Voice & Baroque Violin/Cello

 

Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Malina Rauschenfels performs extensively as both a chamber musician and soloist, with a strong emphasis on early and very contemporary music. Praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer as “spellbinding” for her “powerful clarion tones and crisp articulation,” she has also been commended by Cleveland Classical for her “exceptional vocal range, strong acting abilities, gripping theatricality, and commanding gestures, both musical and physical.” Malina is co-director and a founding member of Burning River Baroque, where she sings and plays baroque cello and violin. She is also artistic director of hūmAnómali, a collaboratively structured music ensemble that incorporates "extra-musical affairs" inspired by dance, gesture, and theatricality into its historically informed performances of music from antiquity to the present.

 

Equally comfortable with early music and new music, she has recorded with The Newberry Consort, Duo Mignarda, Quire Cleveland, Marble Sanctuary Choir, and Toby Twining Music. She performs regularly with El Fuego, North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, and Trinity Chamber Singers. Recently awarded the Waterloo Region Contemporary Music Sessions’ “Contemporary Performance Prize” for performing two pieces for singing cellist, she will be returning to WRCMS this year as a performance mentor and guest artist. This year she was given the opportunity to perform as soprano soloist for the Mexican and US premieres of Luis Ruelas Romo’s Ja’k’áax, adapted from the Mayan poem by acclaimed Mexican writer Wildernain Villegas Carrillo. She recently sang as well for the premier of Alexis Bacon’s Three Songs from The Sheltering Sky, inspired by the Paul Bowles novel of the same name.

 

In Malina’s 12-year NYC incarnation, she participated in many adventures: among others, she performed a work for cellist with two bows by György Kurtág with Alarm Will Sound, debuted as a dancing violinist in an international dance festival with Jody Oberfelder Projects, and premiered her upside-down flute duet at the Bang on a Can Festival.

While completing her Master’s in Cello Performance at Juilliard, Malina performed Davidovsky’s Divertimento for Cello and Orchestra with the Juilliard Orchestra under Reinbert de Leeuw and also played a solo recital in Carnegie’s Weill Hall. She majored in Composition and Cello at Eastman School of Music. As well as performing extensively across the United States and abroad, Malina currently teaches violin, viola, cello, flute, piano and voice in her home in Cleveland Heights, and recently released her first solo CD, In D – Solo Cello Through the Ages. Further information can be found at her website, www.malinarauschenfels.com