Strobe is an award-winning oboe quartet, receiving grants from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, InterMusicSF, and most recently, Chamber Music America, for a new work by UCLA-based composer Kay Rhie. Formed in 2016, Strobe’s mission is to expand the repertoire for oboe, violin, viola, and cello. They have commissioned four composers to write music for oboe quartet, and performed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. A new recording with commissioned works is forthcoming.
Our CD with commissioned music by Alexis Alrich, Neal Desby, and Vincent Russo is ready. Look for it at our concerts, or contact us for a copy. Many thanks to InterMusic SF for the grant that made it possible.
The Ensemble
Laura Griffiths, Oboe
Laura Griffiths is Principal Oboe of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and Professor of Oboe at San Jose State University. In demand as an orchestral musician, she has been Principal Oboe of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Rochester Philharmonic, and Acting Principal Oboe of the San Francisco Opera. She has also served as guest Principal Oboe with several orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony. She is active as a chamber musician with Strobe and other ensembles during the year, as well as summers at Midsummer Mozart Festival, Music in the Mountains, and the Britt Festival. Her previous teaching posts include the Eastman School of Music and Oberlin Conservatory.
Photo by Patrick Kroboth
Ani Bukujian, Violin
Ani Bukujian is Principal Second Violin of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and Concertmaster of the Marin Symphony. She was born into a musical family in Los Angeles, beginning the violin at age two and a half, making her solo debut at the age of seven. She has won numerous awards, including three gold medals at the World Championship of Performing Arts, and was the First Place winner at the JS Bach Competition, ASTA Annual National Solo Competition, and Pasadena String Festival.
She received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, and studied with San Francisco Symphony Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and participated in the Bowdoin Music Festival, Miami Summer Music Festival, the Fontainebleau Festival in France, and the Samos Young Artists Festival in Greece.
Elizabeth Prior, Viola
Elizabeth Prior is Principal Viola of the Santa Rosa Symphony, where she performed as a soloist in the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra. She is Associate Principal Viola of the Marin Symphony, and a member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra. She plays regularly with the San Francisco Ballet and Opera orchestras, as well as the San Francisco Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony.
Before coming to the US, she played with the Cape Town Symphony in her native South Africa, and worked in Germany with the Basel Symphony and Freiburg Philharmonic, where she was Associate Principal Viola. She also played with the Mannheim Opera, Südwestfunk, and Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, and toured regularly as a soloist with the Chamber Ensemble of Cologne. She has performed at Chamber Music San Francisco, and at Carnegie Hall with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra.
She founded the Broderick Ensemble and the Farallon Quintet, and organized the Devon House Garden Concert chamber music series during the COVID lockdown. Festivals where she performs include the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival and Midsummer Mozart Festival, and the Sun Valley Summer Symphony. Her new album, Viola Romance with pianist Miles Graber, can be found on Spotify and Apple Music.
Krisanthy Desby, Cello
Krisanthy Desby has performed in orchestras and chamber ensembles in the U.S., Mexico, Europe, and South Africa. She was Associate Principal Cello of both the Napa Valley Symphony and the Santa Cruz Symphony, and continues to play with several orchestras throughout the Bay Area. She has coached young chamber and orchestral musicians as a String Specialist at University High School, and taught cello at the San Domenico School in San Anselmo. Before coming to San Francisco, she played in the Houston Symphony, as well as the Houston Ballet Orchestra and the Houston Grand Opera, and was a member of the Tucson Symphony. She founded the Laurel Ensemble, a mixed strings, winds, and piano chamber ensemble, which was active from 2005-2010, playing with the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music program. They performed recitals throughout the Bay Area, were invited to premiere six new works at the Musicarama Festival in Hong Kong. She is a member of the Grand Teton Music Festival and Midsummer Mozart Festival, and has participated in the Mendocino Music Festival, Neuberg Kulturtage in Austria, and The Scotia Festival in Canada. Krisanthy holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Peabody Institute and a Master of Music degree from the Shepherd School at Rice University. Her teachers included Nathaniel Rosen, Stephen Kates, Shirley Trepel and Aldo Parisot.
Photo by Patrick Kroboth
The Composers
Kay Rhie - CMA Classical Commissioning Program Recipient with Strobe
Kay Rhie is a composer of contemporary classical music which explores the issues of belonging and the science of acoustics. A commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Five Petals, about displacement from home and a desire to belong, will be premiered during the 2023-2024 season at Disney Hall. She is inspired by a wide-ranging palette of classical, film, and European avant-garde music as well as various literary and artistic traditions.
Ms. Rhie is currently Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of California at Los Angeles. Her musical studies began in South Korea on the piano from the age of seven, and continued at the University of California at Los Angeles. Her composition teachers include Steven Stucky, Roberto Sierra, Paul Chihara, Ian Krouse, David Lefkowitz, John Harbison, Samuel Adler, Stephen Hartke, and Donald Crockett. She received her Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition from Cornell University in 2009.
Ms. Rhie was a recipient of the Charles Ives Fellowship given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008, which said her music has !vehemence and reticence,” where “intimacy and plainness co-exist.” She was awarded the Grand Prize for Student Compositions at the Ojai Music Festival in 2001. Residences have included the Aspen Music Festival (2003), and the Chamber Music Conference and Composers"#Forum of the East (2004). At the Tanglewood Music Center, she was the Otto Eckstein Composition Fellow and the winner of the Geffen- Solomon New Music Commission in 2007. From 2008-2009, she was a Rieman and Baketel Music Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University.
Her music has been performed at the London Festival of American Music, Banff Centre for the Arts, the Hear Now Festival, Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music, Tanglewood Music Center, and the Ars Nova Series in Korea. Performers include the the BBC Singers, Ensemble TM+ (Paris), Ensemble X, In Mulieribus, the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, members of the Tongyeong International Music Festival (TIMF), and Winsor Music.
Photo by Joy Cha
Alexis Alrich - Water Colors
Alexis Alrich began composing music while taking piano lessons at age eight. She studied composition at the New England Conservatory of Music, California Institute of the Arts, and with Lou Harrison at Mills College, where she got her master’s degree in music composition. Her musical style is based on traditional Western classical music, with influences including minimalism, French Impressionism, gamelan, Chinese music and American roots music. Her style is melodic and tonal, using lively rhythms and colorful timbres to weave a musical narrative. Two CDs including her orchestral works were released on Naxos Records in 2021: her Marimba Concerto with Evelyn Glennie and the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong, and her Bell and Drum Tower played by the Janaček Philharmonic.
Her distinct musical voice is popular with audiences and critics alike:
“From its shimmering opening, Alexis Alrich’s substantial three-movement Marimba Concerto creates a distinctively lyrical world. The insistent rhythmic patterns of minimalism sit naturally alongside calmer, more impressionistic textures…” – BBC Music (Concertos for Mallet Instruments CD review).
“Alexis Alrich’s Marimba Concerto, premiered by the San Francisco Composers Chamber orchestra in 2004, is fast becoming a repertoire item…an engaging work chock full of musical incident.” – Musical America (CD review).
She has received numerous commissions from soloists, ensembles and orchestras, including Water Colors in 2019 for Strobe, a 4-movement piece depicting the colors and texture of water. Most recently, she was commissioned by pianist Lynn Schugren for a one-movement piano concerto, Sierra Rhapsody, which will be premiered in Grass Valley by InConcert Sierra in September 2023. She was also the composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Choral Artists for the 2019-2020 season.
Ms. Alrich received a “Continental Harmony” grant from the American Composers Forum to write a piece for the state of Maine. This was an evening-length work for full orchestra, large chorus and folk instruments including fiddlers and singers. Called Maine Suite, it incorporated words and stories of local poets and brought together two disparate communities, Yankees and Franco-Americans.
Nature is another source of inspiration, from landscapes and trees to birds and water. Among many examples, she wrote Voice of the Forest for piano and Canoeing Silver Lake for string quartet. She was selected twice to be a resident at the artists’ retreat I-Park in Connecticut, where she composed the works Fragile Forests I: California Oaks and Fragile Forests II: Cambodia.
Ms. Alrich moved from San Francisco to Hong Kong in 2007. While living in Hong Kong she received commissions from Premiere Performances of Hong Kong: Shadow in the Moon and Beat of the Dragon Boat (with Chinese and Western instruments), and the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra: an erhu concerto, Song of Eternal Regret (with all Chinese traditional instruments).
After returning to live in California in 2017, Alexis joined the Nevada County Composers Cooperative and has been featured on their Meet the Composer series and Wet Ink performances.
As a pianist, Ms. Alrich also plays and composes chamber music. Her violin duo Chase Me was performed in Germany in April 2023 by the Twiolins. String Quartet No. 3 was premiered by the Left Coast Ensemble in Grass Valley. Water Colors for oboe, violin, viola and cello was commissioned and performed by the Strobe quartet in San Francisco. Other chamber works include Ballet for vibraphone, drum set and electric guitar, commissioned by the Living Earth Ensemble, and Muse of Fire for percussion quartet, commissioned by the Orphic Percussion Ensemble.
Her music is published by Alto Publications in Bristol, England, and also a choral piece is scheduled to be published by Pavane Publishing.
Neal Desby - Golden Gate Rag, Musings, Passacaglia and Fugue in the Time of Covid
A native of Los Angeles, Neal Desby first became serious about composing music during high school. While studying piano and oboe, he came under the influence of Jerry Grant, a successful composer of both concert and film music. He received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the University of Southern California, and continued studies with Lukas Foss and William Kraft.
Mr. Desby continued at USC as a professor of Composition, Theory and Analysis. He works with a wide range of musicians in both classical and non-classical genres as a composer, orchestrator and conductor in TV, film and commercial music fields.
His orchestral work, Spiritual,was premiered by the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, and his Tango a Trois was performed to great acclaim in Europe and Asia by the Blue Rose Trio. Musings is nostalgic in mood, highlighting the lyrical aspects of the oboe. Golden Gate Rag has some of the typical highlights of a ragtime piece—a slow introduction, followed by a rollicking theme.
Vincent Russo - Visions & Visitations, Bay Bridge Rag
Vincent Russo is a composer, arranger, orchestrator and conductor residing in San Francisco. His musical styles include the broad range of today's musical genres--Classical, Jazz, Broadway, Rock and Electronic, among others.
Mr. Russo earned a Bachelor of Music in Music Theory, studying with Kamran Ince and Christopher Rouse, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting at the Eastman School of Music. He also earned certificates in New Media and Electronic Music from the Berklee College of Music, as well as a diploma in Media Composition from Music for the Media, based in Los Angeles and London.
His orchestral compositions and arrangements have been performed by the Colorado Symphony, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and the Breckenridge Chamber Orchestra. His large choral work, Ancient Yuletide Songs and Carols, was premiered in Canton, Ohio, with Mr. Russo at the podium.
Mr. Russo has over one hundred musical tracks with production music library publishers, which are distributed internationally for use in TV and film. His music can be heard on Law and Order, Hawaii Five-0, Dateline, Dr. Oz, E News, and Access Hollywood.
Strobe played drafts of Vincent Russo's new piece for oboe quartet at its concert as part of the collaboration between composer, performers, and the music. At the premiere in May, 2018, Mr. Russo introduced each movement and projected paintings above the quartet that represented the artwork or inspirations for the visions and visitations referred to in the work: Joan of Arc, Ludwig Meidner, Abraham Lincoln, and Jakob Boehme.