Viola
String Family
Violas (pronounced “vee-oh-lahs”) are bigger than violins and have a lower, deeper sound. Violas are the only instrument to read music in a clef called “alto clef.” This clef sits in the middle between the high treble notes of the violin and the low bass notes of the cellos and basses, which is perfect for the mid-range sounds of the viola. You play the viola by tucking it between your chin and shoulder, just like the violin. Your left hand presses down on the strings to change the pitch, and your right hand moves the bow or plucks the strings. The viola has four strings tuned a fifth apart, and from highest to lowest, they are: A, D, G, and C.
Artists
Rebecca Albers
Principal Viola, Reine H. Myers Chair
Jenni Seo
Assistant Principal Viola
Sam Bergman
Viola
Sifei Cheng
Viola
Kenneth Freed
Viola
Megan Tam
Viola
Rebecca Albers joined the Minnesota Orchestra as assistant principal viola in 2010 and won the position of principal viola in 2017. She has performed throughout the United States, Asia and Europe, making her New York debut at Lincoln Center, performing the New York premiere of Samuel Adler’s Viola Concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, she performs often at such festivals as the Marlboro Music Festival, Seattle Chamber Music Society Summer and Winter Festivals, and Rome Chamber Music Festival.
Albers is a member of Accordo, a Twin Cities-based chamber ensemble whose members are present and former principal players from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. She has toured extensively with Musicians from Marlboro and with the Albers Trio, an ensemble formed with her sisters Laura and Julie Albers, and has been featured on many of the Orchestra’s chamber concerts, performing music by Schumann, Beethoven, Dvořák and Schubert.
Korean violist Jenni Seo is the Minnesota Orchestra's acting associate principal viola, joining the ensemble after performing in the viola section of the Baltimore Symphony during its 2017-18 season. She is a frequent substitute with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic and New York City Ballet orchestras, and makes reoccurring appearances at the Music at Menlo, Montecito, Bad Leonfelden, Keuka Lake and Perlman Music Program festivals.
Violist Sam Bergman joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 2000. Born in Boston, he grew up primarily in small-town Pennsylvania, studying violin and viola with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra. He attended Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, studying viola with Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey, and was a member of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra before coming to Minneapolis. Since 2005, he has produced, written and hosted more than 40 original narrated shows for the Minnesota Orchestra, many with conductor Sarah Hicks for the Orchestra’s Inside the Classics series.
Born in Taiwan and raised in California, violist Sifei Cheng joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 1995. He has served as principal viola of the Charleston Symphony, New World Symphony and Juilliard Orchestra, and has led sections under Michael Tilson Thomas, Eiji Oue and Christoph Eschenbach. As a chamber musician, he has played in the Ravinia Festival, Caramoor Music Festival, Taos Chamber Music Festival, Pacific Music Festival and the New York String Seminar. Some of his past coaches include Samuel Rhodes, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Alan de Veritch, the Tokyo String Quartet and the American String Quartet. He has collaborated in chamber music with artists such as Joshua Bell, Pamela Frank, Andrew Litton and our own Creative Partner for Summer Programming Jon Kimura Parker. Cheng was also recently appointed principal viola of the Minnesota Bach Ensemble.
Kenneth Freed is an orchestral player and conductor, chamber musician, educator, and social entrepreneur.
A violist and violinist, Freed started music lessons at the Henry Street Settlement Music School in lower Manhattan with Elizabeth Weickert before attending the Juilliard Pre-College Division studying with Louise Behrend. He then received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Yale College and a Master of Music Performance degree from Yale School of Music studying violin with Syoko Aki Erle. While at Yale, he was awarded the William Waithe Concerto Competition Prize, the Broadus Earle Memorial Prize for Violin and the Tokyo String Quartet Prize for Chamber Music. He then studied in London with Helen Dowling, a student and assistant to Georges Enescu.
Violist Megan Tam joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 2003, and returned to Minneapolis in 2015 after a year with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. She performs regularly on the Orchestra's chamber music series, and in the 2016-17 season, she played Mendelssohn's Second Viola Quintet and Prokofiev's First String Quartet with Orchestra colleagues.
Tam studied violin and viola at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music. She completed undergraduate studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying under Robert Vernon and receiving the Robert Vernon Prize in Viola. In 2002 she and fellow members of the Linden Quartet won the grand prize at the Coleman Chamber Music Competition.