Kathleen Winkler & The Fischer Duo

The artistry of Kathleen Winkler has earned her the plaudits of critics and audiences alike worldwide since her solo debut at the age of seventeen with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has been heard with such orchestras as the Detroit Symphony (with which she has toured on many occasions), the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Danish Radio Orchestra, the Odense Byorkester, the Polish Slaska Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Savannah Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony, to name a few. She has toured throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as having performed in Sweden, Poland, Germany, Spain, and the Canary Islands.

The recipient of numerous awards, Ms. Winkler took first prize in the First International Carl Nielsen Violin Competition which led to her sponsored debuts in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as well as numerous radio broadcast performances on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the International Voice of America.

Norman Fischer has concertized on five continents and in 49 of the 50 United States. He was the cellist with the Concord String Quartet through its 16-year career and winner of the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, two Grammy nominations and an Emmy Award. In over 1000 concerts, the quartet performed 18 Bartok cycles, 36 Beethoven cycles and premiered 50 works. They also recorded 40 works for RCA Red Seal, Vox, Nonesuch and CRI. Mr. Fischer’s chamber music expertise has led to performances with the American, Audubon, Bair, Cavani, Chester, Chiara, Ciompi, Cleveland, Dover, Ensø, Emerson, Jasper, Juilliard, Mendelssohn and Schoenberg string quartets, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Banff, Chamber Music International, Context (including a complete Beethoven piano trio cycle on period instruments), and Houston’s Da Camera Society. He has also served on many competition juries, including the Paolo Borciani and Banff International string quartet competitions.

Mr. Fischer is the cellist with the Fischer Duo, a group with pianist Jeanne Kierman that was founded in 1971 and specializes in both the classical masterworks of Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann as well as music of our own time. They have over a dozen recordings. Most notable are: Imaginées: Music of French Masters, American Music in the 1990s, Complete Music for Cello and Piano of Chopin and Liszt, and Complete Cello Music of William Bolcom. The most recent album is Beethoven Cello and Piano Complete on the Centaur label that is the most comprehensive collection of Beethoven’s music for the two instruments. The Duo has premiered over 30 new scores by composers such as George Rochberg, Augusta Read Thomas, Robert Sirota, Pierre Jalbert, and Richard Wilson. They continue to actively perform throughout the United States and twice have served as Artistic Ambassadors for the USIA with tours to South America and South Africa.

Jeanne Kierman Fischer specializes in contemporary American piano music and has presented solo recitals in Africa and North America. As a chamber musician, she appears regularly at festivals such as Tanglewood, Da Camera of Houston, Mohawk Trail concerts, Chamber Music Ann Arbor, Maverick concerts and Juneau Jazz and Classics. Formerly on the faculties of Dartmouth College and the Oberlin Conservatory, Ms. Kierman toured extensively under sponsorship by the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Vermont & Ohio Arts Councils.

In cello/piano partnership, Ms. Kierman and Norman Fischer (as the Fischer Duo) have concertized and engaged in residency activities all around the U.S. for almost forty years; in 1996 and 1997, they were chosen as Artistic Ambassadors for the U.S. Information Agency and toured in South America and South Africa. At the present time, the Fischer Duo is in the process of recording the complete sonatas and variations for cello and piano by Beethoven to celebrate their 40th anniversary.