Biographies
Music
Director - Phillip Bush
Senior Composer-in-Residence - Donald Crockett
Violin Faculty - Joel Berman, Diana Cohen, Gabriela Diaz, Judith Eissenberg, Mayuki
Fukuhara, Shem Guibbory, Renée Jolles, Sheila
Reinhold, Eriko Sato, Maria Schleuning, Andrea Schultz, Calvin Wiersma, Masako Yanagita
Viola Faculty -
Amadi Azikiwe, Nicholas Cords (on sabbatical), Désirée Elsevier, Veronica Salas, Kate Vincent (on sabbatical), Lisa Whitfield
Cello Faculty -
Claire Bryant, Michael Finckel, Kermit Moore, Maxine Neuman,
Nathaniel Parke, Lutz Rath, Ashima Scripp, James Wilson
Double Bass Faculty - Lewis Paer
Flute Faculty - Sue Ann Kahn,
Conor Nelson
Oboe Faculty -
Jacqueline Leclair, Matt Sullivan, Keve Wilson
Clarinet Faculty - Armand Ambrosini, Michael Dumouchel,
Alan Kay, Jo-Ann Sternberg
Bassoon Faculty -
Lauren Goldstein Stubbs, Stephen Walt
Horn Faculty - Joseph Anderer, Daniel Grabois
Piano Faculty - Cynthia Adler,
Xak Bjerken,
Phillip Bush, James
Goldsworthy, Judith Gordon, Stephen Manes, David Oei, Elizabeth Wright
Composers-in-Residence
- Keeril Makan, John McDonald, Andrew Norman
Guest Faculty - Virginia Anderer, Styra Avins, Joel Berman, Phillip Bush, Phillip Coonce, Frank Daykin, Lutz Rath, others to be announced
Composition Fellows -
To be announced
Music Director
PHILLIP BUSH
Phillip Bush is a pianist of uncommon versatility, with a repertoire extending
from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. His active and unconventional
career has taken him to many parts of the globe. Since his New York recital
debut at the Metropolitan Museum in 1984, Mr. Bush has appeared as recitalist
throughout North America, as well as in Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. In 2001
he made his Carnegie Hall concerto debut with the London Sinfonietta to critical
acclaim, replacing an ailing Peter Serkin on short notice in concerti by
Stravinsky and Alexander Goehr. He has also appeared as soloist with the Osaka
Century Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Houston Symphony, and several other
orchestras, in repertoire as far-ranging as the Beethoven concerti and the
American premiere of Michael Nyman’s Harpsichord Concerto.
A much sought-after chamber musician, Mr. Bush has performed and recorded
with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, appears frequently on New
York's Bargemusic series, and has performed at the Grand Canyon Music Festival,
Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Strings in the Mountains (Colorado), Sitka
Music Festival (Alaska), St. Bart's Music Festival, Bahamas Music Festival,
Music at Blair Atholl (Scotland), Cape May Music Festival, and many other
festivals. He has also performed with the Kronos Quartet, the Miami String
Quartet, and members of the Emerson, Guarneri, Tokyo,
and St. Lawrence quartets. Between 1991 and 1999 he performed over 250 concerts
in Japan with the piano quartet "Typhoon," and recorded five CD's with the group
for Epic/Sony, all of which reached the top of the Japanese classical charts. In
1993 Mr. Bush founded “MayMusic in Charlotte,” a critically acclaimed and
innovative festival in North Carolina that annually presented chamber and
contemporary music, film screenings, and other cross-disciplinary
collaborations. He served as Artistic Director of that festival from 1993 to
1998. Mr. Bush can be heard frequently on public radio in the US, including
appearances on "Saint Paul Sunday," and has had live performances broadcast
frequently throughout the nation on television via the Classic Arts Showcase.
A fierce advocate for contemporary music, Phillip Bush has performed often
with many of the New York area's most renowned new music ensembles, including
Bang on a Can All-Stars, Philip Glass Ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, Group
for Contemporary Music, Newband, Sequitur, Parnassus, and New Music Consort.
Since 1995 he has been an artist-member of the Milwaukee-based new music group,
Present Music. Mr. Bush's efforts on behalf of contemporary music have earned
him grants and awards from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Aaron
Copland Fund, ASCAP, Chamber Music America, and the National Endowment for the
Arts. His discography as soloist and chamber musician has now surpassed thirty
recordings, on labels such as Sony, Virgin Classics, Koch International, New
World Records, Denon, and many others.
Mr. Bush is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with
Leon Fleisher. From 2000 to 2004 Mr. Bush taught piano and chamber music at the
University of Michigan. Today, in addition to his busy performing schedule, he
continues to give masterclasses, sharing his insights with young musicians in
venues throughout the nation. He makes his home in the Old Shandon neighborhood
of Columbia, South Carolina, with his wife, pianist Lynn Kompass, and their
part-Siberian-Husky, Ruby.
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Senior Composer-in-Residence
DONALD CROCKETT
Donald Crockett is currently Professor of Composition and Director of the
Contemporary Music Ensemble at the University of Southern California Thornton
School of Music. He has collaborated with such artists and ensembles as the
Kronos, Arditti and Stanford quartets, violinist Ida Kavafian, mezzo soprano
Janice Felty, Collage, Pacific Serenades, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra,
oboist Allan Vogel, the Debussy Trio and the Core Ensemble. He has received
commissions from the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (Composer in Residence, 1991-97), Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and many others.
Crockett has also received grants and prizes from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters, American Music Center, Barlow Endowment, BMI, Composers Inc.,
Copland Fund, Meet the Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/USA, and the
National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently he received an Aaron Copland
Award from the Copland Society, and a California Arts Council Performing Arts
Fellowship. His music is published by MMB Music, St. Louis, and recorded on the
Albany, CRI, Laurel and Pro Arte/Fanfare labels.
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Violin
JOEL BERMAN
Joel Berman has concertized extensively in the United States and abroad, in
recital and as soloist with orchestras. He has given solo and chamber music
performances at venues including the Library of Congress, Town Hall, the
National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center, Juilliard School of Music, the
Corcoran Gallery, the Phillips Collection, the Smithsonian Institution, the
Renwick Gallery, and the National Academy of Sciences, and he has performed a
wide range of concerti with many orchestras. As a recording artist, he appears
on the AmCam, Smithsonian, Orion, Vox, Columbia, and CRI labels.
Since 2001, Dr. Berman has presented nine Beethoven string quartet cycles,
comprising performances with lectures of all sixteen quartets. He is currently
writing a book on the Beethoven string quartets, including a new theory about
the function of the Grosse Fuge. A new performance/lecture series on the Bartók string quartets will be launched in January 2006 at the National
Institutes of Health.
From 1957 to 1988, Dr. Berman was Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at
the University of Maryland, College Park. He founded the University of Maryland
Trio, which gave hundreds of performances from 1964 to 1980, commissioned and
premiered new works, received three Creative Performing Arts Awards, and made
recordings for Vox and Orion. He also performed with many other artists at the
University of Maryland, including members of the Guarneri String Quartet. He was
member of the American Camerata for New Music from 1974 to 2000 and was
concertmaster and soloist for the Camerata from its inception. The Camerata
attracted national attention, made numerous recordings, and has a subsidiary
recording label, AmCam.
Dr. Berman has coached and performed at the Chamber Music Conference and
Composers' Forum of the East since 1966. He studied at the Juilliard School of
Music, Columbia University, and the University of Michigan.
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DIANA COHEN
Praised by critics for her “incredible flair, maturity and insight,” violinist Diana Cohen was appointed concertmaster of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra in 2007. She has also appeared as soloist and served as concertmaster of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, The National Repertory Orchestra, and Red {an orchestra}, among others. Currently dividing her time between chamber music, solo performances, and orchestral work, Diana performs regularly in New York and across the globe with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The International Sejong Soloists, and as a substitute at the New York Philharmonic.
The 2007-2008 season includes solo appearances with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, The Valdosta Symphony, Red {an orchestra}, and with orchestras in Bulgaria. Ms. Cohen was concertmaster of the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, principal second of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and has been rotating principal and member of the IRIS chamber orchestra since its inaugural season.
As a chamber musician, Diana has performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, The Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, The Chamber Music Festival of Giverny, France, The Itzhak Perlman Chamber Music Festival, Taos, Sarasota, Music Academy of the West, Aspen and Piccolo Spoleto. She has appeared in chamber concerts with members of the Cleveland Orchestra at Cleveland’s Severance Hall and has performed as a guest artist on faculty concerts at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Ms. Cohen has regularly collaborated with members of the Guarneri, Juilliard and Cleveland Quartets, as well as with renowned artists including Mitsuko Uchida, Kim Kashkashian, Gilbert Kalish and many others. She has also played regularly with her family; Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinetist Franklin Cohen, Alexander Cohen, principal timpani of the San Diego Symphony, and her late mother, bassoonist Lynette Diers Cohen. Works have been commissioned for the Cohen family quartet.
Ms. Cohen is an honors graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music where she was the recipient of the 2000 Jerome Gross Prize in violin and a winner of the Darius Milhaud competition. Her principal teachers were Donald Weilerstein, William Preucil and Paul Kantor.
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GABRIELA DIAZ
Violinist Gabriela Diaz, a
native of Georgia, began her musical training at the age of five,
studying piano with her mother, and the next year, violin with her
father. Shortly before her sixteenth birthday, she was diagnosed with
Hodgkin's Disease, a type of lymphatic cancer. She was treated with
chemotherapy and radiation at Egleston Children's Hospital in Atlanta
and the Medical Center in Columbus.
As a
cancer survivor, Gabriela is committed to cancer research and treatment.
She has lent her talents to a wide range of related programs and
organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia and
Lymphoma Society, Hasbro Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital and
Mount Auburn Hospital, The Race for the Cure, OnCare, Inc., the Columbus
Medical Center, and the Egleston Children's Hospital at Emory
University in Atlanta. Last year Gabriela was a recipient of a grant
from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation. This grant enabled her to begin
organizing a series of chamber music concerts in cancer units at various
hospitals in Boston called the Boston Hope Ensemble. In addition to
these hospital concerts, Gabriela organized two benefit concerts for
cancer research organizations.
Gabriela has
attended the Aspen Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, and has
performed at the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, the Rockport Chamber
Music Festival, Vail Valley Bravo Music Festival, and the Lucerne
Festival Academy, among others. Devoted to contemporary music, she has
been fortunate to work with many significant living composers, namely
Pierre Boulez, Magnus Lindberg, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Lucier, John
Zorn, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael Gandolfi, Lee Hyla, and Helmut
Lachenmann. In 2003 she won the BMOP/NEC concerto competition, playing
John Zorn's Contes des Fees with the Boston Modern Orchestra
Project. Gabriela became the youngest person to ever record the Ligeti
Violin Concerto, recorded for Mode Records with New England
Conservatory's Contemporary Ensemble (not yet released). She received
her Bachelor's degree from the New England Conservatory of Music,
studying with James Buswell. At graduation, she was awarded the John
Cage Award for her contribution to new music, and the Chadwick Medal,
the highest award bestowed on undergraduates at NEC. She has currently
completed her second year of Master's study at NEC.
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JUDITH EISSENBERG
Judith Eissenberg is the second violinist and a founding member of The
Lydian String Quartet, in residence at Brandeis University since 1980. With
the quartet, she has won multiple international prizes, including the
Naumburg Award for Excellence in Chamber Music. As a member of the Lydian, she tours the US and abroad, has numerous recordings – from the traditional to the contemporary, and has commissioned and premiered new works. A
performer on both modern and period instruments, Ms. Eissenberg has been a member and soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra and has appeared with other performing organizations in Boston, including the
Boston Chamber Music Society, The Boston Conservatory Chamber Players, Emmanuel Music, Boston Pops, and Boston Baroque. She is a founding member
of Music From Salem, a chamber music festival in upstate NY founded in
1987. Ms. Eissenberg is also on the faculty at The Boston Conservatory,
coaching chamber music.
In addition to being a performer, Ms. Eissenberg has a deep interest in
music of diverse world traditions. She teaches the Intro to World Music
course at Brandeis University and is Founder and Director of MusicUnitesUS.
MUUS is an innovative interdisciplinary program at the university that
invites renowned performers from around the world to campus for residencies
that explore history, culture and society through music. Residencies
include open class from across the academy, workshops, public school outreach, and concerts. In Spring of 2011, Ms. Eissenberg was invited by
the South Korean government to study traditional Korean music at the 2011
International Gugak Workshop. She is presently learning janggu,
traditional Korean drum.
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MAYUKI FUKUHARA
Mayuki Fukuhara began his musical studies at age seven, and, by age twelve, he
had won the International Music Festival Grand Prix. He came to the United
States as a scholarship student at the Curtis Institute of Music, and later did
post-graduate work at Mannes College of Music, studying under Ivan Galamian,
Jaime Laredo, and Felix Galimir. He performs with several of the New York
metropolitan area’s most prestigious chamber orchestras (Orpheus, Orchestra of
St. Luke’s, where he is a principal player, and others) and is a participating
artist in such festivals as Marlboro, Caramoor, and the New England Bach
Festival.
Mr. Fukuhara spends his summers performing with the Saito Kinen
Festival of Japan under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. His recordings are
available on the Musical Heritage Society, Music Masters, and other labels.
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SHEM GUIBBORY
A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts, violinist Shem Guibbory has
studied with Broadus Erle and Syoko Aki at Yale University, Romuald Tecco, and
Sophie Feuermann. Since 1981, Mr. Guibbory has been on the faculty at the
Chamber Music Conference and Composer's Forum of the East (at Bennington
College) and was appointed its Music Director in 1997. He is a member of the
First Violin section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Mr. Guibbory has won
recognition as a soloist and as a chamber musician. In 1999, he was a featured
artist in “The Classical Hour at Steinway Hall” a joint production of NHK TV
(Japan) and D’Alessio Media (USA). His interpretations of 20th Century music
have received international acclaim. Mr. Guibbory has performed recitals and
chamber music throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.
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RENEE JOLLES
Hailed as a “real star” by The New York Times for her New York concerto
debut, violinist Renée Jolles has enjoyed a varied career as a solo artist and
chamber musician. She has premiered hundreds of works, including the American
premiere of Schnittke’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Her concerto engagements have
included orchestras such as Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, The Cape May Festival
Orchestra, The Salisbury Symphony, and the Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey.
Ms. Jolles is a member of The Jolles Duo, The Roerich Quartet, continuum, New
York Chamber Ensemble, and she performs frequently with Orpheus Chamber
Orchestra and has served as that ensemble’s concertmaster. She has performed at
festivals such as Marlboro, Cape May, Bowdoin, Norfolk, Taos, Rockport (MA),
Riverrun, and The Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East.
Ms. Jolles is on the faculty of The Juilliard School, Pre-College Division,
the Mannes College of Music, Preparatory Division, and Sarah Lawrence College.
Ms. Jolles received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Juilliard and,
upon graduation, was presented with the school’s highest award, the William
Schuman Prize. While at Juilliard, she held teaching fellowships in chamber
music as an assistant to The Juilliard Quartet and in Ear-Training. Her teachers
have included Lewis Kaplan, Felix Galimir, and members of the Juilliard, Tokyo,
and American String Quartets.
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SHEILA REINHOLD
Sheila Reinhold gave her first performance as soloist with orchestra at the age
of nine in the 92nd Street Y's Kaufmann Concert Hall in her native New York
City. At fourteen, after seven years of study with the Russian violinist
Vladimir Graffman, she was invited by Jascha Heifetz to join his master class at
the University of Southern California, where she studied with him for five
years. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from USC, and studied
composition and theory with Leon Kirchner and Earl Kim at Harvard University.
Ms. Reinhold's solo engagements have included appearances with Zubin Mehta
and André Kostelanetz, and performances at the Chautauqua, ArtPark and Ives
festivals, and she has performed chamber music in concert with Heifetz, Gregor
Piatigorsky and Leon Kirchner. Her activities have reflected a wide range of
interests. She has premiered solo and chamber works for both violin and viola,
has worked on major films and Broadway productions, has performed in orchestras
such as the New York Philharmonic, and has appeared with popular artists such as
Tony Bennett. Her teaching positions have included Resident Musician at Harvard
University as well as appearances offering master classes and solo performances
at other universities, and she especially enjoys working with young people as
head of the string faculty at the Children's Orchestra Society. Ms. Reinhold has
recorded on the North/South Recordings label.
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ERIKO SATO
Violinist Eriko Sato has been a member and frequent concertmaster of the Orpheus
Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra Of St. Luke's. She made her solo debut at
age 13 and has performed as soloist with orchestras in Louisville, San Francisco
and Tokyo. Ms. Sato was the winner of the Tibor Varga International Competition,
the Young Musicians Foundation Competition and three Japanese National
Competitions.
An active chamber musician, Ms. Sato has participated in the Mostly Mozart,
Aspen, Sitka, Angel Fire, Gretna and Kuhmo Music Festivals, and has appeared
regularly with Bargemusic, Chamber Music Northwest, Caramoor, Washington Square
and the Dobbs Ferry Music Festivals. A founding member of the Aspen Soloists,
Festival Chamber Music Society and Salon Chamber Soloists she is also a member
of the Elysium, Ecliptica and American Chamber Ensembles. As a concertmaster,
she has recorded for Deutsche Grammaphon and Sony Classics for the Orpheus
Chamber Orchestra and on Nonesuch, Telarc, Arabesque, and MusicMasters with the
St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. Her latest release is Allen Shawn's string quartet
"Sleepless Night" on Albany Records. She has also recorded for Vanguard, Delos,
Elysium and Grenadilla labels and has been featured on CBS News Sunday Morning.
Ms. Sato has taught at Queens College and the Aspen Music Festival and is
currently a faculty member of Chamber Music Conference/Composers' Forum of the
East, Hoff-Barthelson Music School and the Mannes College Of Music Preparatory
Division, where she teaches violin and chamber music. She lives in New York City
with her husband, pianist David Oei, and their pit bull mix, Jazz.
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MARIA SCHLEUNING
Violinist Maria Schleuning has been a member of the Dallas Symphony since 1994. She has been featured as soloist with Dallas Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Long Bay Symphony, and Columbia Symphony, and as alumni soloist for the 75th Anniversary of the Portland Youth Philharmonic.
In 2004 she performed the Barber Violin Concerto with the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra on a tour of Eastern Europe.
As a chamber musician, Ms. Schleuning has performed at Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Recital Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, and Merkin Hall, and in concerts with Villa Musica in Germany. She is a member of the Grammy-nominated Voices of Change and the Walden Piano Quartet, and has recorded with both ensembles.
Ms. Schleuning has served on the Bowdoin International Music Festival faculty since 1993 and has also performed at Music in the Mountains, Idyllwild Arts, and the Skaneateles Festival. She studied with Josef Gingold at Indiana University where she was awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate; with Yfrah Neaman in London as a recipient of the Dame Myra Hess Foundation Trust; and with Joel Smirnoff at the Juilliard School where she received her Master’s degree.
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ANDREA SCHULTZ
Violinist Andrea Schultz currently performs and tours with a wide array of
groups, including the Cabrini Quartet, the new music ensemble Sequitur, the New
York Chamber Ensemble, Trio of the Americas, and several of New York City’s
leading orchestras, including the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Brandenburg
Ensemble. Ms. Schultz was a member of the Mark Morris Dance Group Music Ensemble
for four years, touring the United Sates, Britain, Japan, and Australia,
including performances with Yo-Yo Ma of the Schumann Piano Quintet. She has also
appeared as guest with the Casssatt String Quartet, Apple Hill Chamber Players,
Da Capo Chamber Players, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Mostly Mozart, and the Limon
Dance Company and has recorded contemporary chamber music for the Albany, New
World, and Phoenix labels. Ms. Schultz has spent summers performing at the
Tanglewood, Aspen, Caramoor, Wintergreen, and Cape May Festivals as well as the
Pundakit International Chamber Music Festival in the Phillipines. A graduate of
Yale University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and SUNY Stony Brook, Ms.
Schultz studied violin with Sydney Harth, Paul Kantor, Donald Weilerstein, and
Joyce Robbins. She currently resides in New York City with her husband, cellist
Michael Finckel, and their one-year-old daughter Talia.
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CALVIN WIERSMA
Calvin Wiersma, violinist, has appeared throughout the world as a soloist and
chamber musician. He has performed numerous solo recitals, including appearances
in Boston, New York, and Chicago, and has appeared with the Rochester
Philharmonic Orchestra, The Concerto Company of Boston, and the Lawrence
Symphony, among others. He was a founding member of the Meliora Quartet, winner
of the Naumberg, Fischoff, Coleman, and Cleveland Quartet competitions, and the
Quartet-in- Residence at the Spoleto Festivals of the U.S., Italy, and
Australia. Mr. Wiersma was also a founding member of the Figaro Trio and is
currently a member of the Manhattan String Quartet.
In addition to his worldwide touring with the Quartet and Trio, Mr. Wiersma
has been heard at the summer Chamber Music Festivals in Vancouver, Rockport,
Portland, Crested Butte, Bard, Interlochen, Caramoor, An Appalachian Summer,
June in Buffalo, and at Music Mountain, as well as the Aspen Music Festival. Mr.
Wiersma's wide range of musical activities have recently involved an
international tour soloing with Kathleen Battle, performances at Bargemusic and
with New York Philomusica, national and international tours with the Orpheus
Chamber Orchestra, appearances at the Berkshire Bach Festival performing the
complete Brandenburg concertos, and concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
with flutist Paula Robison. His recently completed recordings include Jacob
Druckman's Third String Quartet for Philomusica, a recording of Elliott Carter's
Syringa, Swan Song by Milton Babbitt and an album of Chamber Music of Stephen
Foster with Ms. Robison for Telarc.
A noted performer of contemporary music, Mr. Wiersma is a member of Cygnus,
the Lochrian Chamber Ensemble, and the Ensemble Sospeso, and has appeared with
Speculum Musicae, Ensemble 21, Parnassus, and the New York New Music Ensemble.
He has recently completed European tours with Steve Reich and Ensemble 21, and
has been featured in solo performances for the International League of Composers
of Music. Mr. Wiersma was the creator of the Music program and initial Music
Department chair at the Bard High School Early College, an innovative new New
York City Public School for gifted students, and is a music education
coordinator for the American Symphony Orchestra.
An active teacher as well as performer, Mr. Wiersma recently joined the
faculty as an Assistant Professor of Violin and Chamber at the Purchase
Conservatory of Music, and has been on the faculties of the Lawrence
Conservatory of Music, Florida State University, Brandeis University, the New
England Conservatory, and the Longy School of Music. He has conducted clinics
and master classes throughout the world, and has been an artist in residence at
Middlebury College, the California Summer Arts Program, and the Institute for
Chamber Music in Khiryat Shemona, Israel.
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Faculty Page
MASAKO YANAGITA
Masako Yanagita began her violin studies in Tokyo at age six with Eijin Tanaka,
continuing there with Louis Graeler of the Kroll Quartet. In 1966 she was
awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and a J.D. Rockefeller III Grant, enabling her
to come to the U.S. to study with William Kroll at the Mannes College of Music
in New York. She was awarded the Silverstein Prize as leading violinist at the
Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood) during her first summer in the US, while
studying there on a scholarship given by Jascha Heifetz. Subsequently, she won
top honors in a number of competitions, including the Paganini Competition
(Genoa), the Carl Flesch Competition (London) and the Munich International
Competition. She continues to perform in many festivals including Mostly Mozart,
Grand Canyon, Mohawk Trail Concerts and Caramoor. She is a member of the faculty
of Mannes College, Greenwood Chamber Music Camp (MA), the Princeton (NJ) Play
Week and the Chamber Music Conference at Bennington (VT) College. She appears
regularly in concerts with numerous colleagues as well as with her
pianist-husband, Abba Bogin. Their most recent CD recordings include the entire
repertoire for violin/viola and piano of Franz Schubert.
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Viola
AMADI AZIKIWE
Amadi Azikiwe, violist, violinist and conductor, has been heard in recital in major cities throughout the United States, such as New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Houston, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., including an appearance at the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Azikiwe has also been a guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at the Alice Tully Hall in New York, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. He has appeared in recital at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, on the “Discovery” recital series in La Jolla, at the International Viola Congress, and at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since then, he has performed throughout Israel, Canada, South America, Central America, India, Japan, Hong Kong, and throughout the Caribbean.
As a soloist, Mr. Azikiwe has appeared with the Prince George’s Philharmonic, Delaware Symphony, Virginia Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Fort Collins Symphony, Virginia Beach Symphony, Roanoke Symphony, Winston-Salem Symphony, Western Piedmont Symphony, Salisbury Symphony, the Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, the City Island Baroque Ensemble of New York, the National Symphony of Ecuador, and at the Costa Rica International Music Festival. He has also toured with Music from Marlboro, and performed at the Sarasota, Tanglewood, Aspen, Norfolk, and San Juan Islands Festivals, El Paso International Chamber Music Festival, Salt Bay Chamber Festival, Maui Classical Music Festival, Missouri Chamber Music Festival, Yachats Music Festival, Carolina Chamber Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Mr. Azikiwe’s performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today”, “St. Paul Sunday”, on WNYC in New York, WGBH in Boston, WFMT in Chicago, and the BBC, along with television appearances in South America.
Mr. Azikiwe was previously the conductor of the Old Dominion
University Chamber Orchestra and the Atlanta University Center
Orchestra. He was also a visiting faculty member of Indiana University’s
Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, IN. Currently, he is on the
faculty of James Madison University, and Music Director of the Harlem
Symphony Orchestra.
Mr. Azikiwe has appeared as artist faculty at the Brevard Music
Center, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Apple Hill Center for Chamber
Music, Killington Music Festival, Mammoth Lakes Chamber Music Festival,
University of North Carolina School of the Arts Summer Session and the
Aria International Academy in London, Ontario.
As an orchestral musician, he has appeared with the New York
Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, as principal violist of
the SHIRA Jerusalem International Symphony Orchestra and guest principal
violist of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra.
A native of New York City, Amadi Azikiwe was born in 1969. After
early studies with his mother, he began his formal training at the North
Carolina School of the Arts as a student of Sally Peck. He continued
his studies at the New England Conservatory with Marcus Thompson and
conductor Pascal Verrot, receiving his Bachelor’s degree. Mr. Azikiwe
was also awarded the Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University,
where he served as an Associate Instructor, and received his Master’s
Degree in 1994 as a student of Atar Arad.
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NICHOLAS CORDS (on sabbatical)
Violist Nicholas Cords is strongly committed to the advocacy and
performance of music from a very broad historic and geographical
spectrum. His busy touring schedule has led him in recent years to
Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Alice Tully Hall, the Cologne
Philharmonie, and the Library of Congress. As a soloist, he has appeared
with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Minnesota
Orchestra, and with the New York String Seminar Orchestra. His chamber
music credits include the Schleswig-Holstein, Santa Fe, Tanglewood,
Piccolo Spoleto, Moritzburg, Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia,
Smithsonian Folklife, and Charlottesville festivals.
Mr. Cords is a regular member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, a
musical collective that uses the historic Silk Road trading route as a
metaphor for musical exchange and creativity in the present. The group
has not only traveled to many of the major musical centers of the United
States and Europe, but also to China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore,
India, Egypt, Iran, Syria and a number of the Central Asian Republics.
In addition to performing with the ensemble, he has taken a role in the
organization and development of new creative projects, programming for
concerts and museum residencies, and as an active part of two long-term
residencies with the group; one at the Rhode Island School of Design and
one at Harvard University. Mr. Cords appears on all four of the
ensemble’s albums; Silk Road Journeys, Beyond the Horizon, New
Impossibilities and Off the Map.
He has appeared frequently on television and radio including a
Chinese National Television broadcast from the Great Wall, the David
Letterman Show, numerous National Public Radio broadcasts, Good Morning
America, NHK Japan, and a four year run as resident commentator and
performer on WQXR New York’s Radio weekly On A-I-R. Mr. Cords is an
active member of many ensembles, including the Caramoor Virtuosi, An Die
Musik, Richardson Chamber Players, The Knights, and the Metropolitan
Museum Artists in Concert.
Mr. Cords is also a founding member of Brooklyn Rider; a
genre-defying string quartet dedicated to creative programming of
repertoire both new and old (www.brooklynrider.com).
The group has collaborated with composers all over the globe, as well as
with Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, Persian kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan
Kalhor, Japanese shakuhachi player Kojiro Umezaki, and songstress
Suzanne Vega, to name a few. Equally at home in concert halls and clubs,
Brooklyn Rider was the only classical group invited to play in the South
By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. This season’s highlights include
an Alice Tully Hall/Lincoln Center debut this March, residencies in
Laguna Beach and UC Santa Barbara, and an Asian tour in the fall. Their
recordings, Silent City (with the Persian kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan
Kalhor) Passport, and Dominant Curve have received wide critical acclaim
from sources ranging from Gramophone Magazine to Pitchfork. In 2011, the
quartet plans to release the complete quartets of Philip Glass on the
composer’s label, Orange Mountain Music.
Mr. Cords began his musical education at the Juilliard School where
he won top honors in the viola competition and subsequently gave the New
York premiere of John Harbison’s Viola Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall. He
completed his studies at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. His
teachers have included Karen Tuttle, Harvey Shapiro, Joseph Fuchs, and
Felix Galamir. Himself a committed teacher, Mr. Cords spends part of his
summer schedule teaching at the Bennington Chamber Music and Composers
Conference and served for eight years as viola instructor at Princeton
University. He has twice participated as a mentor along with other
members of the Silk Road Ensemble in the Weill Institute Professional
Training Workshops at Carnegie Hall and has also delivered a series of
teacher workshops for the New York City Department of Education on music
and the role of it can play in cross-cultural understanding. He is a
regular contributor to NPR’s classical music blog Deceptive Cadence. Mr.
Cords plays on an instrument made for him in 2008 by famed Brooklyn
maker Samuel Zygmuntowicz.
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DÉSIRÉE ELSEVIER
A New York native, Désirée Elsevier began her studies at the age of 5 on the violin, and at the age of 12 on the viola, and has been a regular member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1987. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University in Economics (where she also studied composition with Karl Husa and Stephen Stucky) and Bachelor and Masters degrees in music from the Manhattan School of Music, studying with Lillian Fuchs and Karen Tuttle. An avid chamber musician, she appears frequently in the New York area, and has been a coach at the Chamber Music Conference and Composer’s Forum of the East in Bennington, VT since 2004. In 1998 she was asked to join the World Orchestra for Peace (founded by Sir Georg Solti, now conducted by Valery Gergiev) and has been a member from that time on, performing concerts in Germany, England, Holland, Belgium, the Hungary, Russia, China, and most recently in Israel. In the 1985-86 season she was Assistant Principal Viola in the Orchestra di San Carlo in Naples, Italy (where she also learned to drive a car). In 2001, she accepted the additional responsibility of being the assistant orchestra manager of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In her spare time she is an avid reader, knitter and is trying to learn to improvise jazz on the viola. She lives in her almost empty nest in Rockland County, NY with her hornist husband.
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VERONICA SALAS
Veronica Salas, violist, has won acclaim for her artistry in the U.S. and
abroad. The New York Times described her playing as "astringently
lyrical", The Los Angeles Times praised her for "presenting a strong case
for the viola as a solo instrument with formidable control and singing tone",
and Stradivarius Magazine found her performance of a solo work performed
at the Lillian Fuchs memorial concert to be "deeply moving". Ms. Salas has given
five New York recitals including her highly successful debut at Weill Recital
Hall in Carnegie Hall. She has traveled to Hong Kong, the Philippines, and
Taiwan, where she gave recitals and master classes under the auspices of the
State Department. Additional international venues include touring Athens and the
Greek Isles as violist of the Elysium String Quartet, Italy as principal violist
at the Spoleto Festival, and touring Japan with The Mostly Mozart Festival
Orchestra.
Ms. Salas, a native of Chile, has performed as soloist with the Aspen Music
Festival orchestra, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of New York, as duo soloist with
Heifetz protege Erick Friedman, University of Southern California Symphony, the
Colonial Symphony Orchestra, The Queens Chamber Band and in 2005 performed the
Bartók Concerto with the Long Island University
Orchestra at the Tilles Center. In 1999 Ms. Salas performed at the White House
for President and Mrs. Clinton as acting principal violist with the Eos
orchestra of New York.
An active chamber musician, Ms. Salas has collaborated in performances with
great artists such as Paul Neubauer, Stanley Drucker, Yo-Yo Ma, Erick Friedman,
Lukas Foss, Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson Quartet, Charles Castleman, and
Joseph Fuchs. Ms. Salas is a member of The Lyrica Chamber Players, The Elysium
Ensemble, The Pierrot Consort, The Modern Works String Quartet, The Bronx Arts
Ensemble, and The Queens Chamber Band, in which she plays concertos on viola and
viola d'amore. Presently Ms. Salas is principal violist of the Colonial
Symphony, Opera Orchestra of New York, and Manhattan Philharmonic. Ms. Salas has
recorded with The New Music Consort and New York Virtuosi ensembles under The
Musical Heritage and Vanguard labels and can be heard on two CDs released in
1999 under the Elysium label, an all-Mozart CD with clarinetist Stanley Drucker,
and the Bach Brandenburg concerti featuring Lukas Foss. Ms. Salas is also one of
the featured artists on a Virgil Thompson CD released on 2002.
Ms. Salas's love of the viola and teaching stems from her beloved teacher
Lillian Fuchs, who supported her in many ways while working towards the B.M.A.,
M.M.A., and D.M.A. degrees that she received from The Juilliard School. Dr.
Salas is presently on the faculty of New York University, Long Island
University, the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East, and
Brooklyn College.
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KATE VINCENT (on sabbatical)
Kate Vincent, originally from Perth, Western Australia, is the Artistic
Director and Violist of the Firebird Ensemble, a Boston-based new music
ensemble. In addition Kate is the Associate Principal Violist of the Boston
Modern Orchestra Project and has performed as both Principal and Associate
Principal violist with numerous groups including Emmanuel Music, Pro Arte
Chamber Orchestra, Opera Boston, Opera Aperta and Opera Unlimited. She was
violist of the Arden Quartet between 1999-2003 and has appeared as a guest
artist with numerous groups including Alea 3, Chameleon Ensemble, the Euclid
Quartet, Windsor Music, Callithumpian Ensemble, and the Benten Trio. Kate has
been featured on BMOP’s Club Café series, Emmanuel Music’s Chamber series, at
the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music and the Bennington Composers Conference
of the East. As a chamber musician, Kate has performed throughout Australia,
Canada, US, Germany, Holland and Russia. Among other composers, Kate has
premiered chamber and solo works by Luciano Berio, John Harbison, John
MacDonald, Joe Maneri, and has recorded for the Tzadik, New World, Oxingale and
Steeplechase labels. In addition to performing in summer festivals throughout
the US and Canada, Kate has spent the last two summers traveling through
Central Asia photographing traditional musicians. Kate graduated from the New
England Conservatory of Music in 2001 where she studied with James Dunham and
Lenny Matcynzski. She holds Masters degrees in both viola performance and music
education.
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LISA WHITFIELD
Lisa Whitfield is an active orchestral and chamber musician in the NYC
metropolitan area, having also performed as a vocalist and improvising violist.
She especially enjoys performing new works for the viola, either alone or with
unusual combinations (such as percussion); in 2003 she premiered Siddhartha’s
Dreams, written for her by composer Louis Fujinami Conti, and also performed
composer Keith Fitch’s Todestanzen. Ms. Whitfield has appeared with such
varied artists as Ray Charles, Shirley Horn, David Murray of the World Saxophone
Quartet, the Indigo Girls, and Sir Elton John. In 2005, Ms. Whitfield performed
with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in the Lincoln Center production of Ocean, a Merce Cunningham/John Cage collaboration. She has also performed in
the orchestras of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and Broadway productions
of Tommy, Big, Frogs, and Victor/Victoria; additionally she has performed with
the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Philharmonic Orchestra of NJ, Connecticut Grand
Opera, and the Greenwich Symphony.
Ms. Whitfield is on the Solfege faculty of the Juilliard Pre-College, as well
as the faculty of the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East,
where she currently serves as a faculty representative to the board of
directors. She is privileged to sit on the music panel of the NY State Council
on the Arts and she has taught at the Third Street Music School Settlement for
nearly twelve years.
In her spare time, Ms. Whitfield is the mother of two budding musicians, one
of whom studies violin at Third Street. She holds degrees from Oberlin
Conservatory and The Juilliard School and counts among her teachers Karen
Tuttle, Jeffrey Irvine, and Lynne Ramsey.
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Cello
CLAIRE BRYANT
A native of South Carolina, cellist Claire Bryant enjoys an active
and diverse career in New York City as a performer of chamber music,
contemporary music, and the solo cello repertoire. She is equally
passionate and committed to her work as an educator and advocate for the
inclusion of the Arts in communities and society. She has appeared as a
soloist with orchestra including the Kuopion Symphony Orchestra of
Finland, the National Symphony of Honduras in Tegucigalpa, the San
Francisco Conservatory Orchestra, and the South Carolina Philharmonic
Orchestra.
As a chamber musician, she has collaborated
with Anthony Marwood, the Peabody Trio, Roger Tapping, Maria Lambros,
Peter Frankl, Boris Berman, Dawn Upshaw, and members of the St.
Lawrence, Orion, Mendelssohn, and Pacifica string quartets and has
participated in Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival, Mohawk Trail
Concerts, Spoleto, USA, Portland Chamber Music Festival, and Juilliard
in Aiken Festival.
In 2006, Claire was the first cellist hand
picked by The Academy: A Program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School,
and the Weill Music Institute, a two-year fellowship program encompassing
performance, teaching, and community engagement. During her tenure at The
Academy, she co-founded The Children's Music Campaign NYC (CMCNYC). The
culmination of this yearlong project in three New York City public schools
included a celebratory concert at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, and an inspiring
documentary short by David Smith:
http://www.acjw.org/cmcnyc_videos.html.
This season, Claire will appear onstage with
several major international artists, including Emanuel Ax, Sir Simon
Rattle, and Christian Tetzlaff at the Zankel Hall’s of Carnegie Hall and
Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. In November, she is performing
alongside Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival faculty for Sir Maxwell
Davies in “Eight Songs for a Mad King” in Brattleboro, VT and Dallas, TX.
In New York, Claire performs regularly with a variety of ensembles, such
as Ensemble ACJW, Continuum, the Zankel Band at Carnegie Hall, and a new
project founded in 2010, the Enescu Chamber Players, with Donald
Weilerstein, Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, Nicholas Mann, and Jennifer
Curtis.
She is a graduate of The Juilliard School and
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where her primary teachers were
Bonnie Hampton and Joel Krosnick. She studied in South Carolina with Dr.
Robert Jesselson at the University of South Carolina. Claire currently
serves as Assistant Faculty of Cello at The Juilliard School assisting
Bonnie Hampton.
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MICHAEL FINCKEL
Cellist Michael Finckel is a founding member of the Cabrini Quartet and
performs regularly as a member of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and as a soloist and
chamber musician throughout the United States. He has been a member of the Ysaye
Quartet, the Eberli and Omega Ensembles and the Sextet Project and performs with
members of his family in the renowned Finckel Cello Quartet. His interest in
contemporary music has involved him in concerts with many of New York’s leading
new music ensembles including Speculum Musicae, Ensemble Sospeso, The Group for
Contemporary Music, The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Steve Reich and
Musicians, the SEM Ensemble, and the American Composer’s Orchestra. In the 1970s
he collaborated with Pierre Boulez in several of the New York Philharmonic's
"Rug Series" Concerts series. He is presently Music Director of the Sage City
Symphony in Bennington, Vermont, and oversees the orchestra’s extensive
commissioning program. Currently on the faculty of the Hoff-Barthelson Music
School in Scarsdale, New York, he has taught cello and chamber music at Cornell
and Princeton Universities and at Bennington College in Vermont. He is director
of the Kinhaven Adult Chamber Music Workshop in Weston, Vermont, is a performing
faculty member at the Composers Conference and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley
College in Massachusetts. He has recorded for the Dorian, Opus One, New World,
CRI, Vanguard, Vox/Candide and ECM/Warner Bros. labels.
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KERMIT MOORE
Kermit Moore is a cellist, conductor, and composer based in New York City.
As a cellist, Moore has performed throughout the United States and has been
heard with major European orchestras such as the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande,
the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the National Radio Symphony of Paris, and the
Belgium National Orchestra. A champion of contemporary music, particularly
American contemporary music, he has given recitals of modern music at Lincoln
Center, at Carnegie Recital Hall, and at universities throughout the United
States and Europe. As a composer, Moore has authored solo works for cello,
compositions for orchestra, a flute sonata, a timpani concerto, and two string
quartets. He also was a founder of the Society of Black Composers. He composed
the film score for a documentary on Ralph Bunche for PBS and also composed the
score for the made-for-television movie Solomon Northrup's Odyssey for
HBO. Moore makes frequent guest appearances as a conductor with symphony
orchestras around the world, including the Detroit Symphony, the Brooklyn
Philharmonic, and the Berkeley (CA) Symphony, as well as his own chamber
orchestra, Classical Heritage Ensemble. He performs and teaches at the Chamber
Music Conference of the East in Bennington (VT) and appears frequently at music
festivals across the United States.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Moore has an honors graduate of the Cleveland Institute
of Music and New York University. He was a pupil of Felix Salmond at the
Juilliard School and of Paul Bazelaire at the Paris Conservatory. His professors
include Georges Enesco, Pierre Pasquier, and Nadia Boulanger. Moore was on the
faculty of the Hartt School at the University of Hartford (CT) for three years.
There he taught the cello and was a member of the String Quartet in residence.
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MAXINE NEUMAN
Cellist Maxine Neuman’s solo and chamber music career spans North America,
South America, Europe, and Japan. A grant recipient from the Rockefeller and
Ford Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and a two-time Grammy
Award winner, her biography appears in “Who’s Who in the World.” She is a
founding member of the Claremont Duo, the Crescent String Quartet, the Vermont
Cello Quartet, Breve, and the Walden Trio, groups with which she has traveled
and recorded extensively. Her long list of recording credits includes Deutsche
Grammophon, Columbia, Angel, EMI, Nonesuch, Biddulph, CRI, Orion, Leonarda,
Argo, Opus One, SONY/Virgin, AMC, Vanguard, Musical Heritage, Albany,
Northeastern, and CBS World Records. She has appeared as soloist before a
sold-out audience in New York’s Town Hall in the American premiere of Giovanni
Battista Viotti’s only cello concerto, and for Austrophon, she recorded the
Schumann Cello Concerto in Count Esterhazy’s historic palace in Austria. She can
also be heard in such diverse settings as the Montreux Jazz Festival, the films
of Jim Jarmusch, and with the rock band Metallica. She has expanded the
repertoire for multiple celli, and cello and guitar, by arranging and
transcribing works from every period.
Distinguished as a teacher as well as performer, Ms. Neuman has served as a
judge for numerous international competitions. On the faculty at the New York’s
School for Strings, she has taught at Bennington College, Williams College, and
C.W. Post University. Her cello is a J.B. Guadagnini, dating from 1772.
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Faculty Page
NATHANIEL PARKE
Nathaniel Parke is a member of the Bennington String Quartet and is
principal cello of the Berkshire Symphony and co-principal cello of the
Berkshire Opera Orchestra. He has also been a member of the Boston
Composers String Quartet with whom he can be heard performing new works
by Boston composers on the MMC label. He is currently artist associate
in cello at Williams College, intructor of cello at Bennington College
and is a part-time lecturer at SUNY Albany in addition to maintaining a
studio of private students. He has served as a faculty member and
chamber music coach at the Longy School of Music, Skidmore College and
is currently on the faculty of the Chamber Music Conference and
Composer's Forum of the East. As a soloist, he has been heard with the
Wellesley, Berkshire and Sage City Symphonies. His free-lance work in
the Albany, N.Y. and Boston areas ranges from period instrument
performances to premieres of new works. He can be heard on Albany
records performing solo cello music by Ileana Perez-Velasquez. He
received his training at the Longy School of Music studying with George
Neikrug, and in London with William Pleeth. He holds an MFA from
Bennington College where he studied with Maxine Neuman. Mr. Parke
performs on an instrument made in 1721 by C.G. Testore.
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LUTZ RATH
Born in Germany, cellist Lutz Rath is heard regularly with the Orchestra of
St. Luke’s and performs in solo and chamber music recitals. Over the years he
has been a regular performer in the Washington Square Music Festival, of which
he is currently music director. For the last 17 years he has participated in the
Chamber Music Conference of the East at Bennington College. Mr. Rath has been a
member of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and for 10 years was the cellist of
the International String Quartet, which won Grand Prix in the International
Chamber Music Competition, Evian, France. While with the Quartet, he toured
Europe, Asia, South America, and the US regularly, and recorded internationally.
From 1996 to 2000 Rath was the cellist of the Elysium Quartet and toured the USA
and Greece, recording with Lucas Foss and Stanley Drucker on the Elysium label.
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ASHIMA SCRIPP
Cellist Ashima Scripp has performed with orchestras, ensembles and
in recital in major concert halls around the world including New York's
Carnegie Hall, Tokyo’s Opera City, Boston's Symphony Hall, Chicago's
Symphony Center and Boston's Jordan Hall. Ms. Scripp has received top
prizes and distinctions at many prestigious competitions and has also
recently been featured on Los Angeles' KMozart, Boston's WGBH, Chicago’s
WFMT and in the Pioneer Press.
A sought-after chamber musician, Ms. Scripp is a member
of the critically acclaimed Walden Chamber Players based in Boston, MA.
With Walden, she performs a variety of chamber music repertoire at some
of the most distinguished series in the country. In addition to their
touring schedule, Walden Chamber Players also present outreach and
education programs across the country and hold the position of
Ensemble-in-Residence at several institutions including the
Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science, Concord Academy (MA) and
Trinity University (TX).
Ms. Scripp also performs in recital and as a member of
the Zefira Trio at venues across the country. In past seasons Ms. Scripp
has been invited to perform at the Phillips Collection’s Sunday Concert
Series, at the Faculty Performing Artist Recital Series at Longy School
of Music and as part of the live recital series run by Chicago’s WFMT.
In the summer Ms. Scripp serves on the faculty of the International
Music Festival in Regensburg, Germany and is co-director of Longy’s
Cellobration Festival. She is also a frequent guest artist with the
North Country Chamber Players in Franconia, NH, VentiCordi in Kennebunk,
ME and the New Hampshire Music Festival.
Ms. Scripp holds degrees from the Manhattan School of
Music and Northwestern University and is on the cello and chamber music
faculty of the Longy School of Music and Concord Academy in
Massachusetts. She has recently released a recording with jazz
pianist/composer Claire Ritter on Zoning Records and a recording of the
chamber music of Augusta Read Thomas with the Walden Chamber Players.
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JAMES WILSON
Cellist James Wilson performs throughout the world and is noted for his singing tone and intelligent but soulful approach to music. The Los Angeles Times has described him as a musician "with something to say and a commanding way of saying it," and he has appeared at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Casals Hall in Tokyo, and the Sydney Opera House, and at diverse music festivals that include those in Hong Kong, London, Bavaria, New York and Aspen. Wilson has collaborated with artists such as violinist Joshua Bell, flutist Eugenia Zukerman, pianist Christopher O'Riley, guitarist Eliot Fisk, actress Claire Bloom, and the Tokyo String Quartet, as well as with ensembles that include the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Richardson Chamber Players, the Music of the Spheres Society, and the Alliance Players. A former member of the Shanghai and Chester String Quartets, he recorded and toured extensively worldwide with both groups and is heard on the Delos and Music Masters labels. A champion of musical works from all periods, Mr. Wilson performs on Baroque as well as modern cello in repertoire ranging from the seventeenth century to new works written especially for him. He has served on the faculties of Princeton University, the University of Richmond, and Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently the Artistic Director of the Richmond Festival of Music (VA) and on the faculty at Columbia University.
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Double Bass
LEWIS PAER
Lewis Paer graduated from the Manhattan School of Music 1975. His studies
included associations with David Walter, Robert Brennand, Orin O'Brien, Robert
Gladstone and Jon Deak. He attended the Aspen Music Festival, playing under
Sergiu Comissiona, and participated in the New School's Christmas String
Seminar with Alexander and Sasha Schneider in 1978-9.
Lewis was a guest of the Detroit Symphony under Antal Dorati in 1982 and
served as the Assistant Principal Bass of the Phoenix Symphony under Theo
Alcantara from 1985-1988. He was Principal of the Long Island Philharmonic under
Christopher Keen from 1981-1985, and has been a guest player with the bass
sections of The New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He
also has appeared with many contemporary music ensembles, including the Erik
Hawkins Dance Company, L'Ensemble of Temple University, The Philadelphia
Composers Forum, and the Steve Reich Ensemble, in whose original recordings
Lewis is included. Lewis has been a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke's since
1980, and has been a guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as
well. He can be heard on many of their recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon,
ECM, Vox Candide, Sony and Nonesuch labels. Lewis' recording of Henry Brant's
bass concerto. which he commissioned, was premiered at the Chamber Music
Conference of the East in 1987, and was recorded with the American Camerata.
Lewis coached and performed in Japan, at the Affinis Seminar from 1990-1993,
and he has been a member of the Faculty of the Chamber Music Conference of the
East at Bennington College since 1981. Since 1981, Lewis has been a member of
the orchestra for American Ballet Theater, and since 1988 has been a member of
the New York City Opera Orchestra. He is the Principal Bass of both orchestras.
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Flute
SUE ANN KAHN
Sue Ann Kahn is acclaimed for her virtuosic and sensitive performances of
music of all styles. She was honored with one of the first Solo Recitalist
Fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts in recognition of her
outstanding gifts as a flutist and received the American New Music Consortium
Award for distinguished performances of contemporary music. She won the coveted
Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award as a member of the Jubal Trio, and she
performs with the Trio, the League-ISCM Chamber Players, and other ensembles in
major concert halls throughout the United States. Kahn presents recitals of
unusual interest with pianist and fortepianist Andrew Willis, and has received
consistent critical acclaim for her recordings for CRI, MMG, Vox-Candide, New
World, and Albany.
Active in the National Flute Association, Kahn is now President. She teaches
flute and chamber music at the Mannes College of Music, at New York University,
and in the Music Performance Program at Columbia University, and gives
master classes nationwide. She has performed and coached chamber music at the
Chamber Music Conference of the East for the past twenty-four summers.
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CONOR NELSON
Canadian flutist Conor Nelson gave his New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and has since appeared frequently as soloist and recitalist throughout the United States and abroad. Recent solo engagements include performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Flint Symphony, and numerous other orchestras. The only wind player to win the Grand Prize at the WAMSO Young Artist Competition, he also won first prize at the William C. Byrd Young Artist Competition. In addition, he has received top prizes at the New York Flute Club Young Artist Competition and the Haynes International Flute Competition. He was recently featured on the McGraw Hill Young Artist Showcase (WQXR New York), Minnesota Public Radio, and WGBH Boston Public Radio.
As a chamber musician, he performs regularly with marimbist/percussionist, Ayano Kataoka as part of the Conor and Ayano Duo. Involved in several exciting commissioning projects for their genre, the duo has performed in Merkin Concert Hall, CAMI Hall, The Tokyo Opera City Hall, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Izumi Hall, and as guest artists for the Ottawa Flute Association in Canada. He has also collaborated with Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Spencer Myer, Colin Carr, Jesse Levine, and the Biava and Calder string quartets. With the Intrada Winds he was a prizewinner at the Fischoff, Coleman and Yellow Springs national chamber music competitions and performed at several prestigious concert seriesӠthroughout the United States. He has appeared at numerous chamber music festivals across the country including the OK Mozart, Skaneateles, Yellow Barn, Cooperstown, Look and Listen (NYC), Norfolk, Green Mountain, Chesapeake, and the Chamber Music Quad Cities series where he is a regular guest. As an orchestral flutist, he has worked with the Detroit Symphony, the Orchestra of St. LukeԳ, and the Tulsa Symphony as well as prestigious summer programs including the National Repertory Orchestra, the National Orchestral Institute, and the Aspen, Banff, and Brevard summer music festivals.
A dedicated artist teacher of flute, Conor is currently the Assistant Professor of Flute at Bowling Green State University. Having previously taught at Oklahoma State University and Stony Brook University, he has also given master classes at schools such as the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin Madison, Manhattan School of Music, Lawrence University Conservatory, Vanderbilt University, Louisiana State University, the University of Iowa, the University of North Texas, Texas Tech University, the University of Minnesota, Penn State, the University of Oklahoma, the Long Island Conservatory, Illinois State University, the University of Kansas and the Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory among several others. He has also served as guest faculty at the International Flute Institute at the New York Summer Music Festival and the Texas Summer Flute Symposium.
He received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, and Stony Brook University where he was the winner of the school-wide concerto competitions at all three institutions. He is also a recipient of the Thomas Nyfenger Prize, the Samuel Baron Prize, and the Presser Award. His principal teachers include Carol Wincenc, Ransom Wilson, Linda Chesis and Susan Hoeppner.
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Oboe
JACQUELINE LECLAIR
Oboist Jacqueline Leclair, one of the United States' foremost interpreters
of new music, resides in New York City and is a member of Alarm Will Sound and
Sequitur. She can frequently be heard performing with other New York City
ensembles such as Sospeso, Ensemble 21 and Carnegie Hall's Zankel Band.
Ms. Leclair specializes in the study and performance of new music. She has
premiered many works, and she regularly presents classes in contemporary music
and its techniques at schools such as UCLA, the Eastman School of Music, Brigham
Young University, The North Carolina School for the Arts and University of
California San Diego. She is faculty at Montclair State University, Hofstra
University and Mannes College.
Ms. Leclair has recorded for labels such as Nonesuch, CRI, Koch, Neuma, and
CBS Masterworks, receiving critical acclaim in particular for her premiere
recording of Roger Reynolds' Summer Island. Luciano Berio's Sequenza
VII Supplementary Edition by Jacqueline Leclair is published by Universal
Edition, Vienna, and Ms. Leclair's recording of the piece is on the 2006 Mode
collection of all the Sequenzas.
Ms. Leclair studied with Richard Killmer and Ronald Roseman at the Eastman
School of Music of the University of Rochester and SUNY Stony Brook, earning a
Bachelor of Music, Performer's Certificate, Masters Degree and Doctorate of
Musical Arts.
The New York Times has reviewed Ms. Leclair's performances as "astonishing"
and as having "electrifying agility," and the New Yorker has referred to Ms.
Leclair as "lively" and "wonderful."
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MATT SULLIVAN
Matt Sullivan has performed extensively on four continents and is recognized
internationally as both a virtuoso performer and teacher, as well as an
important advocate for the modern oboe. The New York Times has praised
his "gorgeously lyrical playing" and the New Yorker has called his
inventive programming the "cutting edge".
As composer, his innovative works created for oboe, English horn
and digital horn, along with his solo and chamber music performances and compact
discs, have been featured on National Public Radio and on Voice of America. In
addition to his active teaching and solo recital schedule, he is a member of
Musicians Accord, the Richardson Chamber Players (Princeton University), First
Avenue, and Quintet of the Americas. He serves on the faculties of Long Island
University C. W. Post, the Manhattan School of Music Prep Division, Rutgers
University, New York University and he teaches oboe at Princeton University
where serves as an Associate Professor.
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KEVE WILSON
Hailed by the New York Times for her “magnificently sweet tone”, Keve Wilson has captivated audiences with her imaginative programming and electric personality. Her 2011 CD Pure Imagination was released on CCR/Naxos and resulted in a two year contract with Baird Artists Management. A past winner of Concert Artists Guild, Keve is solo oboist with Kristjan Jarvi’s Absolute Ensemble and can be heard on the group’s numerous albums, including the Grammy nominated Absolute Mix. With the Absolute Ensemble, she has traveled to Estonia, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Greece, London, Finland, and Amsterdam at the world class Concertgebouw. In March of 2012, the Absolute Ensemble is scheduled to tour India.
In New York in 2011, Keve performed with Jazz at Lincoln Center as part of the re-creation of Bird with Strings as solo oboist, subbed in the pit of the successful Broadway run of South Pacific, and performed as a member of the Wind Soloists of New York on a West Coast Tour. Invited to the Newport Jazz Festival in August as a member of Miquel Zenon’s dectet, she also recorded on his CD Alma Adentro. Keve also performed as principal oboist with Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas in New York and Mexico and recorded on the Sony released CD Travieso Carmisí. Keve premiered After Hearing Bach for oboe and strings by Peter Schickele, won a coveted position in 2004 with Opera Pacific, and co-founded the innovative chamber music series Project Accidental while living in Los Angeles for six years. A fellow at the Tanglewood Institute, she has performed at many summer festivals, including Chamber Music Northwest, Bremen MusicFest, Savannah Onstage, Juneau Jazz and Classics, and New Zealand International Arts Festival. Keve has toured extensively with Meliora Winds and Quintet of the Americas, and taught master-classes at Manhattan School of Music, Eastman School of Music, University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, University of Southern Utah, and the Chautauqua Institute. Radio appearances include NPR’s Performance Today, WQXR, and A Couple of Musicians, a weekly radio show she and her husband hosted and produced on Mountain Public Radio.
Keve is currently on the faculty at Diller-Quaile and the 92nd Street Y. Other prestigious organizations she has taught for include the Pasadena Conservatory, the Heart of Los Angeles Foundation (HOLA), the Henry Mancini Institute, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Caramoor Center, the Chamber Music Conference, and the American Festival for the Arts in Houston and Argentina. She has also performed in hundreds of public schools across New York City and Los Angeles.
Originally from Hyde Park, New York, Keve graduated from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied oboe with Richard Killmer, piano with Patricia Arden, and dance with Elizabeth Clark. She currently resides in her favorite city of New York with her husband and two Portuguese water dogs. Keve is represented by Baird Artists Management.
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Clarinet
ARMAND AMBROSINI
Armand Ambrosini appears as recitalist, chamber musician and teacher
throughout the United States. He has been an Artist-in Residence at the Sequoia
Chamber Music Workshop, Arcata, California since 1991, the Humboldt State
University Adult Chamber Music Workshop, Arcata, California since 2004, the
Ashland Chamber Music Workshop, Ashland, Oregon since 1995, and the Chamber
Music Conference and Composer’s Forum of the East since 2000. He has served as principal clarinetist with the
Philharmonia Virtuosi, Stamford, Bridgeport, and New Haven Symphonies; and the
New York String Orchestra, under Alexander Schneider, in a special performance
at Carnegie Hall. He is a founding member of the Cordier Chamber Ensemble, which
has commissioned several new compositions and toured extensively throughout the
east coast, performing at Symphony Space and the Kitchen Center for Video, Music
and Dance, New York City; the Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, D.C.;
the Center for Chamber Music, Troy, New York; and Carnegie Recital Hall, under
the auspices of a Martha Baird Rockefeller Grant.
He has served on the faculty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Humboldt
State University, and several music festivals, where he has taught award-winning
students from the United States and abroad. He is the recipient of many scholarships and awards, and holds a BFA
and MFA degree from California Institute of the Arts, a MM degree from Yale
University, and a DMA degree from the State University of New York at Stony
Brook.
In addition to an active performance schedule, he currently serves on the
faculty at the University of Oklahoma. The release of his first book and
accompanying CD, Ned Rorem’s Song Cycle Ariel: A Musical Dramatization of Five
Poems by Sylvia Plath, in December 2001 has
received high praise from Ned Rorem and is being sold on the Internet through amazon.com/books. He has co-authored a music textbook entitled Introduction to
Western Concert Music, packaged with four Sony CDs.
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MICHAEL DUMOUCHEL
A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, clarinetist Michael Dumouchel has
studied with Stanley Hasty, Robert Marcellus, and Harold Wright. Currently, Mr.
Dumouchel holds the posts of solo E-flat clarinet and second B-flat clarinet
with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra - posts he has held for more than 30 years.
As a chamber musician, Mr. Dumouchel has been performed with Musica Camerata
Montreal for the past 25 years. Mr. Dumouchel also teaches clarinet at McGill
University. He has recorded on London/Decca, Centredisc CBC, DGG, and CRI.
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ALAN KAY
One of the most versatile and respected musicians of his generation, clarinetist Alan R. Kay was honored with membership in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2002 and serves as Principal Clarinet with New York’s Riverside Symphony. He also performs as principal clarinet often with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and at American Ballet Theater. Mr. Kay’s honors include the C.D. Jackson Award at Tanglewood, a Presidential Scholars Teacher Recognition Award, Juilliard’s 1980 Clarinet Competition, and the 1989 Young Concert Artists Award with the piano and wind sextet Hexagon later featured in the prizewinning documentary film, “Debut.” Mr. Kay is a founding member of Windscape and Hexagon; he appears frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and as a guest of numerous string quartets and chamber ensembles, including the Mendelssohn, Rossetti, Mirò, and Shanghai Quartets.
A guest artist at many of the country’s finest summer festivals, Mr. Kay returned last summer for his second season at Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival and his sixth season at the esteemed Yellow Barn Festival. His acclaimed performance of Weber’s Concerto at the 2005 Windham Chamber Festival was heard repeatedly through the U.S. on NPR’s “Performance Today.” Artistic Director of the New York Chamber Ensemble, his series of thematic programs at the ensemble's Cape May Music Festival draws growing audiences each year. Also a conductor, Mr. Kay studied orchestral conducting as a Bruno Walter Scholar at Juilliard with Otto-Werner Mueller and has led ensembles at Purchase College, Juilliard, in Buck’s County (PA), Staten Island, California and New York City.
Mr. Kay taught at the Summer Music Academy in Leipzig, Germany in 2004 and teaches at the Manhattan, Hartt and Juilliard Schools. He has served on the juries of the International Chamber Music Festival in Trapani, Italy, Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. A virtuoso of the wind chamber music repertoire, Mr. Kay has recorded CD’s with Hexagon, Windscape and the Sylvan Winds; he also appears on many other chamber music, orchestral and new music CD’s. He lives with his two boys, Noah and Jonathan, ages 13 and 10, in Leonia, New Jersey.
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JO-ANN STERNBERG
Clarinetist Jo-Ann Sternberg lives a varied musical life in New York, as a
member of the Riverside Symphony, the Greenleaf
Chamber Players and Sequitur, and performing regularly with such ensembles as
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Luke's Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center, Musicians from Marlboro and New York Philomusica. Her
summer festivals have included Marlboro, Tanglewood and Schleswig-Holstein.
After receiving a B.A. in English from Tufts University and a B.M. in Clarinet
Performance from the New England Conservatory, Sternberg continued her studies
at Yale University with David Shifrin and at The Juilliard School with Charles
Neidich, receiving an M.M. from Juilliard in 1991. In addition to several
recordings with Orpheus for Deutsch-Grammophon, Sternberg's discography includes
recordings on the Nonesuch, Troy, CRI, Archetype and St. Cyprien labels. Ms.
Sternberg has a clarinet studio and coaches chamber music at Princeton
University and Western Connecticut State University, and resides on the Upper
West Side of Manhattan with her husband Bill and their children Joshua and
Rebecca.
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Faculty Page
Bassoon
LAUREN G. STUBBS
Lauren Stubbs, bassoonist, is Co-Founder of the Salt Spring Chamber
Players and was Principal Bassoonist with the Opera Orchestra of New
York, the Riverside Symphony, the Joffrey and Paul Taylor Dance
Companies, Parnassus, the ISCM League Chamber Players and the New Jersey
Symphony. Lauren was Principal Bassoon with the National Ballet of
Canada and Co-Principal and contra-bassoonist with the American
Composers Orchestra since its inception. She received both the Bachelor
and Master of Music Degrees from the Juilliard School. Lauren was a
member of the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra and has performed with
the New York Philharmonic, the Met Opera Orchestra and the Group for
Contemporary Music. She also was Co-Principal bassoonist with the
Westchester Philharmonic as well as the PDQ Bach orchestra.
Lauren is both a chamber music coach and performer at the Chamber
Music Conference and Composer's Forum of the East, a position she has
had since 1982. She resides on Salt Spring Island with her husband, Jim
and their daughter Sarah and son Matthew. She is also the rehearsal
pianist with the Bach on the Rock chorus. She has recorded on Columbia
Records, CRI, Leonard Productions and RCA. Lauren is also a founding
member of the New York Bassoon Quartet.
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STEPHEN WALT
Stephen Walt is principal bassoonist with the Albany (NY) Symphony Orchestra
and the Berkshire Bach Ensemble. He is a member of the Avanti Wind Quintet. Mr.
Walt is Artist-Teacher of Bassoon at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
where he became a member of the woodwind faculty in 1999, and is Director of
Woodwind Chamber Music at Williams College. As a free-lance musician he has
performed with orchestras, opera companies and chamber music ensembles
throughout the eastern United States, including performances with the Leontovych,
Muir, Shanghai and Borromeo String Quartets. Mr. Walt has been guest artist at
the Monadnock Festival, Musicorda, Music Festival of the Hamptons (NY), and
Music From Greer (AZ) and has appeared on the Mohawk Trail Concerts and
Williamstown Chamber Concerts series. His primary teachers were Sherman Walt and
Arthur Weisberg. He has recorded for CRI, Decca, Gasparo, Nonesuch and Albany
Records. Mr. Walt was founder and Co-Director of Williamstown Chamber Concerts
for nineteen seasons.
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Horn
JOSEPH ANDERER
Joseph Anderer is principal horn and a founding member of St. Luke's Chamber
Ensemble and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. He has also been a member of the
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra's horn section since 1984, when he served as acting
Principal Horn for season 1984-5, and is serving in this capacity once again for
the 2003-4 season. Before joining the Met Orchestra, he was a frequent performer
with the New York Philharmonic for 14 seasons, and participated in many
concerts, recordings and tours in the USA and to over 20 countries in Europe,
Asia, Australia and South America, under such conductors as Leonard Bernstein,
Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Eugen Jochum, Erich Leinsdorf, Thomas Schippers,
Carlo Maria Giulini, Klaus Tennstedt, and Zubin Mehta.
He was also a member of the Boehm Quintette for many years, and premiered
many works composed for that ensemble, including compositions by Ralph Shapey,
Charles Wuorinen, Ben Weber, Norman Dello Joio, John Lewis, Don Stewart, Lucia
Dlugoszewski and Irwin Bazelon. As soloist, he has appeared with the Orchestra
of St. Luke's in Carnegie Hall and at the Caramoor Festival, Bargemusic, Inc.,
the Mt. Desert Island Festival, the New York Chamber Soloists, the Seacliff
Chamber Players, and many others. He was heard in Schubert's “Auf dem Strom”
with Hermann Prey and James Levine at Herr Prey's last New York recital prior to
his death. He was also soloist in the American premier of Benjamin Britten's
"Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St.
Luke's. Recent New York performances included the Britten “Serenade” with tenor
Matthew Polenzani and an ensemble from the Met Orchestra conducted by James
Levine.
He holds degrees from the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Ranier
DeIntinis. Orchestral credits include the American Symphony, Brooklyn
Philharmonic, Opera Orchestra of New York, New York Chamber Symphony, New York
Pops, Long Island Philharmonic, Philharmonia Virtuosi, Orpheus and many others,
including the Vienna Philharmonic for about 10 minutes. Mr. Anderer is active in
the recording studio, with a range that encompasses chamber music, countless
operas, symphonic works, solo works, TV commercials and films. He has also
performed for albums by Dawn Upshaw, Billy Joel, Mandy Patinkin, Grover
Washington, Jr., Marcus Roberts, and Tony Bennett & K.D. Lang.
Recordings include Brahms' Trio, Op. 40 with violinist Krista Bennion Feeney
and pianist John Browning, the Beethoven Sextet Opus 81b, and the Hindemith
Sonata for Four Horns (all on the Musical Heritage Society label), Michael
Whalen's “Montana” for horn and 2 harps (Helicon), Hindemith’s Horn Sonata
(Kleos Classics), Irwin Bazelon's Wind Quintet (on CRI, the CD release of a 1977
LP recording), and, most recently, J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #1 with St.
Luke’s Chamber Ensemble (St. Luke’s Collection).
Mr. Anderer recently joined the faculty of the Steinhardt School at New York
University.
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DANIEL GRABOIS
Hornist Daniel Grabois is a member of the Meridian Arts Ensemble, a brass
and percussion sextet specializing in the performance of contemporary works. He
has recorded eight CDs with Meridian. A member as well of the Curiously Strong
Winds and of Sequitur, with whom he premiered and recorded David Rakowski’s
“Locking Horns” horn concerto, Grabois also performs frequently throughout New
York and on tour with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Luke’s Chamber
Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Opera
Orchestra, and New York City Opera Orchestra. An instructor of French horn at
the Hartt School of Music and at Princeton University, Grabois has also played
with many rock and jazz ensembles including Duran Duran. He lives in New York
with his wife and son.
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Piano
CYNTHIA ADLER
Cynthia Adler, a native New Yorker, began studying at the age of four and
completed her early studies at the Juilliard Preparatory Division. She received
her Bachelors Degree in Art History from Mt. Holyoke College, where she
continued to perform, and returned to The Juilliard School for her Masters
Degree. Her teachers have included Irwin Freundlich, William Masselos, Guido
Agosti and Ernst Oster in Analysis (Schenkerian).
Ms. Adler has appeared as soloist and chamber musician in the United States,
Europe and Israel. Since the mid 1980's she has been based in Tel Aviv and is a
member of The Yarden Ensemble formed in 1991 whose members work both in Israel
and Europe. It is known for finding and performing rarely heard works from the
19th and 20th centuries and has commissioned new music from Israeli and European
composers. Recent performances include concerts in Zurich, Geneva (salle Frank
Martin), The Hindemith Foundation (Blonay), Levin Hall in Tel Aviv, The Henry
Crown Hall in Jerusalem, and festivals at Clermont-Ferrand (France) and Luzerne-Weggis
(Switzerland). The group has recorded for Kol Israel.
Ms. Adler is an active teacher, coach, and lecturer and has helped foster the
development of amateur chamber music study in Israel. She has been a performer
and coach at The Chamber Music Conference (at Bennington) since 1973 and is on
the faculty of The Composer's Forum and Chamber Music Center at Wellesley
College.
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XAK BJERKEN
Pianist Xak Bjerken has given solo and chamber music recitals in
Europe and throughout the United States. Orchestral solo appearances
include Edinburgh with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Rome with the
Spoleto Festival Orchestra and in Disney Hall, Los Angeles, with members
of the LA Philharmonic. He has performed at the Royal Concertgebouw Hall
in Amsterdam, Alice Tully Hall, Weill Hall, the Kennedy Center, and has
given recitals in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Hungary. Mr. Bjerken
is the pianist of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, which tours the U.S.
regularly, and with his wife, pianist Miri Yampolsky, directs MAYFEST,
an annual chamber music festival in Ithaca, New York. In addition, he
has directed three festivals of twentieth-century music: "Angels, Saints
and Birdsong: A Messiaen Festival," "Through the Iron Curtain: Music of
Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union," and "The Stravinsky
Project."
Mr. Bjerken has held chamber music residencies at the Tanglewood Music
Center and the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, performed at
the Olympic Music Festival and the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival,
and served on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival. His first solo
recording for CRI, released in 2001, was entitled
High Rise; he has also recorded
for Chandos, Albany Records, Fleur de Son, and Koch International and
has made three recordings with violist Michael Zaretsky for the Artona
label. Mr. Bjerken earned his bachelor's degree cum laude at UCLA,
studying with Aube Tzerko, and his master's and doctoral degrees from
the Peabody Institute as a student and teaching assistant to Leon
Fleisher.
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PHILLIP BUSH
See biography above.
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JAMES GOLDSWORTHY
James Goldsworthy has performed in Europe, Israel, Japan, Canada, and the
United States, including broadcasts on Austrian National Television, the
California cable television show Grand Piano, Vermont Public Television,
BBC radio, and Minnesota Public Radio. While a Fulbright scholar in Vienna,
Goldsworthy participated in German Lieder master classes with Hans Hotter
and studied vocal coaching and accompanying with Erik Werba, Walter Moore, and
Roman Ortner. He performed in one of the Musikverein 175th anniversary
celebration concerts given in the Brahms Saal, and concertized in Vienna, Baden,
and Spital am Semmering, Austria. More recently, he performed at the Hôtel de
Ville in Paris, and in Le Sax concert hall in Achère, France, and at the White
House. He has appeared in chamber music concerts including celebrations of
Milton Babbitt at The Juilliard School, Carnegie Recital Hall, and Cooper Union,
James Levine’s Met Chamber Ensemble, and in the Works & Process series at
the Guggenheim Museum. He has accompanied the singers Judith Bettina, Lindsey
Christiansen, Véronique Dubois, Elem Eley, Marion Kilcher, Benjamin Luxon,
Sharon Sweet, and Edith Zitelli in recital, and performed in concerts with
violinists Jorja Fleezanis, Lilo Kantorowicz-Glick, Rolf Schulte, and violist
Jacob Glick. He has premiered works by Milton Babbitt, Christopher Berg, Chester
Biscardi, David Olan, Tobias Picker, Mel Powell, David Rakowski, Cheng Yong
Wang, and Amnon Wolman. Goldsworthy is currently the Director of the New
Works for Young Pianists Commissioning Project. He has taught at Goshen
College, Stanford University, and the University of St. Thomas, and is presently
on the piano faculty at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. His
recordings with Judith Bettina of Chester Biscardi’s The Gift of Life,
David Rakowski’s Three Songs on Poems of Louise Bogan, and songs of Otto
Luening are on CRI label. Most recently, he recorded works written for Judith
Bettina with Bridge Records.
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JUDITH GORDON
Judith Gordon gave her debut recital in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 1990. She has performed concertos by Mozart, Saint-Saëns, and Ravel with the Boston Pops Orchestra, and works by Bach, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Hindemith, Berg, and Boulez with such ensembles as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra. She has worked with a wide range of living composers, among them Martin Brody, Peter Child, Alan Fletcher, John Harbison, Lee Hyla, Peter Lieberson, and Donald Wheelock, almost all of whom have written works specifically for her. In 1997 she was selected by the Boston Globe as "Musician of the Year."
A specialist in chamber music, Ms. Gordon has collaborated in performance and on recordings with a great number of artists including the singers Lisa Saffer, Janice Felty, Mary Nessinger, Krista River, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, William Hite, and James Maddalena; the cellists Andres Diaz, Rhonda Rider, and Yo-Yo Ma; the violists James Dunham, Cynthia Phelps, Marcus Thompson, and Roger Tapping; the violinists Rose Mary Harbison and Andrew Kohji Taylor; and the flutist Fenwick Smith. She has performed with Imani Winds, the Jacques Thibaud String Trio, and the Borromeo, Daedalus, and Lydian String Quartets. She has further worked with the Boston Chamber Music Society, Collage New Music, Emmanuel Music, and Lighthouse Chamber Players.
Ms. Gordon, who studied with Patricia Zander at the New England Conservatory of Music and received the school's Outstanding Alumni Award in 2009, performs and teaches regularly at music festivals in Bennington, Vermont, Charlottesville, Virginia, Rockport, Maine, and Token Creek, Wisconsin. In Washington County, New York, she is an Artistic Co-Director of Music from Salem. She has appeared with the conductor-composer-commentator Rob Kapilow on his programs "What Makes It Great?" and "Family Musik" in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and St. Louis.
Judith Gordon has been a member of the faculty in the Department of Music at Smith College since 2006. Her 2010–2011 performances included the premiere of James Matheson's quintet Borromean Rings with the Borromeo String Quartet at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, New York; solo and chamber music by Amherst College composer Lewis Spratlan at Santa Fe New Music (New Mexico); and, as part of SmithArtsFest 2011, Vanitas by Salvatore Sciarrino.
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STEPHEN MANES
Pianist Stephen Manes has performed in most major U.S. cities as well
as in European centers, including London, Berlin, Amsterdam, the Hague,
Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vienna. He is Professor Emeritus of Music at
the University at Buffalo (SUNY), where three times he presented the
complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas.
Mr. Manes is equally distinguished for his formidable technique and
interpretive refinement. A native of Vermont, where he received his
early training with Lionel Nowak, he has appeared numerous times with
the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and has performed with the New York
Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh, National, Detroit, Baltimore and Denver
Symphonies and at the Boston Esplanade, under conductors including
Michael Tilson Thomas, Neville Marriner, Arthur Fiedler, Brian Priestman,
Sergiu Comissiona, Christopher Keene, Semyon Bychkov and Maximiano
Valdes. In 1997, when he made his concert debut in Chicago with the Ars
Viva Symphony Orchestra under Alan Heatherington, the Chicago Tribune’s
music critic, John von Rhein, remarked about Manes's "robust and
spontaneous reading of the 'Emperor'." He further wrote: "...the pianist
brought firm rhythm, a resilient attack and a largeness of vision to
Beethoven's most brilliant piano concerto."
Stephen Manes’s affinity for chamber music has led to performances with
the Cleveland, Tokyo, Kronos, Rowe and Cassatt String Quartets, and to
appearances at the Marlboro and Chautauqua Music Festivals. With the
Cassatt Quartet, he recorded “It is My Heart Singing” by Tina Davidson,
available on Albany Records. He is on the faculty of the Chamber Music
Conference and Composers Forum of the East held each summer on the campus
of Bennington College in Vermont, and he is resident pianist at the
Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival in Maine where he served as co-Music
Director from 1982-85. He has been a member of the Baird Piano Trio, in
residence at the University at Buffalo from 2000-2007. The Baird Trio made
its New York debut at Carnegie Hall (Weill Auditorium) in 2004, and its
Los Angeles debut in 2006. In 2007, they again performed at Carnegie Hall
and released their CD entitled “Thoughts and Dreams,” on Albany Records.
A graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Irwin
Freundlich, Mr. Manes was a prize winner in the Leventritt, Kosciuszko,
and Michaels Competitions. He recorded works of Tchaikovsky and Busoni for
Orion Master Recordings and has made frequent radio appearances both in
this county and abroad. With his (late) wife, pianist Frieda Manes, he
performed programs of four-hand and two-piano music throughout the United
States, as well as toured abroad, most notably in Australia. They recorded
the complete piano, four- hand music of Beethoven for Spectrum Records.
Recently, he played the complete Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle in
Buffalo, had several performances with the Baird Trio, including the
Beethoven Triple Concerto, and gave several recitals and master classes in
Sweden, Denmark and Mexico. During the 2009-2010 season his concert
schedule includes appearances in Buffalo, New England and the Los Angeles
area.
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DAVID OEI
David Oei, pianist, was a soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic at the age of
nine and has since performed with major orchestras including the New York
Philharmonic, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore Symphonies. Mr. Oei is the winner of
five Interlochen Concerto Competitions and the WQXR, Concert Artists Guild,
Young Musicians Foundation and Paul Ulanowsky Chamber Pianist Awards. He has
made guest appearances with the Audubon Quartet, Claring Chamber Players, Da
Capo Chamber Players, St. Luke's and Orpheus Chamber Ensembles and the Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Founding director of the Salon Chamber Soloists and a founding member of the
Aspen Soloists, Festival Chamber Music and the Intimate P.D.Q. Bach he is also
currently a member of the Friends Of Mozart and the Elysium and Ecliptica
Chamber Ensembles besides enjoying a longtime collaboration with violinist Chin
Kim. A former regular participant at Bargemusic and Chamber Music Northwest he
has performed at various festivals including Caramoor, Sitka, Bard, Gretna,
Seattle, Chestnut Hill, Dobbs Ferry, OK Mozart, Washington Square and Kuhmo
(Finland). His television credits include Leonard Bernstein's Young People's
Concerts, CBS News Sunday Morning and the Today Show.. He has recorded a wide
range of chamber works for Delos, ADDA, Vanguard, CRI, Pro Arte, Arabesque,
Grenadilla and New World Records, a recent release being Donald Crockett's piano
quartet Ceiling Of Heaven for Albany Records. Mr. Oei was the Music Director and
Production Advisor for Music-Theatre Group's productions of Stanley Silverman
and Richard Foreman's Africanis Instructus and Love and Science. He was also the
Music Director for the Sundance Theater Workshop production of the
Wallace/Foreman opera Yiddisha Teddy Bears. In the summer of '07 he conducted
the Washington Square Festival Chamber Orchestra in a Gershwin/Weill concert
titled Music as Political Statement. He also recently recorded the Strauss and
Rachmaninoff Sonatas for cello and piano to help launch the Festival Chamber
Music label using CD-60, the Steinway Grand featured in James Barron's
bestseller Piano.
A former affiliated teacher at SUNY Purchase and the Volunteers Coordinator
and Head Coach for Manhattan Special Olympics, Mr. Oei is a faculty member of
Summertrios, Bennington Chamber Music Conference, Hoff-Barthelson Music School
and the Mannes College Of Music Preparatory Division. Mr. Oei lives in New York
City with his wife, violinist Eriko Sato, and their pit bull mix, Jazz.
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ELIZABETH WRIGHT
Elizabeth Wright has performed extensively throughout the United States,
Europe, the USSR, and Japan. She has appeared in recital with many distinguished
artists and was awarded the prize of Outstanding Accompanist at the Fourth
International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Ms. Wright premiered and
recorded many new works, performing in such groups as the American Composers
Orchestra, the Aspen Contemporary Festival and Orpheus. She is principal pianist
with the American Symphony Orchestra and was for many years piano soloist for
both the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. She has
been an artist-teacher for the Lincoln Center Institute and has served on the
faculties of the Mannes College of Music, Bennington College, and Princeton
University. Appearing frequently on PBS, Ms. Wright has recorded on the Gasparo,
Opus One, and CRI labels.
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Composers-in-Residence
KEERIL MAKAN
Recipient of the Luciano Berio Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, Keeril Makan has also received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Foundation, the Gerbode Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Aaron Copland House, the Utah Arts Festival, and ASCAP. Described by The New Yorker as “an arrestingly gifted young American composer,” his work has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, American Composers Orchestra, Harvard Musical Association, and Carnegie Hall, among others.
Makan’s work has been featured at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and the MATA Festival in New York, and internationally at the Gaudeamus Festival in the Netherlands, Musica Nova in Finland, and Voix Nouvelles in France. The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Dal Niente, the Sonar Quartett, the Del Sol Quartet, Nuova Consonanza, the New Juilliard Ensemble, percussionist David Shively, guitarist Seth Josel, pianist Bruce Levingston, pianist Ivan Ilic, and others have performed his music. His first CD, In Sound, was released on the Tzadik label with performances by the Kronos Quartet and Paul Dresher Ensemble. Starkland Records has released his second CD, Target, with performances by Either/Or, the California E.A.R. Unit, and soprano Laurie Rubin. His music has also been recorded on Innova and Carrier Records.
Makan was raised in New Jersey by parents of South African Indian and Russian Jewish descent. After training as a violinist, he received degrees in composition and religion from Oberlin and completed his PhD in composition at the University of California–Berkeley. Outside the US, he spent a year in Helsinki, Finland, at the Sibelius Academy on a Fulbright grant. After receiving the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the University of California, he studied for two years in Paris, France. Makan is Associate Professor of Music at MIT where he holds the Lister Brothers Career Development Chair. He makes his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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JOHN MCDONALD
John McDonald, Professor of Music and Director of Graduate Music Studies at Tufts University, is a composer who tries to play the piano and a pianist who tries to compose.
He received the 2009 Lillian and Joseph Leibner Award for Distinguished Teaching and Advising from Tufts University, and was named the 2007 MTNA-Shepherd Distinguished Composer of the Year by the Music Teachers National Association.
McDonald was Music Department Chair from 2000 to 2003. He has served as an Artistic Ambassador to Asia, and is on the advisory boards of American Composers Forum New England, Worldwide Concurrent Premieres, Inc., and several other cultural and academic organizations.
His recent and in-progress projects include Peace Process (basset horn and piano), The Creatures’ Choir (an evening-long song cycle for voice and piano), Ways To Jump (a choral work concerning frogs, commissioned by Music Worcester), Piano Albums 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 (collections of piano miniatures that attempt to chronicle some difficulties and joys of daily life through musical observation), Four Compositions for flute and piano, and a new work for saxophone and piano commissioned by the Massachusetts Music Teachers Association that responds to Schubert’s song cycle “Winterreise.” Pianist Andrew Rangell has just completed a recording (for Bridge Records; May 2009 release) of McDonald’s Meditation Before A Sonata: Dew Cloth, Dream Drapery, a piece which can function as a preamble to either of the monumental Charles Ives sonatas.
His recordings appear on the Albany, Archetype, Boston, Bridge, Capstone, Neuma, New Ariel, and New World labels, and he has concertized widely as composer and pianist. Recent performances at the Goethe Institut of Boston and at Tufts have been highly acclaimed. His solo piano recital of “Common Injustices” by twenty-five living composers prompted Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe to write “one can hardly imagine anyone else undertaking such a program, or playing it with such modest and unobtrusive but total musical and pianistic mastery.” McDonald has appeared with many ensembles and has maintained long-standing musical partnerships with soprano Karol Bennett, saxophonists Kenneth Radnofsky and Philipp Stäudlin, and several other prominent soloists. Since 2004 he has performed as pianist for The Mockingbird Trio (with Elizabeth Anker, contralto and Scott Woolweaver, viola).
B.A., Yale University, 1981. M.M., 1982, M.M.A., 1983, and D.M.A., 1989, Yale School of Music.
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ANDREW NORMAN
Andrew Norman (b. 1979) is a composer of chamber and orchestral music. A native Midwesterner raised in central California, Andrew studied the piano and viola before attending the University of Southern California and Yale. His teachers and mentors include Martha Ashleigh, Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, Stewart Gordon, Aaron Kernis, Ingram Marshall, and Martin Bresnick.
A lifelong enthusiast for all things architectural, Andrew writes music that is often inspired by forms he encounters in the visual world. His music draws on an eclectic mix of sounds and usually features some combination of bright colors, propulsive energy, a healthy dose of lyricism, and the fragmentation of musical ideas.
Andrew is a committed educator who enjoys helping people of all ages explore music. He has written several pieces to be performed by and for the young, and has held educational residencies with orchestras and festivals across the country, including a two-year relationship with the schools in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. Andrew taught piano and composition at the Pasadena Conservatory and has given master classes at the Hoff-Barthelson Music School and the Des Moines Symphony Academy.
Andrew is increasingly active as an orchestral composer. His symphonic works, often noted for their clarity, vigor, and wit, have been commissioned and premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony, and the New York Youth Symphony.
Andrew’s chamber music has been featured at numerous venues in recent seasons, including the Wordless Music Series at Le Poisson Rouge, the MATA Festival, the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Juilliard School Focus Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival. In May of 2010, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble presented a portrait concert of Andrew’s music entitled “Melting Architecture.”
Andrew spent the 2006-2007 academic year as a fellow at the American Academy in Rome, where, when not eating gelato, he explored newfound interests in Cosmati pavement designs, Palladian villas, and the Norman kings of Sicily. In the fall of 2010 he returned from an equally rich year at the American Academy in Berlin, where, when not downing currywurst and bionade, he scratched the surface of Berlin's vibrant street art scene and heard lots of amazing music.
Upcoming projects for Andrew include commissions from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Des Moines Symphony. He was recently named “Komponist für Heidelberg” for the 2010-2011 season, and is thrilled to be writing a Theremin concerto for Carolina Eyck and the Heidelberg Philharmonic to be premiered next April.
Andrew recently finished a two-year term as Composer-in-Residence for Young Concert Artists and his works are published by Schott Music.
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Guest Faculty
VIRGINIA ANDERER
Biography to be supplied.
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STYRA AVINS
Styra Avins has attended the CMC as Guest Faculty since 1999. A New Yorker,
she earned a B.A. in Social Studies from the City College of New York, then went
on to cello studies at the Juilliard School and a Master of Music degree from
the Manhattan School of Music. As cellist she has played with the Seoul
Symphony, the American Symphony, and the New York City Opera Orchestra, and has
been the cellist of several chamber music groups. For much of her adult life she
has taught cello, including a ten-year appointment to the music faculty of the
United Nations International School.
Avins now divides time between performing and writing. She is
author of Johannes Brahms, Life and Letters (Oxford University Press,
1997) and a chapter contributed to the just-released Performing Brahms (Cambridge University Press, 2003). She is a member of the Queens Symphony in
New York and Adjunct Professor of Music History at Drew University, where she
lectures on a variety of historical topics.
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JOEL BERMAN
See biography above.
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PHILLIP BUSH
See biography above.
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PHILLIP COONCE
Phillip Coonce, violinist and violist, has studied with Leonard Felberg,
Hiroko Yajima, Felix Galimir, Blanche Moyse and Raphael Bronstein. He earned a B Mus. from the University of New Mexico, an M. Mus. from SUNY at Stony Brook, and
a DMA from the Manhattan School of Music. He
has performed with the New Jersey Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, The
Hudson Chamber Players and the Martha Graham Ballet. A member of the
New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the Right as Rain Bluegrass Trio, Dr.
Coonce is on the faculties of the Joiner Academy, Playweek and
Summertrios. He is also the author of Toquemos el Violín, and is the
inventor of the Don’t Fret Finger Position Indicator.
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FRANK DAYKIN
Pianist Frank Daykin is equally known as soloist, collaborative
pianist, teacher, and writer. He is particularly identified with the
French piano and chamber music repertoire, having performed the complete
solo piano works of Ravel on Ravel’s own piano at the Ravel
house-museum in France. He was the first non-French winner of the Ravel
prize in 1983. His 30-year partnership with Millette Alexander in
piano-duo performance has produced two award-winning recordings and a
host of performances in the US and abroad, always to rave reviews. The
Toronto Citizen named them “surely the finest duo in the world today”
and the New York Times proclaimed “they make music as one.” He is
pianist in the Ambrosia Trio, the Gotham Trio, Music of the Spheres
(pianist and artistic advisor), Apollo Muses Festival (NJ, music
director for seven years), and he co-founded the Sing! art song recital
and master class project. In addition, Mr. Daykin is sought after to
adjudicate piano competitions, notably at the Juilliard School, where he
taught the “Singer and Accompanist” performance class. Currently, he
is on the faculty of the Chamber Music Conference/Composers Forum of
the East at Bennington, VT, where his musical discussion-seminars have
consistently been the most popular events. He also teaches at the
Chamber Music Central summer camp for children in Bridgeport, CT.
Daykin is the author of the music blog “Before and After Silence.” He is
writing an encyclopedia of classical French song, and has had two
volumes of poetry published, numerous selections having been set to
music by contemporary composers.
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LUTZ RATH
See biography above.
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Composition Fellows
Composition Fellows are to be announced.
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