2011
Festival
Season
2011
Concert Schedule
2011 Artists
2011 Artists
Tom Artin, trombone, has played throughout the U.S. and Europe with a number of world-renowned jazz groups, including the Smithsonian Jazz Repertory Ensemble and the Louis Armstrong Alumni All-Stars. He played lead trombone in Mel Tormé's big band and was also the house trombonist at Eddie Condon's jazz club in New York for nearly a decade. He currently leads his own sixteen-piece swing band, a traditional jazz band, and Standard Brass, an adventurous seven-piece jazz ensemble.
Violinist Heidi Braun-Hill has been a soloist with Emmanuel Music since 1999, where she has performed more than 150 Bach cantatas. She played in Peter Sellars' production of Bach Cantatas BWV 82 and 199 with Lorraine Hunt Leiberson, and has appeared as concertmaster and soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Boston, Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Winsor Music, Chameleon Arts Ensemble, and the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival. She has premiered numerous chamber works, and her recordings appear on the Arsis, Nonesuch, Naxos, and Albany record labels. Ms. Braun-Hill is on the faculty at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Laura Burns, violin, is a member of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and their HeartStrings quartet, which brings live interactive music programs to adults and children with disabilities. She also performs with many local groups including the Oakwood Chamber Players and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. A dedicated teacher, Ms. Burns has taught middle and elementary school strings, and has been a faculty member of Summer Music Clinic (UW-Madison), Prelude Music Academy, and Music Makers, a program that offers violin instruction to economically disadvantaged children.
Pianist Ya-Fei Chuang's appearances include the Beethoven Festival (Warsaw), the European Music Festival (Stuttgart), the Schleswig-Holstein, the Bach Festival Leipzig, and the Ruhr Festival. Ms. Chuang has also performed at the Tanglewood, Ravinia, Gilmore, and Sarasota festivals. She has performed at Berlin Philharmonie Hall, Schauspielhaus Berlin, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Symphony Hall, and Jordan Hall. Her duo partners include Kim Kashkashian, Robert Levin, and Steven Isserlis. Four CDs are soon to be released. Ms. Chuang serves on the faculty of Boston Conservatory, and gives masterclasses at Tanglewood, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and elsewhere.
Soprano Kendra Colton sings “radiantly and vividly,” according to The New York Times. Trained in the U.S. and Europe, she appears regularly in solo recital, with symphony orchestras, and at major music festivals on both continents. She has developed a niche in the oratorios and sacred works of Bach, Brahms, Haydn, Handel, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Schubert, and is acclaimed equally for her performances of Handel and Mozart operas, as well as for her skill as an interpreter of contemporary music.
Formerly Principal Bassist in the Jacksonville Symphony, Elizabeth Foulser has held titled positions in the Springfield Symphony, New Haven Symphony, and Lancaster Festival Orchestra. She performs regularly with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and also plays with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Boston Lyric Opera, Emmanuel Music, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston Philharmonic. She has also played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston and at Tanglewood, Ms. Foulser also maintains a teaching studio and is active as a chamber musician.
Bassist Ross Gilliland has played with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Con Vivo!, Oakwood Chamber Players, Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Madison Bach Musicians, and with his touring ska band. Mr. Gilliland holds undergraduate degrees in music and physics, and the master's degree in Environmental Policy and Management. He worked at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and now serves on an advisory board for Seattle Public Utilities, and as an analyst with Equal Opportunity Schools.
Composer John Harbison, pianist, violist, and artistic co-director of the Token Creek Festival, is one of the nation's most distinguished artistic figures. Recipient of the Pulitzer, MacArthur, and Heinz awards, among many others, his current projects include a work for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, his fifth string quartet (for the 100th birthday of the Pro Arte Quartet in 2012), and his sixth symphony, for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He will be resident composer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center this season, and his opera The Great Gatsby will have its chamber version premiere in February. Mr. Harbison is Institute Professor at MIT.
Rose Mary Harbison, violin, is artistic co-director of the Token Creek Festival. She has been guest artist with the Santa Fe, Aspen, Tanglewood, and Berlin Festivals. With Rudolph Kolisch she founded the Kolisch Ensemble, and she is a founding member of Emmanuel Music Boston. Ms. Harbison taught at Brandeis and MIT, and was a Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute and winner of an Ingram-Merrill Award. She recently presented, with physicist Jack Fry, “Solving the Stradivarius Secret” at the Boston Museum of Science, illuminating Fry's groundbreaking research into the acoustical properties of the world's finest violins, and she is featured on DVD in Kameschwar Wali's new book Cremona Violins: A Physicist's Quest for the Secrets of Stradivari.
Whitacre Hill, horn, holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Northwestern University. He has performed with the Harrisburg Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, the Heidelberg Schloss-Spiel Orchestra and the Chicago Civic Orchestra. Since moving to Boston, Mr. Hill has performed with the Boston Philharmonic, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, North Shore Music Theater, and Paramount Brass. He is currently on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory of Music and performs with Emmanuel Music.
Linda Kimball is principal horn in the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and associate principal horn of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. She has been a member of Whitewater Brass Quintet since its inception in 1983, and is a founding member of the Artemis Horn Quartet, performing at International Horn Society Workshops and on Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast recitals. She is also a member of UW-Madison's Wingra Woodwind Quintet, and instructor of horn at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Karl Lavine is principal 'cellist with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and a member of the Milwaukee-based new music ensemble, Present Music. He is also a founding member of the Kepler Quartet, and 'cellist with the HeartStings Quartet, an innovative program of the Madison Symphony designed to address special-needs populations. As a chamber musician Mr. Lavine has performed with faculty members of Lawrence University, Beloit College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and with members of the Pro Arte Quartet.
Robert Levin has performed on the modern Steinway with major orchestras throughout the world, and on period pianos with every important baroque and classical orchestra. A noted Mozart scholar, Mr. Levin is renowned for his improvised cadenzas in Classical period repertoire. His completions of Mozart's Requiem, C minor Mass and other unfinished works have been recorded and performed throughout the world. Also a passionate advocate of new music, Mr. Levin has commissioned and premiered a large number of works. He has also recorded extensively. He is Artistic Director of the Sarasota Music Festival, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Akademie für Mozartforschung, and President of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition (Leipzig).
Vocalist Nicole Pasternak has been a mainstay in the Northeast for more than twenty years, carving her niche with jazz enthusiasts with a repertoire that embraces the powerful traditions of swing, bebop, Brazilian, ballads and big band music. A natural improviser known for the conversational tone of her lyric delivery, she can be heard frequently in concert, radio and nightclub appearances. Her CDs are widely available.
Violist Jennifer Clare Paulson is a member of the Madison and Green Bay symphony orchestras. She also performs with several improvisational and new music ensembles, including WRACK, Madi Ensemble, Lightbox Orchestra, and the annual Chicago Sound Map series. Ms. Paulson earned the DMA in viola performance at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and teaches studio violin and viola at the UW-Whitewater and at the Madison Music Foundry.
Peggy Pearson, oboe, is winner of the Pope Foundation Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Music and Artistic Director of Winsor Music Chamber Series. She is a member of the Bach Aria Group and oboist with Emmanuel Music, an organization that performs the complete cycle of sacred cantatas by J.S. Bach. According to The Boston Globe, "Peggy Pearson has probably played more Bach than any other oboist of her generation; this is music she plays in a state of eloquent grace."
Cellist Rhonda Rider, a founding member of the Lydian quartet, with whom she played for more than twenty years, is a member of the celebrated piano trio Triple Helix. Actively touring, she has been heard at international festivals including Concerts Spirituel de Geneve, American Academy in Rome, and Tanglewood. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Moscow Conservatory, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress. She is chair of the chamber music department at the Boston Conservatory of Music.
John Schaffer, jazz bass, can be heard regularly in the Madison area with the Paul Muench Quartet, the Michael B.B. Quartet, and the Bill Evans Repertory Trio. He also makes frequent guest appearances with artists such as Jan Wheaton, Michelle DuVall, Doug Brown, Dave Stoler, Kurt Lang and the Madison Jazz Orchestra. He is Professor of Music Theory at UW-Madison, where he has served for fifteen years as Director of the School of Music.
Todd Steward, drums, performs regularly in the Madison area with such groups as the Michael B.B. Quartet, the Madison Jazz Orchestra, CTM Theater Orchestra, Doc DeHaven's Jazz Band, Kelly DeHaven's Misbehavin' Band, Brad Pregeant's New Orleans Low-Down, the Ed Anders Quartet, Five-by-Design, The Dry Martinis, and folk singer Ken Lonnquist. He has also toured the world performing in ten cruise-ship orchestras.