Cafe String Quartet

Monique Odell Pinelli enjoyed growing up listening to her father play all styles of music. She first studied violin with Robert L Forney, then with Leopold LaFosse at the U of Iowa School of Music and with David Moskovitz at UNC-Greensboro College of Visual and Performing Arts. Monique has played with the TriCities IA, Greensboro, Salt Lake, Asheville and Hendersonville Symphonies, Asheville Lyric Opera and Brevard Philharmonic. In addition, Monique has toured China and Inner Mongolia with the South Shore Orchestra. Her playing credits include: Chris LeDoux’s Powder River LP, Utah’s Sundance Institute, AVL Magic Festival, Christmas at Biltmore, AVL’s Shindig on the Green!, ¡Hola Carolina! Full House and New Broad River Bands, NPR broadcast with Jherek Bischoff at the AVL Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit, AVL Transcendental Meditation Center, Cirque de Soleil, Celtic Woman and The Temptations. Cafe String Quartet’s notable weddings include: NC Governor Roy Cooper’s daughter and the great great grandson of George Vanderbilt. In 2006, Monique founded Cafe String Quartet, please check out our website for a full listing of the AVL benefit programs we’ve organized for our community! 

 Paula Sisson Akbar, a native of Dee Flat, Oregon, attended Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and received her Master of Violin Performance degree from the Yale Graduate School of Music. Prior to joining the National Symphony Orchestra in 1991, she was a first violinist in the Oregon, New Haven, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. Ms. Akbar has since performed with the 20th/21st Century Consort, the Library of Congress Summer Chamber Players, the Sunrise String Quartet, the National Chamber Players, and the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and is a founding member of the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra in Washington DC. She has performed with Mexican musicians in San Miguel de Allende’s Angela Peralta Theatre, toured to Costa Rica and Buenos Aires (and recorded a CD entitled “To Buenos Aires With Love”) with the WAMMIE award-winning group QuinTango, in 2010 completed a two week cruise to the Caribbean as a member of the Symphonic Voyages Orchestra, and, with her Viva Violins/Fiddle Sessions NSO colleagues, participated in almost every NSO United States Residency since 1992. Ms. Akbar is the creator of Madame Mavis Pugh’s School of the Violin/Viva Violins Kinderkonzert, and Bears, Bears, Everywhere, NSO Teddy Bear programs which have been presented in the KC Family Theater for three seasons. Locally, Ms. Akbar is current Concertmaster of the Blue Ridge Orchestra and is a member of the Four Seasons Chamber Orchestra. Her violin is crafted by Black Mountain luthier Kate Rickenbacker. 

  Claudia is an active performer, teacher, and collaborator in Asheville, NC. She performs frequently with several Asheville-area orchestras, and enjoys learning about and implementing Suzuki methods within her violin/viola studio. Claudia earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Peabody Conservatory, and earned both her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Georgia. .