Introducing Two New Music Members

By Kathy Pate, Music Editor

NLAPW would like to welcome and introduce two of our newest music members: Dr. Roumena Georgieva (Atlanta Branch, Georgia) and Mary Fineman (Concord-Alameda Branch, California).

Roumena Georgieva, PhD, is an accomplished violinist with an international solo-performing career spanning five decades. She has toured many times since age 23 as concertmaster and soloist with the Ladies’ Chamber Orchestra of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, and has performed as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Rome, Milan, Berlin, Leipzig, and Thessalonica (Greece).

Since arriving in the United States in 1997, she has performed with the Northbrook Symphony Orchestra (Illinois) and Lake Shore Symphony Orchestra in Chicago, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, Paducah Symphony Orchestra in Kentucky, and Southern Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and as concertmaster with the Georgia State University Symphony Orchestra in Atlanta.

Georgieva has also performed in many chamber ensembles and recitals in Bulgaria, Thessalonica, and throughout the United States. In 2005, she became director of the Atlanta University Center Symphony Orchestra, comprised of students from Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College.

She recently taught a program at American University in Washington, D.C., and in 2007 published a book, “Method and Methodology of Violin Training in the Beginning of the 21st Century,” explaining the performance benefits for string players using the Alexander Method. This book has been reprinted in part by Clark Atlanta University, and used in classroom teaching, and was also reprinted in part in the International Journal of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 4, Feb. 20, 2018.

Georgieva and her accompanist, Phillip Skerrett, Jr., have performed together for many years. They continue to give recitals and concerts, playing a wide variety of repertoire. “Spirit Suite” for violin and piano, written in 2014 by Atlanta composer Sharon Willis, was dedicated to Georgieva.

Mary Fineman, originally from Baltimore, began her musical career as a classical pianist and accompanist who could improvise and play in different genres. She had always heard music playing “in her head,” but in 2003 at the age of 52, she suddenly began hearing her own original music. Thus began her next career — as a composer and singer-songwriter.

Prior to writing and performing her own music, Fineman taught at Concordia University in Montreal and Temple Junior College in Texas, and did freelance work for instrumentalists, singers, and dancers (and one classical whistler).

In 2014, with a grant from the James Irvine Foundation, Fineman wrote an original orchestral score, the song cycle “It’s About Love,” which she performed with the Oakland Symphony and vocalist Wesla Whitfield. She has performed her music in the San Francisco Bay area at the Paramount Theatre, Piedmont Piano Co., Chapel of the Chimes, Goat Hall, the Marsh Berkeley, and Opera at the Nave, as well as Steinway Piano and CCPAS.org events. She has played in numerous benefits, private events, and house concerts in the United States and Canada.

Fineman has recorded many of her more than 70 songs and piano pieces. Her four albums are titled “Out of the Blue,” “Everyday Secrets,” “Mary Fineman Solo Piano,” and “You and Me.” She is currently working on a fifth CD, to be released this year, as well as music for a string quartet.

She teaches at her private studio in Oakland, California. To learn more about her, and to listen to or purchase her music, visit www.maryfineman.com.