Biographies
Nicolas Orbovich
Michigan City Chamber Music Festival (MCCMF) Artistic Director, Concert Violinist
Nicolas Paul Orbovich enjoys a high reputation among adventurous American violinists. His highly acclaimed career spans a wide variety of musical styles and genres, while expanding into prolific artistic entrepreneurial endeavors.
As a performer, Nic has been honored widely. In 1987, he was awarded the Bronze Medal at Her Royal Majesty’s International Festival Competition in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK). Orbovich was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition as a member of the Amherst String Quartet. In 2001, he was featured as a soloist on the Grammy Award nominated release, “The Hot Springs Music Festival: Louis Moreau Gottschalk” (Naxos). That same year, Nic was a prominent figure in the Emmy Award winning documentary, “The Sound of Dreams.” In 2008, Nic was concertmaster on a “Top Ten of the Year” selection of Gramophone Magazine, “Rudolf Haken; Concertos” (Naxos). He has soloed with numerous orchestras around the country, having performed concertos and brilliante works by Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, Sarasate, J.S. Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi.
He enjoys a reputation as an outstanding recording artist in many genres. Besides the aforementioned Grammy nominee and Gramophone magazine award winner, Nic appears in “The Hot Springs Music Festival; Creole Romantic Composers” (2001-Naxos), “Music of Jerome Moross” (2002-Naxos), “Music of Jerome Starer” (1997-Albany), and appears on an album of jazz violinist Diane Delin.
He has performed on stage with some of the most acclaimed names in classical music. Some of those names include; Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, Gidon Kremer, Joshua Bell, Andre Watts, Hilary Hahn, Lang Lang, Garrick Ohlson, Shlomo Mintz, Daniel Barenboim, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin, and Sir Georg Solti. Currently, he holds the Principal Second Violin chair with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra (SBSO), where he is also a member of the SBSO String Quartet and String Quintet, performing over 20 concerts a year with those chamber ensembles. His performances of chamber music have been featured on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”
Nic has garnered much attention in the “pop” genre as well. He has performed on stage with such popular artists as Rod Stewart, Amy Grant, Michael Bolton, Clay Aiken, Arturo Sandoval, Tony Bennett, the Duke Ellington Big Band, Frank Sinatra Jr., Bobby Vinton, the Moody Blues, Yanni, Roger Daltry, Kansas, Melissa Manchester, Ben E. King, Tito Puente Jr., Ben Vereen, the Platters, the Ink Spots, and Barbara Mandrell, just to name a few.
He is the co-founder (with wife Sunny) of the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival (MCCMF), and performs as violinist in their annual concerts. Visit MCCMF website.
Sunny Gardner-Orbovich
Michigan City Chamber Music Festival (MCCMF) Education Director
Sunny enjoys a growing reputation as one of Northwest Indiana’s most respected artistic pedagogues for children. She has developed a unique general curriculum of arts education which includes cultural diversity, world and natural history, folk idioms and ideas and disciplines from the most current educational research minds.
“Mrs. G.O.” (as she is affectionately called by her students) was an Art Teacher in the Michigan City Area Schools Systems for 20 years. Her artistic and musical experience, however, go far beyond the conventional limitations of public schools.
Sunny is also a respected and award-winning painter, muralist and musician (viola and soprano). She graduated from Wichita University with honors in painting. Ms. Gardner-Orbovich also holds a certificate of education from Indiana University, Bloomington and a Masters of Arts Education from Indiana Wesleyan University. She has studied voice with the acclaimed Sonia Rasmussen at IU-Bloomington and acquired 6 years of Suzuki string method experience while residing there.
As a musician, she is an active violist with the LaPorte County Symphony Orchestra and is co-founder of the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival (MCCMF). Sunny is also co-founder of the Michigan City Ecumenical Community Children’s Choir, established in 2005, and is founder of and facilitates the MCCMF’s annual “Children’s Choir Camp.”
Jennet Ingle
Concert Oboist
Jennet Ingle loves the oboe. She has built an active career around performing, teaching, making reeds for and writing about it, and believes deeply that everyone else loves it, too. Perhaps they just don’t know it yet.
Jennet Ingle has been Principal Oboist of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra since 2006. She is a soloist at heart, joyfully taking over any stage that will have her. Her lifelong interest in new music led to a recent commissioning project – Dreams and Visions (Searching the Shadows) by Marjorie Rusche is a triptych based on cards from the Tarot deck. In March 2007, she was honored to perform the world premiere of Doug Lofstrom’s Oboe Concertino, a work commissioned for her by the New Philharmonic Orchestra and the College of DuPage. In 2020, the most isolating year of our lifetimes, Jennet worked to build community for oboists. Her signature group program, the Invincible Oboist, demystifies instrumental skills and helps oboists to get past the STRUGGLE to find ease in their playing. She created a Reed Club that meets every Monday for social connection and to discuss details of the reedmaking process. She started a group program for reedmaking beginners, as well – Zero to Reedmaker – which teaches the process through a series of group classes and accountability.