Jessie Montgomery : violin Curtis Stewart : violin Nick Revel : viola Amanda Gookin : cello
Cellist Amanda Gookin is a teacher, chamber musician, and orchestra player living in New York where she received her Bachelor of Music from the Mannes College of Music. Upon graduation she spent two years as a performing cellist in Barcelona, Spain. Among her most influential teachers are Mary Lou Rylands, Marcy Rosen, Marçal Cervera, and Hans Jørgen Jensen.
In 2002 Amanda appeared as a soloist with the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra as the winner of their Youth Concerto Competition. In the Spring of 2007 she was awarded "Most Musical Performance" of the Podiums XI Chamber Music Competition in Barcelona, Spain playing the Beethoven g minor and Brahms e minor cello sonatas with pianist Alejandro Lidón. She was then invited to give a solo recital in the Fall of 2007 playing these sonatas and works by Spanish composers for cello and piano. Amanda and Alejandro worked closely as a duo for two years and were invited to appear in many different cultural centers in Catalunya, Spain, among them the beautiful Agbar Museum. Most recently she was a featured chamber music artist in the Fredrikstad Cafe de Concert Festival in Norway and performed with the Wordless Music Orchestra for Lincoln Center's White Lights Festival 2010.
Amanda is currently the cellist and co-founder of PUBLIQuartet. Formed in 2010, PUBLIQuartet injects fresh perspective into the world of Classical music. Each member contributes to a collective background in classical, jazz, world and electro acoustic performance. They aim to present music from the classical cannon, contemporary compositions, and open-form improvisations which extend the stylistic norms of the traditional string quartet. She has participated with PQ in the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, where they performed in Lincoln Center, the Deer Valley Music Festival in Park City Utah where they worked closely with the Muir Quartet and Joan Tower, and the Robert Mann String Quartet Institute under the tutelage of Robert Mann and the American String Quartet. This season they have been actively sought out to perform on many classical and contemporary music series.
Amanda composes music for theater and film and is an active collaborator with the Mortal Folly Theatre Company, Brave New World Repertory Theatre, and Bushwick Shakespeare Repertory, theater companies on the cutting edge of the New York drama scene. She recently wrote music and performed live for productions of Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Romeo and Juliet. This March she was the Music Director for the Brave New World Repertory Theatre's production of The American Clock. She is currently scoring a film, "Thru|Lines", based on the daily lives of New Yorkers for Dryspell Productions.
Amanda recorded albums for Universal Motown Records and New Amsterdam Records. She has collaborated with such diverse musicians as Sigur Rós, Olivia Newton John, William Britelle, Atomic Tom, Richard Walters, Jonathan Read Gealt, Ryan Scott Oliver, members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Wordless Music Orchestra. She is the cellist for Blake Whyte (Mama Mia) and writes the original string parts along with Curtis Stewart on violin from PUBLIQuartet.
Amanda is an active teacher and is on MILES faculty at the Third Street Music Settlement, teaching cello in NYC public schools. She also runs string improvisation workshops with PUBLIQuartet in schools in the tri-state area.