La Belle Alliance

'La Belle Alliance' is a small, intimate concert hall in Curaçao where the couple has concertised many times. They adopted this name for their duo because it signifies the special spirit of collaborative communication between the two of them and between musicians and audience. They take pleasure in performing both the standard repertoire and contemporary music. RELEASE, their CD of works for solo violin and violin/piano by New Zealand composers, was released by Ode records in June 2012.

Tessa Petersen studied at the University of Otago and led the New Zealand Youth Orchestra before continuing her studies in London at the Royal College of Music with Levon Chilingirian under a British Commonwealth Scholarship. She went on to play and tour with leading chamber orchestras in the UK and Europe. Moving to the USA in 1993, Tessa established a career on the East Coast as an orchestral and chamber player, concertmaster, recitalist, adjudicator and teacher. She has participated in the Aldeburgh Music Festival in the UK, as well as The Waterloo, Wolfeboro, Mohawk Trail, Marlboro and Monadnock music festivals in the USA. Tessa is currently Executant Lecturer in Violin at the University of Otago.

John Van Buskirk, a versatile pianist referred to by the NY Times as "sensitive and assertive", has a broad experience of music as an academic and as a practical discipline. He has played from Los Angeles and New York to Budapest, Prince Edward Island and the Netherland Antilles as a recitalist, chamber music player and recital partner to singers and instrumentalists. A graduate from the Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School, he completed post-graduate study at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. He has performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Wigmore Hall; also for radio broadcast in the USA and the UK. John's prolific recordings include those made as a member of The New York Chamber Symphony and the Harmonie Ensemble amongst others. His solo recordings include Music of Robert Schumann, The Art of the Fortepiano, and Songs of Robert Schumann, with Jane Bryden. His more recent recording is of Allen Shawn's Messages (dedicated to him) on an Albany CD. Since relocating to New Zealand, John has adjudicated several IRMT competitions, lectured and tutored at the University of Otago and become an examiner for the New Zealand Music Examinations Board. In addition to concerts of La Belle Alliance, he has performed with such well-known New Zealand artists as Terence Dennis, Dame Malvina Major, Edith Salzman, Alexa Still and Deborah Wai-Kapohe.