduated with a Doctoral Degree from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 2018
A former and founding member of the Hampden String Quartet, with whom she won the Sir john Barbirolli Prize for Chamber Music at the Royal Academy of Music, Ashley Stanfield is a founding member and violist of the Opus 76 Quartet.
Ashley performs regularly with the Kansas City and Des Moines Symphonies. She also serves as Principal Violist of the Kinnor Philharmonic and plays in the Saint Joseph Symphony. She has appeared as a guest artist with the Bach Aria Soloists, Spire Ensemble and the KC Baroque Consortium. In 2019, Ashley will appear as a soloist with the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, playing Mozart's "Sinfonia Concertante".
Outside of classical music, Ashley has enjoyed performing with several rock/pop bands including Michael Buble, Belle and Sebastian, Hanson and Johnny Mathis.
A native of Kansas City, Ashley Stanfield has been teaching and performing locally for over ten years. She is an Alumni of both the Interlochen and Idyllwild Arts Academies and holds a Bachelors Degree in Viola performance as well as a Teaching Licentiate from the Royal Academy of Music, London, where she was a student of London Symphony Orchestra Principal Violist, Paul Silverthorne. Other teachers include Miami String Quartet violist, Scott Lee and Christine Grossman, former Principal Violist of the Kansas City Symphony.
As a part of her studies at the Academy, Ashley also worked with many prominent conductors including Trevor Pinnock, Leif Segerstam, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Tadaaki Otaka, and Sir Colin Davis, with whom she recorded Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Beethoven's Symphony No.9. With the U.K. based Hampden String Quartet, she performed regularly at the Oxford Proms and the Prom's at St. Jude's concert series.
Ashley enjoys teaching and has extensive experience at the beginner through to collegiate level. She currently teaches group violin (elementary level) in the Kansas City Missouri School district via the KC Harmony Project program and formerly served as a teaching artist on the faculty at Drake University. Many of her private students are members of the Kansas City Youth Symphony and the Kansas All-State and District Orchestras. She lives in Prairie village with her husband and son and their faithful Labrador, Miley.
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