Bassoonist Collin Anderson attended the Eastman School of Music earning a Bachelor of Music Degree in bassoon performance in 1989 under the tutelage of David Van Hoesen. He completed a Master’s Degree in performance in 1991 at Kent State University where he studied with David DeBolt and was awarded a graduate assistantship. Collin earned a Master of Music degree in composition in 1996 from DePaul University where he was the recipient of the Raymond Hubbell/ASCAP Composition Scholarship. In 2003 he completed a Doctoral degree in composition at Northwestern University in 2003. He has played bassoon and contrabassoon with the Canton (OH) Symphony, the Spoleto Festival Orchestra (Italy), and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Collin is a member of the Lake Forest Symphony and appears frequently with the Elgin Symphony, Rockford Symphony, and Chicago Opera Theater. He has performed with the Chicago Lyric Opera and on the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW contemporary series. Collin teaches bassoon at Lake Forest College, Northeastern Illinois University, and Harper College. His own works have been performed by Quintet Attacca and at numerous universities and festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, New Music DePaul contemporary concerts, and the International Double Reed Society Annual Conference….back to artist roster.Concert saxophonist Ashu, age 25, has won numerous international and national competitions, and has performed as recitalist and concerto soloist throughout the world. He made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and, at age 16, made his concerto debut at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Since then, performances have taken him to such locations as Norway, Vienna, Switzerland, Hawaii, and the French West Indies.Ashu has won many major competitions traditionally won by pianists and violinists. Among his First Prizes are the International Heida Hermanns, National Federation of Music Clubs, National Midland-Odessa, International Kingsville Wind Instrumentalist, National Lennox, National George S. Howard, and National Alliance for Excellence Competitions. In addition, Ashu has been overall winner of the Houston Symphony, Keweenaw Symphony, Skokie Valley Symphony, and Northwestern University Concerto Competitions. Other awards include overall winner of the America Opera Society Competition, First Prize winner of the W.A.F.A Concerto Competitions, winner of the Interlochen Governor’s Scholarship, and Grand Prize winner of the Houston Symphony Alice Flores-Smith Competition.With a repertoire ranging from original soprano and alto saxophone works by Debussy, Villa-Lobos, and Ibert to his own arrangements of Piazzolla, Rachmaninoff, and Morricone, Ashu aims to bring the concert saxophone to a broader audience so more are aware of its tremendous expressive and virtuosic capabilities. His playing has been described as “Riveting…Brilliant…Pizzazz to burn!” (Miles Hoffman, National Public Radio Performance Today commentator) and “…just as much fun to watch him as it is to listen to him.” (Anshel Brusilow, Dallas Morning News)Ashu has been featured as soloist with major symphony orchestras around the world and been presented on numerous prestigious recital series, with recent concerts at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Kravis Center, and La Jolla Music Society series. Upcoming engagements include concert tours throughout Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and the USA. Ashu received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in saxophone performance from Northwestern University under the guidance of saxophonist Frederick Hemke….back to artist roster.Stephen Balderston joined the DePaul School Of Music faculty as String Coordinator and Professor of Cello after twenty successful years as an orchestra and chamber musician. Balderston was Assistant Principal Cello with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for ten years after ten years with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. He performed as soloist with both orchestras and was an artist-in-residence at Washington University. Balderston began his studies on the cello with Gabor Rejto in his native southern California, and earned both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lynn Harrell.A sought-after soloist, chamber musician and coach, Balderston participates in clinics, chamber music concerts and festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad. In recent years, Balderston has performed solo works and chamber music with Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Christoph Eschenbach, Lynn Harrell, Yo-Yo Ma, Menahem Pressler, Gil Shaham, and Pinchas Zukerman. He debuted as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Bobby McFerrin in 2000. He has been a featured artist at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois, Bargemusic in New York City, Affinis Music Festival in Japan. Additionally, he has participated in the OK Mozart International Festival in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, the Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival and the International Music Festival in Shanghai, China.Balderston’s summers have been spent performing and working with students at a variety of venues. Balderston was the cello coach for Daniel Barenboim’s “West-Eastern Divan” workshops in 1999 and 2000 in Weimar, Germany, the 2001 Workshop held in Chicago, and the 2004 Workshop in Seville, Spain. In 2002 he accompanied a group of colleagues to Shanghai, China for that city’s international music festival. Since 2002, he has been cello coach and soloist at a number of prestigious summer venues, including the Marrowstone Music Festival, the International Festival – Institute at Round Top, the Midwest Young Artists Festival, the ARIA International Festival and the Northwestern University High School Institute. In August of 2004, Balderston was featured as lecturer, soloist and coach at the International String Music Festival in Taipei, Taiwan….back to artist roster.
Bruce J. Barber, II, was appointed Director of Cathedral Music in January 2004. Prior to joining the staff of St. James, he served as Canon Precentor & Director of Cathedral Music at the Cathedral Church of St. John, the Diocese of the Rio Grande, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for 10 years. At the Cathedral Church of St. John he developed a highly respected and internationally known music program consisting of a large choral program for both children and adults, various multi-faceted concert series and an organ recital series.
As an orchestral musician, Mr. Barber has performed with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Florida Symphony Orchestra, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, and since moving to the Midwest, has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of such notable maestros as James Conlon, David Zinman, Helmuth Rilling, Semyon Byshkov, Kent Nagano and Duane Wolfe. An avid conductor, he has conducted a wide range of sacred music, orchestral literature and concerto repertoire ranging from Bach to Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart, Brahms to Duruflé, Bernstein and Stravinsky. He has made two CD recordings with the Musicians of St. Johns Cathedral, To the Creator of Light: Choral Music from the Cathedral Church of St. John and All This Time: Music for Advent and Christmas, both of which have been critically acclaimed. While in New Mexico, the St. John’s Cathedral Choir was directed by such notable Anglican choral directors as Dr. Gerre Hancock, Sir David Willcocks, Dr. Murray Forbes Somerville, and Bruce Neswick.
Trained as a choral and orchestral conductor, an organist and cellist, Mr. Barber holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, and a Master of Music Degree from the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. With Bernard Zinck, Professor of Violin at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he performs concerts for organ and violin both in the United States and Europe each year.
His professional affiliations are as a member of the Association of Anglican Musicians for which he is the Region V Coordinator, and as a member and Past Dean of the American Guild of Organists.
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Tenor Hoss Brock has best been described by composer John Eaton as “an impeccable musican, …well practically anyway”. The “firm, warm tenor” (the Chicago Tribune) divides his time among opera, oratorio, and professional ensembles.
Hoss’s operatic credits include the Majordomo of the Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier” at the San Francisco Opera, Don Ottavio in “Don Giovanni” with the Pine Mountain Music Festival, Count Almaviva
in “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” with L’Opera Piccola, exhibiting a “lithe, ringing tenor” (the Chicago Tribune), and Ramiro in Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” with the San Francisco Opera’s prestigious Merola Opera Program, during which “… he shaped his melodies with ardent grace” (the San Francisco Chronicle).
He has performed Bach’s “St. John Passion”, “Magnificat”, “Easter Oratorio” and several other major cantatas as a regular soloist with “Bach Week” in Evanston, IL, Haydn’s “Die Schöpfung”, at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, and made his Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s “Messiah”.
His performance of the Brahms “Liebeslieder Waltzer” with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, revealed a voice “full of nuance and depth” (the Chicago Sun Times). His solo debut with the Grant Park Symphony Chorus in Rachmaninov’s “Vespers” earned praise from critic John Von Rhein for his “plaintive, clarion singing” as well as his command of the Slavic text: “Brock sounded like the genuine article…”.
Hoss’s upcoming engagements include Bach’s “B Minor Mass” with Chorus Angelorum, Mozart’s “Requiem” with the New Philharmonic and Northwest Indiana Symphony, Mozart’s “Die Maurerfreude” with the Northbrook Symphony, Music of the Baroque’s upcoming “French Connection” program, and a concert of early music at the Newberry Library in early December.
A member of the internationally recognized ensemble “Chicago a cappella”, his voices-only arrangement of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” for this group was described by music director Jonathan Miller as “one of the great achievements in the ensemble’s history”.
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Sarah Bullen has been principal harp of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the past decade, having held the same position with the New York Philharmonic from 1987 to 1997. She began her orchestra career in 1981 as principal harp of the Utah Symphony.
Sarah has been critically acclaimed as a soloist throughout her career, with more than fifty concerto appearances. She has served as soloist, chamber musician, lecturer, and judge at numerous American Harp Society conferences, the World Harp Congress and the USA International Harp Competition.
As a leading educator, Sarah has taught master classes throughout the world. She is currently professor of harp at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Several of her students enjoy major professional careers. During her tenure in New York, she served as chairperson of the harp department at the Manhattan School of Music, and she is the author of the best-selling book Principal Harp, A Guidebook for the Orchestral Harpist. She is currently working on Principal Harp Book II, soon to be published by Vanderbilt Music Company. Her solo and chamber music recordings include The Essential Harp and Lyon & Healy Hall’s Inaugural Concert.
Sarah is a student of Marcel Grandjany, Mildred Dilling and Susann McDonald. She received both a bachelor’s and master’s of music degree from The Juilliard School.
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Trumpet virtuoso and conductor Stephen Burns is the Artistic Director of the Fulcrum Point New Music Project in Chicago. He has been acclaimed on four continents for his consistently and widely varied performances encompassing recitals, orchestral appearances, chamber ensemble engagements, and innovative multi-media presentations involving video, dance theatre, and sculpture. He began his studies at the age of ten and made his professional debut at the age of 14 performing Handel Aria “Let the Bright Seraphim” with coloratura soprano Elizabeth Phinney. In 1988 he won First Prize at the second Maurice Andre International Competition for Trumpet in France, which brought him numerous international engagements, including a Paris recital, national television appearances and tours of Europe, Asia and the United States.
Mr. Burns has performed in the major concert halls of New York, Boston, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Houston, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, and Venice. He has been a guest at the White House and has appeared on NBC’s “Today Show” and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His European tours have taken him to Italy, France, Finland, Germany, Holland, and Switzerland for guest appearances with orchestras, as well as recitals and performances on radio and television. On tour in the Far East he won rave reviews, which singled out his remarkable tone, musicianship, and technical facility. In recent seasons he has appeared with many leading international orchestras including the Atlanta Symphony under Neeme Jarvi, The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Iona Brown, The Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, The Arturo Toscanini Orchestra of Parma, the Japan National Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz, and a United States tour with the Leipzig Kammerorkester. His recital programs often feature his own transcriptions of Falla’s El Amor Brujo, Prokofiev’s Lt. Kije, and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, the latter scored for trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, piccolo trumpet, bass trumpet, and piano.
In 1998 Stephen Burns was invited to create innovative new music programs as the Artist in Residence with Performing Arts Chicago. He is the Artistic Director of the Fulcrum Point New Music Project and the American Concerto Orchestra whose mission it is to champion classical music influenced and inspired by Pop culture, Jazz, Rock, Blues, Latin, Folk, Klezmer, World Music, literature, film, art, dance, and theatre.
A conducting student of Jorma Panula and Pinchas Zukerman, Mr. Burns often appears as both soloist and conductor with orchestras performing repertoire ranging from the Second Brandenburg Concerto and Haydn’s Eb major concerto to works by Copland, Shostakovitch and André Jolivet. He has performed this dual role with the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, the Simon Bolivar Orquesta, the Orquesta da Camera del Tachira, the Sea Cliff Chamber Orchestra, and the American Concerto Orchestra.
He has given numerous premiers by American composers (Rorem, David Stock, Gunther Schuller, Robert Rodriguez, Philip Glass) as well as composers of international renown (Stockhausen, Franck Amsallem, Somei Satoh, Sallinen). Committed to new music, Mr. Burns has written for trumpet, electronic music, chamber music and symphony orchestra. His composition “Reflections,” a work created in collaboration with choreographer Ruby Shang, was performed around the Henry Moore reflecting pool at Lincoln Center. In 1993 he composed and performed the Inaugural Fanfare for the Kuhmon Talon Concert Hall and his most recent composition, “Variations in America” was premiered in Hyannis, MA as part if their Independence Day celebration. He is currently composing Phalanx, a multi-media work based upon American military musical themes.
Stephen Burns is a frequent guest artist at many prestigious summer festivals including Santa Fe, Kuhmo, Tanglewood, Mostly Mozart, Spoleto, Caramoor, Lieksa, Grand Canyon, Moab, Estate Musicale St. Cecilia, and Divonne les Bains. His recordings include Telemann for Trumpet, with the American Concerto Orchestra, on Dorian, The Complete Sonatas for Brass by Paul Hindemith on Helicon, The Complete Brandenburg Concerti with Helmuth Rilling on Haenssler Classics, and Trumpet Voluntary on ASV records. He has also recorded for Kleos, Musical Heritage Society, Delos, Classical Masters, Ess.ay and Grammavision.
Originally from Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, Stephen Burns studied under Armando Ghitalla, Gerard Schwarz, Pierre Thibaud, and Arnold Jacobs at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Julliard School (BM/MM 1981-82), as well as in Paris and Chicago for post-graduate studies. He has won many prestigious awards including the 1981 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, 1982 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the 1983 National Endowment for the Arts Recitalist Grant, the Naumburg Scholarship at Juilliard, “Outstanding Brass Player” at Tanglewood and the aforementioned 1988 Maurice Andre Concour International de Paris. Sought after internationally for master classes, Mr. Burns is a former tenured Professor of Music at Indiana University and Visiting Lecturer at the Arturo Toscanini Foundation Corso MYTHOS in Bologna, Italy. He presently resides in Chicago with his wife, school psychologist, Kate Neisser and their twin sons Edward and Isaac. Stephen Burns is a Yamaha performing artist.
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Erica Burtner Anderson, oboe, is an accomplished artist and teacher. She has performed throughout Chicago, including performances with the Chicago Philharmonic, Music of the Baroque, and MusicNOW at the Symphony Center. As a chamber musician, Ms. Anderson has been featured at Midsummer’s Music in Door County, Wisconsin, and at the Music Institute of Chicago series. A former student of Richard Killmer, she teaches at Lake Forest College and the Music Institute of Chicago.
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Flutist Claire Chase is active as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and arts entrepreneur. Claire co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001, and has served as the organization’s Executive Director since its inception. Claire has received recognition for her work in the field of contemporary music with awards from the Theodore Presser Foundation, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Chamber Music America, ASCAP, and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs; in 1996, Claire was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts by the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars at the U.S. Department of Education.
As a soloist, Claire has received top prizes in the National Young Artist Competition, the International Chamber Orchestra Young Artist Competition and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Competition. She made her concerto debut at the age of 15 with the San Diego Symphony, and her solo recital debut at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts at the age of 17. In 2005, Claire was featured at the National Flute Association Convention, performing a new concerto by Harvey Sollberger. To date, Claire has given the world premieres of over 300 new solo works for flute.
As a chamber musician, Claire gives more than 50 concerts a year. In Chicago, she has performed in venues ranging from The Green Mill to Symphony Center. She has performed with ICE throughout the United States at such venues as the Mostly Mozart Festival of Lincoln Center, the Miller Theatre of Columbia University, and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, and on tour in Latin America and Eastern Europe. She has also been a guest at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW Series, New Music Northwestern, and has been featured on WFMT Radio for her performances at the Music in the Loft series. Claire spends her summers at the Walden School in New Hampshire, where she is a founding member of the Walden School Chamber Players and mentors young composers and performers of contemporary music. Claire will be featured on forthcoming 2007 releases of new music on the Naxos, Bridge, Tzadik and Focus record labels.
Claire received a B.M. from the Oberlin Conservatory in the studio of Michel Debost in 2001, where she was the recipient of a Dean’s Talent Scholarship and the Presser Music Award. Her other teachers are John Fonville, Damian Bursill-Hall and Mary Stolper.
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Owen Clayton Condon made his solo debut in 1996 with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra after winning the orchestra’s Young Artist Competition. In 2000 he won the New England Conservatory Concerto Competition, and performed with the Conservatory’s Symphony Orchestra in Jordan Hall. Most recently he was a finalist in the 2003 PASIC Solo Marimba Competition. He has performed with the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the University of Chicago’s Contempo series, and as a guest artist with the Eighth Blackbird contemporary music group. Recently, he performed on behalf of Northwestern University at the Kennedy enter in Washington D.C. He holds a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Frank Epstein and Will Hudgins. Owen is completing his Doctorate of Music at Northwestern, where he studied with Michael Burritt and James Ross. He is currently the Director of Percussion Studies at Northeastern Illinois University.
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Flutist Jennifer Clippert’s performance career clearly reflects her passionate knowledge of music from Baroque to present day. Equally comfortable as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player, she has performed throughout Chicago with groups such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Grant Park Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony’s MUSICNOW series among others. Her woodwind quintet, Quintet Attacca, won both the Senior Wind Division and the Grand Prize at the 2002 Fischoff National Chamber Music Festival and has maintained an active performance schedule including tours of both Italy and the United States. She is the winner of several competitions including the 2001 Musicians Club of Women Farwell Award and the 2000 Flute Talk Competition. Ms. Clippert has been a finalist and prize winner in several competitions including the National Flute Association Young Artist, Piccolo Masterclass and Performers Masterclass Competitions. A dedicated teacher, Ms. Clippert is on the faculty of DePaul University School of Music. She is also a member of the National Flute Association’s Pedagogy committee.
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Larry Combs, having been previously a member of the orchestras of New Orleans and Montreal and of the Santa Fe Opera, joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1974 and was appointed principal clarinet by Sir Georg Solti in 1978. He has since appeared as soloist with the Orchestra on numerous occasions in works by Copland, Mozart, Brahms, Berio, Corigliano and Rouse. He also has been featured many times on CSO tour concerts performing Morton Gould’s adaptation of Chicago for clarinet and orchestra.
An avid chamber musician, he is a founding member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Smithsonian Chamber Ensemble. In addition, he has recorded as soloist and chamber musician on the Erato, Sony, Cedille, Crystal, and Summit labels. Some of his recent chamber music experiences have included joining CSO Music Director Daniel Barenboim and cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Brahms’s Trio in A minor, Op. 114, at Orchestra Hall, and performances with Ravinia Music Director Christoph Eschenbach at the Ravinia Festival.
In addition to orchestral playing and chamber music, Larry has had a lifelong interest in jazz. He appeared with Chicago pianist Larry Novak at the 1999 Chicago Jazz Festival and joined the Chicago Jazz Orchestra in its Tribute to Benny Goodman concert in September 1999. He also has performed and recorded with Bill Russo’s Chicago Jazz Ensemble and participated in the Tribute to Duke Ellington CD on the Teldec label with Daniel Barenboim.
In 2002, Larry was awarded his second Grammy Award for his recording of Richard Strauss’ Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon, strings and harp, with David McGill and Maestro Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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Robert Dillon is a founding member of the Third Coast Percussion Quartet and an active performer and teacher in the Chicago area. He has performed as a substitute with the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, and has performed numerous times on the Chicago Symphony’s contemporary music series, Music- NOW. From 2004 to 2006, Robert was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony. He has also performed with the Madison Symphony, Rockford Symphony, Chicago Arts Orchestra, Lira Ensemble, Gardner Chamber Orchestra and Hingham Symphony. He was a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy, in Lucerne, Switzerland, led by Pierre Boulez and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, from the Academy’s creation in 2003 through 2005. He has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and a member of the Spoleto Festival USA, National Repertory Orchestra, Chautauqua Summer Music Festival and Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. Robert holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Northwestern University and a Master of Music from New England Conservatory, where he received the John Cage Award for Outstanding Contribution to Contemporary Music Performance for his work in organizing and coaching a complete performance of Steve Reich’s “Drumming.” His teachers include Michael Burritt, James Ross and Will Hudgins.
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Barbara Drapcho, clarinet, holds both Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Northwestern University, where she studied with Russell Dagon and Charlene Zimmerman. She is currently a member of the Chicago Arts Orchestra, new Philharmonic, and DuPage Opera Theater and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 2000 – 2002. Ms. Drapcho developed her passion for chamber music through the Civic Orchestra’s MusiCorps Program and her interest in contemporary music from many premiere performances for the American Composers’ Forum. As a freelance clarinetist, Ms. Drapcho frequently performs with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra as well as many local opera companies. She has worked with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, Alabama Symphony, and Illinois Philharmonic. A devoted teacher, Ms. Drapcho maintains a large teaching studio and is currently on faculty at Lake Forest College and the Merit School of Music.
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Mathieu Dufour is principal flute of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a position he has held since 1999. Before coming to Chicago, he was principal flute solo of the Paris National Opera Orchestra from 1996 to 1999. Prior to his appointment there, he served as principal flute solo of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse for three years.
Dufour began his flute studies at the age of eight with Madeleine Chassang at the National Regional Conservatory in his hometown of Paris, France. At the age of fourteen, he was awarded the school’s gold medal by unanimous vote. He subsequently studied with Maxence Larrieu at the National Conservatory of Music in Lyon, where he was unanimously awarded first prize in 1993. Additional awards include second prize at the Jean-Pierre Rampal International Flute Competition (1990); third prize at the International Flute Competition in Budapest (1991); and second prize at the International Flute Competition in Kobe, Japan (1997).
Dufour frequently appears as soloist in recitals and concerts around the world. He made his Carnegie Hall and Lucerne Festival debuts as soloist with the Chicago Symphony under Daniel Barenboim in 2002, and he also has performed under conductors Pierre Boulez and Christoph Eschenbach, among others. He is in demand as a coach and teacher, and has led master classes in Canada, Japan, Europe, and the United States. As a member of the Georges Cziffra and Juventus foundations, Dufour has given many recitals and concerts as part of their Young European Soloists Ensemble. He is a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and he serves on the faculty at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
Dufour’s discography includes a recently released solo recital of sonatas by Prokofiev, Martinu, and Hindemith; Poulenc’s complete chamber music; and the complete works for flute by Roussel.
Mathieu Dufour first appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at a special donor appreciation concert in May 2000, in Devienne’s Seventh Flute Concerto with William Eddins conducting. He made his debut as soloist on subscription concerts in November and December 2000, in Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in C major, with Sarah Bullen as harp soloist and Daniel Barenboim conducting. Dufour most recently appeared as soloist on subscription concerts in June 2002, in Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto with Daniel Barenboim conducting. He first appeared as soloist with the Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival in June 2000, in Jolivet’s Flute Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach conducting, and most recently in July 2002, in Mozart’s First Flute Concerto with Christoph Eschenbach conducting, and in Bach’s Second, Fourth, and Fifth Brandenburg concertos with Nicholas McGegan conducting.
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Abraham Feder will be a fourth-year year student at The Curtis Institute of Music. He is a student of David Soyer and Peter Wiley.
Abraham was chosen to serve as principal cello of the New York String Orchestra seminar under Jamie Laredo at Carnegie Hall. He also spent five summers as a member of the Disney Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra. He was selected to serve as principal cello of the Disney Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival and again at Avery Fisher Hall. While growing up in Chicago, Abraham served as principal and co-principal of the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra as well as principal of the Encore Chamber Orchestra
Abraham received the Merit Award in cello from the National Foundation for the Advancement in Arts. Abraham soloed with the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Youth Concert Orchestra, and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. He was a prizewinner in the Primary, Junior, and Intermediate Divisions of the Society of American Musicians and received an Honorable Mention in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Feinberg Competition.
Abraham has been featured as a soloist on “From the Top,” and has been presented in recital with “Music in the Loft.” He was featured in concert with Christopher O’Riley at the Laguna Beach Music Festival. Abraham was featured this past year on WFMT’s “Impromptu.” He has performed with artists Brant Taylor and Yuan-Qing Yu of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO); Rami Solomonow and of the Chicago Chamber Musicians; Stephen Balderston former Assistant Principal cellist of the CSO; and Joseph Silverstein.
Abraham has participated in the Rush Hour Concerts at St. James Cathedral in Chicago. He has performed in master classes with Janos Starker, Wolfgang Laufer, Yehudi Hanani, Truls Mork, and Eleanore Schoenfeld. Abraham’s teachers have included Richard Hirschl and Tanya Carey.
Abraham will spend this summer at the Encore School for Strings, the Idyllwild Summer Festival, and the Lewes Chamber Music Festival.
Abraham plays on a 1785 Joseph Odoardi cello.
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Soprano Carole FitzPatrick received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas and two Master’s degrees from Yale. In 1988, she went to Europe to pursue a full-time career in singing. After engagements in Dortmund and Osnabrück, Germany, she joined the ensemble of the State Theater in Nuremberg. Her extensive opera repertoire includes Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Strauss and Wagner, having sung over 50 major roles in German opera houses, including Hannover, Mannheim, Duesseldorf and Berlin, her concert work has been extensive as well, including the Brahms, Mozart, Dvorak, Fauré and Verdi Requiems, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, and Handel’s Messiah, Israel in Egypt and Judas Maccabeus. Ms. FitzPatrick has also done concert tours in France and Spain.
Recently she sang the “Four Last Songs” of Richard Strauss in Mainz and Bielefeld, and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in Moscow under Vladimir Fedosseyev, as well as Cosí fan tutte, Elektra and Lohengrin in Essen and Ariadne auf Naxos in Graz, Austria. Last season in Nuremberg she sang “Leonora” in both La Forza del Destino and Il Trovatore, “Madame Lidoine” in Dialogues des Carmélites, the title role in Iphigénie en Tauride, and “Gutrune” in Götterdämmerung, as well as two performances of the Verdi Requiem.
Since its inception, Ms. FitzPatrick has been a vocal advisor for the Nuremberg State Theater’s Opera Studio for Young Singers, giving both master classes and private voice lessons to the participants. A number of her voice students are now actively working in the German opera system. Ms. FitzPatrick joined the voice faculty at Arizona State University in the fall of 2005.
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Gregory Flint is Assistant Professor of Horn at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. As a performer, he is currently principal horn with the Elgin Symphony, Chicago Opera Theater, Present Music of Milwaukee, the Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. He has performed with the Chicago Symphony, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Honolulu Symphony, Key West Symphony, and the Ravinia Festival Orchestra. Additional orchestral experience includes two full seasons as a member of both the Milwaukee Symphony and Grant Park Festival horn sections. Engagements at Lyric Opera have included several on-stage appearances and a complete Wagner “Ring” cycle conducted by Zubin Mehta.
A busy chamber musician, Gregory is a founding member of the Asbury Brass Quintet, and hornist with the Chicago Brass Quintet. He has recorded and toured internationally with both ensembles. As a soloist, he recently appeared as guest artist at the Trombones de Costa Rica International Brass Festival. Mr. Flint also plays for broadway musicals, commercial recordings, and many jazz and popular performers including Frank Sinatra, Clark Terry, and Aretha Franklin.
As an educator, Gregory teaches each summer at the Birch Creek Music Center in Door County Wisconsin. Mr. Flint has also served on the faculties of DePaul University, Roosevelt University, and Northwestern University.
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Hornist Jeremiah Frederick is currently a freelance horn player in Chicago and Northern Indiana. He holds the positions of Second horn with the Green Bay Symphony and Associate Principal horn with the South Bend Symphony. In addition, Jeremiah has played with other fine ensembles including the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Lake Forest, Northwest Indiana, Elgin, and Omaha Symphonies, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and the Philly Pops Orchestra in Philadelphia. He enjoys new music performance and to this end has played with contempo at the University of Chicago and on the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNow series. As a soloist, Jeremiah was awarded third place in the American Horn Competition in 2001. Solo engagements have included performances of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and Jacob’s Concerto For Horn and Strings at Northwestern University.
An avid chamber musician, Mr. Frederick is a member of the Stonegate Brass, Third Coast Brass and the Millar Brass Ensemble. He is also a founding member of Quintet Attacca, a wind quintet and winner of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition’s Grand Prize in 2002. Following this great honor, Quintet Attacca has toured extensively in the Midwest, been an ensemble-in-residence at Italy’s Emiglia Romagna Festival and made their New York debut at the Schneider Concert series at New School University. Quintet Attacca is currently in residence at Lake Forest College and with the Chicago Chamber Musicians in CCM’s Professional Development Program.
Jeremiah graduated from Northwestern University in 2000 with a Masters’ Degree in horn performance and received his Bachelor’s in performance from Lawrence University. His teachers have included Gail Williams, Bill Barnewitz, Dale Clevenger, and James DeCorsey.
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Micah Fusselman, cello, is an active soloist, chamber musician and orchestral musician in Chicago and the surrounding region. His solo engagements have included appearances in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Parties of Note,’ appearances as guest soloist with the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra, plus numerous solo recitals in several cities throughout the Midwest. Micah’s activities as a chamber musician have included performances with small and large chamber ensembles such as the Advent Chamber Orchestra, which has also included collaboration with guests such as Eteri Andjaparidze, Stephen Balderston, and David Schrader. As an orchestral musician Micah is a four year Regular Member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago where he has played under conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Mazel, and Cliff Colnot. He is also the Principal Cellist of the Oistrach Symphony Orchestra, and a member of the Lira Ensemble. Micah also spent three seasons as a member of the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra.
In June of 2006 Micah received his Master’s Degree in Cello performance (with distinction) from DePaul University, where he studied with Stephen Balderston. Micah also attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Chicago College of Fine and Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His major teachers include Stephen Balderston, Richard Aaron, Alan Harris, Tanya Carey, Gary Stucka, and Karen Becker.
As a teacher Micah has taught in many different methods and formats. While living in Nebraska, he maintained two cello studios. One studio in Lincoln, which consisted of traditional students, and one studio in Omaha which consisted of Suzuki Method students. While in Nebraska Micah also coached chamber music groups and taught master classes. At DePaul University Micah was enlisted to coach cello sectionals for the DePaul University Symphony Orchestra, and has been invited by Maestro Cliff Colnot to again coach cello sectionals for the orchestra.
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James Giles regularly performs to acclaim in important musical centers in America and Europe. He recently completed a tour of China and played at Warsaw’s Chopin Academy of Music. Last season he appeared as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Bangor, Boise, Evanston, and Fresno. He performed Gershwin’s Concerto in F and Rhapsody in Blue with the Fresno Philharmonic on five days notice, replacing the indisposed soloist. This season, in addition to performances in France, Italy, and Bosnia, he collaborates with the Cassatt, Chicago and Pacifica Quartets, with tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, with violinist Gerardo Ribiero, and with the Chicago Chamber Musicians.
In an eclectic repertoire encompassing the solo and chamber music literatures, Giles is equally at home in the standard repertoire as in the music of our time. He has commissioned and premiered works by William Bolcom, C. Curtis-Smith, Stephen Hough, Lowell Liebermann, Ned Rorem, Augusta Read Thomas, Earl Wild, and James Wintle. Most of these new works are featured on Giles’s new Albany Records release entitled “American Virtuoso.”
His Paris recital in 2004 was hailed as “a true revelation, due equally to the pianist’s artistry as to his choice of program.” The critic for Helsinki’s main newspaper wrote that “Giles is a technically polished, elegant pianist.” And a London critic called his recent Wigmore Hall recital “one of the most sheerly inspired piano recitals I can remember hearing for some time” and added that “with a riveting intelligence given to everything he played, it was the kind of recital you never really forget.”
He has performed with New York’s Jupiter Symphony; the London Soloists Chamber Orchestra in Queen Elizabeth Hall; the Kharkiv Philharmonic in Ukraine; and with the Opera Orchestra of New York in Alice Tully Hall. After his Tully Hall solo recital debut, critic Harris Goldsmith wrote: “Giles has a truly distinctive interpretive persona. This was beautiful pianism – direct and unmannered.” Other tours have included concerts in Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Series, Salt Lake City’s Assembly Hall Concert Series, and in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Musikhalle in Hamburg, and the Purcell Room at London’s South Bank Centre. He has given live recitals over the public radio stations of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Indianapolis. His compact disc of works by Schumann and Prokofiev is available on England’s Master Musicians label and a recording of new American music can be found on the Albany label. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with members of the National and Chicago Symphonies and with members of the Pacifica, Cassatt, Chicago, Ying, Chester, St. Lawrence, Essex, Lincoln, and Miami Quartets, as well as singers Aprile Millo and Anthony Dean Griffey.
A native of North Carolina, Dr. Giles studied with Byron Janis at the Manhattan School of Music, Jerome Lowenthal at the Juilliard School, Nelita True at the Eastman School of Music, and Robert Shannon at Oberlin College.
The pianist received early career assistance from the Clarisse B. Kampel Foundation and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Florence with the legendary pianist Lazar Berman. He was the recipient of a fellowship grant and the Christel Award from the American Pianists Association and now serves on the APA’s National Advisory Board. He won first prizes at the New Orleans International Piano Competition, the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition, and the Music Teachers National Association Competition. As a student he was awarded the prestigious William Petschek Scholarship at the Juilliard School and the Rudolf Serkin Award for outstanding graduate at the Oberlin College Conservatory. He has written for Piano and Keyboard magazine and has presented lecture-recitals at the national conventions of the Music Teachers National Association, the College Music Society, and Pi Kappa Lambda. He has served on the juries of several international piano competitions.
Dr. Giles is on the piano faculty at Northwestern University. He has recently been a guest professor at the Sibelius Academy in Finland and at Indiana University, where he taught the students of Menahem Pressler. He has formerly served on the faculties of the University of North Texas and the Interlochen Arts Academy. He is the founder of the Las Vegas Piano Institute, an educational summer program for young pianists, and is the chair of the piano department at the Eastern Music Festival during the summers.
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Kevin Hartman is Professor of Trumpet at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and a Master of Music degree from Northwestern University, where he studied with Vincent Cichowicz. In addition to performing with the Fulcrum Point New Music Project, Mr. Hartman has performed, toured and recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Brass Quintet. He is a founding member of the Asbury Brass Quintet, winners of the Fischoff and Coleman chamber music competitions.
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With a velvety tone and a stage presence which exudes confidence and charm Baritone Levi Hernandez is quickly gaining momentum as a sought after artist on the operatic stage. Mark Thomson Kettelson of Opera News declared of his principal debut with Lyric Opera of Chicago as Dandini in La Cenerentola, “Young baritone Levi Hernandez’s intelligent Dandini displayed a most impressive knack for subtle text-painting within a pristinely negotiated coloratura line…” A recent alumnus of the Lyric Opera center for American Artists, Mr. Hernandez made his Lyric Opera mainstage debut during the 2004-05 season as Manders in Regina. During his tenure at Lyric he was also seen as Marullo in Rigoletto, Sciarrone in Tosca, the Innkeeper in Manon Lescaut, and the Bartender in the world premiere of William Bolcom’s A Wedding. A versatile actor as well as a fine singer Hernandez portrayed the title role in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi at the 2004 Grant Park Music Festival.
Other career highlights include Papageno with Madison Opera in their Die Zauberflote, performances in Boston Lyric Opera’s productions of Carmen and Il barbiere di Siviglia, Marcello in La bohème at El Paso Opera, and Count Ceprano in Rigoletto, Moralès in Carmen, and Haly in L’italiana in Algeri, all with Opera Company of Philadelphia. Most recently the El Paso native returned home to sing Germont in El Paso Opera’s La traviata and made his Los Angeles Opera debut as Mercurio/Console in L’Incoronazione di Poppea. Upcoming engagements include appearances as a soloist in Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra and the Pennsylvania Ballet, Valentin in Faust with The Kalamazoo Symphony, a return to Los Angeles Opera as Don Lucas in Luisa Fernanda, Marcello in San Antonio Opera’s La bohème, and a return to Lyric Opera of Chicago in the 2007-08 season.
Mr. Hernandez has been seen on the concert stage as a soloist in Handel’s Messiah with Charlotte Symphony and Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Pennsylvania Ballet. A 2002 Metropolitan Opera National Council Awards finalist his many awards include a Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation grant as well as being a 2002 OPERALIA competition finalist. After receiving his undergraduate degree at Westminster Choir College Mr. Hernandez attended the prestigious Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia where he performed a number of leading roles including the title role in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Marcello in La bohème, Ford in Falstaff, Gugliemo in Cosi fan tutte, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, Vicar in Albert Herring and Falke in Die Fledermaus.
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Richard Hirschl is a native of Washington, Missouri, where he grew up in a musical family. He began early music lessons with his mother, a piano teacher, but, by the age of ten, he had become interested in his father’s hobby, the cello. Although his father is an amateur cellist, Richard says he is a natural player and an excellent teacher.
As his cello studies progressed, he began lessons with Saint Louis Symphony member Savely Schuster, who encouraged Richard to pursue music professionally by sending him to the eminent soloist and pedagogue Leonard Rose. When a junior in high school, Richard moved to a boarding school in New York to facilitate his studies with Rose and Channing Robbins at the Juilliard School. The recipient of an honorary scholarship, he received both bachelor’s (1987) and master’s (1988) degrees from Juilliard. After graduation, he served as an assistant teacher to Robbins for one year. In 1989 he was appointed to the cello section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Sir Georg Solti.
In1988, Richard made his New York debut at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center playing Barber’s Concerto with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the Juilliard Orchestra. Since then, he has played Milhaud’s Concerto with Jens Nygaard and the Jupiter Symphony in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. In addition to these and other appearances with orchestras, he performs extensively as a recitalist and chamber musician.
Richard is on the faculty of the Music Institute of Chicago and has a large class of private students. He lives with his wife, Nancy, in a downtown high-rise.
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Kuang-Hao Huang, piano, enjoys an active career of performing and teaching. He has performed throughout the country and Europe and has soloed with several orchestras, including the New World Symphony Orchestra and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra. In March of 2000, Mr. Huang premiered works by Louis Andriessen and Chen Yi at Weill Hall as part of Carnegie Hall’s Millennium Piano Book Project. He has also performed on Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series (WFMT 98.7 FM) and has won First Prize at the Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Auditions and at the Barnett Foundation Piano Competition.
Mr. Huang is an active collaborator, regularly performing concerts with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and as a guest of the Chicago Chamber Musicians. His collaborations have also led him to performances on Ravinia’s Rising Stars series and on the Chicago Symphony’s new music series, MusicNOW, as well as a broadcast on Radio France.
Mr. Huang currently serves on the adjunct faculties of Concordia University-River Forest, North Park University and the Merit School of Music in Chicago. He is also actively involved with educational outreach programs organized by the International Music Foundation. During the summer, he coordinates the piano program at Northwestern University’s National High School Music Institute and has also served on the faculty of the Mimir Chamber Music Festival at TCU in Ft. Worth, Texas.
A native of Wisconsin, Mr. Huang received his B.A. with honors and distinction from the University of Wisconsin, a Masters degree from Indiana University and has done doctoral work at Northwestern University. During his graduate studies he was the recipient of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, an award given by the U.S. Department of Education. From 1996-97, Mr. Huang served as a member of the New World Symphony. His principal teachers include Leonard Hokanson, Joseph Kalichstein, Howard Karp, Rita Sloan and Sylvia Wang.
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As an active collaborator, pianist Kay Kim performs an average of 40-50 concerts a year in the Chicago area. She has been one of the pianists of Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s conductor’s rehearsals where she played for such artists as Daniel Barenboim, Andrey Boreyko, Hannah Chang, Mathieu Dufour and Branford Marsalis. Kay also performed with the Stradivari Society artists and collaborated with Chicago Chamber Musicians. She was heard in a WFMT radio broadcast performing in the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series and Impromptu. In April, 2006, she performed in the Kennedy Center as a part of Conservatory Project at the Kennedy Center. Kay is the newest member of the musical ambassador group Trio Chicago and Friends as of August 2006. Prior to her move to the Chicago area, she served as a collaborative pianist for The Perlman Music Program, the Juilliard School and University of Michigan. She has also appeared on the “CBS Early Show” with violinist Itzhak Perlman.
As a solo pianist, Kay was one of the Gilmore Scholars at the Gilmore Festival and was invited to participate in Alicia de Larrocha Festival at Indiana University. In the 2005-2006 season, Kay embarked on a tour performing Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” in collaboration with the puppet company Blair Thomas and Company. One of the performances was presented in Marshall Field’s Day of Music at the Symphony Center. She also performed Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto with members of Northwestern University and Civic Orchestras in April 2006.
Kay serves as a lecturer in collaborative piano department at Northwestern University and as faculty at the Music Institute of Chicago during the year and at National High School Music Institute at Northwestern University during the summer.
A native of South Korea, Kay attended Seoul National University for her undergraduate study and University of Michigan for her graduate degrees. She holds a doctoral degree in piano performance from Northwestern University. Her principal teachers include James Giles, Anton Nel and Louis Nagel.
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Katinka Kleijn has been a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1995. Her list of solo credits includes appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at youth concerts; The Hague Philharmonic Orchestra; the Chicago Sinfonietta; the symphony orchestras of Elmhurst, Sheboygan, DuPage and Indian Hill; the Highland Park Strings; the New Millennium Orchestra; and the Illinois Philharmonic. Kleijn also appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival, on the Ravinia Festival’s Rising Star Series, and on Dutch National Radio.
An avid chamber musician, she has partnered with pianist Richard Goode and cellist Lynn Harrell, joined the Chicago Chamber Musicians in 2006, and was invited to join the Kronos Quartet earlier in her career. As a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), she recently toured to Poland and Mexico, and she performed the American premiere of Zona for solo cello and 7 instruments by Magnus Lindberg at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. She regularly performs on the CSO’s MusicNOW series, most recently in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Kai for solo cello and ensemble with Cliff Colnot conducting. Her May 2007 American premiere of Eternal Escape by Dai Fujikura was described by John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune as “a five-minute tour de force, played with wonderfully incisive bravado.”
Her 2003 recording of the David Baker Cello Concerto, with the Chicago Sinfonietta on the Cedille label, won rave reviews: The Strad magazine writes that “Kleijn gives infectious energy to the performance;” Fanfare comments that “Kleijn brings plenty of temperament and gorgeous tone to her solo part.” She also recorded the Dello Joio Trio for Boston Records.
Kleijn has been a member of the DePaul University School of Music faculty since 2000. In the summer, she teaches at the Symphony Orchestra Academy of the Pacific (SOAP) in British Columbia, Canada.
To seek support for her younger colleagues, Kleijn founded the Holland-America Music Society in 1999, and in 2000, launched the annual HAMS Competition for strings, distinguished by its first prize award-the full-time use of a fine contemporary Dutch instrument.
Katinka Kleijn won first prize in the Dutch National Princess Christina Competition at age 16. She received a scholarship from the Dutch Government for studies with Lynn Harrell at the University of Southern California, and Laurence Lesser at the New England Conservatory of Music. Following graduation, she joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
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Jasmine Lin, violin, began musical studies at age four. Since then she has appeared as a soloist with leading symphony orchestras from Chicago to Singapore, Brazil and Uruguay, as well as in recital in Chicago, New York, Nova Scotia, Rio de Janeiro, and Montevideo. The New York Times describes her as an “unusually individualistic player” with “electrifying assertiveness”. Ms. Lin has been a participant of the Marlboro Music Festival and the Steans Institute for Young Artists at Ravinia. Chamber music tours include North America, China, and Taiwan. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Lin received prizes in the 1996 International Paganini Competition and the 1998 International Naumburg Competition and was appointed Second Assistant Concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Lin is currently a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians.
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Emily Lodine, mezzo-soprano, recently made her Carnegie Hall debut in Handel’s Messiah under the baton of conductor and composer John Rutter. She has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and the symphonies of Omaha, Milwaukee, Detroit, Jacksonville, Syracuse, Indianapolis and Phoenix. Lodine created the role of Verena Marsh in Stephen Paulus’ opera Summer for Berkshire Opera and has performed in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia with Lyric Opera Cleveland, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Anchorage Opera, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with Opera Grand Rapids, and Verdi’s Falstaff with the Pine Mountain Music Festival. Recent engagements include Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Houston Masterworks Chorus, Mahler’s Symphony No.2 with the South Dakota Symphony and Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the Peninsula Music Festival. She graduated magna cum laude from Indiana University with a degree in music theory and has received a Pi Kappa Lambda scholarship as well as numerous Margaret Hillis fellowships.
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Rex Martin, professor of music at Northwestern University, has been playing the tuba since the age of nine. He received performance degrees from Illinois State University and Northwestern University, where he studied with Arnold Jacobs and Edward Livingston. His playing can be heard on more than 100 recordings of various ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Pro Musica, Tower Brass, Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He has performed on more than 3000 television and radio commercials and has also performed with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra (Osaka), Lucerne Festival Orchestra and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. His students occupy positions in orchestras and universities throughout the world, and he was awarded the Outstanding Young Alumni Award by Illinois State University. He previously held professorships at DePaul University, Illinois State University, University of Illinois at Chicago, The University of Notre Dame, and The Oberlin Conservatory. As a soloist and clinician, he has performed and taught throughout North America, the Far East and Europe. A Swiss citizen, he also teaches at Ticino Musica in Lugano, Switzerland, and has traveled to Europe 91 times to give recitals and master classes.
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Peter Martin has concertized as a percussion soloist and chamber musician across the globe. He has been a featured artist at the Jeju Summer Music Festival of Korea, the Leigh Howard Stevens Summer Marimba Seminar, the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, the CJYPE Concert Series, the Long Island Day of Percussion, and the Kansas Day of Percussion. Peter is also on high demand as a guest clinician and performer at music schools worldwide. Recent appearances have included those at Seoul National University, Bryn Mawr University, St. Cloud State University, Colorado State University, and Iowa State University. Peter Martin has enjoyed competition success as the first prize winner at the 2003 Percussive Arts Society International Marimba Competition.
Since 2004, Peter has been an artist/ endorser for Kp3/Malletech Co., making him the youngest artist on their roster. As an ensemble musician, Peter has performed with the Scandinavian Chamber Orchestra, the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra, the Longmount Symphony Orchestra, the Monmouth Symphony Orchestra, the Stampede Group Inc., the Summitt Theatre Group, and the Exit 9 percussion group and is an active freelance performer and educator in the Chicago area. Peter Martin holds a Masters in Percussion Performance from Northwestern University where he is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Music Degree. His teachers include world renowned percussion soloist Michael Burritt, She-e Wu, and marimba virtuoso Leigh Howard Stevens.
For more information on Peter, please visit: www.newmarimba.com.
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Adam Moen earned his Bachelor of Music degree from Northwestern University while studying with Frank Crisafulli. He then joined the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and pursued further musical studies with Jay Friedman, Principal Trombone of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Moen performs regularly as a substitute player with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Grant Park Music Festival. He is Principal Trombone of the Lake Forest Symphony and the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra and section trombone with the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Ravinia Festival Orchestra and Tower Brass of Chicago.
He has appeared as a guest artist with the orchestras of Minnesota, Milwaukee, Alabama, Honolulu and Toledo. Adam has performed with many popular artists including: Chicago, YES!, The Beach Boys, Barry White, Joni Mitchell, The Three Tenors, The Irish Tenors, Mannheim Steamroller, Art Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Cetera, 3 Mo’ Tenors (Cook, Dixon and Young), Il Divo, Dennis DeYoung, and Andrea Bocelli. He currently serves on the faculty of the University of Illinois.
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Kenneth Olsen, cello, joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as Assistant Principal Cello in 2005.
Mr. Olsen is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and a winner of the Institutes prestigious Concerto Competition. Other awards received by the 24-year-old cellist include first prize in the Nakamichi Cello Competition at the Aspen Music Festival and second prize at the 2002 Holland-America Music Society competition. Mr. Olsens teachers have included Richard Aaron, Cleveland Institute of Music; Joel Krosnick, Juilliard School of Music; and Luis Garcia Renart, Bard College. He has also been a participant at The Steans Institute for Young Artists, the Ravinia Festivals professional studies program for young musicians, and Boston Universitys Tanglewood Institute.
A native of New York, Mr. Olsen is a founding member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), a group of talented young musicians from orchestras and ensembles all over the county.
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Quintet Attacca, Grand Prize Winner of the 2002 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, is one of Chicago’s most dynamic chamber music ensembles. Quintet Attacca is one of only two wind quintets in the 33-year history of the Fischoff Competition to have received the coveted Grand Prize. In that same year, the quintet was also invited to be a finalist for Chamber Music Society Two at Lincoln Center.
Quintet Attacca is an ensemble dedicated to bringing the unfamiliar sounds of the wind quintet to all types of audiences; to this end, the quintet has played in venues across the Midwest, with extensive programming in Chicago. In fall 2002, Quintet Attacca toured Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. In February 2003 they traveled to Minneapolis and participated in a Music da Camera taping for Chamber Music Minnesota and gave a concert at the University of Minnesota’s School of Music. The summer of 2003 marked the quintet’s European debut, with concerts at the Emilia Romagna Festival and the Catania Musica Estate Festival in Italy. Recent seasons have seen Quintet Attacca continue to expand its reach with debut performances on Chicago’s classical radio station’s Live from WFMT, a New York debut on the Schneider Concert Series at the New School in January of 2005, and a Detroit debut on the Cranbrook Music Guild Series. Numerous new music projects have included a master class of young composers’ works and performance on the New Music Marathon at Northwestern University in 2004 and a call for scores in 2006, culminating in a recital at Lake Forest College of Chicago-area composers’ works for wind quintet. In the spring of 2006, Quintet Attacca completed its first year in residence at Lake Forest College and will continue that relationship in the 2006-2007 season. In addition to performances on WFMT, on the Music Institute of Chicago’s Passports series, and the Fermilab Gallery Chamber Series in Batavia, IL, Quintet Attacca has begun a two-year relationship with The Chicago Chamber Musicians in CCM’s Professional Development Program.
Quintet Attacca delights in bringing music education to all ages and abilities. Using the differences in the individual instruments of the quintet as an advantage, the educational programs of Quintet Attacca bring understanding to the unexpected. The group has performed educational programs at libraries, elementary schools and middle schools in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, including the Dogwood Fine Arts Festival in Dowagiac, Michigan and throughout the Chicago Public Schools. The group has given master classes to young performers and composers at Northwestern University, Eastern Michigan University, Sherwood School of Music, Northeastern Illinois University, and the Merit School of Music.
Priding themselves on their innovative programming, Quintet Attacca enjoys presenting concerts that are both accessible and cutting-edge. A wind quintet is unusual by design and QA seeks to make the unusual worthwhile through music that challenges the performers while engaging the audience. Programs by the quintet have included works by Roberto Sierra, Eric Ewazen, Elliott Carter, Miguel del Aguila, Paquito D’Rivera, John Steinmetz, John Harbison, and Gyorgy Ligeti. In addition to these composers, two works have been written for the quintet: Collin Anderson’s Tangram, written for Northwestern University’s New Music Marathon, and Two Episodes for Wind Quintet, written for the ensemble by Dana McCormick. To create balanced and entertaining programs, Quintet Attacca combines the challenges of today’s most difficult works with gems from the past.
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Equally at home in front of a harpsichord, organ, piano, or fortepiano, David Schrader is “truly an extraordinary musician … (who) brings not only the unfailing right technical approach to each of these different instruments, but always an imaginative, fascinating musicality to all of them” (Norman Pellegrini, WFMT, Chicago). A performer of wide-ranging interests and accomplishments, Mr. Schrader has performed at the American Guild of Organists’ national convention on four occasions performing as a featured artist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Schrader has appeared as a soloist on organ and on harpsichord with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra having performed under the direction of Sir Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim, and Pierre Boulez. He has also appeared with the and Chicago’s Grant Park Symphony under Carlos Kalmar, and with many other orchestras throughout the United States and Canada.
In addition, Mr. Schrader has appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as the repetiteur and principal harpsichordist in Chicago Opera Theater’s highly acclaimed production of “Orfeo” under Jane Glover. He was the featured performer at the prestigious Irving Gilmore Keyboard Festival, performing concerts on organ, harpsichord and clavichord. And, Mr. Schrader appeared as a soloist at the Ravinia Festival under the direction of Nicholas McGegan performing all six of the Bach Brandenberg Concertos.
Mr. Schrader has appeared at numerous music festivals throughout the United States and Europe. He performed as the Artist of the Year at the Oulunsalo Soi Music Festival in Oulu, Finland. He was the harpsichord soloist with the Nagaokakyo Chamber Ensemble in a tour of Japan under Yuko Mori and the Canadian baroque orchestra Tafelmusik in a European tour. He has also performed at the Aspen Music Festival, the Michigan Mozartfest with Roger Norrington, the Connecticut Early Music Festival, the Manitou Music Festival, and the Woodstock Mozart Festival where he performed as soloist and conductor.
A resident of Chicago, Mr. Schrader leads an active musical life at home. He performs with Baroque Band (Chicago’s period instrument orchestra), Music of the Baroque, the Newberry Consort, and Bach Week in Evanston. Mr. Schrader has appeared with Chicago Chamber Musicians, Contemporary Chamber Players, Chicago Baroque Ensemble, and The City Musick. He is a frequent guest on WFMT radio (Chicago) on recordings and in live broadcasts as part of WFMT’s “Live From Studio One” programming.
Mr. Schrader’s recording with Grant Park Symphony of music for organ and orchestra by American composers is the first recording of the Casavant Frères organ in Chicago’s Symphony Center which was described by John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune as a “rich palette of sounds and deft rhythmic interplay … Schrader’s 17th recording for the Chicago-based indie label may be his best yet. Go for it.”
Mr. Schrader’s other recordings include concerti of J. S. Bach with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and continuo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for both recordings of Sir Georg Solti’s “Creation”, and the “St. Matthew Passion” and “Messiah”. Mr. Schrader has many releases of solo repertoire on the Cedille label, including the music of J.S. Bach, Soler, Franck, Vivaldi, Dupre and Domenico Scarlatti. His recording of Soler “Fandango & Sonatas” was described thus “We have never heard more beautiful, natural, realistic harpsichord sound … The playing? Excellent … There is no better recording on CD” (American Record Guide). “The popular ‘Fandango’ has perhaps never received so exhilarating a reading” (Chicago Tribune). “His recording of J. S. Bach “Fantasies & Fugues” “captures the sense of improvisatory, virtuosic energy that is to be found so plentifully in this music.” (Continuo) Mr. Schrader has also recorded for the Centaur and CRI labels.
Mr. Schrader is on the faculty of Roosevelt University, Chicago College of Performing Arts - Music Conservatory for performance and academic studies where he has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses since 1986. From 1993 through 1995 he also directed the Collegium Musicum at Northwestern University. He has also taught at the Music Institute of Chicago (formerly know as The Music Center of the North Shore.) Since 1980, he has been the organist of the Church of the Ascension, whose liturgies command a national reputation for musical integrity.
Mr. Schrader received a Doctor of Music degree in organ from Indiana University as well as the coveted Performer’s Certificate. He received a Bachelor of Music in piano and a Bachelor of Music in organ from the University of Colorado. His principal teachers have been Storm Bull, Abbey Simon, Oswald Ragatz, Anthony Newman and Everett Jay Hilty.
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Pianist Diana Schmück, described in the Chicago Sun-Times as “one of the finest chamber pianists on the scene, …playing with her ears as much as her gifted hands,” has appeared in concert throughout the United States and Canada, in Europe and as far as the Philippines, where she was a soloist with the Metro-Manila Symphony. She has performed as a soloist and collaborator at Chicago’s major venues, including Symphony Center, Ravinia, WFMT, and the Chicago Cultural Center.
Dr. Schmück is a founding member of the Orion Ensemble, heralded in the Sun-Times as “one of Chicago’s most adventuresome, polished chamber groups” and praised by critics and listeners alike for its new Cedille recording, “Twilight of the Romantics: Chamber Music of Walter Rabl and Josef Labor.” Diana also founded two duos: the Debriana Duo piano team (with Debra Sutter), which received special recognition at the first Murray Dranoff Duo-Piano Competition and was invited to perform at the American Liszt Society in Washington, D.C.; and the Daedalus Duo (with clarinetist Bonnie Campbell), heard in Chicago (Dame Myra Hess and other series) and across the country in theme-based concerts that frequently include poetry. She collaborates frequently with singers and orchestral musicians as well.
Schmück is a doctoral graduate of Northwestern University where she was a student of Deborah Sobol. She has also studied with Mary Sauer and Reginald Gerig and holds degrees from DePaul University and Wheaton College. Having taught and coached in several university, college, outreach, and summer festival settings—including the Chicago Chamber Musicians Outreach program at its inception, as well as Ravinia’s Steans Institute and the Csehy Summer School of Music—she currently maintains a studio in Evanston.
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David Skidmore is active as both a performer and composer of percussion music. David is a founding member of the Third Coast Percussion Quartet, the Lucerne Festival Percussion Group, and the Collide Trio, and has premiered over a dozen new works with these groups over the past two years alone by composers such as Dai Fujikura and Dmitri Tymoczko. Solo performances include appearances with the Pacific Soundings series in Sapporo, Japan, the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, and the Chicago Civic Orchestra LaSalle Bank Chamber Music Series. David has performed as a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Pacific Music Festival, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the National Repertory Orchestra and the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, and he has also performed with the New World Symphony and the Breckenridge Music Institute. He has played under such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, David Robertson, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
David’s original works for percussion are performed regularly in concert halls and universities across the country. He has received commissions from David Herbert (San Francisco Symphony), Dr. John Parks and the Florida State University Percussion Ensemble, the Spindrift Percussion Quartet, and Peter Martin. He was awarded 1st prize in the 2005 Percussive Arts Society Composition Contest and 2nd prize in the 2004 contest. His piece “Whispers – for 9 Percussionists” was a finalist for an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award in 2005, and has been recorded by the Northwestern University Percussion Ensemble. In May of 2007 his latest piece, “Unknown Kind”, will be premiered in Carnegie Hall.
David completed his Bachelor of Music degree at Northwestern University where he studied with Michael Burritt and James Ross. He is currently pursuing the Master of Music degree at the Yale School of Music where he is a student of Robert Van Sice.
For more information on David, please visit his website at davidskidmorepercussion.com.
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Deborah Sobol is a concert pianist and music educator with a distinctive background and outlook. She attended Smith College, where she studied with Lory Wallfisch, graduated magna cum laude and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Her post-graduate studies were done in Vienna at the Hochschule für Musik with Hans Petermandl and at London’s Royal College of Music with Carola Grindea. She has performed in solo and duo recitals, concerto performances, and chamber music concerts with internationally renowned artists and has recorded for Cedille and Summit records. She is a much sought-after teacher of piano and chamber music coach and has been on the faculty of the Longy School of Music and the Northwestern University School of Music. Her publications have appeared in Clavier and London’s Piano Journal.
She was one of The Chicago Chamber Musicians’ original Artistic Co-Directors and its founding Executive Director. An advocate for improving arts education in the community, she was instrumental in initiating CCM’s fellowship program for young musicians and its outreach programs to Chicago Public Schools and senior centers. Ms. Sobol is the founder and Artistic Director of the summer “Rush Hour Concerts” series at St. James Cathedral in Chicago.
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Born in New York and raised in San Antonio, Brant Taylor began cello studies at the age of 8. His varied career has included solo appearances and collaborations with leading chamber musicians throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, as well as orchestral, pedagogical, and popular music activities.
After one year as a member of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Taylor was appointed to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra by Daniel Barenboim in 1998. In Chicago, Mr. Taylor has performed recitals for the Dame Myra Hess Concerts (live radio broadcasts), the First Monday concerts, Rush Hour Concerts at St. James, and the Ravinia Festival‘s Rising Stars recital series. He has also performed regularly with the renowned Chicago Chamber Musicians and appeared on the CSO’s contemporary music series, MusicNOW. Mr. Taylor performs frequently as a member of the Lincoln Quartet, a group formed 7 years ago with colleagues from the CSO. The Chicago Tribune wrote of one recent performance: “the lush expanses of melody seemed to have been written for Taylor, who brought a throbbing lyricism, incisive attack and idiomatic characterization to the cello part.”
From 1992-97, Mr. Taylor was cellist of the award-winning Everest Quartet, prizewinners at the 1995 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The Quartet performed and taught extensively in North America and the Caribbean, and gave the world premiere performance of a work by Israeli-American composer Paul Schoenfield. Mr. Taylor has also been a member of the Whitney Trio since 1994, an ensemble dedicated to bringing chamber music to audiences of all ages in rural areas across the U.S.
In 1997, Mr. Taylor was a member of the New World Symphony. He has returned to appear as soloist with that orchestra under the batons of Michael Tilson-Thomas and Nicholas McGegan, as well as to teach and participate in audition training seminars. Other solo appearances with orchestra include the San Antonio Symphony, Raleigh Symphony, Midland-Odessa Symphony, and Racine Symphony.
At home in the world of pop music, Mr. Taylor performs with the band Pink Martini. With this eclectic 11-member ensemble, he has appeared with the orchestras of Seattle, Rochester (NY), San Antonio, Utah, Milwaukee, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Austin, Jacksonville, Portland (OR), and Eugene (OR), in addition to performing 2 concerts at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in the summer of 2002.
Mr. Taylor is a frequent performer and teacher at music festivals, including the Festival der Zukunft in Ernen, Switzerland, the Portland Chamber Music Festival, the Shanghai International Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Mimir Chamber Music Festival, the Mammoth Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Music Festival Santo Domingo, Michigan’s Village Bach Festival, and Music at Gretna in Pennsylvania, where he has made repeated appearances as a concerto soloist.
Active as a teacher of both cello and chamber music, Mr. Taylor serves on the faculties of DePaul University’s School of Music and Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts. In addition, he is a faculty member at Northwestern University’s National High School Music Institute, and has led classes on orchestral repertoire at the University of Michigan. Mr. Taylor holds a Bachelor of Music degree and a Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he won the school’s Concerto Competition and performed as soloist with the Eastman Philharmonia. His Master of Music degree is from Indiana University. Mr. Taylor’s primary teachers have been János Starker and Paul Katz.
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Third Coast Percussion is an exciting new group dedicated to the performance of new and classic works for percussion. This dynamic quartet is committed to breaking down barriers between classical and popular art forms, and is equally at home in concert halls, theaters, and rock clubs.
Originally formed in 2004 as a satellite of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago chamber music program, Third Coast has since come into its own with recent activities including a performance at the 2006 Percussive Arts Society Convention in Austin, concerts and master classes at the California Institute of the Arts, the University of Chicago, and Northeastern Illinois University, and the recent release of the group’s debut album, “Ritual Music”. The upcoming 2007-2008 season promises to be Third Coast’s busiest and most exciting yet, with performances at the Northwestern University Summer Percussion Seminar, and tours of Florida and California.
Third Coast Percussion has quickly established a strong commitment to the very highest performance standards for new music. In addition to performances of classic works by John Cage and Steve Reich, Third Coast has commissioned and premiered pieces by many of today’s leading up-and-coming composers.
This unique chamber music group has continued to blur the lines between musical styles with performances such as those at the edgy Neo-Futurarium Theatre in Andersonville and the iconoclastic rock club the Empty Bottle. No matter what the venue, Third Coast Percussion brings the same energy, finesse, and dedication to the exciting music they play.
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Hailed by the critics as possessing a “resplendent voice” and “rich, burnished sound” with “formidable skill” and a “commanding grace and strength”, bass-baritone Peter Van De Graaff has sung to great acclaim throughout the world. In Europe, he recently returned from Salzburg where he was a featured soloist at the International Vocal Symposium. He has performed and recorded a Mass by Jan Vorisek with the Czech State Symphony under Paul Freeman and has also sung Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis throughout the Czech Republic and Poland with the Czech Philharmonic. He appeared in Berlin with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. In Budapest he sang with the Budapest Concert Orchestra in Verdi’s Requiem and in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Chamber Orchestra joined him in a Mozart Mass. As a recitalist he appeared in Tokyo. His singing has also taken him throughout the United States, where his appearances include engagements with the Houston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Utah Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Syracuse Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic, Omaha Symphony, Wichita Symphony, Colorado Springs Symphony, Richmond Symphony and many, many others. Conductors with whom he has worked include Pierre Boulez, Christopher Wilkins, Paul Freeman, Bernard Labadie, Paul Hillier, Joseph Silverstein, Robert Page, Thomas Wikman, Jane Glover, Klaus-Peter Seibel, Victor Yampolsky, James Paul, Daniel Hege and Nicholas Kraemer, among many others.
Mr. Van De Graaff has made a specialty of the baroque repertoire and this has brought him as soloist to the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Costa Rica International Music Festival, Chicago’s Music of the Baroque, Pittsburgh Bach Choir, Grand Teton Music Festival, St. Louis Early Music Festival, Boulder Bach Festival and many other festivals and concert series throughout the country. He and his soprano wife have been responsible for the modern premieres of several early 18th century chamber operas called “intermezzi.”
He has also been active in the opera house and has performed with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Florentine Opera, Milwaukee Opera, Rochester Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Cedar Rapids Opera and many other companies.
His recordings include 3 intermezzos on the Naxos label and Menotti’s The Medium, Vorisek Mass in B-Flat and Mozart arias and duets, all on the Cedille label.
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Yang Wei began his musical education at the early age of 6, receiving instruction in the playing of various classical Chinese instruments. At the age of 13, he made the decision to concentrate his considerable talents upon mastering the pipa. As a developing musician, Wei was taught by the pipa Master, Liu Dehai. At 18, he performed as a pipa soloist with the national Shanghai Orchestra and his young career blossomed. In 1989, he was awarded the ART Trophy first Prize for the International Chinese Musical Instruments Competition, in the Young Professional Pipa Section.
Wei’s performances have been celebrated worldwide, inspiring audiences throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. From the year 2000, Wei has toured with the acclaimed, high profile Silk Road Project, performing alongside world famous cellist, Yo-Yo Ma. Wei has toured from coast to coast in the United States, additionally, performing at such known venues as the Ravinia International Music Festival, the Kimmel Center, the Lincoln Center and the Chicago Symphony Center. In addition to these performances and appearances, he has served as artist-in-residence for the Chicago’s Art Institute and has led international music lectures. He has been instrumental in commissioning new works by Chinese composers such as Bright Sheng, Huang Ro, and Lu Pei. His participation in such musical ventures serves to enrich the already grand legacy of Chinese music.
In 1996, Wei moved to the United States. With a desire to honor the musical heritage of his homeland China, but also, to express himself in Western themes in the U.S., Wei strives to share his native musical heritage, exploring the creative possibilities of blending his Eastern background with Western influences of his new home. He continues to develop his art through diligent study, as well as through his involvement in timely new collaborations. He is ever committed to sharing his music with the community around him.
For more information on Yang Wei, please visit his website at PipaSensation.com.
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At the age of thirteen, Richard Young was invited to perform for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium at the Royal Palace in Brussels. Since then he has been soloist with various orchestras and has given solo and chamber music recitals throughout North and South America, Europe, the Far East, Africa, and Australia. A special award winner in the Rockefeller Foundation American Music Competition, he was a member of the New Hungarian Quartet as well as the violinist of the Rogeri Piano Trio. Since 1985 he has been the violist of the renowned Vermeer String Quartet.
Mr. Young has performed at many prestigious festivals throughout the world and has recorded over three dozen works for Teldec, Naxos, Orion, Cedille, Vox, Musical Heritage, Angelicum, and Alden Productions. He has received three Grammy nominations, and was the producer of the Vermeer Quartet’s CD of Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, which has been broadcast to over 60 million people throughout the world. He is also the author of a best-selling book entitled Echoes from Calvary, published by Rowman & Littlefield. He has taught at Northern Illinois University, the University of Michigan, Northwestern University, North Park University, and was chairman of the string faculty at Oberlin Conservatory. Mr. Young is also a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. In addition to his more traditional teaching activities, he does a substantial amount of volunteer work in inner-city Chicago for the benefit of disadvantaged children at the People’s Music School, and as a supervisor of the International Music Foundation’s extensive “outreach” program.
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Bernard Zinck, concert violinist and recording artist, is on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee after serving as Violin Professor at the University of New Mexico. He also teaches at the Merit School of Music in Chicago.
He began his musical studies at 5 and entered the Paris Conservatory at 15. He left it three years later with a slew of first prizes, in ear training, violin and chamber music. Demanding teachers like Gérard Poulet and Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux enabled him to reach an outstanding level of technical excellence and instilled in him an acute sense of rigor and musical integrity.
Admitted to the Juilliard School of Music as a Fulbright scholar, he finished his B.M. and M.M. degrees after only four years of studies. This academic training was crowned by a Doctorate degree received from Temple University in Philadelphia. His thesis on The Chevalier de Saint-George – an eighteenth-century French Violinist – makes him a knowledgeable scholar on the French School of Violin in the “Age of Enlightenment”.
His career began when he won the 1992 Yehudi Menuhin Trust Award in Paris. His scintillating recordings of “Szymanowski’s Complete Works for Violin and Piano” and the “Live From France Album”, have won him the reputation of an expert interpreter of impressionistic music. Even though he has a close affinity with the works of the European nationalist composers of the early twentieth century, he refuses any label, equally at ease in a repertoire ranging from Bach to Barber.
An increasingly international performer, Bernard Zinck made his Japan debut in 2001 at the Oji Hall in Tokyo and in 2004, was invited to perform in Seoul, Korea at Sahmyook University International Music Festival. He has concertized extensively both as a chamber musician and soloist in Europe, the United States, Central and South America in numerous venues and festivals among which: the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Théâtre Impérial in Compiègne, Les Flâneries de Reims, Radio-France Montpellier (France), Brighton Arts (U.K.), the Salzbourg Mozarteum (Austria), the Liszt Academy in Budapest (Hungary), Szymanowski Festival in Zakopane (Poland), the National Gallery and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, Bowdoin, the Santa Fe Concert Association. He has appeared as guest soloist with many orchestras: the New Mexico Symphony, the Princeton Chamber Players, the Orquesta Sinfonica de la Universidad de Chihuahua, the Porto Alegre, Unisinos and Caxias and Camargo Guarnieri Symphony Orchestras in Brazil, the Hungarian National Philharmonic, the Bohemia Symphony, the Radio-Television Orchestra of Romania, the New Opera Di Roma Orchestra and the Orchestre National de la Garde Républicaine in Paris.
Residing in the Chicago area, Bernard Zinck has appeared on Chicago numerous concert series: Dame Myra Hess at the Cultural Center, Rush Hour at St. James Cathedral, St. James Cathedral Concerts, Cube, The Alliance Française, and was featured with members of the Chicago Chamber Musicians on WFMT “Live from Studio One”.
Bernard Zinck’s violin playing is neither a gratuitous display of pyrotechnics, nor a self-indulgent outpouring of emotion. It is an ever-renewed quest for authenticity and truth. “Impeccable accuracy of pitch”, “formidable technique” are recurrent press quotes. The Strad Magazine has praised his “round and opulent tone”, his “vibrato bringing moments of sheer ecstasy”, while Fanfare Magazine is impressed by the “singing, sensuous, sumptuous, shimmering” quality of his playing, which the French Figaro sums up in the glowing expression: “violon solaire”.
Doctor Zinck is also very active as a pedagogue. He has served on the faculty of the Köln Summer Institute in Montepulciano (Italy) and is regularly invited to conduct Master Classes and residencies in Universities and Conservatories throughout the United States, Brazil, Mexico and Europe.
Since 2002, Bernard Zinck plays on a Giovanni Battista Rogeri violin, dated 1690 – a purchase made possible with the support of the Bass family.
For more information on Bernard Zinck, please visit his website at bernardzinck.com.
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