Carl Donakowski, cello, with Gabriel Dobner, piano

Carl Donakowski was a prizewinner in the 1989 Mendelssohn Competition in Berlin. His recital performances have aired on WQRS Detroit, WQXR New York and Sudwestfunk Radio Baden-Baden. As a chamber musician, he has been a member of the North Shore Pro Musica, the Fontana Chamber Music Society and the Orpheus Piano Trio. As a member of the West End Chamber Ensemble, he participated in the National Endowment for the Arts/Chamber Music America Rural Residency Chamber Music Initiative. During the summer, he teaches and performs at the Bay View Music Festival (Michigan) as a member of the Westbrook String Quartet. Donakowski holds a B.M. from Indiana University, a D.M.A. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and an Artist Diploma from the Musikhochschule Freiburg. His major teachers were Timothy Eddy, Janos Starker, Gary Hoffman and Christoph Henkel. Full bio

Gabriel Dobner has played for such notable singers as Kevin McMillan, Gerhard Siegel, Rod Gilfry, Cornelia Kallisch and René Kollo. He has recorded for Haenssler Classic and MDG in Germany, and Ottavo in Holland. Following his first CD recording with mezzo-soprano Cornelia Kallisch for MDG, Dobner was referred to as a “master among Lieder pianists” in a BBC Music Magazine review. Performances recorded for radio broadcast include those for the Bavarian State Radio, West German Radio, North German Radio, Budapest Radio in Hungary, Nippon Broadcasting Corporation in Japan, and Saint Paul Sunday in the U.S. He has performed in many of the world’s leading venues including those in Vienna, Dresden, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Zürich, Budapest, Barcelona, Tokyo, Nagoya and Seoul. Dobner joined the piano faculty at JMU in 2001 and has also been on the faculty of AIMS (American Institute of Musical Studies) in Graz, Austria, since 2017. Full bio