CT Virtuosi to Present BRAZIL IN MOTION Season Finale In Hartford, New Britain

​Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra will perform its season finale with the eighth installment of their popular “We the People” Immigrant Stories in Music series. The program entitled The Story of Brazil in Motion is set to feature Albanian-American violinist Brunilda Myftaraj and Brazilian-American dancer/choreographer Felipe Puletini and AMA Dance Theatre. The concert will send audiences out on a high with Mozart's ever-beautiful Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K201. 

The concert will be held on Sunday, June 2 at 3pm at The Bushnell @ the First Presbyterian of Hartford (136 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT) and be repeated on Sunday, June 9 at 3pm at New Britain Museum of American Art (56 Lexington St., New Britain, CT). Tickets for the Hartford performance are available via Bushnell.org; information regarding the New Britain performance can be found at TheVirtuosi.org.

About The Story of Brazil in Motion

Violinist Brunilda Myftaraj leads the Virtuosi in a concert featuring Brazilian-American Felipe Puletini & AMA Dance Theatre of Mystic, CT. The love of movement and its artistic expression in dance are essential elements of Brazilian culture and music. These traditions are reflected in the work of the Brazilian American dancer Felipe Puletini and his AMA Dance Theatre. The event's repertoire will feature Bachianas brasileiras No.9, by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Heitor, Sonata for strings “O Burrico de Pau” (The Wooden Donkey) by Antônio Carlos Gomes. The concert and the Virtuosi Season will conclude with an ever-beautiful by W. A. Mozart.

About Felipe Puletini

Felipe Puletini is a member of the International Dance Council – CID/ UNESCO. Puletini is currently the head of the children's division and company manager for Ballet RI. His responsibilities include coordinating the school and being the children's cast director for The Nutcracker, as well as assisting the dance company's directors in organizing productions, scheduling, communications, cultivation of donors, and tour management.

Throughout his professional career in Brazil and the USA, he has performed in repertory classical ballet, musical theater, and Brazilian television. Career highlights include Cinderella, Swan Lake, Paquita, Don Quixote, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote (Cuban version), and La Fille Mal Guardée (Cuban version), I Gotcha! (Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb), The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and the ensemble in 1st Bibi Ferreira Awards (The Brazilian Tony Awards). His repertory includes contemporary works by Rodney Rivera, Sergei Vanaev, Alejandro Ulloa, Lauren Edson, Gabrielle Lamb, Catherine Fellows, Pascal Rekoert, and Nan Giordano.

Puletini is a guest teaching artist for Central Connecticut State University (Dance Education), and coaches/choreographs for many schools in New England. As a choreographer and dancer, he has collaborated with the New Britain Symphony Orchestra, the Mystic River Chorale, Mystic Outdoor Festival Performing Arts Stage, the University of South Carolina – Beaufort, and New England Ballet Theatre of CT.

About Brunilda Myftaraj

Albanian-American violinist Brunilda Myftaraj has drawn enthusiastic accolades from audiences as well as critical acclaim for her masterful musicianship in Albania, Italy, Greece, France, Morocco, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Israel, and in the United States. She has been praised by the New London Day critic as an “especially fine and beautiful player”. Although Myftaraj's teachers are some of the world's finest, her true inspiration comes from audiences and her students. Her recordings of“Naked Violin” and “The American Pie” received impeccable reviews from Fanfare magazine.

Brunilda was part of the Love's Tango recording project with Alex Nakimovsky and June Bizantz, which has been awarded a 2019 Silver Global Music Award for Outstanding Achievement in the album & lyrics/songwriting categories. Ms. Myftaraj currently holds the position of Concertmaster for the Connecticut Virtuosi, Connecticut Lyric Opera and Greve opera festival in Italy. She is the director of the Virtuosi Music Academy and the Summer Music Institute in Farmington Connecticut, where she also teaches violin and chamber music.

About the Series

Connecticut Virtuosi's “We The People” concert series funded in part by an Arts grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. From 2021 to 2024 the Virtuosi will introduce audiences to the rich and diverse cultural threads woven by America's immigrants into 20th and 21st-century music. Each concert features an immigrant composer and/or musician, whose music reflects inspiration from a distinct culture or group of cultures. Each concert includes written and/or spoken word pieces by writers who are themselves immigrants from the culture(s) being highlighted. When words fail, music speaks. The series explore connections between cultures, languages, and people. 

About Connecticut Virtuosi

Established in 1997, the Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra is Connecticut's premier professional chamber orchestra, based in the Greater New Britain area, and dedicated to presenting both traditional and contemporary works to the public. As artists, the Virtuosi strive to be cultural leaders and teachers and to inspire our audiences to recognize the beauty and quality of classical music in any form.

The Orchestra, led by founder and artistic director Adrian Sylveen, currently presents approximately ten critically acclaimed concert and opera programs each season. Virtuosi also presents eight school concerts for the New Britain Department Education. Altogether, the group performs thirty times a season in New Britain, Hartford, New London, Middletown, New York, and Waterbury. Virtuosi also presented occasional concerts in Mystic, Meriden, New York City, and Pennsylvania. The organization consists of approximately 27 professional musicians representing many nationalities. Learn more at thevirtuosi.org

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