Biographies


photo by Jim Bishop

Dolci is the musical duo of Ted Rust and Viva Knight. They perform music for oboe and piano. Between 2011 and 2018 they gave 81 public recitals in Santa Barbara County and the San Francisco Bay Area. They commissioned Filled With Moonlight by Philip Freihofner, which they performed at the 2012 annual conference of the International Double Reed Society. In 2018 they moved to Southern California, where they have performed at the Santa Monica Public Library. Since March, 2020 they have published 38 episodes of The Dolci Show, an ongoing free series of home concert podcasts.



When she was six and living in rural Arkansas, Viva Knight heard a piano on the radio and declared that she must play one. Her grandmother bought her a piano and lessons, the family’s only luxury. Viva studied piano with Stefan Bardas at the University of North Texas, Marina Young at Rutgers University and Betty Oberacker in Santa Barbara. She produced several television series including Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. She has given solo piano recitals in New York and Southampton, New York and Assisi, Italy; she recorded Baby Aboard, a CD of short classical works for expectant mothers.

Ted Rust sang with his parents from early childhood and learned to play several instruments by ear. On entering fifth grade, he was told that the only vacant chair in the school orchestra was for an oboe, so he learned to play it. In his teens, he studied with Louis Speyer of the Boston Symphony. While pursuing his career as a city and port planning consultant, Ted studied further with Eleanor and Raymond Dusté, taught woodwinds and chamber music at The Crowden School, and played in the Berkeley Bach Cantata Group, the Kensington Symphony and the quintet Quorum Ventorum. For the last twenty years before retiring he published the newsletter Music for the Love of It.
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Web page updated December 2, 2021