B i o g r a p h y
Acclaimed as a "terrific cello soloist" with a "big, generous tone," American cellist Natasha Farny performs frequently as a soloist and chamber musician. Her debut CD, “French Cello Music” for cello and piano with Jitka Fowler Frankova was released on the Centaur label in 2020 and in 2022, her second CD, “Women’s Voices,” was released with pianist Eliran Avni, her duo partner in the Ekstasis Duo. A third CD, “…From the Shadows” will be released in fall of 2023. Recent concerts have taken the duo to Arizona's Del E. Webb Performing Arts Center, New York's Merkin Hall, and Colorado's Strings Music Festival. In 2022-2023, the duo premiered Avner Dorman's new Double Concerto for Cello, Piano, and Orchestra, and gave recitals at Grand Valley State University (MI), Buffalo's Friends of Vienna, and the Arts in the Village (MA) series. Upcoming 2023- 2024 concerts feature a return to Merkin Hall and several other chamber music series in New York state, with programs entitled “Sophisticated Lady” and “Slavic Masters.”
Ms. Farny made her concerto debut at age 17 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and Yale College during her undergraduate years. After completing her master’s and doctoral degrees at the Eastman School of Music and at the Juilliard School, she received a fellowship for study in Leipzig, Germany. While studying at Juilliard, Ms. Farny won two concerto competitions, performing Dutilleux’s Tout un Monde Lointain with conductor Robert Spano and Olav Anton Thommessen’s world premiere, Through Reflection with conductor Joel Sachs. More recent performances have included concertos with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Abilene Philharmonic, and the Greeley Symphony Orchestra, as well as with the Longwood (Boston) Symphony, Orchard Park (NY) Symphony, National Music Festival Orchestra, Pennsylvania Sinfonia, Schenectady Symphony, Erie Chamber Orchestra, and the Western New York Chamber Orchestra.
Abroad, Ms. Farny performed at the International Dvorak Society American Spring Festival in the Czech Republic with Jitka Frankova in 2011. In 2013, she made a tour of Brazil, giving concerts in four capital cities, and returned in August 2016 as a clinician and performer. She performed on the Theremin cello in 2009-2010 for a project of the complete works of Edgard Varèse, alongside the Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her performances with these groups of Varèse’s rarely heard Ecuatorial were held at the Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Festival d’Automne (Paris), the Southbank Centre (London), and at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City. Nationally, she has played for audiences in New York City at the Bargemusic “Here and Now” series, at Chicago public radio “Live from WFMT”, Rochester, NY public radio “Live from Hochstein”, and at numerous recital series from Las Vegas to Steamboat Springs, CO.
Research interests include music by women for cello. Her studies lead her to present a paper at an international conference, give multiple in-person and online lectures, and publish her writing, “Worthy of the Canon: Romantic Cello Sonatas by Women,” in the College Music Society Symposium in 2021.
Ms. Farny is Professor of Cello at the School of Music at the State University of New York in Fredonia. She has been honored there with several promotions and awards, including grants from the Faculty Student Association and the United University Professions, as well as the Hagan Young Scholar Artist Award and the Kasling Memorial Lecture Award. In the summer, she teaches at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival and the Fredonia String Camp and has been appointed to festivals in Chestertown, MD, Boulder, CO, Anchorage, AK, and Sweden, ME.
