2012
Festival
Season
2012
Concert Schedule
2012 Artists
2012 Artists
James T. Addis retired from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in 2000, having served as Administrator of the Division of Resource Management and Director of the Bureaus of Fisheries Management and Science Services. With early experience doing studies on the long-term effects of human uses on aquatic communities, he came to believe that management decisions based mainly on science and engineering considerations are overly simple and undervalue the feelings and values that underlie real-life decisions. Possessed of an informed skepticism about prospects for our environmental future, he believes that the Token Creek Farm project, with its legacy of nature, conservation and art, offers a rare opportunity to explore ways of connecting land management and the arts that might lead to new ways to value nature, which, in turn, might ultimately lead to better decisions based on new values.
Tom Artin, trombonist, has performed throughout the world with numerous ensembles, including the band from Eddie Condon’s, Smithsonian Jazz Repertory Ensemble, Louis Armstrong Alumni All-Stars, and the World’s Greatest Jazz Band. He has appeared at leading venues including Michael’s Pub, The Iridium, Rome’s Alexanderplatz, Cork Opera House, Roy Thompson Hall, and the White House. For several years he was house trombonist at Eddie Condon’s in New York, inheriting the seat of the great Vic Dickenson. Mr. Artin leads his own sixteen-piece swing band, the TomCats Jazz Aces, as well as Standard Brass, an adventurous seven-piece ensemble for which he also arranges, and he is a founding member of the co-operative jazz trio We Three. Mr. Artin is the author of Earth Talk: Independent Voices on the Environment; The Allegory of Adventure; and The Wagner Complex.
Violinist Heidi Braun-Hill has participated in numerous chamber music series, including Winsor Music, Apple Hill, Firebird Ensemble, and Radius Ensemble. Since 1999 she has been a soloist in Emmanuel Music’s Bach Cantata series and has performed in Peter Sellars/Craig Smith productions in the U.S. and Europe. She has premiered chamber works by Martin Brody, Martin Boykan, Edward Cohen, and Allen Anderson, and has worked closely with composer John Harbison. Ms. Braun-Hill is engaged with many Boston groups, is sought after as a concertmaster, and has made recordings with various groups on the Arsis, Nonesuch, Naxos, BMOP/sound, and Albany labels. She is passionate about arts education and is on the music faculty at Phillips Exeter Academy. She lives in Boston with her husband, Whitacre Hill, and their two children, Finnis and Adelaide.
Doug Brown, guitarist, has performed, recorded and toured internationally with Harmonious Wail and Ken Lonnquist, appears frequently with the Madison Symphony, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and with many jazz and folk musicians. He has played on more than thirty recordings by various artists and is active as a freelance producer and arranger. Currently he is most frequently heard playing piano and guitar with jazz singer Michelle DuVall with whom he has recorded two CDs including a collection of original songs: Chillin’ At The White Horse. A prolific songwriter, Mr. Brown also composed the music for the movie Madison and for many productions at American Players Theatre. He has also composed for Winter Theater, Tapit Productions, and the Madison Repertory Theater, and has contributed arrangements for plays at Children’s Theater of Madison.
Laura Burns, violinist, is a member of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, where she also performs with the Rhapsodie String Quartet, part of the MSO’s Heartstrings initiative that brings live music to individuals with disabilities. In June she spoke about the Heartstrings program at the League of American Orchestras national conference in Dallas. Ms. Burns performs regularly with Fresco Opera Theater, Oakwood Chamber Players, and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. She also teaches violin at Edgewood College and maintains a private violin studio in Oregon, Wisconsin. She serves as president of the Independent String Teachers of Madison and was recently elected president of the Wisconsin Chapter of the American String Teachers Association. Ms. Burns earned the M.M. degree in violin performance from UW-Madison, where she studied with David Perry.
Elizabeth Foulser is a freelance classical bassist. A regular performer with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Ms. Foulser has toured the U.S. and Asia, and played many of the major concert halls and summer festivals in this country. She performs regularly with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Lyric Opera, Emmanuel Music, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston Philharmonic. She has also played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and with the Super World Orchestra (Tokyo). She has held titled positions in the Jacksonville, Springfield and New Haven symphonies, and in the Lancaster Festival Orchestra. Ms. Foulser is also an active chamber musician and studio teacher. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, was a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Music Festival, and participated in the Bach Aria Festival.
Stephen B. Glass recently founded Restoration Ecology Lab. Formerly at the UW Arboretum as Restoration Planner and Fire Manager, he has been active in all phases of restoration since 1989, particularly in civic engagement and community-sponsored restoration projects. He is especially interested in natural springs, such as those found abundantly on the Token Creek Festival property, and is currently investigating the cultural history and ecological features of these “magical places.” Mr. Glass is co-author of the new book Introduction to Restoration Ecology (Island Press), and he maintains the blog WingraSprings, which covers ecological restoration of the Lake Wingra Watershed, ways in which ecological restoration improves communities, and spotlights successful community-based restoration projects that are a model of civic involvement. Steve volunteers for community-based restoration projects in the Wingra watershed.
Earlier this summer John Harbison–composer, pianist, violist, and artistic co-director of the Token Creek Festival–again served as Chair of Composition at Tanglewood. New works that premiered last season include Closer To My Own Life (Metropolitan Opera Orchestra), Symphony No. 6 (Boston Symphony Orchestra, which presented Harbison’s full symphonic cycle between 2010-2012), the chamber orchestration of The Great Gatsby (Ensemble Parallèle and Aspen Music Festival), String Quartet No. 5 (Pro Arte Quartet’s centennial), Violin Sonata No. 1 (Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where Harbison served as Composer in Residence 2011-2012) and, on August 25, Koussevitsky said for the 75th anniversary of Tanglewood. Next season his Full Moon in March will be presented in London, and concert versions of The Great Gatsby will be presented by Emmanuel Music in Boston and at Tanglewood. Mr. Harbison is recipient of the Pulitzer, MacArthur, and Heinz awards, and is Institute Professor at MIT.
Rose Mary Harbison, violinist and artistic co-director of the Token Creek Festival, started formal musical training at the age of four, in piano, at a small conservatory in Madison with Miss Jenny Taylor. The conservatory was remarkably advanced in its level of training and quality of faculty, most of whom had studied in Europe. Ms. Harbison began violin at age seven, with Adele Strelow. She was home-schooled during these early years because of extensive concertizing. In 1944 she was one of ten children under the age of ten chosen for a gala Christmas Day concert at the Chicago Opera House, a precursor of today’s American Idol, emceed by the radio personality Don Ameche and broadcast to the “boys overseas.” Ms. Harbison started public school at the Token Creek Grade School, one room with only electricity, and thirty students in eight grades (she loved it), went on to DeForest High School, and then to the University of Wisconsin where she earned a degree in music. She left for New York to study and work. She met John Harbison in a graduate composition seminar at Princeton University, and the rest is history.
Horn player Whitacre Hill was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and spent most of his childhood near Hershey, Pennsylvania. He currently lives in Boston with his wife, violinist Heidi Braun-Hill, and their two children, Finnis and Adelaide. Mr. Hill is a member of Emmanuel Music, and also performs with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Pops, Boston Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble. Concert tours have taken him throughout the United States, and to Japan, Germany, Spain, France, Monaco, the Netherlands, the UK and soon to Istanbul, Turkey. He can be heard on recordings on the Arabesque, Decca, Albany, Oxingale, Naxos, New World, and Cantaloupe labels. Mr. Hill studied at the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University, and the Music Academy of the West.
Dr. William R. Jordan III, called by Michael Pollan “the leading visionary of ecological restoration,” has provided intellectual leadership in this field for more than 30 years. The founding editor of the journal Ecological Restoration, he coined the term “restoration ecology,” and was senior editor of the first book defining this approach to ecological research. During his years as outreach manager at the UW-Madison Arboretum, he developed the Aldo Leopold Chair in Restoration Ecology at the UW-Madison, the first professorship in the field. Dr. Jordan is director of the New Academy for Nature and Culture, co-director of DePaul University’s Institute for Nature and Culture, and author of The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature (2003) and most recently Making Nature Whole: A History of Ecological Restoration (2011).
Linda Kimball is principal hornist of both the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and a member of UW Madison’s Wingra Woodwind Quintet and the Whitewater Brass Quintet at UW-Whitewater, where she also serves as horn instructor. She was recently guest artist/recitalist at the SCMEA Day of Horn (Suffolk County, NY), where she conducted the world’s largest horn ensemble (Guinness World Record!). Ms. Kimball has performed orchestral and chamber music throughout the world, including Austria, Sweden, Scotland, and France, and has served as substitute principal horn of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. In addition to her performaning activities, Ms. Kimball serves as director of the annual UW-Whitewater Fall Horn Festival, an event for horn players of all ages, for which she composes or arranges for horn ensemble much of the music presented.
Karl Lavine is principal cellist for the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. As a member of the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s Heartstrings quartet program, he performs in many special needs communities throughout the Madison area. He is also a founding member of the Kepler Quartet, currently recording the complete string quartets of American composer Ben Johnston. Mr. Lavine has also recorded a number of recent compositions, both solo and ensemble, while a member of the Milwaukee-based contemporary music ensemble Present Music. Mr. Lavine has held faculty positions at Luther College, Illinois Wesleyan University, and the UW-Madison Summer Music Clinics. He directs the Chamber Music Program for the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, and also maintains a private studio.
Michael Mercier works as an actor, producer, and teaching artist in Chicago. He’s been seen in The Merchant of Venice (First Folio Theatre), As You Like It (Two Pence Theatre Company), Arcadia (New Leaf), Dental Society Midwinter Meeting (16th Street Theater), The War Plays (The Strange Tree Group), Theories of the Sun (Sideshow Theatre Company), and Tartuffe and The Elephant Man (Bohemian Theatre Ensemble). He also worked at the Great River Shakespeare Festival as an apprentice in 2007. Mr. Mercier is a company member of Two Pence Theatre Company (Grants Manager/Education Assistant) and Vintage Theater Collective, where he served as managing director for the company’s first full season of events. A graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program, Mr. Mercier originally hails from Marshfield, Wisconsin.
Violist Jennifer Clare Paulson is a member of the Madison and Green Bay symphony orchestras. In addition to performing in regional orchestral and chamber music settings she is also a member of several new music ensembles based in Chicago, including Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack, which toured Europe and played at the Ulrichsburg Kaleidaphon festival in Austria this past spring. Bruckmann also recently won a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant to support future projects with the group. Ms. Paulson’s fall schedule includes performances with Fresco Opera Theater (a “spaghetti-western” themed The Good the Bad and the Divas), Sound Ensemble Wisconsin, and bluegrass band Milkhouse Radio. She currently teaches at Madison Music Foundry, is an apprentice at Spruce Tree Music, learning to repair and restore new and vintage string instruments, and is an accomplished Japanese koto player.
Vocalist Ricky Richardson, a Memphis native, is a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS in Humanities and Science, with a focus in mathematics and music). Originally a violinist, his early interest in music was encouraged by his father, a trumpeter and teacher. At MIT, Mr. Richardson performed across many genres with a number of musical groups, including the Gospel Choir, Concert Choir, Chamber Chorus, Vocal Jazz Ensemble, and the Chorallaries, shifting his long-term career goals toward vocal training in his final year of study. He has studied under Boston Conservatory graduate Chelsea Beatty, Berklee College of Music Professor Kristine Adams (as one of MIT’s Emerson Scholars), and MIT Institute Professor John Harbison. Though new to the jazz idiom, Ricky brings an unbridled enthusiasm and thoughtfulness to each performance.
Allison Schaffer was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. Always interested in the dramatic, her formal career in theater began at age 10, when she joined the Madison Young Shakespeare Players, participating in more than 25 productions with them (including Bolingbroke (Richard II), Othello, Kent (King Lear), Cymbaline, Lady Macbeth, and Juliet). She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program, where notable roles included the Queen in Cymbeline, Ilsa in Spring Awakening, and Atossa in The Women of Persia. Ms. Schaffer also studied at the Globe Theater in London, culminating in a performance as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She has worked at Great River Shakespeare and American Players Theater, and currently resides in Chicago, where she works as both an actor and a graphic artist.
John Schaffer, classical guitarist, theorist, recording engineer, and jazz bassist, appears regularly with leading jazz players in this region, including the Rand Moore Quartet, Michael BB Trio, Jan Wheaton Quartet, pianists Peter Lundberg, Paul Hastil and Paul Muensch, guitarists Doug Brown, Cliff Fredrickson and Vince Jessie, and the Madison Jazz Orchestra. Dr. Schaffer holds degrees from Wayne State University and Indiana University. For the past fifteen years he served as Director of the UW-Madison School of Music. Also a faculty member, his work as a music theorist focuses on the analysis of contemporary music, and on artificial intelligence applications in music. He served two terms on the accreditation board of the National Association of Schools of Music and is in frequent demand as an independent program consultant throughout the U.S.
Soprano Anna Slate has developed an eclectic performance history, including roles in Baroque opera and contemporary music theater, and singing with an improvisatory rock band. Her professional debut with West Edge Opera as Atalanta in Handel’s Xerxes was hailed as “the surprise treasure of the night” (San Francisco Chronicle). Recent roles include Anne Egerman (A Little Night Music), the one-woman show Alice Unwrapped, Liesgen in Bach’s Coffee Cantata and Oberto in Handel’s Alcina, and excerpts from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Expanding classical music beyond traditional bounds is a particular interest, and recent projects include a recital focused on themes of social justice and oppression, and her performance of an operatic rendition of German rock band Rammstein’s Du hast. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ms. Slate currently studies with Paul Rowe.
A native of Green Bay, Todd Steward toured with the LaCrosse Blue Stars Drum & Bugle Corps and the U.S. Continental Army Band before moving to Madison, where he performed with many groups over the past 30 years. He plays regularly with The Stellanovas and The Big Show: Sinatra Review. He has appeared with Brad Pregeant & Lynnea Godfriaux, the Michael B.B. Quartet, the Madison Jazz Orchestra, the CTM Theater Orchestra, the Ed-Anders Quartet, the Peter Lundberg Trio with Jan Wheaton, guitarist Cliff Frederickson, the Ken Wheaton Trio, Acoustic Moon, and The Dry Martinis. He also traveled the world performing in cruise-ship orchestras. Mr. Steward recently completed the associate degree in Paralegal Studies, and currently works as a Google driver, mapping the streets of Greater Green Bay for the Street View project.
Scot Stewart, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, has been Southern District Fisheries Supervisor since 2006. His professional interests include trout stream biology and habitat improvement, large lake population dynamics, muskellunge and large pike management, and lake sturgeon management. Originally from Ann Arbor, he has been tying flies since the age of 10. He holds a BS degree in Fisheries Biology from the University of Minnesota, and an MS degree in Fisheries Management from Ohio State University. Particularly interested in trout and muskie, his other outdoor interests include waterfowl hunting. Favorite recent fishing trips include S. Platte, Colorado; Bighorn River, Montana; and Henry’s Fork, Idaho.
Kurt Welke, DNR’s Senior Fisheries Biologist for Dane and Green Counties, has worked in the field of fisheries since 1975. Since then, he has had the good fortune of learning the art and science of fisheries management from the Colorado and Columbia river systems to the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and now the lakes and streams of his native Dane County. Mr. Welke has management responsibilities for fish and habitat of the Madison lakes, as well as the warm, cool, and coldwater rivers and streams in the county. Besides survey and assessment activities on these waters, much of his time is spent on land-management issues that affect the quality of the public fishery, including stormwater management, especially in new developments, and urban and agricultural runoff.