"Eusebius Duo"
Hilliary Nordwell & Monika Gruber
Piano & Violin
Featured Guest Artists

Monika Gruber and Hillary Nordwell formed the Eusebius Duo in 2005, shortly after graduating from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. They have performed chamber music together, both as a duo and in the formation of a piano trio, since the Fall of 2004. In May 2006 the Eusebius Duo performed in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as 1st Prizewinners of the 2nd International Chamber Music Ensemble Competition in Boston, MA.

Their recent engagements include concerts in the Noontime Concert Series of San Francisco, the Bing Concert Series at Stanford University, the Festival del Sole in Napa, and the Summer Matinees for Young Artists concert series in Dortmund, Germany. They have toured in Germany, Sweden, and Washington State, where they were also featured on KONP Radio's Art Beat show and were honored to appear in Northwest on Tour, the juried roster of artists sponsored by the Washington State based agency Arts Northwest.

Both members of the Eusebius Duo teach and perform extensively throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and the duo is an affiliate of the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the service of chamber music in California.
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Hillary Nordwell is a graduate of Lawrence Conservatory in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she studied with Catherine Kautsky and was honored for three consecutive years with the Marjory Irvin Prize for “excellence in solo piano and chamber music.” In 2005 she completed her Masters Degree in Chamber Music, studying both piano and chamber music with Paul Hersh, Mark Sokol, and Ian Swensen at the San Francisco Conservatory. Hillary has performed in master classes with renowned artists and teachers Richard Goode, Robert McDonald, and Gilbert Kalish, and in collaborative classes with Paul Katz, Lynn Harrell, and Menahem Pressler. She has performed chamber music throughout the United States, as well as in Italy, Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Her solo engagements have included concerto appearances with the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra, Port Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Port Townsend Orchestra. As pianist of the Eusebius Duo (www.eusebiusduo.org), she recently performed in Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall, New York) after winning first place in the Chamber Music Foundation of New England’s International Chamber Music Competition. Hillary maintains an active private teaching studio, and is a member of the piano faculty at St. Brigid School in San Francisco.
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Monika Gruber, a native of Germany, graduated from the ‘Hochschule fuer Musik’ in Weimar in 2003 with an Artistic Diploma and a Teaching Diploma. She spent the Academic Year 2000/01 as a recipient of the European “Erasmus” Scholarship at the ‘Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique’ in Lyon, France, studying violin with Stephane Tran Ngoc. In 2003 she won the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship Award, which enabled her to come to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Ian Swensen and completed her Masters Degree in May 2005. After having served as 1st violinist of the SF Conservatory’s New Music Ensemble, Monika currently pursues her passion for New Music as concertmaster of the SF Composers Chamber Orchestra. A dedicated teacher, she was a faculty member of the SF Conservatory’s Preparatory Division in 2005/06 and currently teaches at the SF Community Music Center, where she won this year’s Faculty Concerto Competition and will perform the Sibelius Concerto in June of 2007

The "Eusebius Duo" will be performing at St. Dominics Catholic Church
as Featured Guest Artists.

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