Greencastle Summer Music Festival

May Phang Tonight!

2011-08-10T09:24:00.000-04:00

May Phang, my amazing colleague from DePauw, performs tonight in what looks to be a fantastic program. She's making connections: rondos (pieces with a recurring theme and contrasting sections) by classical-era composers Mozart and Hummel, along with a set of variations by the latter, make up the first half.

The second half opens with two ballades--instrumental ballads. First, a very famous one by Chopin, then what I'm sure will be quite something: Superstar Etude No. 3 "Ballad(e) Out of the Blues" by Alan Jay Kernis. Nariaki Sugiura performed the Superstar Etude No. 1 last month. It was wild and crazy, even using his foot on the piano, and a big hit.

I really can't wait to hear/see this piece!

Then to finish things off, May will play two pieces by Franz Liszt, the 19th-century showman, virtuoso, and genius who essentially invented the solo piano recital.

More details in the Banner-Graphic story and on the DePauw website. May's bio is here.

--Eric Edberg

Yana and Tony Weinstein Perform Russian Art Songs August 3

2011-07-31T12:50:00.000-04:00

The Greencastle Summer Music Festival presents mezzo soprano Yana Weinstein and her brother, pianist Tony Weinstein, director of the DePauw School of Music Accompanying Center, in a program of Russian art songs by Medtner, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Prokofiev at 7:30 PM Wednesday August 3, in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Admission is free, with the series supported by donations by local individuals and businesses, including Chief’s Restaurant, and the Paul and Joanne Kissinger Endowment. The remaining concerts in the Festival include pianist May Phang on August 10 and soprano Barbara Paré and pianist John Clodfelter on August 17.

“I believe this is our first concert performed by siblings,” says DePauw music professor Eric Edberg, the founder and director of the Festival, now in its seventh season. “We’ve had spouses, such as Matvey Lapin and Katya Kramer-Lapin, and my mother and I have played concerts together, but as far as I know Yana and Tony are our first brother/sister performers. I hope they get along better than I imagine my sister and I would if we were involved in a major project together! In any event, I’m looking forward very much to hearing them make music together Wednesday evening.”

Ukrainian-born mezzo soprano Yana Weinstein grew up in a family of musicians and began studying voice and piano at the age of five. Shortly following her graduation with her first degrees in voice and choral conducting, her family immigrated to the United States, where she has been living for seventeen years. Ms. Weinstein earned a Bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in Vocal Performance from Northern Kentucky University, where she worked under the guidance of Prof. Nancy Martin. She was an active member of the Sigma Alpha Iota musical society and was elected to the Pi Kappa Lambda Honor Society. In 2000, she was accepted as a Merit Fellowship Student at the Ohio State University, where she studied with Dr. Karen Peeler and served as a graduate teaching assistant. While at OSU, she appeared as Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, Gherardino in Gianni Schicchi, and gave a performance of Lee Hoiby’s mono-opera Bon Appetit! In 2002, she received her Master’s degree in Vocal Performance. In 2009, she moved to Bloomington to pursue her doctoral degree in voice under the guidance of Dr. Brian Horne. This season, Yana has appeared as Suor Zelatrice in the Jacobs School of Music production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and performed in Liz Avery’s Singing in Czech workshop. Yana has been Adjunct Professor of Voice at Kenyon College and had maintained private voice studios in Columbus and Cincinnati, OH. She is an active recitalist and chamber musician, and has given a number of programs with special emphasis on 19th and 20th century Russian repertoire.

Pianist Tony Weinstein is a fourth-generation musician who began his musical studies at home. At age 11, he became a student at the "School Years" (Shkolniye Gody) Choral School in his native city, and, as a member of the school's Senior Choir (in which his sister was a soloist), won international choral competitions in Bulgaria, Spain, and the former Soviet Union. After the family immigrated to the USA in 1993, he began piano studies with Derison Duarte at the School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio. Tony received a double degree (BM/BA) with majors in Piano Performance and Pure Mathematics and a minor in Music History from Oberlin College where he studied with Professors Haewon Song and Sedmara Zakarian-Rutstein. Having earned an MM and a PD from Indiana University, Tony is currently pursuing his doctorate as a student of Prof. Edlina-Dubinsky. He has been an Associate Instructor of Piano and Music Theory as well as Piano Accompanying Coordinator. Tony is in his second year as Director of the Accompanying center at DePauw University as well as Adjunct Professor of Piano at Vincennes University. Tony combines an active solo repertoire with a strong interest towards collaborative and chamber music.

Encore Duo Wednesday July 27

2011-07-24T16:37:00.000-04:00

The Greencastle Summer Music Festival continues this week as the Encore Duo, harpist Jill Pitz and cellist Marjorie Hanna, perform at 7:30 PM Wednesday July 27 in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. As always, the concert is free and open to the public (donations are accepted).

“It’s fair week, and it’s hot,” says Eric Edberg, the festival’s director and a DePauw music professor. “So let me emphasize that the air conditioning at Gobin is working very well! And Jill and Marjie’s music is gorgeous. Cello and harp makes such a wonderful combination. If you’re spending much of the week at the fair, Wednesday’s concert will make a refreshing break.”

“As I put together this summer’s concert schedule,” Edberg says, “I knew I wanted to have the Encore Duo perform. They are two of my favorite musicians. Marjie is a superb cellist and one of my most admired colleagues. And given the diversity of this summer’s concerts, the lush beauty of their ensemble’s playing will make a great contrast with last week’s rock-influenced, electronics-based performance by Seth Tsui and Michael Kelsey.”

Pitz and Hanna will be performing music by Bellini, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff, and others. The program will conclude with the Sonata for Cello and Harp by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, perhaps the most famous work for the ensemble.

Jill Pitz earned her Bachelor of Music and her Master of Music from Indiana University, where she studied with renowned Harp Professor Emeritus Susann McDonald. Jill was a speaker and performer at the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen. She enjoys her freelance work playing for many organizations and performs with local orchestras. Jill has been actively performing with her two duos, "Encore" and "Bravo" and her trio, "Trio Vivo" since 1987. She has been featured on CD's recorded of the Christ Church Cathedral Men and Boy's Choir. She serves as Midcentral Regional Director of the American Harp Society. Jill has had the pleasure to perform with such notables as Barry Manilow, the Moody Blues, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Marie Osmond, Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme. Jill continues to teach harp students in her home. Jill and her husband, John, are enjoying their three young children, while being involved in community service including the Indiana Children's Wish Fund and Girl Scouts.

Principal cellist of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Marjorie Hanna attended Indiana University and received both a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Cello Performance. She studied with distinguished professor Janos Starker and became his "forever student". Marjie has played with a wide variety of superstar musicians including Henry Mancini, Johnny Mathis, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Lyle Lovett and acts as diverse as Page & Plant and Josh Groban. Marjie even gave a private performance for the late, great Michael Jackson. In 1993, Marjie toured Europe with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Later that year she and harpist Jill Pitz represented the United States at the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. Marjie stays active as a studio musician, performer and recitalist.

Videos! For the Seth Tsui/Michael "Interlooping" Concert

2011-07-19T12:04:00.000-04:00

Seth Tsui

I'm looking forward to tomorrow night's stretching-boundaries concert featuring Seth Tsui and Michael Kelsey. There are articles up on the (Greencastle) Banner-Graphic and DePauw sites.

It's our second concert which will be mostly non-classical while including some classical music. As the Festival organizer, I'm excited about it and also a bit anxious that our classical audience may not be too excited about rock music. On the other hand, I'm hopeful we'll have a bunch of people there who don't usually come to our concerts.

Good music is good music, and Seth and Michael are fabulous musicians, both extraordinary at what they do.

I love this photo of Seth, which turned up in the DePauw article. Shows the fusion of the various aspects of his music making.

Seth's set will include his Ghosts of Extinct Elephants, from his North Africa Suite (follow the link to listen).

Saturday night, Seth and I both went to Michael Kelsey's show at the Knickerbocker Saloon in Lafayette. Michael's not just an incredible musician, he's also an extraordinary stage presence who establishes great rapport with and interacts with the audience.

Here's one of the videos from Michael's YouTube channel:

It shows the diverse elements, including "world" and rock influence, that Michael's music combines.

Speaking of videos, here's Seth's trombone side:

And his rock side:

Seth will open his set by playing a famous virtuoso violin piece, the Czardas by Vittorio Monti. I can't find any trombone arrangements on YouTube, but here's a very passionate violin version.

Michael Kelsey and Seth Tsui: Interlooping Wednesday

2011-07-18T01:27:00.000-04:00

Michael Kelsey, a genre-fusing rock guitarist and singer-songwriter, whom David Wilcox has called “Cirque du Soliel on acoustic guitar,” and recent DePauw music graduate Seth Tsui, a classical trombonist, rock singer, and audio engineer, will combine forces at 7:30 PM Wednesday night at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church in this week’s Greencastle Summer Music Festival concert.

“Seth and Michael are two of the most amazing creative musicians I know,” says DePauw music professor Eric Edberg, the festival’s founder and director. “As I was thinking about this summer’s programs at Gobin, I asked myself, ‘What would happen if we took a classically-trained trombonist who also plays in a rock band, who’s amazingly adept at technology, and is a great improviser, and put him on a stage with one of the most versatile and creative, genre-fusing guitarists and singer-songwriters in the midwest?’

“Well, I just have to find out. So I invited them to do a concert together.”

Since both performers make frequent use of “looping” devices, in which passages of music are recorded in real time and repeated while additional layers are added, the concert has been titled “Interlooping.”

This program is another experiment in diversifying the programming of the summer festival, now in its seventh season. “My biggest professional interest is how classical musicians and institutions can engage new, and younger, audiences while maintaining artistic integrity,” Edberg says. “While on sabbatical this spring in New York, I discovered that for many musicans and audeinces, especially under 35, the distinctions between musical genres, like ‘classical’ and ‘rock’ and ‘blues’ and ‘folk,’ have lost their validity. So in programming this summer’s concerts, I’ve been experimenting with combining genres. And this week there will be a lot of rock-inspried music along with some classical music, including a romantic virtuoso piece in which Seth will be accompanied by DePauw piano professor Claude Cymerman.”

Seth Tsui is one of an emerging class of musicians that merges performance, composition, and audio engineering. He performs as both a classical trombonist and a rock singer with his band, Addictive Stranger. He also owns his own recording company, Melting Skies Audio. During this concert, he will be playing his acclaimed composition, Ghosts of Extinct Elephants for Trombone and Electronics as well as showcasing his looping abilities in several rock numbers and demonstrating his vision for the trombone as a 21st century instrument.

Michael Kelsey cannot be limited to a simple description. When you listen to his music and see him perform live you’re witnessing more than a just another singer-songwriter. You’re watching a rhythmic, inspired guitarist and performance artist who brews soul, funk and even a little bit of the blues into a guitar festival of organic sound. Multi-instrumentalist Kelsey has been known to blend many musical genres with fervour and grace. When he hits the stage to perform, he plays every inch of his guitar and makes it sing, soar, pop and ping--by strumming it, pounding it and pulling every part of it or anything else an arm's length or foot kick away.

Born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, he began his musical journey weaving in and out of successful area bands as lead guitarist or bassist. Later he opened and ran a thriving recording studio, which after five years he retired in order to enable him to embark freely on his career as a solo artist.

His naturally soulful vocal illuminates carefully chosen lyrics that make his songs shimmer and shine. He plays expressively and manipulates the guitar to create a melodic fusion of alternate tunings and unorthodox hand positions allowing for him to achieve a full sound. The true beauty is in the way the song, the sound and the motion of his music unites. The songs, especially the lush instrumentals, can be reminiscent of the late, great Michael Hedges, but boast Kelsey’s personal percussive stamp, exceptional arrangement and deliberate instrumentation.

His live performances are particularly moving. Sometimes he sounds as if he’s deftly playing more than one guitar. At a Kelsey show audience members may actually lose themselves in the moment and forget they are listening to one person. They can be tapping their foot one minute, in a deep trance the next, then bursting into laughter.

"There is a five piece band in my head. They all have different tastes in music and they are all trying to escape at the same time through my hands, feet and mouth. I hang onto an acoustic guitar and see what happens," Kelsey sums up his stage show aptly. He is well versed in the art of entertaining and at every show he creates a rare army of sound that comes from one man, a voice and an acoustic guitar.

Whether he’s creating a song spontaneously for a lucky lady in the front row, telling a story complete with sound effects, or letting an inspired moment move his fingers around the fret board, Kelsey never performs the same show twice.

After performing an opening set for folk artist David Wilcox, David described Kelsey's show as “Cirque Du Soleil on acoustic guitar."

Kelsey’s abilities have enabled him to be noticed by many. A finalist in Guitar Player Magazine's national competition and winner of Guitar Center’s "Guitarmageddon," chosen as best unsigned guitarist out of over 3000 entrants nationwide says it all. This allowed him to be apart of Eric Clapton’s Crossroads 2004 performance where he shared the stage with many of the guitar legends such as Santana, Steve Vai, Eric Clapton. He has toured nationally with Blind Melon and Dishwalla and has opened shows for many artist of many styles including The Doobie Brothers, 38 Special, Rodrigo and Gabriella and the California Guitar Trio.

From Haydn to a Tango, tonight at Gobin

2011-07-13T14:34:00.000-04:00

Ha! I have a little block when it comes to promoting my own concerts. So I'm just getting this up the afternoon of the show.

Tonight, Nariaki Sugiura and I play at Gobin. There have been stories in the Banner-Graphic and on the DePauw site. It will probably be Nariaki's last concert in Greencastle for quite a while. He starts a new faculty position at the University of North Dakota next month.

Nariaki starts things off with a solo set. He begins with a vivacious Allegro from a Haydn piano sonata, followed by two short programmatic pieces ("Banshee" and "The Harp of Life") by the American composer Henry Cowell (1897-1965), and then a piece by a actual living composer: Alan Jay Kernis's Superstar Etude No. 1.

The Kernis is wild and crazy. A hard act to follow!

But I'll give it a try.

Together we'll play the Five Pieces in Folk Style by Robert Schumann. I think it's the first time for both of us, certainly for me. I grew up listening to these pieces as performed by Pablo Casals. As I explain in the press release below, the first cello record I was given included these pieces. I'd listen to them, or the Schumann Cello Concerto on the other side, almost every night as I went to sleep. (I had an automatic turntable, which would turn itself off when a record was over, in my room.) At some point in my teens, I decided to wait until I was an adult to learn and perform them--I thought it would be nice to "save" them. Last week, thinking about tonight's program, I decided now is the time.

That got me thinking about other childhood pieces, and the Saint-Saëns A Minor Concerto started floating through my head. An album with Leonard Rose playing it, along with the Lalo Concerto and the Fauré Elegy, came into possession early in my cello life as well. I got to meet Mr. Rose in 1973 after a concert, and he autographed the album for me. I was with another cello student and he signed it, "Hello fellow sufferers! Greetings, Leonard Rose." The Saint-Saëns Concerto was one of my favorite pieces. I haven't performed it since 1989--it's out of fashion to play concertos with piano accompaniment, although this was done all the time in the 19th century as well as the pre-World War II era in the 20th. So why not? It's such a terrific piece, and it sounds great with piano.

We finish off with Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango, which he composed in 1982 for Mstislav Rostropovich. They didn't get around to performing it until 1990. So I definitely didn't grow up listening to it. But I love Piazzolla, and this piece is enormously fun to play.

Here's the press release:

It’s a combination “welcome back” and “farewell” concert as the Greencastle Summer Music Festival continues Wednesday night July 13 at 7:30 PM at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Festival founder and DePauw cello professor Eric Edberg is performing in Indiana for the first time since returning from a sabbatical in New York City. Pianist Nariaki Sugiura, who has been a staff accompanist and part-time piano professor at DePauw for several years, as well as a regular Festival performer, has accepted an appointment to the University of North Dakota and will be moving shortly to Grand Forks, ND.

Wednesday’s program features a wide array of music. “I wanted to play music with which I have a personal connection,” Edberg says. “The first cello recording was given when I started playing featured Pablo Casals playing Schumann’s Five Pieces in Folk Style. I used to put the record on almost every night when I went to bed, and would fall asleep to it. I fell in love with those pieces! During my student years I decided to wait until I was a professional to learn them, to give adult self a kind of treat. Well, now I’ve decided to take that gift from my younger self. This will be the first time I’ve performed them.”

Edberg will also be performing the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 1 (with Sugiura playing a piano reduction of the orchestra part). “Another favorite cello record was the great Leonard Rose playing this and other concertos. I couldn’t believe it was the same instrument I was playing! Eventually I had the opportunity to play for him in his home, to see if he would take me as a student at Juilliard. I played this piece for him, he accepted me, and I got into Juilliard. I had worked very intensely on this piece with Denis Brott, my cello teacher at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and won the concerto competition there. It’s a piece I’ve always loved, and now that I think about it, a vehicle for some early triumphs.”

Edberg and Sugiura will also play “Le Grand Tango” by Astor Piazzolla. “This is an enormously fun piece,” Edberg explains,”and shows a very different side of the cello. Piazzolla studied with the great Nadia Boulanger in Paris, who encouraged him to continue to use the folk tango music of his native Argentina. He returned to Buenos Aries, where he pretty much invented what you might call the ‘art tango.’”

Nariaki Sugiura will perform solo pieces by Haydn, Henry Cowell, and Alan Jay Kernis (whose music was celebrated in this past spring’s Music of the 21st Century festival at DePauw) in addition to playing with Edberg. Sugiura says, “I call this group of pieces ‘The Evolution of the PIano.’ The Haydn sonata is very conventional. The Cowell pieces--’Banshee,’ ‘Aeolian Harp,’ and ‘The Harp of Life,’ use unusual playing techniques, including strumming inside the piano. The Kernis piece is called ‘Superstar Etude No. 1,’ and you’ll have to hear it to learn why it got that name.’”

Edberg says he and Sugiura have performed together many times. “This is a wonderful artistic relationship. We’ve played many recitals together, and he has accompanied many of my students. Nariaki is a tremendous artist, a terrific collaborator, and a fantastic accompanist and coach. While I’m sure we’ll play together in the future, I’ll miss having him at DePauw. So I’m glad we can celebrate his accomplishments here at Wednesday’s concert.”

Vivaldi with a Pirate's Eye Tonight at Gobin

2011-07-06T12:00:00.002-04:00

Allison Edberg and the "head" of the viola d'amore

There are always challenges when a musician learns a new program. But Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra lead violinist Allison Edberg has faced an unusual one as she prepares for the group’s “Vehemently Vivaldi” concert at 7:30 PM on Wednesday July 6 at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church, part of the Greencastle Summer Music Festival.

And it looks back at her with a pirate’s eye patch.

No, there hasn’t been a privateer pointing a pistol at her (although, she says, the pressure of learning new music sometimes makes it feel as if there’s a gun at her head).

It’s the "eyes" of the new instrument she’s been learning for the IBO’s upcoming concerts in Greencastle and Indianapolis.

“For these concerts I have been asked to play the viola d'amore, a seven stringed instrument about the size of a viola,” Edberg explains. “The maker carved a lady's head instead of the traditional scroll. The last guy to work on the instrument surprised the owner by putting a pirate's eye patch on her with black duct tape. It gave us a good laugh when we spotted it.”

That lady may have been winced once or twice in recent weeks. “One of the trickiest things has been the length on the instrument. I keep bonking into the music stand with the beautiful carved head,” she says. So far, the instrument remains unscathed.

Meanwhile, Edberg has been falling in love with the sound of the instrument, whose name literally translated is “viola of love.” “It has a set of sympathetic strings that vibrate as you play on others, and give the instrument a wonderful resonance.”

The concert features works by the beloved “red-haired priest,” Antonio Vivaldi, who during his lifetime was known as a wild and dramatic violin virtuoso as well as a prolific composer. “This concert is full of the fast and fiery music Vivaldi is famous for. The violins are really having to work!” says Edberg, who has red hair herself. “We are starting the concert with a concerto for two violins and cello with string orchestra. There is plenty of wild fiddling in this, particularly by the cellist! It has a fugue and a lovely slow movement in which I get to ornament or add decorative notes to what Vivaldi has written. This is a practice that took a long time for me to get comfortable with and used to make me blush!”

Blushing or not, Edberg will be joined by fellow violinist Martha Perry, violist Brandi Berry, cellist Christine Kyprianides, and harpsichordist Tom Gerber.

The Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra began in 1995 when a group of area musicians entranced with “period” instruments gathered to read through music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. “The instruments we hear in most concerts today have evolved significantly from those used at the time Vivaldi and Bach were composing. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, numerous changes were made to make instruments louder and brighter as large concert halls developed,” explains Eric Edberg, the DePauw music professor who organizes the festival at Gobin. “Groups like the IBO are dedicated to playing ‘early music’ using playing techniques and instruments as much like the composers would have heard as possible.”

From its informal beginning, the IBO has become one of the top professional period-instrument ensembles in the country, with residencies at both the Christel DeHann Fine Arts Center at the University of Indianapolis and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Internationally-known flutist Barthold Kuijken is the group’s artistic director.

On Sunday June 10, Wednesday’s players will be joined by others, including Ronn McFarlane on lute, as the IBO performs a 7:30 PM performance (Viva Vivaldi: The Compete Works for Lute and Strings) at the Indiana History Center as part of the 45th Indianapolis Early Music Festival.

Links:

Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra

Indianapolis Early Music

Banner-Graphic article

DePauw website article

John Kamfonas Demonstrates Music for Wednesday's Concert

2011-06-27T19:18:00.000-04:00

As I've written before, I'm really excited about having John Kamfonas play for us this week. He's really gone the extra mile and made videos for us. His introduction is in the previous post. In the clips below he discusses the composed music he'll be playing on Wednesday (he'll also be improvising).

--Eric Edberg

John Kamfonas: Classical, Improv, and Rock Piano Combine Wednesday at Gobin

2011-06-25T16:52:00.000-04:00

John Kamfonas is a young New York classical pianist who also improvises and plays in rock bands. His growing international career has taken him from Aspen, Colorado to Philadelphia to Beijing--and this coming week to Greencastle. He performs this Wednesday, June 29, at 7:30 PM in Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church as the Greencastle Summer Music Festival presents its fifth concert of the summer. Admission is free (the festival is funded by donations from individuals and local businesses).

“John, who’s performed from Aspen to Philadelphia to Beijing, is one of the young “Next Generation” professional musicians I went to New York on sabbatical to experience first hand. He’s a fabulous classical musician who just received his Master of Music degree from one of the world’s great conservatories—the Manhattan School of Music,” says Eric Edberg, Professor of Music at DePauw and the founder and director of the festival. “He also improvises and plays in rock bands. His concert here in Greencastle will use all three of these skills. “ In addition to improvisations, Kamfonas will perform music by Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, and “For a Little White Seashell: Five Pieces Based on Greek Folk Dances” by Manos Hadjigakis. The concert will conclude with improvisations on songs by Michael Jackson. “Or at least that was the plan last I talked to him,” says Edberg. “With improvising musicians, you never know where the spirit may lead them.”

Edberg believes the concert will be appealing to both the older traditional classical-music audience who regularly attend the concerts as well as younger people who might mistakenly assume classical concerts are dull or stuffy. “We’ve got a great young guy in his early twenties, creating music on the spot, embracing rock music as well as classical. Many performers of his generation find it natural to combine different genres of music in one event. They don’t necessarily think of it as classical music or rock music—it they love it, it’s just good music.”

John Kamfonas’s penchant for improvisation, passion for the classical repertoire, and interest in indie rock have led to varied performances such as a fully improvised solo piano concert at Columbia University, solo and collaborative harpsichord performances with Manhattan School of Music’s Baroque Aria Ensemble, as well as an appearance at the Knitting Factory on electric keyboard supporting singer songwriter Rachel Rossos. Mr. Kamfonas is also an active chamber musician who recently performed a piano duo recital at Manhattan School of Music with his sister, Grace Kamfonas, as well as a violin duo recital at Elizabethtown College. Mr. Kamfonas’ recent east coast solo engagements include performances in Syracuse, Philadelphia, and at Steinway Hall in New York City. Summer festival performances include International Academy of Music in Tuscany, Aspen Music Festival, PianoSummer at New Paltz, and Beijing International Music Festival and Academy, where Mr. Kamfonas had the honor of performing in the final young artist gala concert held at the Central Conservatory of Beijing. He has recently performed for masterclasses with Robert Levin, Jeremy Denk, and Eduard Zilberkant. Mr. Kamfonas holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Economics from Columbia University in New York and a Master of Music in Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied under Phillip Kawin.

Guest/Kramer Play Classical/Jazz

2011-06-22T08:32:00.001-04:00

It’s a jazz and classical “mashup” as the Greencastle Summer Music festival continues Wednesday evening June 22 with clarinetist Gareth Guest and pianist Katya Kramer. Classical music by jazz composers, and jazz-influenced works by classical composers, will make for a lively and interesting musical evening at 7:30 PM in the free concert (donations accepted) at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

Gareth Guest has had a long career as a classical and jazz clarinetist, as well as holding a “day job” as a nuclear physicist. Eric Edberg, the festival’s organizer, has asked this summer’s performers to program music they love and, if the want, to combine musical genres. “I thought it would be very interesting to show the evolution of jazz in classical music,” says Guest. The program will start with an arrangement of George Gershwin’s Three Preludes, originally for solo piano. “Gershwin was initially dismissed by the classical music establishment,” explains Edberg, “which was very suspicious of anything with roots in jazz and popular music. Now we see that as a colossal, snobbish mistake.”

The program continues with the British jazz/classical composer Alec Templeton’s Pocket Size Sonata, composed in the 1940s, and Aaron Copland’s Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra (with piano substituting for the strings this week). “What’s interesting about the Copland is that you can hear traces of his works such as Appalachian Spring, and in other sections it sounds like pure Benny Goodman, for whom the piece was composed. And it includes a big slide much like the beginning of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.” The concert will conclude with Jimmy Rowles’ The Peacocks.

“I’m very excited about this program,” says Edberg. “While on sabbatical in New York this spring, I heard a number of concerts by young classical composers influenced by jazz, rock, and other genres. Gareth—who just turned 78 himself—is showing us how this has been going on for decades.” Guest has played clarinet and saxophone since childhood, putting himself through college playing in jazz bands and later serving as principal clarinet of the Oak Ridge Symphony while working for the federal government there. Now retired, he authored a textbook, Electron Cyclotron Heating of Plasma, published by John Wiley, Inc. last year.

The festival continues its mixed-genres theme next week with a June 29 concert by young New York pianist John Kamfonas performing classical music, improvisations, and Michael Jackson.

Duo Amabile Performs Russian Music Wednesday June 15

2011-06-11T13:07:00.001-04:00

The 2011 Greencastle Summer Music Festival continues Wednesday evening June 15 as Duo Amabile (violinist Matvey Lapin and DePauw faculty/staff pianist Katya Kramer-Lapin) play a program of Russian music for violin and piano. There is no admission charge for the 7:30 PM performance at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church (the series is supported through donations from local individuals and businesses).

The program includes Karol Szymanowski’s Sonata for piano and Violin, Op. 9; Nicolas Medtner’s Sonaten-Triade for piano, Op. 11; and Sergey Prokofiev’s Five Melodies for Violin and Piano, Op. 35-bis.

Since its 2003 debut, Duo Amabile has presented violin and piano recitals to enthusiastic audiences throughout the United States. Married since 2004, Matvey and Katya Lapin bring to their collaborations virtuosity, enthusiasm, and striking passion. Their repertoire ranges from eighteenth to twenty-first century music, and includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Bartok, among many others. Equally at ease with the standard repertoire, the Duo’s offerings range from Rachmaninov to Arvo Part, and include contemporary works especially written for them.

Popular with young audiences, they present Lecture-Performances and Workshops in conjunction with their concerts. Currently, Duo Amabile performs extensively throughout the country. In 2007-2010 they have presented cyclical concerts, including all the violin sonatas of Beethoven and Brahms.

Matvey Lapin enjoys his free-lance performing carrier, including both modern and Baroque violin engagements. Mr. Lapin graduated from the St. Petersburg State Conservatory (Russia), where he completed his Undergraduate, Graduate, and Post-Graduate Courses in violin performance. He has been a recipient or several awards, including the 3^rd prize at the Locatelli Concours international competition (Amsterdam, 1995), the stipend from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation (2000), and the Gartow Scholarship in Germany, 1997. Matvey had also been awarded a grant to participate at the Holland Music Sessions master class series (Netherlands, 1995). During 2002-03 he was a member of the world renowned St. Petersburg String Quartet (Quartet-in-residence at Oberlin College-Conservatory).

Katya Kramer-Lapin is currently on faculty at DePauw University School of Music as Assistant Professor of Music and Staff Accompanist. Katya received her Master’s degree and Performer’s Diploma at IU School of Music as well. She received her Bachelor’s degrees at Oberlin College Conservatory and Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne (Germany). As an active soloist and chamber musician, Katya’s concerts include appearances at the 25^th Anniversary of the UNESCO, held at its Headquarters, (Paris, France), sponsored by the Pope Paul John Second, chamber recital, representing young opera artists of Bolshoy Theater, dedicated to the visit of Renata Scotta (Moscow, Russia), solo concerts at the World Bank (Washington, DC), international tours to Taiwan and Europe, as well as collaboration with the soloists of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

DePauw Woodwind Faculty Perform Wednesday 6/8

2011-06-04T15:58:00.000-04:00

The Greencastle Summer Music Fesitval continues Wednesday evening at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church with a performance by DePauw School of Music faculty members Anne Reynolds (flute), Randy Salman (clarinet), and Leonid Sirotkin (oboe). There is no admission charge (donations are accepted).

“This is the first piece I’ve ever played where I . . . well, maybe I shouldn’t say, so it will be a surprise for the audience,” says flutist Anne Reynolds. “I’m not telling, either,” says the Festival’s founder and organizer, DePauw cello professor Eric Edberg. “What could it be that Anne’s never done in a concert before? You’ll have to come to Gobin to find out.”

The program features music by a diverse set of 20th and 21st century composers, including Britain’s Sir Malcolm Arnold (who wrote in a tonal, melodic style) to the avant-garde Frenchman Edgard Varése, Russian Rodion Shchedrin, and arrangements of classic tunes by George Gershwin. “The theme this summer is for the musicians to play pieces they love and tell the audience why they love them. Last week we ended up with a program featuring classical and folk music. This week is more centered in the contemporary classical tradition, and should make a fascinating contrast,” Edberg says.

The festival will continue on June 15 with a concert of Russian works for violin and piano performed by Duo Amabile (violinist Matvey Lapin and his wife, pianist Katya Kramer). Clarinetist Gareth Guest will perform on June 22, and young New York-based pianist John Kamfanos will perform classical music, improvisations, and Michael Jackson on June 29.

Randy Salman is Principal Clarinetist with the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra and has worked professionally with the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, David Baker, Gunther Schuller, Quincy Jones, Tony Bennett, Joe Williams, and many others. Randy has performed on programs for the International Association for Jazz Education Conference and International Clarinet Association Clarinetfest. He has recorded with Clark Terry, Winds of Indiana, Chicago Jazz Orchestra, Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, Condition Blue and has participated in Educational Recordings for several music publishing companies. He has contributed CD reviews and articles for The Clarinet and Band Director Guide journals and is a faculty member of the Indiana University Summer Clarinet Performance Workshop and the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops. Mr. Salman currently serves as University Professor of Music and Director of Jazz Studies at DePauw University, where he performs with the Faculty Woodwind Ensemble.

Anne Reynolds studied flute with William Kincaid and performed as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra while still in high school. A graduate of the Indiana University School of Music as a student of James Pellerite, she was a member of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1968 to 1978. She is a charter member and Principal Flute of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. She is on the faculty of DePauw University where she is a member of the DePauw Woodwind Ensemble. She also teaches at the University of Indianapolis where she regularly performs on the faculty artist series. She is a solo recitalist and free lance musician in Indianapolis, playing recordings and occasional jobs. Anne writes music reviews for Flute Talk Magazine and is the ensemble chair of the Indyflute group, a gathering of flutists in the Indianapolis and Indiana area. She also tests flutes and headjoints for the noted flute maker, David Straubinger.

Leonid Sirotkin is Assistant Professor of Oboe at DePauw University and oboist with Fort Wayne Philharmonic. A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, he received his BM and MM from the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and for almost a decade was principal English horn with the Kirov Opera and Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater under Valery Gergiev. Mr. Sirotkin performed with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and has toured with the CSO to Japan and Europe. He has also performed with Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. An active chamber musician, he has appeared at numerous festivals including the Kuhmo International Chamber Music Festival, Finland; Kostamuksha Music Festival, Russia; Lucca Music Festival, Lucca, Italy; and the Togliatti International Music Festival. He has given masterclasses throughout Russia and the United States. In 2010 his performance was featured on NPR program “Performance Today”. In 2000, he published the book, "Orchestral Excerpts for oboe and English horn from operas and ballets by Tchaikovsky." Mr. Sirotkin’s major teachers include Dr. Valery Sobolev and Dr. Mark Ostoich.

Classical/Folk Mashup to Open 2011 Series

2011-05-28T16:53:00.003-04:00

Some of Indiana’s finest classical and folk musicians will join together to open the seventh season of the twelve-concert Greencastle Summer Music Festival (www.greencastlesummermusic.org) this Wednesday, June 1, at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church in Greencastle. No tickets are required for the performances, which are supported by donations from local individuals and businesses. Concerts will be presented every Wednesday evening through August 17.

“All our concerts have been strictly classical music in prior summers,” says DePauw music professor Eric Edberg, the festival’s founder and organizer. “While I’ve been in New York on sabbatical this spring, I’ve seen how many performers are combining, or ‘mashing up,’ music of different genres. So I’ve invited this summer’s performers to include any kind of music they love, and to tell us in the audience why they love it. Most of our concerts will remain all-classical, but a few will include something different, including the folk music on the opening concert. Other concerts will include jazz influences, improvisation, and even some indie rock.”

[Linda Hicks, Joe Peters, and Allison Edberg]

Violinist Allison Edberg (Eric’s former wife) performs Baroque violin around the country and also loves folk music, performing frequently with Lafayette-area musicians Joe Peters and Linda Hicks in the group “Deep and Simple.” She’s invited Joe and Linda, as well as folk singer Sharon Dressen McKnight, Keith Collins (Celtic harp, recorder, and dulcimer) and Phil Spray (violone, a forerunner of the double bass) to join her in “The Classical-Folk Connection,” a program exploring the relationship between Celtic ballads, Baroque “classical” music, and present-day folk music, including original songs by Peters and Hicks.

“Growing up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, I was aware of the Appalachian culture around me,” Allison Edberg explains. “My family could afford a cleaning lady once a week. Georgia, from nearby Oliver Springs, let me follow her around while she dusted and swept and mopped, singing a few tunes over and over. Years later I was given a recording of lullabies from around the world and low and behold there was the song Georgia sang most often, a lullaby from Scotland.

“The music of Scotland has had many periods of great popularity and one was during the Baroque period. Some of the ballads collected by Francis James Child performed at this concert appeared in print as early as 1611. We will play them in their earliest incarnation and then show how they changed and transformed as they crossed the ocean. These songs inspired the folk music movement of the 1960's which had its influence on a generation of singer/songwriters.”

Eric Edberg says he couldn’t be happier with the program. “Yo-Yo Ma, who will be visiting DePauw this fall, has been doing just this sort of thing for years. His ‘Appalachian Waltz’ album with violinist Mark O’Connor and bassist Edgar Meyer, with whom Allison grew up, has been extremely popular. This is a great way to start this summer’s festival.”

About Linda Hicks and Joe Peters

Linda and Joe became musically acquainted a decade ago through the Songwriters Association of Mid-North Indiana (SAMI). Initially, Joe was attracted to Linda’s pure, clear voice and Linda seemed to appreciate Joe’s global perspective as reflected in his songs. When recording his second CD with Lafayette guitar wizard Michael Kelsey, Joe asked Linda to sing one of his songs as a duet with him. A couple years later, after recording a CD of her own, Joe suggested a musical partnership to promote their recordings through live performances in the Lafayette area. For the past four years, they have performed frequently as a duo, and Linda has appeared more and more prominently on each of Joe’s subsequent three CDs. They are currently working on a joint album due for release sometime this year.

The music these two make together is often times gentle and soothing, to the ear and to the soul. Whether it is an original song of the mundane or the exotic, or a cover of a traditional or contemporary folk song, their performances are engaging as well as entertaining.

For more information, including audio tracks, videos and performance schedules see
www.lindahicksmusic.com and www.myspace.com/joedaiwarriors.

About Sharon Dressen McNight:

Sharon McKnight lives in Lafayette, Indiana, and has performed at a wide variety of festivals, concerts, and coffeehouses. She began her public music career in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area in the early ‘80s. She initiated and coordinated Friday night music at the Klein Brot Haus in Brookston for several years and led a monthly, community sing-around "Sing Your Heart Out!". She has volunteered era-appropriate historic music for venus including The Tippecanoe Historic Society, Delphi’s Wabash and Erie Canal Park, Connor Prairie, and Historic Prophetstown. In 1992 Sharon was the recipient of Greater Lafayette’s YWCA Salute to Women Award for her contributions to the creative arts in the Greater Lafayette community.

In 2000 Sharon produced her first recording, “My Backyard”, melding traditional with contemporary folk. The Minnesota influence is found in songs written by St. Paul songwriters, Patrice Kersting and Larry Havluck. The Indiana influence is present in Appalachian tunes “Cold Frosty Morn” and “Cluck Old Hen”. This banjo/fiddle medley features Sharon on clawhammer banjo and veteran Indiana fiddler, Edwin Layer. And Lafayette, a stop along the route of the well-intended but bittersweet Orphan Trains, influenced Sharon’s own song by the same title. Sharon’s second CD, “Factory Girl”, released in 2006, takes its title from a mid-1800’s song about working in the textile mills. The title song, FACTORY GIRL incorporates synced sounds from a mid-1700’s style loom, operated by weaver friend, Lilly Marsh, recorded and electronically synced by percussionist Dennis Leas. Textiles also became the graphics theme throughout the CD. The title song also plays just a little on the fact that Sharon has a 25 year work history at the Caterpillar engine factory in Lafayette. In both of these recordings Sharon enlists a variety of musician acquaintances to add instrumentation and vocal enhancements.

Sharon is a founding member of Lafayette’s folk band, The Vagaband. She divides performing time between solo work and performing with the band. The Vagaband published a recording in 2010, applying guitar, banjo, base, fiddle and rich vocal harmonies to old and not-so-old ballads.

Cellist and Pianist from Indiana Weslyan Perform Tonight

2010-08-11T11:50:00.000-04:00

Cellist Yeon-Ji Yeon and pianist Phoenix Park-Kim, both on the faculty of Indiana Weslyan University, will perform a program featuring music by Beethoven, Schubert, Saint-Säens, and Brahms this evening (Wednesday August 11) as the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival continues at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Festival concerts are free, with costs underwritten by free-will offerings and donations from individuals and businesses.

The summer's final concert, featuring clarinetist Gareth Guest, will be next Wednesday, August 18.

Yeon-Ji Yun is active as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and clinician. Her most recent concert tour took place in Asia including China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, where she gave series of successful master classes and concerts. Her Walton Concerto Performance in 2007 was described by the music critic as “Impressive care of its array of mechanical demands” and “Great success infusing her performance with generous portions of the music’s exotic nature”.
She is the prizewinner in numerous competitions around the world including Seoul National Competition, Nanpa Music Competition, Korean-American Competition, Ibla World
Competition in 2008. Born in Seoul, she began studying cello at age nine. From 2000, she began working for Korean Symphony Orchestra while attending Seoul National University pursuing
Master of Music in Cello Performance. In 2005, she came to study at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with Janos Starker and Helga Winold. She is currently teaching at Indiana
Wesleyan University. Her new CD “Love Songs” was released in 2010. She performs on a French Cello, Guersan of 1766.

Phoenix Park-Kim, an Associate Professor of Piano at Indiana Wesleyan University graduated
summa cum laude from Yonsei University in Seoul, where she received in 1999 Bachelors
degrees in both Piano Performance and English Literature. She completed her graduate works at
Miami University (M.M.) and at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Conservatory of
Music (D.M.A.). She won numerous competitions and appeared as a soloist with the Korean
Philharmonic Orchestra and Marion Philharmonic Orchestra among others. She gave
performances throughout the United States, Korea, Italy, Switzerland, and Russia. In addition to
traditional performances in concert halls, she is dedicated to bringing music to the underserved
public as well as providing more exposure to musical compositions that are less known. She was
awarded the Lilly research grant which enabled her to conduct research on classical piano music
written by African Americans. Recently, in this endeavor, she was a featured performer on the
show Live from FM 91 on WGTE. Her recordings are available on iTunes and cdbaby.com.

Agostini and Cymerman Perform French Sonatas August 4

2010-08-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

The Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival continues Wednesday August 4, 2010, as violinist Federico Agostini (of the IU Jacobs School of Music faculty) and DePauw School of Music piano professor Claude Cymerman perform sonatas by Debussy, Ravel, and Franck. The free concert, underwritten this week by Jane Irwin in memory of her late husband Stanley Irwin, a member of the School of Music faculty for many years, takes place at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Greencastle's Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

"This week brings us the three great gems of the French literature for violin and piano," explains Eric Edberg, Professor of Music at DePauw and the festival's organizer. "While all three are great pieces, the Franck in particular is regarded as one of the greatest works in the chamber music literature. The Ravel shows his love for American jazz. It's going to be a great concert."

Federico Agostini has toured internationally as a soloist, chamber musician, teacher, and adjudicator. He was a faculty member at Staatliche Hochshule für Musik in Trossigen, Germany, and has taught numerous master classes in Japan, Sweden, and Italy. He studied at the conservatories of Trieste and Venice and completed studies at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena with Salvatore Accardo and Franco Gulli. He is in particular demand as a chamber musician, was a regular member of the chamber orchestra I Virtuosi di Roma (1981-1986), and led I Musici (1986-1992). Professor Agostini is a regular guest at Sarasota's La Musica International Chamber Music Festival and many others. He is a member of Quintetto Fauré di Roma, performs duo recitals with French pianist Claude Cymerman, and is a promoter and organizer of Open Chamber Music, an annual ten-day festival. He has also recorded for the Philips and Claves labels. He is Professor of Music at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

A native of France, Claude Cymerman graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with highest honors, studying with Pierre Sancan. After winning National and International Competitions, including the Grand Prize at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud contest, he studied at Indiana University with Gyorgy Sebök. The late French President Georges Pompidou, in a special ceremony, recognized him as “Outstanding Pianist”. Cymerman performs extensively as a recitalist and chamber musician and has appeared as a soloist with the Radio France Orchestra, Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National d’Ile de France, Orchestre Symphonique de Limoges, the Luxembourg and San Francisco Chamber Orchestras, as well as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He is regularly invited to perform and give master classes at major festivals in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Israel and is a frequent guest on French National Radio and the BBC. In 1982 he impersonated the composer J. Brahms on French National Television. He has performed with cellist Gary Hofmann and violinist Federico Agostini (former concertmaster of the chamber orchestra I Musici di Roma) with whom he has recorded the chamber works of Erich Korngold. Cymerman made his Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1985 with Rumanian born violinist Sherban Lupu, (followed by a CD recording of works by Georges Enesco on the Continuum label), and has since played four more concerts there. He is a member of the Trio Concorde (based in New York). In June 2002, he joined virtuoso violinist Nai-Yuan Hu, first Prizewinner of the Queen Elizabeth International Competition, for a CD recording of virtuosic transcriptions of Viennese Waltzes for the EMI-Classics label. In addition to the standard repertoire, Cymerman also performs more unusual solo and chamber music performances, such as tangos by Astor Piazzolla, neglected works by child prodigy Erich Korngold, and his own transcription of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Appointed to the DePauw School of Music faculty in 1974, Cymerman was named the John C. and Lillian W. Siegesmund Professor of Music in 1996 in recognition of his outstanding teaching and artistic accomplishments.

Quartet for the End of Time this week at Gobin

2010-07-27T12:00:00.000-04:00

Three DePauw music professors will be joined by violinist Allison Guest Edberg at 7:30 PM Wednesday July 28 for a performance of Olivier Messaien's "Quartet for the End of Time" as the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival continues in the sanctuary of Greencastle's Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Free festival concerts are presented every Wednesday evening through August, with expenses underwritten through donations from individuals and local businesses.

Pianist Katya Kramer-Lapin, clarinetist Randy Salman, and cellist Eric Edberg, each a School of Music faculty member, form the rest of the unusual quartet for the legendary Messiaen work. "Messiaen was interred in a German prisoner of war camp when he composed this famous famous piece," explains festival director Eric Edberg. "He was a fine pianist and organist, and it happened that there were also a professional clarinetist, violinist, and cellist in the camp as well. Some of the camp officials were supportive of Messiaen's work and gave him a room in which to compose as well as manuscript paper." The title of the work comes from the Book of Revelation, with the work dedicated, "in homage to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who raises a hand towards Heaven saying: 'There shall be time no longer.'" Messiaen, who was a deeply religious Roman Catholic, based many of his compositions on religious and mystical themes. He gave an explanation before the first performance and later said, "I told them first of all that this quartet was written for the end of time, not as a play on words about the time of captivity, but for the ending of concepts of past and future; that is, for the beginning of eternity, and that in this I relied on the magnificent text of the Revelation."

The 50-minute, 8-movement work will be the only piece performed on the concert. The performers will briefly explain the piece and Messiaen's unique musical language, which was based on bird songs, rhythms from ancient Greece and India, and unusual harmonies and scales. After playing the first four movements, there will be a short intermission and then the rest of the work will be performed.

Allison Guest Edberg is a member of Olde Friends, Ensemble Galilei, ViVaCe, Ensemble Voltaire, the Mirabel Classical Quartet, and is concertmaster of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. She was a recipient of the Willi Apel Scholarship in baroque violin at Indiana University where she studied with Stanley Ritchie. With him she appeared in recital at Chicago's Quigley Chapel in 2002. The Chicago Sun Times called her performance of the Telemann Eb Fantasie "impeccable, with unerring intonation and an austere beauty." (November 11. 2002). She has collaborated in recent years with Apollo's Fire, the Washington Bach Consort, La Monica, and Early Music Southwest, and is frequently featured at the Bloomington Early Music Festival. Ms. Edberg has toured nationally and has recorded for the Electra and Centaur CD labels.

An accomplished performer of both jazz and classical music, Randy Salman has worked professionally with the Indianapolis Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, David Baker, Gunther Schuller, Quincy Jones, Tony Bennett, Joe Williams, Clark Terry, Louis Bellson, and many others. He is a member of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and has performed on programs at the International Association for Jazz Education Conference and International Clarinet Association Clarinetfest. Randy has recorded with the Winds of Indiana, Chicago Jazz Orchestra (charter member), Eastman Jazz Trio, Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, Condition Blue, Birch Creek Summer Music Center, Steve Allee, Al Cobine, Wanda Stafford, Sandi Patty, and has participated in educational recordings for several music-publishing companies. He has contributed CD reviews and articles for The Clarinet and Band Director Guide journals and is a faculty member of the Indiana University Summer Clarinet Teaching Workshop and the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Professor Salman has studied clarinet with Larry Combs, Howard Klug and Leon Russianoff. His saxophone teachers have included Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano.

An active solo recitalist and chamber music collaborator, Katya Kramer-Lapin enjoys performing internationally. Her venues include appearances at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, Moscow Conservatory Hall, major concert halls in Germany and Eastern Europe, as well as concert tour to Taiwan. Katya received her Masters, and Performance Diploma at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music studying under Professor Shigeo Neriki. She earned her Bachelor’s Degrees at Oberlin College Conservatory and Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne (Germany). She began her piano studies at the Gnessin’s School of Music, a special school for gifted children in Moscow, Russia where Katya was born. Her passion towards chamber music finds its apprehension in frequent collaboration with soloists of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra as well as members of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Katya is the co-founder of the “Duo Amabile”, violin-piano duet with her husband, violinist Matvey Lapin, a former member of the world-renowned Grammy Award Winner St. Petersburg String Quartet. Katya’s recent prizes from various competitions include 1st prize at the Matinee Musicale, Indianapolis IN, second prize at the “Forum of Young Pianists”, Athens, Greece, 1st prize at the Rudolf Serkin Piano Competition as well as former support and recognition from “The Russian Arts Help” Charity Foundation, sponsored by Maestro Rostropovich as well as Tchaikovsky‘s Young Artists Competition Winners’ Association.

Eric Edberg attended the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Juilliard School, SUNY Stony Brook, and Florida State University, and studied with Gary Hoffman, Denis Brott, Stephen Kates, Leonard Rose and Bernard Greenhouse. Winner of the NCSA Piatigorsky Memorial Award and Concerto Competition, and an honorary scholarship to Juilliard, he was a two-time regional winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artists Competition. Formerly principal cellist of the Annapolis (Maryland) and Terre Haute (Indiana) Symphonies, he has performed widely as a concerto soloist with the Indianapolis Philharmonic, the Bismark-Mandan Orchestra, the Tampa Bay Chamber Orchestra, the Fox Valley Symphony, and the Annapolis Symphony.

Edberg is a frequent recitalist and is a member of the DePauw Chamber Players. He performed extensively with the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, D.C., whose concerts were broadcast worldwide over the Voice of America network. He has been praised by the Washington Post for an “excellent solo performance,” and the Appleton Post-Crescent wrote, “. . . the star event of the evening [was] Eric Edberg's performance of Saint-Saens' First Cello Concerto. A big man with a big tone and a command of the broad sweep of the music, his performance was nonetheless outstanding for its small touches, the turns of phrases, the accuracy of intonation, and the balance with the orchestra. It seemed to be playing both faultless and effortless, a pleasure to observe and enjoy.” Edberg is also an improvisational musician who advocates creativity in performance and presentation, leads drum circles, and has given improvisation workshops at Appalachian State University, Bethany College, the Interlochen Arts Camp, the Lawrence Conservatory of Music, Ohio State, and the University of Iowa.

Roe, Cook, and Lubiarz Wednesday Night

2010-07-20T14:02:00.002-04:00

Indianapolis Symphony acting principal oboist Roger Roe will be joined by Calgary Symphony violinist (and DePauw School of Music graduate) Steven Lubiarz and Illinois Wesleyan University piano professor R. Kent Cook at 7:30 PM Wednesday July 21 as the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival continues. The concert is free and open to the public. This weeks performers have been sponsored by Steve and Linda Raines, Sharon Walters (in memory of Gordon Walters), and Chief's Restaurant.

The varied program will include compositions by Mozart, Schumann, Copland, and Bach. "I'm very excited about this program," says DePauw cello professor Eric Edberg, the Artistic Director of the Festival. "Each of the artists is an outstanding performer with a distinguished career.n And all three have a strong connection to Greencastle and DePauw. Steve Lubiarz is a DePauw graduate, and Roger Roe and Kent Cook both taught at DePauw before moving on to tech at Indiana University and Illinois Wesleyan, respectively."

Next week (July 28), those Putnam County residents who want an evening off from the fair may wish to hear a performance of the "Quartet for the End of Time," a work for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano by Olivier Messiaen while he was a German prisoner of war during WWII. "It's one of the most important pieces of chamber music composed in the 20th century," says Edberg. "It's a sublime, mystical work, deeply religious, which draws on Messiaen's love of bird song and unusual rhythms and modes from both ancient Greece and India."

Roger Roe, who assumed his duties as English Horn/Assistant Principal Oboe of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1995, is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Southern Methodist University and Arts Magnet High School in Dallas. Before coming to Indianapolis, he held oboe and English horn positions with the orchestras of Honolulu and Charleston, South Carolina.

Mr. Roe is Associate Professor of Oboe and English Horn at Indiana University and served on the Faculty of DePauw University for six years. In addition to solo appearances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra on oboe, oboe d'amore, and English horn, Roger acts as
narrator for children's programs. He is an active chamber musician and recitalist and is a past winner of the Fort Worth Young Artist Competition and of a Downbeat Magazine Award as Outstanding
Young Classical Instrumentalist. Roger shares his life with his partner, Dr. Kent Cook, a piano professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Dr. R. Kent Cook is an Associate Professor of Piano at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. He keeps an active schedule as soloist and chamber musician, having performed in many venues throughout the United States and abroad. Regionally, he has appeared in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, while in Europe, he has performed in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany and Italy. R. Kent Cook hails from Odessa, Texas where he began to play the piano at age six. He attended Baylor University to pursue dentistry, but soon abandoned that goal to begin serious study of the piano. After finishing a Piano Performance Degree with honors under the guidance of Roger Keyes, he continued his studies at Indiana University receiving both a Master’s and Doctorate in Piano Performance. He has worked with distinguished pianists Leonard Hokanson, Eteri Andjaparidze, Michel
Block, James Tocco, and Karen Shaw, and in 1992-93, he studied with Herbert Seidel as a Fulbright Scholar at the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt, Germany.

Before joining the piano faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University in 1999, Dr. Cook served on music faculties at DePauw University, the Indiana University Piano Academy, and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. He is currently active as an adjudicator and master teacher throughout the Midwest, and during the summer he teaches at the Illinois Chamber Music Festival. In 2009, he joined the faculty of the International Chamber Music Festival based in Kyustendil, Bulgaria. Cook released his first recording in 2002 on the Novitas label. Entitled Nachtstück, it is a recording of twelve Nocturnes by seven different composers including Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann.

A native of Troy, Michigan, Steven Lubiarz moved to Canada in 2003 to join the second violin section of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and Bell'arte Strings. Prior to moving to Canada he was a member of the New World Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas in Miami Beach, Florida. While completing his Master of Music in Violin Performance and Orchestral Studies at Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts, Steven was a student of Cyrus Forough and Joseph Golan and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of
Chicago.

Steven, who has been playing the violin since he was five years old, has performed in the Czech Republic, Austria, and throughout Japan. He received a Bachelor of Music from DePauw University where he was a student of Stephen Boe and Dan Rizner. Mr. Lubiarz also holds the position of concertmaster with the Calgary Bach Society in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

In addition to performing, Steven is the Artistic Director of the St. Roch Chamber Music Festival in Caseville, Michigan. He has also been an active teacher for the past decade in New York, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and continues his love of teaching today at the Mount
Royal University Conservatory in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Steven performs on an 1897 Leandro Bisiach, which was a gift from his first teacher, the late Anne Dodge.

Flutist Mihoko Watanabe with Yun and Sugiura Tonight

2010-07-14T13:52:00.000-04:00

Flutist Mihoko Watanabe, a faculty member at the Ball State University School of Music, makes her second Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival appearance tonight (Wednesday, July 14) at 7:30 PM. The Festival presents free programs every Wednesday evening through August 18 in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

Also performing are pianist Nariaki Sugiura and cellist Yeon-Ji Yun. Music of Haydn, Doppler, Villa-Lobos, Monti, Mompou, Brahms, and Piazzolla will form the program.

Flutist Mihoko Watanabe, a native of Japan, appointed as an Assistant Professor of Flute and a member of Musical Arts Woodwind Quintet at Ball State University starting August 2008. Prior to joining the School of Music, Dr. Watanabe taught at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, the Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Windsor, Canada.

A celebrated and versatile international performer, Dr. Watanabe has completed successful tours of Japan, Israel and Canada as a recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist. As a member of TRIO PIACERE (flute, cello, piano), she toured Japan In summer of 2006 and recently Trio Piacere was invited to perform at the Fox River Music Festival (WI). As a member of DUO VIVA (Two Flutes Duo), she released first CD, “Doppler Effect (Little Piper),” at the National Flute Association Convention in 2006. Duo Viva was invited to perform at the NFA in New Mexico (2007) and Kansas City (2008). As an orchestral player, she has held principle flute positions in orchestras in North America. She is currently the principal flutist with the Muncie Symphony Orchestra (IN). Also, she was the winner of both Japan Flute Association competition as well as the National Flute Association competition in the U.S. She also enthusiastically premiers new works for flute. As a pedagogue, Dr. Watanabe has taught numerous master classes throughout the United States, Canada, and Japan, and has adjudicated international music festivals and competitions. In 2005, she joined the faculty of the Brevard Music Center summer festival, where she played flute and piccolo with the BMC orchestra, taught in master classes, and coached various chamber music groups.

Along with being a gifted flutist, Dr. Watanabe is also devoted to the study of ethnomusicology, with a focus on Japanese traditional music, in particular. As such, she studied Ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan. She received the Faculty Development Grant to research Japanese traditional perspectives on Kazuo Fukushima’s Mei for solo flute in Japan. In 2007, she was invited to give a lecture recital titled “Essence of MEI” and to perform at the National Flute Association (NFA) Convention. Also, it became a feature article on Spring 2008 issue of the official journal of the National Flute Association, Flutist Quarterly.

Dr. Watanabe received her Doctorate from the University of Michigan, both her Master of Music and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, and her Bachelor of Music from the Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo. Her teachers have included Bonita Boyd, Leone Buyse, Fenwick Smith, Takao Saeki and Ervin Monroe. For her additional training, she has participated in numerous summer festivals across North America and master-classes with Julius Baker, Jean Baxtresser, Bradley Garner, Walfrid Kujala, Alain Marion, and Emmanuel Pahud among others.

Yeon-Ji Yun is active as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and clinician. Her most recent concert tour took place in Asia including China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, where she gave series of successful masterclasses and concerts. “Three Brahms Cello Sonatas” with pianist Nariaki Sugiura had a great success in 2008. Following her recital with Raquel Gorgojo in Segovia Music Conservatoire in Spain received highest acclaim. Her Walton Concerto Performance in 2007 was described by the music critic as “Impressive care of its array of mechanical demands” and “Great success infusing her performance with generous portions of the music’s exotic nature”. As a clinician, she gave multiple cello classes at Universities in South Korea, China and US, and she has been receiving frequent invitations from many institutions.

She is the top prize winner in numerous competitions around the world including The Eleventh Annual Competition in the Performance of Music from Spain and Latin America, Indiana University Travel Grant Competition and Concerto Competition, Chunchu Music Competition,Seoul National Competition, Nanpa Music Competition, Korean-American Competition, and most recently Paganini special mention from Aprilthe Ibla World Competition in 2008.

Born in Seoul, she began studying cello at age nine, studying at Yewon School and Seoul Arts High School in Korea. Upon receiving the highest honor from the school and she was awarded to perform Boccherini’s B-flat Major Cello Concerto with the Seoul Art High School Orchestra and Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Korean Symphony Orchestra. From 2000, she began working for Korean Symphony Orchestra while attending Seoul National University. During this period, she frequently gave solo and chamber recitals with famous musicians in Korea. She received Master of Music in Cello Performance from the University in 2002. In 2005, she came to study in the US under tutelage of Helga Winold, receiving Performer Diploma of Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Later she studied with Distinguished Cello Professor Janos Starker finishing doctoral degree in 2011.

She is currently teaching at Indiana Wesleyan University. Previously she was a cello instructor at Indiana University String Academy and an assistant instructor at Seoul National University and Indiana University. Her new CD “Love Songs” was released early 2010. She performs on a French Cello, Guersan of 1766.

"Most Sensitive Touch to the Piano”, “Rigueur, Passion and Discipline of an Old Samurai” music critics raved about his solo performance in Europe. International concert pianist Nariaki Sugiura frequently gives solo, lecture, and chamber recitals and master classes throughout U.S., Europe and Asia. He recently returned from his 2010 Asian Concert Tour which he presented 18 concerts, 3 lectures and 9 piano masterclasses in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. Some concerts featured his new arrangements of Piazzollas, Brahms and some Asian Traditional Music for chamber ensemble. As a collaborator, his performance with cellist Emilio Colón have won great acclaim on their recital tours in Hungary, Italy, Japan, Malta, Puerto Rico and South Korea. Their 2008 European concert tour was described as “The Great Performers” and “A Formidable Performing Duo.” In demand as a collaborator, he has performed with many instrumentalists throughout the world.

Sugiura is a featured artist on several CD recordings, including two of his solo albums released by T.K. Music Productions. Klavier Music Productions produced “Esencia,” an album of music for cello and piano from South America and the Caribbean created by Sugiura and Colón. His collaboration with cellist Joseph Kaizer is featured in several Eroica Classical Recordings. He is also a chamber music editor for Ludwig Masters Music Publications.

Numerous national and international competitions have awarded Sugiura prizes, including the 1999 Indianapolis Matinee Musicale Competition Grand Prize and the 2000 Indianapolis Matinee Musicale Competition Graduate Piano Prize. He was laureate of the 1993 National Music Competition in Tokyo and of the Annual Competition of Music from Spain and Latin America in 1999.

Born in Hakodate, Japan in 1975, Sugiura began piano study with his mother at age five, later studying at Tokyo College of Music High School. Under the tutelage of Michel Block and Shigeo Neriki, he received a Bachelor and Master of Music in Piano Performance. He will be completing his doctoral studies at Indiana University in 2010.

Currently Sugiura is an assistant professor / staff accompanist for DePauw University School of Music. He is a faculty member at Lamond Summer Pre-College Academy in Denver. He has held the positions of Adjunct Lecturer, Assistant Instructor, Studio Pianist of Professor of Janos Starker, and Accompanist / Chamber music coach for the String Academy at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He is an accomplished teacher and chamber music coach; he has given many classes as a clinician.

Trio Amabile and Marjorie Lange Hanna Wednesday Night

2010-07-06T13:43:00.000-04:00

Trio Amabile, featuring violinist Alfred Abel, violist Colette Abel, and cellist Margo Marlatt, will be joined by cellist Marjorie Lange Hanna in this week's Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival free concert at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church in Greencastle. Featured composers include Leo Weiner, Anton Arensky, Maurice Gardner, and John Wiliams. Presenting concerts every Wednesday through August 18, the Festival is supported by contributions by individuals and businesses, including Chief's Restaurant.

An unsual work on the program will be the quartet for violin, viola and two cellos by the Russian romantic composer Anton Arensky, who wrote it in memory of his teacher Tchaikovsky. "I've never heard this piece before," says DePauw music professor Eric Edberg, the Artistic Director of the Festival. I've heard it's an extraordinary work--and with two cellos in it, how could it not be?" Edberg laughed and added, "That may be my cellist's bias. In any event, Margot Marlatt and Margie Hanna, the daughter-in-law of DePauw's late band director Professor Dan Hanna, are two of my favorite Indiana cellists, and I'm looking forward to hearing them very much.

John Williams is known for his award-winning film scores for movies such as Jaws and the Indiana Jones series. Not everyone knows he is also an important composer of classical concert music. His Duo Concertante for Violin and Viola was written in 2007 for members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, an organization with which Williams has had a long relationship since his many years as Director of the BSO's Boston Pops series.

The Festival continues next week with a recital by Ball State University flute professor Mihoko Watanabe and pianist Nariaki Sugiura.
Alfred Abel has been the Concertmaster of the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra since 1986. He is Associate Principal Second Violin of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, a chair he has occupied for 24 years. He was recently appointed Visiting Artist at Kentucky Wesleyan College, where he has had the pleasure of collaborating with pianist Diane Early for two years. Alfred teaches violin and viola at Wabash College and is the conductor of the Wabash College Chamber Orchestra. He co-founded and conducted the Wabash Valley Youth Symphony until 2007. Prior to this, he served as concertmaster of the Kokomo Symphony, conductor of both, the Indianapolis Youth Orchestra and the Greater Indianapolis Youth Symphony, adjunct professor of music theory at Butler University and adjunct violin professor at Purdue University.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Abel performs frequently with his wife, violist Colette Grossman Abel and cellist Margot Marlatt in Trio Amabile. He has toured Germany, Spain and Italy with the St. Alban Quartet, which received favorable reviews in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Barcelona's El Noticiero. He has coached with many of the world's preeminent chamber musicians, including members of the Tokyo, American, Chillinghirian Quartets, Quartetto Italiano, The Borodin Trio, and the Beaux Arts Trio.

As a soloist, Alfred has performed concertos and major solo works of Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Ravel, Saint Saëns, Sarasate, Sibelius, Vieuxtemps and Vivaldi with the Lafayette Symphony, the Kokomo Symphony, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Indianapolis, the Anderson Symphony, the Carmel Symphony and the Butler University Symphony. His performances have been aired on NPR, Indiana cable television, and Southwest German Television.

Mr. Abel studied with Vartan Manoogian at the NCSA and at Butler University. He pursued graduate studies with Franco Gulli at Indiana University. He holds two bachelor's degrees: B.A. cum laude in Classics, University of North Carolina; and B.M. cum laude in Violin Performance, Butler University. He and his wife Colette have two children, Benjamin and Clara.

Colette Grossman Abel began her violin studies with her father at age 7 and at age 9 she and her brother appeared as featured soloists with the Sioux City Symphony. In subsequent years they appeared together performing concerti with the Casper, Wyoming Symphony and the Oklahoma City Symphony.

A childhood protégé of the late renowned pedagogue Paul Rolland, Colette was chosen from among his pupils to demonstrate his teaching principles in master classes in Switzerland. She went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Violin Performance from the Eastman School of Music where she studied under Donald Weilerstein of the Cleveland Quartet. Upon her graduation, she and her future husband, Alfred Abel, formed the St. Alban Quartet and together they concertized throughout Spain, Italy and Germany, receiving favorable reviews from the El Noticiero Universal (Barcelona, Spain) and the Taunus-Zeitung (Frankfurt, Germany).
As violist with the St. Alban, Ms. Abel felt compelled to embark on a serious study of that instrument and in 1987 received her Master’s Degree in Viola Performance from Indiana University, where she is currently a Doctoral candidate. Colette has studied with such prestigious violists as Kim Kashkashian, Csaba Erdelyi, Atar Arad and Donald McInnes. She has appeared as viola soloist with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Indiana University Philharmonic, the Butler University Symphony, and the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra. She has served as a member of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra since 1985, and is Principal Violist of the Marion Philharmonic. She was recently appointed associate principal viola of the Sinfonia Camerata under Ian Hobson.

Margot Marlatt has been playing the cello since the age of seven. A graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, she went on to earn her Bachelor's Degree in Cello Performance from the University of Toronto under the guidance of Denis Brott and received her Master's Degree in Cello Performance from Butler University where she studied with Dr. William Grubb. During her studies Marlatt participated in master classes with Janos Starker, Lorne Munroe, Gyorgy Sebok, the Cleveland Quartet and the Orford Quartet.

In her professional career, Ms. Marlatt has performed as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player. As soloist she has appeared with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra, Purdue University Symphony and the Bronx Symphony Orchestra in New York City. In 1992 Margot joined violinist Alfred Abel and violist Colette Abel to form Trio Amabile. Together they have performed concerts on the Taft Museum (Cincinnati)Chamber Music series, Wabash College Visiting Artist’s series and the Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society series. As an orchestral player Margot held the position of principal cellist with the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra for 12 years. She continues to freelance in the Indianapolis Symphony and the Northwest Indiana Symphony. Marlatt has served as cello instructor at Wabash College and Purdue University along with teaching in her home studio.

In addition to performing, Margot is the Executive Director of the Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society and the owner of Classical Music Agency (www.hireclassicalmusic.com), a musical resource for weddings, corporate events and parties.

Marjorie Lange Hanna graduated from Indiana University where she studied with Fritz Magg and Janos Starker. While completing her Master’s degree in performance, she was a graduate assistant to Mr. Starker. She is a charter member of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra having served as principal cellist since its founding. She has appeared as soloist with various orchestras in the Midwest, played in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra on its 1993 European Tour, and was a featured performer along with harpist Jill Pitz at the World Harp Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ms. Hanna’s 1996 performance with Margaret Jones in David Ott’s premiere of his Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra earned the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra a place on Charles Staff’s top five concerts of the year and marked the first time that distinction came as a result of soloists from the orchestra. In addition to her private teaching studio, she performs regularly with four chamber ensembles in the Indianapolis area.

One Piano, Four Hands Wednesday at Gobin

2010-06-28T18:12:00.000-04:00

DePauw University faculty pianists Claude Cymerman and Katya Kramer-Lapin will perform the 21 Hungarian Dances of Johannes Brahms and Gabriel Fauré's "Dolly Suite" as the 2010 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival continues Wednesday June 30. The free concert will be held in the sanctuary of Greencastle's Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church at 7:30 PM. The festival is supported by donations by local individuals and businesses.

A native of France, Claude Cymerman graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with highest honors, studying with Pierre Sancan. After winning National and International Competitions, including the Grand Prize at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud contest, he studied at Indiana University with Gyorgy Sebök. The late French President Georges Pompidou, in a special ceremony, recognized him as “Outstanding Pianist”. Cymerman performs extensively as a recitalist and chamber musician and has appeared as a soloist with the Radio France Orchestra, Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National d’Ile de France, Orchestre Symphonique de Limoges, the Luxembourg and San Francisco Chamber Orchestras, as well as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He is regularly invited to perform and give master classes at major festivals in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Israel and is a frequent guest on French National Radio and the BBC. In 1982 he impersonated the composer J. Brahms on French National Television. He has performed with cellist Gary Hofmann and violinist Federico Agostini (former concertmaster of the chamber orchestra I Musici di Roma) with whom he has recorded the chamber works of Erich Korngold. Cymerman made his Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1985 with Rumanian born violinist Sherban Lupu, (followed by a CD recording of works by Georges Enesco on the Continuum label), and has since played four more concerts there. He is a member of the Trio Concorde (based in New York). In June 2002, he joined virtuoso violinist Nai-Yuan Hu, first Prizewinner of the Queen Elizabeth International Competition, for a CD recording of virtuosic transcriptions of Viennese Waltzes for the EMI-Classics label. In addition to the standard repertoire, Cymerman also performs more unusual solo and chamber music performances, such as tangos by Astor Piazzolla, neglected works by child prodigy Erich Korngold, and his own transcription of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Appointed to the DePauw School of Music faculty in 1974, Cymerman was named the John C. and Lillian W. Siegesmund Professor of Music in 1996 in recognition of his outstanding teaching and artistic accomplishments.

An active solo recitalist and chamber music collaborator, Katya Kramer-Lapin enjoys performing internationally. Her venues include appearances at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, Moscow Conservatory Hall, major concert halls in Germany and Eastern Europe, as well as concert tour to Taiwan. Katya received her Masters, and Performance Diploma at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music studying under Professor Shigeo Neriki. She earned her Bachelor’s Degrees at Oberlin College Conservatory and Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne (Germany). She began her piano studies at the Gnessin’s School of Music, a special school for gifted children in Moscow, Russia where Katya was born. Her passion towards chamber music finds its apprehension in frequent collaboration with soloists of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra as well as members of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Katya is the co-founder of the “Duo Amabile”, violin-piano duet with her husband, violinist Matvey Lapin, a former member of the world-renowned Grammy Award Winner St. Petersburg String Quartet. Katya’s recent prizes from various competitions include 1st prize at the Matinee Musicale, Indianapolis IN, second prize at the “Forum of Young Pianists”, Athens, Greece, 1st prize at the Rudolf Serkin Piano Competition as well as former support and recognition from “The Russian Arts Help” Charity Foundation, sponsored by Maestro Rostropovich as well as Tchaikovsky‘s Young Artists Competition Winners’ Association.

George Wolfe and Eric Edberg Tonight

2010-06-23T13:15:00.000-04:00

Ball State saxophone and peace studies professor George Wolfe (supposedly one of the “101 Most Dangerous Academics in America”) will join cellist Eric Edberg in Wednesday’s free Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival concert at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin United Methodist Church. The program will include music by Bach, Massenet, Wiedoff-Frey, as well as improvisations by Wolfe and Edberg.

“This is the sixth concert I’ve done with George Wolfe,” explains cellist Edberg, Professor of Music at DePauw and the festival’s organizer. “We've performed at the University of Iowa, at Chautauqua, at the University of Dayton, here in Greencastle last summer, and at Ball State, where George is the saxophone professor.”

Each musician will perform traditional composed pieces in addition to a number of improvisations, and will discuss the pieces and the collaborative process with the audience. Edberg, who teaches “free” improvisation at DePauw, explains,“The great thing about improvised music is that it is an experience of being totally in the moment; in many ways it gets to what is, for me, the essence of being human. Not many people know that improvisation was a part of what we now call ‘classical music’ for centuries; today we mostly associate it with jazz. Our improvisations are much more influenced by our classical backgrounds than specific jazz styles.”

Saxophonist George Wolfe has performed extensively throughout the United States and has also concertized in Europe, Cyprus, Costa Rica, Canada, India, Korea and Japan. He has been heard on radio stations across the US and has appeared as a soloist with such ensembles as the United States Navy Band, the Saskatoon Symphony, the World Band at Disney World, the Chautauqua Motet Choir, The Indianapolis Children's Choir, and the Royal Band of the Belgian Air force. Wolfe's teacher, Eugene Rousseau, describes him as "an artist of exceptional ability and great sensitivity." Critics have praised his playing as "brilliant and moving." His recordings have won praise from Steven Ellis of Fanfare Magazine and jazz great David Baker. Thomas Liley, writing in the Saxophone Symposium, states: "...Wolfe performs with beautiful tone, impeccable intonation, and assured technique in a wide range of stylistic contexts...He negotiates the wide range of dynamics and of register with exceptional ease." Critic John Lambert writing in the Winston Salem Spectator, described Wolfe's performance as "a deeply satisfying and moving artistic experience." Dr. Wolfe holds a Performance Certificate from Indiana University where he studied with Eugene Rouseau and Daniel Deffayet. He is featured on eight volumes of the compact disk series America's Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax distributed by Arizona University Recordings. He has presented master classes at the Paris Conservatory, Indiana University, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and he has taught as an artist-in-residence at Arizona State University, Klagenfurt Conservatory (Austria), the University of Saskatchewan (Canada), and at the University of San Jose in Costa Rica. He was also the recipient of an open fellowship award from the Eli Lilly Endowment to study Hindustani music in New Delhi, India and at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California. In 1997, Ball State University awarded Wolfe its Outstanding Creative Endeavor award for his CD entitled Lifting the Veil. Dr. Wolfe currently is Professor of Music at Ball State University and performs each summer at Chautauqua Institution where he has also taught a class on Christianity and the history of nonviolence in America. He frequently lectures on topics related to peace education and the role of the arts in the fight against social injustice. As a result of his contribution to Peace Studies and his performance of protest music, Professor Wolfe has been recognized by national conservative commentator David Horowitz as one of the "101 most dangerous academics in America." George Ruckert, MIT world music professor and long-term disciple of sarode artist Ali Akbar Khan, has referred to George Wolfe as "a major musician of our time."

DePauw Voice Faculty Perform June 16

2010-06-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

The Greencastle Summer Classical Music festival continues at 7:30 PM Wednesday June 16 with a concert featuring DePauw University voice faculty members Pamela Coburn, Barbara Paré, Caroline Bradely Smith, and Jay White. Joining the vocal soloists will be pianists Claude Cymerman, Amanda Hopson, and Keith Teepen, clarinetist Randy Salman, violinist Johna Smith, and cellist Eric Edberg. The free concert (the festival is supported by donations from individuals and businesses, including Chief's Restaurant) will be held in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Fesitval concerts continue every Wednesday evening through August 18.

Music by a wide variety of composers will be performed, including works from the Medieval period performed by countertenor Jay White, Richard Strauss songs performed by soprano Pamela Coburn, music by Andre Previn and Reynaldo Hahn sung by mezzo-soprano Caroline Smith, and soprano Barbara Paré performing music by Mozart and Richard Cumming. "What a spectacular array of vocal performers with international careers," says the festival's artistic director, DePauw cello professor Eric Edberg. "This week is 'Vocal Arts at DePauw,' a week-long camp for outstanding high-school vocalists. We're incredibly fortunate that so many of the DePauw voice faculty are in town and have agreed to perform. This will also be the biggest success in our 'bring someone under 40 to a classical concert' campaign, since the camps students will be attending."

Pamela Coburn obtained her voice education at DePauw University, the Eastman School of Music, the Juilliard School in New York and studied lieder with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. In 1980 she was the winner of ARD (German Broadcasting Co.) Competition in Munich, and in 1982 she won a similar competition at the Metropolitan Opera.

Since her striking success as Rosalinde in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus 1982 at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich with Carlos Kleiber conducting, American lyric soprano Pamela Coburn has held her own among the leading international singers.

She is a regular guest in the most renowned opera houses and concert halls all over the world including appearances at the Vienna State Opera, Carnegie Hall and Metropolitan Opera New York, in Munich, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Paris, Toulouse, London and Tokyo’s New National Theatre as well as the Salzburg and Richard-Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Among the most prominent conductors Ms Coburn has worked with are: Carlos Kleider, Sir Colin Davis, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Carlo Maria Giulini, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Eschenbach, Riccardo Muti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Sir Georg Solti, Guiseppe Sinopoli, Helmuth Rilling, Erich Leinsdorf, James Conlon, Bernhard Haitink Christian Thielemann, Charles Dutoit, Ken Nagano, and Isaac Karabichevsky.

Her enormously wide opera repertory ranges from the works of Monteverdi to Penderecki. Especially worth mentioning are the roles of the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte, Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Cleopatra in Händel’s Giulio Cesare, and Nitocris in Belshazzar, Alice in Verdi’s Falstaff, the Countess in Strauss’ Capriccio and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella, Ellen Orford in Britten’s Peter Grimes, Freia in Wagner’s Das Rheingold as well as Queen Rosamunde in Penderecki’s Ubu Rex and the widow in the Merry Widow.

Pamela Coburn’s exceptionally wide concert repertory includes nearly all the works of the respective musical literature starting from Bach (Passions, Cantatas) via Beethoven (e.g. Missa Solemnis, 9th Symphony), Schumann (e.g. Paradise and Peri), Mahler Symphonies, Britten (War Requiem) to Szymanowsky (Stabat Mater) and contemporary works (e.g., Udo Zimmermann).

Pamela Coburn has made numerous recordings, among them Gounod’s Faust with Sir Colin Davis, Beethoven’s Fidelio with Bernard Haitink and Leonore with Marc Soustrot, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Bruckner’s Te Deum with Helmuth Rilling, Mahler’s 8th Symphony with Lorin Maazel, Strauss’ Gypsy Baron with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Lehar’s The Merry Widow with Helmuth Froschauer ,Verdi’s Requiem with Enoch zu Guttenberg, and a DVD of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus on Deutsche Grammophone with the late Carlos Kleiber.

Very remarkable were three concerts: Strauss’ Four Last Songs conducted by Maestro Sawallisch in Philadelphia, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater in San Francisco and Haydn’s Creation and Bach’s Mass in B-minor at the Cincinnati May Festival conducted by James Conlon. In May the artist worked again with Maestro Conlon at the Festival, singing Beethoven’s Kantate zum Tode von Kaiser Joseph II. With the same program, a concert was planned in Paris on Sept. 13 with the Orchestre National de France, who invited her back for Mozart’s Requiem that December. More performances included the Cincinnati May Festival and the Bach Festival in Leipzig in May, Beethoven’s 9th in August in Philadelphia.

In March 2004 she sang Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, opera arias with the Bahia Symphony, and Beethoven’s 9th at the Festival Santo Domingo. In April, she was soloist with the Marin Symphony (CA) for Fauré’s Requiem and Mozart arias. In May, she was the soloist for performances of Beethoven’s 9th for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Wolfgang Sawallisch, for whom this concert was his farewell. 2004 brought more engagements singing Strauss’ Four Last Songs and Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915 with the Orquestra Experimental in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Beethoven’s 9th with the Oregon Symphony, and again Beethoven’s 9th at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center under the baton of Charles Dutoit.

Soprano Barbara Paré has extensive solo and operatic experience, having performed with a variety of nationally-known opera companies, including the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, the Cincinnati Opera Summer Festival, the Ensemble Company of Cincinnati Opera, the Des Moines Metro Opera, and Opera Iowa. Her operatic experience has included roles in staged productions of Cendrillon, Carmen, The Barber of Seville, and The Bartered Bride, and a concert performance of Die Zauberflöte with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed as a soloist with the Cincinnati Ballet, and presented numerous recitals at colleges and universities, including the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Northern Kentucky University, and Western State College.

She has recorded Bernard Gilmore's Five Folksongs for Soprano and Band on the Klavier Label, with the Cincinnati Wind Symphony, under the direction of Eugene Corporon. She is active as an adjudicator and clinician for the Indiana State School Music Association (ISSMA), the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), and the Indiana Music Teachers Association (IMTA).

In addition, she has also been a participant in the Grandin Festival for vocal chamber music. She received a Bachelor of Music degree in voice performance from Westminster Choir College and Master of Music degree in voice performance from Florida State University. Her major teachers have included Patricia Berlin, Barbara Doscher, Yvonne Ciannella, and Lindsay Christiansen. Before joining the faculty at DePauw University, Professor Paré taught at Northern Kentucky University, Florida State University, Western State College, and Simpson College.

Caroline Bradley Smith, mezzo-soprano and professor of music, has extensive operatic, solo and chamber music experience. An active recitalist, master class clinician and adjudicator (NATS, MTNA, Classical Singer National Competition, ISSMA and Prelude Competition), she has frequently performed with concert organist, Larry Smith, throughout the United States. Ms. Smith has performed on and recorded for NPR as well as PBS.

Most recently, highlighted solo performances have included Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Brahms's Neue Liebeslieder Walzer (Op.6), Chen Yi’s Meditation, Schumann’s Spanische Liebes-Lieder, Fauré's Requiem, George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children, Debussy's La Damoiselle Élue, Tania León's Oh Yemanja, Augusta Reed Thomas' Bubble: Spirit Level and the Midwest Première of Robert Kapilow's Green Eggs and Ham. While having performed with many regional opera companies and ensembles throughout the south and midwest (leading roles in The Medium, La bohème, Così fan tutte, The Old Maid and the Thief, Hansel and Gretel, La Perichole, Falstaff), Ms. Smith's current focus has shifted to that of chamber soloist, recitalist, clinician, and collaborator. Her current CD project is in collaboration with Carla Edwards, DePauw University Distinguished Professor of Organ. She recently has given Master Classes and workshops at Interlochen Arts Academy, in Arizona, Wisconsin, Indiana, and for such organizations as NATS, The Classical Singer National Convention, AGO, etc.
She received a Master of Music Degree in vocal/opera performance from Florida State University and a Bachelor of Music Degree in vocal performance from Converse College. Professor Smith's major teachers have included Virginia MacWatters, Seth McCoy, Pauline Thesmacher, Eugene Talley-Schmitt and Jane Frazier Rolandi. Her students have won and placed in many national, regional and state competitions and have been awarded scholarships to major music schools including New England Conservatory, The Peabody Conservatory, Indiana University, Florida State University, The Eastman School of Music, Boston University, Boston Conservatory, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Conservatory, and The Cleveland Institute of Music.

In Spring 2008, she was elected to serve for a second two-year term as the Great Lakes Regional Governor for the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) after previously serving for two years as the District Governor (Indiana) and three years as the Indiana NATS President .She also serves as Director for Vocal Arts at DePauw, a high school summer camp for vocalists and the Vocal Area Coordinator at DePauw University. She has taught at Indiana University-Bloomington (Visiting Professor of Voice) and Wabash College where she began the first solo voice training program in the school's history. Professor Smith recently was named the Cassel Grubb University Professor, an honor she assumed after completion of being named a DePauw University Distinguished Professor for 2006-2008, which she assumed after the completion of the Martha C. Rieth Faculty Fellowship that previously she had been awarded for 2004 -2007.

Countertenor and Grammy award-winning artist Jay White has been hailed by the press as “most impressive”, “displaying beauty and flexibility”, and “a voice with a full measure of passion.” He has enjoyed a variety of performing experiences ranging from the works of Bach to Britten appearing with such ensembles as the Washington Bach Consort, the Folger Consort and Santa Fe Pro Musica as well as with members of the Smithsonian Players, Tafelmusik, and the Seattle and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestras. Sought after as an interpreter of medieval, renaissance and baroque repertoire, he has appeared at national and international early music festivals and has sung under the batons of Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, Donald Burrows and Bruno Weill.

Dr. White sang eight seasons with the internationally acclaimed ensemble Chanticleer, with whom he traveled to over 40 states and 15 foreign countries, appeared in such venues as Chicago's Orchestra Hall, Cleveland's Severance Hall, Boston's Symphony Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), the National Theatre of Taipei (Taiwan), performed at the Tanglewood, Ravinia, Interlochen, Schleswig-Holstein, and Brisbane (Australia) Music Festivals, and shared the stage with Frederica von Stade, Dawn Upshaw, the San Antonio, Atlanta, and Virginia Symphonies, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

No stranger to the recording process, Dr. White’s discography includes Chanticleer’s two GRAMMY® Award-winning recordings and recordings on the Angel/EMI, Focus, New Albion, and Teldec labels. He has also been heard on National Public Radio and Public Radio International programs such as Harmonia, St. Paul Sunday, Around New York, Weekend Edition Sunday, and Performance Today as well as radio broadcasts in eight foreign countries.

Having received his training at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University and the School of Music at the University of Maryland, Dr. White has taught at the University of Maryland, Columbia Union College (MD), the University of Delaware and is currently an Assistant Professor of Voice, teaching applied voice and related subjects.

Indianapolis Symphony Musicians Peform June 9

2010-06-04T14:52:00.002-04:00

Indianapolis Symphony principal violist Michael Isaac Strauss will be joined by ISO violinist Patrick Dalton-Holmes and DePauw cello professor Eric Edberg on Wednesday June 9 for the second concert of the 2010 Greencastle Summer Chamber Music Fesitval. Concerts are held every Wednesday at 7:30 PM through August 18 in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Admission is free. Concerts are supported by donations from individuals and local businesses, including Chief's South by Southwest Restaurant.

Concerts are presented in an informal, interactive environment with the musicians discussing the works with the audience. "We're experimenting with concert format," says Eric Edberg, the Festival's Artistic Director. "A lot of people think classical music is boring or stuffy, and we're out to change that. I challenged the audience last week, asking that each of us over 50 invite someone under 40 to attend. This is great music, played with energy and passion by first-rate professional musicians."
This week's concert features Chahagir, a meditative work for solo viola. It will be followed by Mozart's Duo for Violin and Viola in G Major, which Edberg calls a "delightful and energetic conversation between the instruments." To end the program, cellist Edberg will join Dalton-Holmes and Strauss for the energetic and varied Serenade for String Trio by Hungarian composer Erno Dohnanyi. "The Dohnanyi work is made up of five short pieces, which classical musicians call 'movements,'" explains Edberg. "There are two marches, a lovely Romance, and a fast and playful "Schezo" movement. It's one of the most popular--and fun--pieces ever composed for this combination of instruments."

Patrick Dalton-Holmes is a native of Syracuse, New York. He began his study of the violin at age three. Dalton-Holmes earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with William Preucil, and a Master of Music degree from the University of Michigan, where he was a student of Paul Kantor. Before joining the second violin section of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in March 2006, he played with the New World Symphony Orchestra (Florida) and as a substitute musician with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Michael Isaac Strauss has served as principal violist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra since 1994. He has performed around the world as a soloist, chamber and symphonic musician. He made his solo debut with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1990. He has since been re-engaged as a soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Charleston Symphony, Camerata Chicago, and numerous appearances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Formerly a member of the distinguished Fine Arts Quartet, Strauss has performed at the Schleswig-Holstein and Montpellier festivals in Europe. In North America he has performed at the LaJolla, Caramoor and Banff festivals among others. Strauss appears on annual chamber music series throughout the United States.
     Strauss has made several recordings found on the labels of I Virtuosi (Jennifer Higdon’s Viola Sonata), CRI (David Finko’s Viola Concerto and 20th century chamber music works with the Philadelphia-based Orchestra 2001), Lyrinx (Mozart’s complete viola quintets with the Fine Arts Quartet), and Centaur (Stamitz’s works for solo viola with orchestra). Strauss is the featured recording artist on the official CD for the Suzuki Association of the Americas Viola School Volume 8.
    A sought-out teacher, Strauss has held faculty positions at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Swarthmore College, DePauw University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Butler University.
    Strauss’ work has been honored with the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Cinnamon Award, First Prize of the WAMSO Competition of the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Ealing prize at the Tertis International Viola Competition, Artist Fellowship Awards from South Carolina and Indiana, and a Creative Renewal Fellowship Award from the Arts Council of Indianapolis. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and performs on a viola made by Matteo Albani from Bolzano, Italy in 1704.

2010 Concerts Begin Wednesday June 2

2010-06-01T12:27:00.000-04:00

The sixth season of the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival begins this Wednesday, June 2 with a 7:30 PM recital by Chilean pianist Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando featuring music by Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. Concerts will be held every Wednesday through August 18 in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Admission is free, with donations accepted. The series is supported by individuals and businesses in the community, including Chief's South by Southwest restaurant.

"It's hard to believe this is our sixth summer of concerts," says cellist Eric Edberg, Professor of Music at Depauw University and the founder and artistic director of the festival. "It's developed into a wonderful addition to Putnam County's summer life. We're fortunate that DePauw music faculty, musicians from the Indianapolis Symphony, Indiana University faculty and graduate students, and other professional musicians from central Indiana are willing to come and play for very small honoraria. We're also very lucky, and grateful, that Gobin has been able to replace all the Festival funds that were embezzled last summer. Our reserves are back in place"

Future concerts this summer will include Indianapolis Symphony musicians including principal violist Michael Issac Strauss, violinist Patrick Dalton-Holmes, and acting principal oboist Roger Roe. DePauw faculty will include soprano Pamela Coburn, mezzo-soprano Caroline Bradley Smith, soprano Barbara Paré, and pianists Claude Cymerman and Katya Kramer. Many other musicians will be performing as well, with the full schedule to be announced soon.

"Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando is an amazing virtuoso pianist," says Edberg, "and he has performed with us almost every summer. He's definitely an audience favorite and I'm thrilled to have him perform our opening concert."

Born in Concepcion, Chile, Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando began his piano studies and his formal studies of theory and harmony with his father Luis Urrutia. At the age of eleven, Mr. Urrutia made his concert debut with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Concepcion and in the following year won the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition and Concurso Jovenes Talentos.

In 1994 he began his studies at Columbus State University, Georgia with Dr. Betty-Anne Diaz and later at Butler University, Indianapolis, IN with artist-in-residence Panayis Lyras, participating in important Master Classes with Lee Luvisi, Anton Kuerti, Stephen Hough, Brice Morrison, John Browning, John O’Connor, Vladimir Feltzman and The Diaz Trio.

As a recitalist and chamber musician, Mr. Urrutia has performed an extensive repertoire in South America, the United States and Germany collaborating with violinists Alexander Kerr and Lorey Courney, cellist William Grubb, clarinetist David Bellman and bandoneonist Peter Soave. As a soloist, he has performed with the Butler Symphony Orchestra, Columbus State University Orchestra, The National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Chile, the New Millennium Orchestra of Indianapolis, The Akron Youth Orchestra, LaGrange Symphony (GA), Orquesta Sinfonica de Concepcion, Orquesta Clasica de Santiago(USACH), Akron Symphony Orchestra, Die NordwestDeutsche Philarmonie, Germany and the ProArte Chamber Orchestra of Indianapolis, collaborating with conductors Wilfried Junge, Luis Urrutia, Patricio Cobos, Kypros Marcou, Toshiyuki Kamioka, Luis Gorelik, Mathew Kendall Kraemer and Stanley DeRusha. Mr. Urrutia has been Radio and Television broadcasted in his native Chile more than a dozen times and has also video-recorded the Liszt B-minor Sonata for the Pencopolitan Project 2010. He is also co-founder and artistic director of The ProArte Chamber Orchestra of Indianapolis.

Mr. Urrutia was featured in a recital in Ojai Valley, Santa Barbara, California to commemorate the centennial celebration of Hungarian pianist Lili Kraus. He has done premieres of works by composer Paul S. Chihara and has just premiered the piano-string quintet “Encuentros” by renowned Chilean composer Juan Orrego-Salas.

Mr. Urrutia is an active teacher and has given Master Classes at academic venues and festivals here in the United States and in his native Chile. He is Director of Cultural Activities and Artist in Residence for SADCO Indianapolis.

Three Russian Artists in 2009 Grand Opening Concert

2009-05-22T14:12:00.001-04:00

The Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival (greencastlesummermusic.blogspot.com) begins its fifth season of thirteen weekly Wednesday evening concerts (continuing though August 19) at 7:30 PM May 27 in the sanctuary of Greencastle’s Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. The “grand opening” concert features music by Poulenc, Debussy, Minkov, Mozart, and Brahms performed by three Russian-born musicians: oboist Leonid Sirotkin and the husband/wife “Duo Amabile” of pianist Katya Kramer and violinist Matvey Lapin.

All concerts are free and open to the public with free-will donations accepted. Festival artistic director, Eric Edberg (DePauw University Professor of Music) says he is delighted with the wide array of artists performing this summer. “Our concerts are performed in a relaxed, come-as-you-are environment. The performers speak to the audience during the concert and mingle and chat afterwards. If you’ve never been to a classical-music concert before, its a great introduction. Many people have told me that these concerts are the highlights of their summer in Greencastle. And look at the quality of our performers! How marvelous it is that in a small town like Greencastle you can hear a concert with musicians who have performed in major international concert halls.”

Leonid Sirotkin is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia where he received his BM and MM from St. Petersburg State Conservatory. For almost a decade, Leonid has been a principal English hornist with the Kirov Opera and Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev and has toured internationally with the Orchestra performing at Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Opera, Avery Fisher Hall, Kennedy Center, Covent Garden, La Scala, and Concertgebouw among other venues. He has performed as a soloist with Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, Bogota Opera Orchestra of Theatro Colon, and Kuopio Symphony Orchestra. His chamber music festival appearances include Kuhmo International Chamber Music Festival, Finland, Kostamuksha Music Festival, Russia, Lucca Music Festival, Lucca, Italy. He was featured as a lecturer on the IDRS International conference in 2006. Leonid is a regular substitute player with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and has toured with CSO to Japan and Europe. He has recorded more than 35 CDs with Kirov Orchestra and 5 Cds with Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra.In 2000, Leonid published the book, "Orchestral Excerpts for oboe and English horn from operas and ballets by Tchaikovsky".He is currently a DMA candidate at Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. Mr. Sirotkin’s major teachers include Dr. Valery Sobolev and Dr. Mark Ostoich.

Since its 2003 debut, Duo Amabile has presented violin and piano recitals to enthusiastic audiences throughout the United States. Married since 2004, Matvey and Katya Lapin bring to their collaborations virtuosity, enthusiasm, and striking passion. Their repertoire ranges from eighteenth to twenty-first century music, and includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Bartok, among many others. Equally at ease with the standard repertoire, the Duo’s offerings range from Rachmaninov to Pärt, and include contemporary works especially written for them. Popular with young audiences, they present Lecture-Performances and Workshops in conjunction with their concerts. Currently, Duo Amabile performs extensively throughout the country.
An active soloist and chamber collaborator, Matvey Lapin has performed across the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan and Korea at such venues as Concertgebouw Hall, Gewandhaus, Milan Conservatory and the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Matvey hails from St. Petersburg, Russia. He is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree at the IU Jacobs School of Music and is a student with Ik-Hwan Bae. Mr. Lapin graduated from the St. Petersburg State Conservatory (Russia), where he completed his Undergraduate, Graduate, and Post-Graduate Courses in violin performance. He has been a recipient or several awards, including the 3rd prize at the Locatelli Concours international competition (Amsterdam, 1995), the special grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation (2000), and the Gartow Scholarship in Germany, 1997. Matvey had also been awarded a grant to participate at the Holland Music Sessions master class series (Netherlands, 1995). During 2002-03 he was a member of the Grammy Award winner, world renowned St. Petersburg String Quartet (formerly Quartet-in-residence at Oberlin College-Conservatory).
Internationally recognized solo pianist and chamber musician, Katya Kramer-Lapin is currently working on her Artist Diploma program at IU Jacobs School of Music, studying under Professor Shigeo Neriki. Katya received her Master’s degree and Performer’s Diploma at IU School of Music as well. She received her Bachelor’s degrees at Oberlin College Conservatory and Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne (Germany). Katya’s concerts include appearances at the 25th Anniversary of the UNESCO, held at its Headquarters, (Paris, France), sponsored by the Pope Paul John Second, chamber recital, representing young opera artists of Bolshoy Theater, dedicated to the visit of Renata Scotta (Moscow, Russia), solo concerts at the World Bank (Washington, DC), concert tours to Taiwan and Europe, as well as frequent collaboration with the soloists of the New York Philharmonic and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras. Katya is a former scholar of the “Russian Arts Help” Charity Foundation, sponsored by Maestro Rostropovitch. Katya received several awards from international competitions which include Rudolf Serkin Piano competition, Matinee Piano Competition in Indianapolis, IN, and the “Forum of Young Pianists” (Athens, Greece).
The full series schedule is:

May 27: Oboist Leonid Sirotkin and the husband/wife “Duo Amabile” (pianist Katya Kramer and violinist Matvey Lapin) perform works by Poulenc, Debussy, Minkov, Mozart, and Brahms

June 3: The DePauw Woodwind Quintet Anne Reynolds (flute), Leonid Sirotikin (oboe), Randy Salman (clarinet), Kara Stolle (bassoon), and Rob Danforth (French horn)

June 10: Internationally-renowned violinist Federico Agostini is joined by cellist Eric Edberg and pianist Nariaki Sugiura in chamber works by Haydn, Ravel, and Mendelssohn

June 17: DePauw University Voice Faculty A diverse program performed by Pamela Coburn, Barbara Paré, Keith Tonne, Caroline Smith, and Jay White with assisting artists including pianist John Clodfelter

June 24: Korean cellist Yeon Ji Yun and Japanese pianist Nariaki Sugiura

July 1: Cellist Kirsten Landowne and pianist/composer Carlos Carrillo in a special “farewell to the Carrillos” concert featuring a work composed for the occasion by Dr. Carrillo, performed by various DePauw and area musicians.

July 8: Pianist Judith Edberg (retired University of Tampa piano professor) performs “An Evening with Johannes Brahms”

July 15: “Music of the Fears” Improvisations featuring Ball State saxophone and peace studies professor George Wolfe (named one of the “100 Most Dangerous Professors in America) and cellist Eric Edberg

July 22: Ensemble Voltaire, Indianapolis’s premiere early-music group, featuring IU professor flutist Barbara Kallaur, violinist Allison Guest Edberg, and harpsichordist Tom Gerber

July 29: Clarinetist Gareth Guest and pianist Martha Krasnican

August 5: Cellist Margot Marlatt

August 12: Soprano Barbara Paré, violist Nicole Brockmann, and pianist John Clodfelter

August 19: “Grand Finale” concert featuring pianist May Phang

2008 Festival Concludes Wednesday Evening

2008-08-16T10:49:00.002-04:00

The 2008 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival concludes at 7:30 PM this Wednesday evening at Gobin United Memorial Church with a concert by Duo Amabile, the outstanding husband/wife violin and piano duo, joined by DePauw oboe professor Leonid Sirotkin. The program includes works by Beethoven, Stavinsky, Jacob, and Paganini.

Admission is free, with donations accepted. Yourk Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc. is the festival’s main corporate underwriter, with additional support from Arts at DePauw, the DePauw School of Music, and Fine Print Books, as well as many individual donors.

Since its 2003 debut, Duo Amabile has presented violin and piano recitals to enthusiastic audiences throughout the United States. Married since 2004, Matvey and Katya Lapin bring to their collaborations virtuosity, enthusiasm, and striking passion. Their repertoire ranges from eighteenth to twenty-first century music, and includes works by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Bartok, among many others. Equally at ease with the standard repertoire, the Duo’s offerings range from Rachmaninov to Part, and include contemporary works especially written for them. Popular with young audiences, they present Lecture-Performances and Workshops in conjunction with their concerts. Currently, Duo Amabile performs extensively throughout the country.

An active soloist and chamber collaborator, Matvey Lapin has performed across the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan and Korea at such venues as Concertgebouw Hall, Gewandhaus, Milan Conservatory and the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Matvey hails from St. Petersburg, Russia. He is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree at the IU Jacobs School of Music and is a student with Ik-Hwan Bae. Mr. Lapin graduated from the St. Petersburg State Conservatory (Russia), where he completed his Undergraduate, Graduate, and Post-Graduate Courses in violin performance. He has been a recipient or several awards, including the 3rd prize at the Locatelli Concours international competition (Amsterdam, 1995), the special grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation (2000), and the Gartow Scholarship in Germany, 1997. Matvey had also been awarded a grant to participate at the Holland Music Sessions master class series (Netherlands, 1995). During 2002-03 he was a member of the Grammy Award winner, world renowned St. Petersburg String Quartet (formerly Quartet-in-residence at Oberlin College-Conservatory).

Internationally recognized solo pianist and chamber musician, Katya Kramer-Lapin is currently working on her Artist Diploma program at IU Jacobs School of Music, studying under Professor Shigeo Neriki. Katya received her Master’s degree and Performer’s Diploma at IU School of Music as well. She received her Bachelor’s degrees at Oberlin College Conservatory and Hochschule fur Musik in Cologne (Germany). Katya’s concerts include appearances at the 25th Anniversary of the UNESCO, held at its Headquarters, (Paris, France), sponsored by the Pope Paul John Second, chamber recital, representing young opera artists of Bolshoy Theater, dedicated to the visit of Renata Scotta (Moscow, Russia), solo concerts at the World Bank (Washington, DC), concert tours to Taiwan and Europe, as well as frequent collaboration with the soloists of the New York Philharmonic and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras. Katya is a former scholar of the “Russian Arts Help” Charity Foundation, sponsored by Maestro Rostropovitch. Katya received a several awards from international competitions which include Rudolf Serkin Piano competition, Matinee Piano Competition in Indianapolis, IN, and the “Forum of Young Pianists” (Athens, Greece).

Leonid Sirotkin is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia where he received his BM and MM from St. Petersburg State Conservatory. For almost a decade, Leonid has been a principal English hornist with the Kirov Opera and Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev and has toured internationally with the Orchestra performing at Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Opera, Avery Fisher Hall, Kennedy Center, Covent Garden, La Scala, and Concertgebouw among other venues. He has performed as a soloist with Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, Bogota Opera Orchestra of Theatro Colon, and Kuopio Symphony Orchestra. His chamber music festival appearances include Kuhmo International Chamber Music Festival, Finland, Kostamuksha Music Festival, Russia, Lucca Music Festival, Lucca, Italy. He was featured as a lecturer on the IDRS International conference in 2006. Leonid is a regular substitute player with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and has toured with CSO to Japan and Europe. He has recorded more than 35 CDs with Kirov Orchestra and 5 Cds with Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra.In 2000, Leonid published the book, "Orchestral Excerpts for oboe and English horn from operas and ballets by Tchaikovsky".He is currently a DMA candidate at Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. Mr.Sirotkin’s major teachers include Dr. Valery Sobolev and Dr. Mark Ostoich

Matthew Gianforte Wednesday August 13 at Gobin

2008-08-09T09:21:00.002-04:00

Concert pianist Matthew Gianforte, part-time Assistant Professor of Piano at DePauw, performs Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata along with works by Brahms and Liszt in the thirteenth concert of the 2008 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival. The program begins at 7:30 PM Wednesday evening in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

Admission is free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge, Inc., of Greencastle is the main underwriting sponsor of the series, with additional support from Arts at DePauw, the DePauw School of Music, Fine Print Books, and many individual donors.

“I know many of our audience members are going to be excited to hear the ‘Moonlight’ sonata live and in person,” says DePauw music professor Eric Edberg, the series’ Artistic Director. “Matt’s program also includes the Brahms F minor sonata and a Tarantella by Liszt. It’s going to be dazzling concert.”

Edberg says Wednesday’s concert is one of the Festival events he’s especially proud of. “One of the unique aspects of our series is that because of our proximity to Bloomington and the IU Jacobs School of Music, we are able to present outstanding young artists, like Matt Gianforte, who are at the stat of their careers. In Bloomington completing doctorates, they are willing to come to Greencastle for additional performing experience. We are very fortunate!”

A native of Chicago, pianist Matthew Gianforte received the Bachelor of Music degree at The Catholic University of America, where he studied with Marilyn Neeley. He continued his studies with Karen Shaw at Indiana University, where he earned the Master of Music degree, and where he currently is completing the Doctor of Music degree in Piano Performance. Mr. Gianforte has served as both an Associate Instructor in Piano and as the Coordinator of Piano Accompanying at Indiana University, and currently serves on the faculty of the IU Young Pianists Program, IU Piano Academy, and the DePauw University School of Music. A top prize winner in the 2004 Indianapolis Matinee Musicale competition, he has appeared across the United States as both a soloist and collaborator.

The 2008 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival concludes next week, with a Wednesday August 20 recital by Duo Amabile, the Russian husbad/wife team of Matvey Lapkin and Katya Kramer.

Indianapolis Symphony Musicians Perform Wednesday

2008-08-04T08:44:00.007-04:00

Indianapolis Symphony musicians violinist Jayna Park and cellist Ingrid Fischer-Bellman will be joined by pianist Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando in two Romantic-era favorites, the Sonata for Violin and Piano by Richard Strauss and Anton Arensky's Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello, as the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival continues Wednesday evening.

The concert is at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Admission is free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc., is the festival's main underwriting sponsor, with additional support from the DePauw School of Music, Arts at DePauw, Fine Print Books, and many individual donors.

"Jayna and Ingrid are both spectacular players," says Eric Edberg, Professor of Music at DePauw and Artistic Director of the Festival, "and Eugenio is well-known to Festival audiences from his prior appearances this and in past summers. The audience is in for a real treat!"

Violinist Jayna Park was born in Daegu, Korea, and earned a Bachelor of Music degree and an Artist Diploma from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Her major teachers have included Sylvia Rosenberg, Victor Danchenko and Berl Senofky. She joined the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 2001. Since then, Ms. Park has been an adjunct faculty member of Taylor University in Indiana, and has served as a coach at the Masterworks Music Festival in Winona Lake, IN and as a coach for the Side by Side program of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Winner of the American String Teachers Association competition, she has been heard throughout South Korea as an orchestral soloist and in recitals in many parts of the United States. In 2002, she was a participant in the Sixth Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Ms. Park has a one year old daughter with husband Brian Smith who is a bassist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Ingrid Fischer-Bellman is a member of the Indianapolis Symphony cello section. She studied cello with Janos Starker at Indiana University where she earned a Masters Degree in Music. Born in Bucharest, Rumania, Ingrid immigrated with her family to Israel. She was a scholarship recipient of the American Israeli Foundation for Young Artists and has concertized in Israel and the United States. She has performed as soloist with the Carmel Symphony and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Indianapolis. Ms. Fischer-Bellman is a co-founder and Artistic Director of the Ronen Chamber Ensemble which will celebrate its 25th Anniversary Season during 2008-'09. Ingrid is also devoted to bringing music to young people, and has an active private studio as well as a busy schedule with the ISO education department's public school initiative, where she presents thematic programs that coordinate with teachers' curriculums.

Edberg, Sugiura, and a restored cello Wednesday evening

2008-07-27T16:15:00.008-04:00

Critically-acclaimed cellist Eric Edberg celebrates the return of his 1790 Italian cello, which just finished 3 years of restoration, in Wednesday’s 7:30 PM Greencastle Classical Music Festival concert at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

Admission is free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc. is the festival’s main underwriting sponsor, with additional support from Fine Print Books, the DePauw School of Music, Arts at DePauw, and many individual donors.

Edberg will be joined by concert pianist Nariaki Sugiura in a program of music by Arvo Pärt, Franz Schubert, and Frédéric Chopin. “I’m very excited about this concert,” says Edberg, Professor of Music at DePauw and Artistic Director of the Festival. “First, it is a thrill to perform with Nariaki, who is an extraordinary young pianist who knows the cello-piano literature as well as any pianist I’ve known. He’s an absolute joy to make music with. And the restoration of my 1790 Pietro Pallotta cello was just completed, and this is my first concert reunited with my cello.”

Edberg’s cello developed a large crack nearly the entire length of the top in the spring of 2005 has been painstakingly restored by Russell Wagner of Chicago Celloworks. “Russell is widely regarded as the top cello restorer in the coun try,” explains Edberg. “In addition to the new crack which developed in 2005, the cello had a number of old cracks that had been somewhat crudely repaired in the past. Russell took the cello completely apart, removed the old glue from all the cracks, and redid the repairs in a way which makes it nearly impossible to tell there ever were any cracks. What he’s done is absolutely amazing. And the cello sounds better than ever!” (Click on the photos to see expanded versions.) More before and after photos are available on Edberg's blog, and photos of the restoration process can be seen here.

Eric Edberg attended the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Juilliard School, SUNY Stony Brook, and Florida State University, and studied with Gary Hoffman, Denis Brott, Stephen Kates, Leonard Rose and Bernard Greenhouse. Winner of the NCSA Piatigorsky Memorial Award and Concerto Competition, and an honorary scholarship to Juilliard, he was a two-time regional winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artists Competition. Formerly principal cellist of the Annapolis (Maryland) and Terre Haute (Indiana) Symphonies, he has performed widely as a concerto soloist with the Indianapolis Philharmonic, the Bismark-Mandan Orchestra, the Tampa Bay Chamber Orchestra, the Fox Valley Symphony, and the Annapolis Symphony.

Edberg is a frequent recitalist and is a member of the DePauw Chamber Players. He performed extensively with the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, D.C., whose concerts were broadcast worldwide over the Voice of America network. He has been praised by the Washington Post for an “excellent solo performance,” and the Appleton PostCrescent wrote, “. . . the star event of the evening [was] Eric Edberg's performance of Saint-Saens' First Cello Concerto. A big man with a big tone and a command of the broad sweep of the music, his performance was nonetheless outstanding for its small touches, the turns of phrases, the accuracy of intonation, and the balance with the orchestra. It seemed to be playing both faultless and effortless, a pleasure to observe and enjoy.” Edberg is also an improvisational musician who advocates creativity in performance and presentation, leads drum circles, and has given improvisation workshops at Appalachian State University, Bethany College, the Interlochen Arts Camp, the Lawrence Conservatory of Music, Ohio State, and the University of Iowa.

International concert pianist Nariaki Sugiura frequently tours as a recitalist and chamber musician, and gives lessons and master classes throughout the U.S. as well as tours in Europe and Asia. He has recently appeared on the concert stages at the Roundtop Music Festival in Texas, the Fox River Chamber Music Festival in Wisconsin, and in South Korea and Japan. Since 2002, he has been collaborating with a cellist Emilio Colón, and they have toured in the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Puerto Rico. He is an active performer and promoter of contemporary music, and has premiered many newly written pieces including Robin Macheel’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2005).

He is a featured solo and chamber music artist on several CD recordings including a solo album, which features Mr. Sugiura's performance of Barber's Piano Sonata, released by T.K. Music Productions. In 2007, T.K. Music Productions released a new CD of his collaboration with cellist Joseph Kaizer. In 2006, Klavier Music Productions Esencia was produced, a recording featuring Sugiura and Colón in an album of music for cello and piano from South America and the Caribbean. He also has been an editor of musical scores published by Master's Music Publications since 2002.

Born in Hakodate, Japan in 1975, Mr. Sugiura began piano study with his mother at age five, later studying at the Tokyo College of Music High School. In 1996, he entered the Indiana University. Under the tutelage of Michel Block and Shigeo Neriki, he received a Bachelor and Master of Music in Piano Performance. He will be completing his doctoral study at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2008. He is a winner of numerous competitions including the both 1999 and 2000 Indianapolis Matinee Musicale Competitions and the Annual Competition of Music from Spain and Latin America in 1999. Other awards include the third place the 47th Japan National Student Music Competition in 1993.

Mr. Sugiura has held the position of Adjunct Lecturer and Associate Instructor of Piano at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and is currently a staff accompanist for DePauw University School of Music, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (the distinguished cellist and pedagogue Janos Starker’s studio) and Indiana University String Academy.

Justih Edberg Performs Wednesday July 23

2008-07-20T10:06:00.000-04:00

Pianist Judith Edberg, emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Tampa, will perform music by Bach, Scriabin, Koehler, and Liszt in the tenth concert of the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival this Wednesday, July 23, at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church in Greencastle.

Admission is free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc., is the main corporate underwriter for the festival, with additional support from the DePauw School of Music, Arts at DePauw, and Fine Print Books.

Judith Edberg began piano study as a small girl in the Detroit area, where her mother was an active piano teacher. She earned her Bachelor and Masters degrees from Wayne State University, studying with Edward Bredshall, Mischa Kottler, and Julius Chajes, and studied in Paris for a summe with Lazzare Levy. An active recitalist, concerto performer, and chamber music partner in the Detroit area, she moved to Tampa in 1971 where she was soon appointed to the music faculty of the University of Tampa, becoming Director of Keyboard Studies and chair of the music department. In the spring of 1980 she studied music for left hand alone, a particular interest and speciality of hers, with the eminent pianist Leon Fleisher.

She has appeared as concerto soloist with the Royal Oak Symphony, the Wayne State University Orchestra, the Detroit Jewish Community Center Orchestra, the University of Tampa Orchestra and Concert Band, the Tampa Bay Chamber Orchestra, and the Aurora Orchestra in Colorado. The Detroit Free Press wrote she “played with freshness and enthusiasm.” The Tampa Tribune has praised her “pointed dramatic playing” and the St. Petersburg Times wrote that she played “in a forceful, no-nonsense way that cut through the orchestral texture with striking effect.”

Judith Edberg and her husband moved to Greencastle in the fall of 2007. She’s enthusiastic about the charms of Putnam County. “I can’t imagine a more beautiful area,” she says, “and we just love living here.”

“It’s a thrill to have my mother performing in the festival,” says DePauw music professor Eric Edberg, the Festival’s artistic director. “She has such a beautiful tone and sense of melodic line, and has selected a fascinating program. And it’s wonderful that in the festival we are hearing not only a number of young artists in the early stages of their careers, but also some excellent musicians, such as my mother and clarinetist/saxophonist Gareth Guest, who performed earlier this summer, who have retired from their full-time positions and continue to practice avidly and perform beautifully.”

The festival presents concerts every Wednesday evening at 7:30 PM through August 20. Upcoming concerts include cellist Eric Edberg and pianist Nariaki Sugiura on July 30, and Indianapolis Symphony violinist Jayna Park and pianist Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando on August 6.

Violinists Andrew McCann and Grammy Winner Matt Albert Wednesday July 16

2008-07-13T13:56:00.003-04:00

Grammy-winner Matt Albert will be joined by fellow violinist Andrew McCann in an unusual concert of works for two violins as the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Series continues this Wednesday at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church.

Admission with free, with donations accepted. The major corporate underwriter of the series is York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc. More information is available at www.greencastlesummermusic.org.

Albert is the violinist and violist with the contemporary-music ensemble eighth blackbird, which won the 2007 Best Chamber Music Recording Grammy for its album "strange imaginary animals." He and McCann will perform a sonata by the French Baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair, a set of pieces by the contemporary composer Luciano Berio, Stephen Hartke's "Oh Them Rats Is Mean In My Kitchen," and two Etude-Caprices by the Romantic violin virtuoso Henryk Wieniawaski.

"I'm really excited about the concert," says the Festival's artistic director, Eric Edberg, a professor of music at DePauw. "These are two of the top young violinists performing today. We are very fortunate both that they are available and willing to perform in Greencastle, and that the many generous donors to the Festival have made it possible for us to bring artists of this caliber in from out of state. And what a fantastic array of music they are going to play for us! It will be one of the highlights of the summer."

Matt Albert was born and raised in Winchester, Virginia. He is a founding member of eighth blackbird, with whom he has received numerous awards, including first prizes at the Naumburg, Concert Artists Guild, Coleman, and Fischoff Competitions. With the other members of eighth blackbird he holds concurrent teaching positions at the University of Richmond and the University of Chicago. He has recorded with the ensemble for Cedille Records, with their most recent disc strange imaginary animals receiving the 2007 Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance. His principal teachers include Kenneth Sarch, Gregory Fulkerson, Kurt Sassmannshaus, and Almita Vamos. He has performed throughout the Chicago area with the Chicago Sinfonietta, CUBE, Light Opera Works, and Corky Siegel's Chamber Blues. Matt holds degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory (B.Mus. violin and B.A. English), the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (A.D. chamber music), and Northwestern University School of Music (M.M. violin).

A native of Philadelpha, PA, Andrew McCann holds degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory (B.Mus. violin and B.A. history) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne (M.M. violin). His principal teachers include Gregory Fulkerson, Jorja Fleezanis and Sherban Lupu. During the last year, he has appeared as a guest artist with Present Music Milwaukee, the International Contemporary Ensemble and Contempo. He performs regularly with the Grand Rapids Symphony and the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, and is a member of the New Millennium Orchestra, Chicago, and the Woodstock Mozart Festival Orchestra. Andrew is an AmSat certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, and maintains teaching studios in Andersonville and Hyde Park. He has given workshops on the Alexander Technique at the University of Chicago, Lake Forest College, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Roosevelt University, and Florida State University.

Upcoming concerts in the Festival, which presents programs every Wednesday evening through August 20, include pianist Judith Edberg on July 23, cellist Eric Edberg and pianist Nariaki Sugiura on July 30, and Indianapolis Symphony violinist Jayna Park on August 6.

Trio Russe Performs Wednesday July 9 at Gobin

2008-07-06T13:19:00.002-04:00

Trio Russe—pianist Natalia Rachford, violinist Irina Povarova, and cellist Polina Umansky—will perform music by Schumann, Rachmaninoff, and Bernstein in the eighth concert of the 2008 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival, this Wednesday July 9 at 7:30 PM, in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Admission is free with donations accepted; the main corporate sponsor for the series is York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc.

“This is an exciting opportunity,” says the festival’s artistic director Eric Edberg, “to hear three fine musicians trained in Russia. I’m delighted that they are including a major Russian work, Rachmaninoff’s gorgeous piano trio, in their program. We’ll hear a true ‘Russian-style’ performance of this fabulous piece.”

The three women in the trio each now reside in the Indianapolis area. Russian-born pianist Natalia Rachford graduated from Russian Music Academy in Moscow. She performed as soloist and chamber musician in many cities in Russia including Moscow and St.Petersburg. She received honorable mention from All-Russian Instrumental Competition in St. Petersburg. In 1987 she joined the faculty at the Rostov-on-Don Conservatory, before coming to the United States as an exchange program specialist at Oklahoma City University in 1992. In 1993 she received honorable mention at the Bartók-Kabalevsky International Piano Competition and completed a master’s degree in music in 1995. She then moved to Bloomington where she started her doctoral degree in piano performance at Indiana University. From 1996 she served as Associate Instructor at IU and as staff accompanist at Depauw University. Natalia has been a faculty member at Butler University since 1998 and is near the end of her doctoral program at IU. She has performed the Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev Piano Concertos with Philharmonic Orchestra of Indianapolis. Natalia presently on faculty at DePauw University and has private teaching studios in Zionsville and Greenwood.

Violinist Irina Povarova graduated from Kazan State Conservatory and studied with professor Afanasiev former student of Prof.Yankilevich in Moscow. She graduated with the Diploma as an orchestral soloist, chamber ensemble and teaching. She has been a member of the Symphonic Orchestra of the Radio and TV Company of Belarus (1981-2002) and toured with orchestra in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland, releasing recordings in 2003-04. She has been a teacher of violin at the Gymnasium of Art in Minsk, Belarus and at the Institute of Music of California (2002-2003) and was a member of Trio "Oberon". She has taught and presented masterclasses in Algebras and Malaga Spain from 2003 to 2007. At the present time, she is teacher of music at Midwest Conservatory, Carmel Conservatory and Broad Ripple High School.

Polina Umansky is a cellist who has performed as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician. Her passions chamber music and teaching. Her teachers include Ayzik Zhadan and Janos Starker. She holds a Masters Degree in music from Odessa State Conservatory in Russia. She has had numerous solo appearances in Odessa as well as in other cities in former Soviet Union,such as Moscow, Kiev, and Kharkov. Polina began her orchestral carrier as a member of the cello section of the Odessa Philharmonic orchestra and appeared as a soloist on numerous occasions. Upon her arrival to United States in 1979 she performed with a variety of orchestras in New York area, including performances in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She appeared as a soloist with Marion Philharmonic and Anderson Symphony orchestras. Polina taught at Ball State University (1998-2002). At the present time she is a principal cellist with Lafayette Symphony orchestra.

Next week’s festival concert on Wednesday July 16 will feature Grammy-winning violinist Matt Alpert and violinist Andrew McCann in a program of works for two violins.

July 2: Gareth Guest and Friends Perform Katchaturian, Wieland, Milhaud, and Hagen

2008-06-30T09:11:00.002-04:00

Clarinetist, saxophonist, and nuclear physicist Gareth Guest is the featured artist in Wednesday’s 7:30 PM Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival concert, held in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Guest will be joined by violinist Allison Guest Edberg (his daughter), cellist Eric Edberg , and the young Chilean pianist Eugenio Urrutia, who opened the series in May. The program includes works by Katchaturian, Milhaud, Hagen, and Greencastle’s own Rev. Bill Wieland.

Admission is free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle is the Festival’s major underwriter.

“I always like to say about Gareth that while it doesn’t take a nuclear physicist to play the clarinet, it doesn’t hurt,” says DePauw music professor Eric Edberg, the festival’s artistic director. “He’s an extraordinary musician, always meticulously prepared, who plays with soulful, centered quality that has made him one of the audience favorites in past summer concerts.” Guest has played clarinet and saxophone since childhood, putting himself through college playing in jazz bands and later serving as principal clarinet of the Oak Ridge Symphony while working for the federal government there. Now retired, he’s completing a textbook, Electron Cyclotron Heating of Plasma, to be published by John Wiley, Inc. later this year. “I spend the morning writing,” says Guest, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “After lunch, I spend the afternoon practicing, and in the evening I do research.”

Wednesday’s concert will feature the premier of two movements of William D. “Bill” Wieland’s Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Cello, which he composed for Guest, Allison Edberg, and Eric Edberg. Wieland, the rector of Greencastle’s St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, minored in music theory and composition at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and studies composition with Michael Schelle, the composer in residence at Butler University. “Not many people outside the St. Andrew’s community know what a fine musician and composer Bill is,” says Eric Edberg. “Gareth, Allison, and I are honored that he’s written this piece for us.

Wieland explains that, “The first movement, ‘Turkish Imprint’, takes its title from a five-week stay in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon early in 2003, when the only time we ever heard anything other than Middle Eastern music was the night a restaurant owner obviously saw us coming and plopped some Bach on the CD-player. There’s a place in the middle where you might be able to hear a suggestion of what our daughter heard early one morning through the shimmering mists of ancient Bursa, as echoes of the first call to prayer floated toward her open window from every corner of the city.”

Opening the program will be the Katchaturian Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano. Guest says, “It’s a very Eastern sounding work, with a strong Persian influence . . . but the last movement is pure Russian.” Following the Wieland trio, Guest and Eugenio Urrutia will perform Darius Milhaud’s Scaramouche Suite for Saxophone and Piano. “The first movement is very much in a jazz style, using breaks and turnarounds,” Guest explains, “while the second movement is a pretty, wistful little piece with Parisian overtones. No jazz here, just a glimpse of between-the-wars Paris. The third movement, Braziliera, is an energetic samba. Milhaud was part of the French Embassy staff in Brazil during World War I; he obviously spent a lot of time watching the girls at Carnival!”

The program will conclude with “Harlem Nocturne” by Earle Hagen, which Guest is presenting as a tribute to the man who called himself “the most famous composer you never heard of.” Hagen, who passed away in May, began his career touring in the Tommy Dorsey band, and went on to become one of the most important composer/arrangers in Hollywood. He’s especially known for his television work, including the Emmy-winning score for “I Spy” and the famous whistled theme for “The Andy Griffith Show.”

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Mambo, Tangos, and a visit to Norway Wednesday Evening at Gobin

2008-06-23T11:05:00.001-04:00

American violist Donna Lively and Norwegian guitarist Espen Jensen, known as "Duo Diez," will perform musical tour of Latin America (Cuba, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil) and Norway Wednesday evening June 25 at 7:30 PM in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. The concert, the sixth in the 2008 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival, is free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle is the main underwriting sponsor of the festival.

With ten strings in play, Norwegian guitarist Espen Jensen and violist Donna Lively offer a rich and varied repertoire they have developed for this delightful combination. Given two instruments with a similar tonal range, the base and lead lines can be exchanged, leading to arrangements that offer intricate interplay and uncommon tonal beauty. Both musicians are known for their interpretation of twentieth-century music and their compelling performances of Latin American music. Fans of this duo find the enthusiasm and expertise of the artists to be what turns a great repertoire into a memorable listening experience.

Cuban composer Dan Román's "El Gran Mambo," will open the program. "It's a new piece for guitar and viola that has quickly become one of our favorites," says violist Lively. The composer has written, "El Gran Mambo talks about many aspects of Caribbean music at once. The idea of the mambo includes multiple genres and styles related to what we know as Afro Antillean music." The program also features "Suite BueonsAires" by Maximo Pujol. Lively explains the piece is "a music tour tour of four barrios in Buenos Aires starting with Pompeya, the rough working class suburb where tango developed. It continues with San Telmo, the very old market where tourists go to tango shows and flea markets. We then visit Palermo—much like Broad Ripple but more hip—and finish with the high energy and cacophony of traffic jams in the city center."

Other pieces in Wedneday's "musical tour" include "Zero Hour/Café 1930, a tango by Astor Piazzolla, "Sahara" by Chilean composer Alberto Cumplido, a sonata by the Brazilian composer Radames Gnatalli, and Preludes for solo guitar by Kjell Marcussen of guitarist Jensen's native Norway.

Donna Lively Clark earned a full scholarship to study at Indiana University School of Music under the renowned William Primrose and has also studied with William Lincer, Georges Janzer, and Alan de Veritch. She holds a Bachelor of Music Education from Indiana University and a Master of Music in Viola Performance from Butler University. An active and well-known performer, teacher and clinician, she has served as guest professor of viola at Indiana University and Ball State University. Other significant teaching engagements include the Viola Camp at Pepperdine University; the National String Workshop at University of Wisconsin-Madison; Butler University, École Saint Trinité in Port au Prince, Haiti and as the director of the Carmel Conservatory of Music Summer Chamber Music Camp. Ms. Clark makes her home in Indianapolis where she performs in the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, with various ensembles including Duo Diez and the Lockerbie String Quartet and as a soloist. She also performs in the Pacific Northwest with the Bellingham SummerFestival Orchestra. As a recipient of a Lilly Foundation Creative Renewal Fellowship, she lived, studied, performed and recorded in Buenos Aires, Argentina. These recordings of both traditional and original works appear on a CD, Una Viola Porteña, A Tribute to the Heart and Soul of Argentina, on the Centaur label. She is also featured on a romantic, classical/jazz fusion CD entitled Erosonata.

A native of Norway, guitarist Espen Jensen is a recording artist currently living in the United States. He is the winner of several awards, among them First Prize in the 2001 Competition in Performance of Music of Latin America and Spain as well as First Prize in Indianapolis Matinee Musicale. In 2002, Mr. Jensen released his début solo CD, the much-acclaimed Nocturnal Variations. He soon releases his second album, Elogio de la Danza y la Canción, featuring music of the Caribbean, of Latin American and of Spain. In 2006, he is scheduled to complete yet another album, this one featuring premiere recordings of contemporary Norwegian music of the guitar. Mr. Jensen holds the degree of Candidatus Magisterii (cum laude) from Agder College-Conservatory in Norway (1998). From Indiana University's prestigious School of Music, he has earned a Master of Music (2000) as well as a Performer Diploma (2003). His guitar instructors include Ernesto Bitetti, Luis Zea, Jan Erik Pettersen, and Bengt Martinussen. Mr. Jensen currently teaches classical guitar at Indiana University where he also serves as the assistant director of the esteemed Latin American Popular Music Ensemble

The festival continues Wednesday July2 with a concert featuring clarinetist Gareth Guest, pianist Eugenio Urruttia, and violinist Allison Guest Edberg.

Classical Improvisation Wednesday Night

2008-06-15T22:43:00.002-04:00

New York-based concert pianist Eric Barnhill, a specialist in classical-style improvisation, will perform at 7:30 PM Wednesday night June 18 in the fifth concert of the Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival, held in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. Admission is free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc., is the underwriting sponsor of the series, and this week's concert has been underwritten by Neal Abraham and Donna Wiley in memory of Percy Lavon Julian.

"I'm very pleased that the increasing financial support from the Putnam County community, from businesses and individuals, is enabling us to begin bringing outstanding musicians from outside Indiana," says Eric Edberg, Professor of Music at DePauw and coordinator of the Festival. "Eric Barnhill is one of the leaders in reviving the 'lost art' of improvisation in classical music. Most people don't know that Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin were great improvisers, as well as composers, and that until the 20th century it was common for pianists in particular to improvise between pieces on recitals. Eric knows more about this than just about anyone, and it's going to be an incredible concert."

Barnhill's program will include classical works, including pieces by Schubert and Chopin, as well as improvisations in the style of Chopin, Brahms, and Schubert. Eric Barnhill is a champion of improvisation in classical styles, seeking and inventing ways to speak new thoughts in the great musical language of the past. A graduate of the Juilliard School in piano performance and the Dalcroze School of New York, Eric Barnhill has performed both solo improvisations and in improvisational collaborations with dance and theater. Recent concerts featuring his improvisations include performances at Longy School of Music and the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva, Switzerland. He publishes the Internet blog The Daily Improvisation (ericbarnhill.wordpress.com) which presents near-daily recordings of improvised music in classical styles. He is also the creator of Cognitive Eurhythmics (cognitive-eurythmics.com), a method of music-movement neuromotor education for children with special needs, and on the faculty of the Special Music School for musically gifted children and the Mannes College of Music. As classical recitalist he has performed in concert halls from Maine to California as well as concerts in Canada, France, Italy and Portugal. New York recital venues include Cooper Union Great Hall, Bargemusic, Merkin Hall, MOMA-Summergarden and the Bruno Walter Auditorium.

Jazz, Mozart, and “Café Music” Wednesday Night at Gobin

2008-06-10T12:10:00.007-04:00

Works influenced by jazz and popular music, including Paul Schoenfield’s exciting “Café Music” and a trio by the “Russian Gershwin” Nicholai Kapustin will be featured along with a Mozart work in Wednesday’s free 7:30 PM Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival concert in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. DePauw School of Music faculty members Claude Cymerman (piano), Randy Salman (clarinet), and Eric Edberg (cello) will be joined by flutist Corinna Nash-Wnuk (DePauw’s Assistant Director of Music Admission) and violinist/violist Allison Edberg. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc., is the festival’s underwriting sponsor.

The program will begin with the Trio for Flute, Cello and Piano by the Russian composer Nicholas Kapustin. “He’s been called ‘the greatest composer you never heard of,’” says Cymerman, a strong advocate of Kapustin’s music, which is just becoming available in the West. Kapustin’s works, written in a jazz style, make virtuoso demands on all three players. “It’s classical music, in that every note is written out,” explains Festival coordinator Eric Edberg, “but it is brilliantly jazzy, fun, and exciting. You could call Kapustin the Russian Gershwin, I think. And it’s extremely difficult music to play—we’ve all been practicing and rehearsing for weeks!”

Mozart’s Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano will follow. “It’s known as the “Kegelstatt” trio,” Edberg says, “because Mozart supposedly wrote it while playing skittles with friends. Despite the playful conditions in which it was written down, it’s actually an emotionally powerful work, which will make a great contrast between the jazzy Kapustin and the eclectic Schoenfield work which follows.”

Paul Schoenfield’s “Café Music,” a trio for violin, cello, and piano, which Edberg calls “perhaps the most popular contemporary ‘classical’ piano trio of our time” will conclude the program. “The idea to compose Café Music,” Schoenfield has written,” first came to me in 1985 after sitting in one night for the pianist at Murray's Restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Murray's employs a house trio which plays entertaining dinner music in a wide variety of styles. My intention was to write a kind of high-class dinner music -- music which could be played at a restaurant, but might also (just barely) find its way into a concert hall. The work draws on many of the types of music played by the trio at Murray's. For example, early 20th century American, Viennese, light classical, gypsy, and Broadway styles are all represented. A paraphrase of a beautiful Chassidic melody is incorporated in the second movement.” Juilliard professor Joel Sachs explains that Schoenfield’s “work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience -- popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and historical traditions of cultivated music-making, often treated with sly twists ... He looks for his inspiration in the national spirit, which in his case he describes specifically as that of the Jewish American. The spirit is, however, multifaceted: like Charles Ives, he enjoys the mixing of ideas that grew up in entirely different worlds, making them converse, so to speak, and delighting in the surprises that their interaction evokes."

Pianist Claude Cymerman graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris with highest honors, studying with Pierre Sancan. After winning National and International Competitions, including the Grand Prize at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud contest, he studied at Indiana University with Gyorgy Sebök. The late French President Georges Pompidou, in a special ceremony, recognized him as “Outstanding Pianist”. Cymerman performs extensively as a recitalist and chamber musician and has appeared as soloist with the Radio France Orchestra, Orchestre des Pays de la Loire, Orchestre National d’Ile de France, Orchestre Symphonique de Limoges, the Luxembourg and San Francisco Chamber Orchestras, as well as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He is regularly invited to perform and give master classes at major festivals in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Israel and is a frequent guest on French National Radio and the BBC. In 1982 he impersonated the composer J. Brahms on French National Television. He has performed with cellist Gary Hofmann and violinist Federico Agostini (former concertmaster of the chamber orchestra I Musici di Roma) with whom he has recorded the chamber works of Erich Korngold.

Cymerman made his Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1985 with Rumanian born violinist Sherban Lupu, (followed by a CD recording of works by Georges Enesco on the Continuum label), and has since played four more concerts there.

In June 2002, he joined virtuoso violinist Nai-Yuan Hu, first Prizewinner of the Queen Elizabeth International Competition, for a CD recording of virtuosic transcriptions of Viennese Waltzes for the EMI-Classics label. In addition to the standard repertoire, Cymerman also performs more unusual solo and chamber music performances, such as tangos by Astor Piazzolla, neglected works by child prodigy Erich Korngold, and his own transcription of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Cymerman was named the John C. and Lillian W. Siegesmund Professor of Music in 1996 in recognition of his outstanding teaching and artistic accomplishments.

Corinna Nash-Wnuk is a versatile flutist with performing experience that ranges from the vast solo flute literature through chamber and symphonic music. Ms. Nash-Wnuk holds her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Indiana University School of Music, where she was also a recipient of the prestigious Performer's Certificate and later served as the Associate Instructor of Flute. Her major teachers include Thomas Robertello and Kathryn Lukas. As a chamber and symphonic musician, Corinna has performed on three continents, including appearances with members of the Saint Louis Symphony, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and as principal flutist under Lorin Maazel and Alan Gilbert among others. Ms. Nash-Wnuk has won top prizes in several competitions, most notably the Frank Bowen Flute Competition and the Kingsville International Young Artist Competition, and was chosen as the Golden Key National Honors Society Performing Arts Showcase North Atlantic First Prize Winner. Her concerto performance with the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra drew a sold out audience. Ms. Nash-Wnuk is currently Second Flutist with the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic, and she was previously a member of the Evansville Philharmonic.

An accomplished performer of both jazz and classical music, Randy Salman has worked professionally with the Indianapolis Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, David Baker, Gunther Schuller, Quincy Jones, Tony Bennett, Joe Williams, Clark Terry, Louis Bellson, and many others. He is a member of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and has performed on programs at the International Association for Jazz Education Conference and International Clarinet Association Clarinetfest. Randy has recorded with the Winds of Indiana, Chicago Jazz Orchestra (charter member), Eastman Jazz Trio, Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra, Condition Blue, Birch Creek Summer Music Center, Steve Allee, Al Cobine, Wanda Stafford, Sandi Patty, and has participated in Educational Recordings for several music-publishing companies.

He has contributed CD reviews and articles for The Clarinet and Band Director Guide journals and is a faculty member of the Indiana University Summer Clarinet Teaching Workshop and the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops.

A graduate of the University of Illinois, Professor Salman has studied clarinet with Larry Combs, Howard Klug and Leon Russianoff. His saxophone teachers have included Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano.

Violinist Allison Edberg is a specialist in early music and tours the United States frequently with Ensemble Galilei is a member of Olde Friends, Ensemble Galilei, ViVaCe, Ensemble Voltaire, the Mirabel Classical Quartet, and is concertmaster of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. She was a recipient of the Willi Apel Scholarship in baroque violin at Indiana University where she studied with Stanley Ritchie. With him she appeared in recital at Chicago's Quigley Chapel in 2002. The Chicago Sun Times called her performance of the Telemann Eb Fantasie "impeccable, with unerring intonation and an austere beauty." (November 11. 2002). She has collaborated in recent years with Apollo's Fire, the Washington Bach Consort, La Monica, and Early Music Southwest, and is frequently featured at the Bloomington Early Music Festival. Ms. Edberg has toured nationally and has recorded for the Electra and Centaur CD labels.

Cellist Eric Edberg is an active concert artist who has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across the country. Trained at Peabody, Juilliard, The North Carolina School of the Arts and Florida State, his teachers included such eminent cellists as Leonard Rose, Bernard Greenhouse, and Stephen Kates. Recent performances include concerto appearances with the Fort Wayne and Terre Haute symphonies in Indiana and the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony in North Dakota as well as collaborative performances with the Chisti Chamber Players.

An improvisational musician as well as a classical cellist, he has performed with artists including David Darling and Paul Horn. At DePauw he teaches one of the country's few non-jazz improvisation courses for classical musicians, and frequently gives workshops on improvisation and self expression, most recently as part of a Music for People weekend at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. He has given improvisation workshops at Lawrence University, Ohio State, Appalachian State, Bethany College, the Interlochen Arts Camp, and for the Indiana Music Teachers Association annual convention.

Brockmann, Edberg, and McCoy Wednesday Night

2008-06-02T14:10:00.004-04:00

DePauw viola professor Nicole Brockmann will be joined by violinist Allison Edberg and pianist Darcy McCoy this Wednesday June 4 at 7:30 PM in the third concert of the 2008 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival. Held in the sanctuary of Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church, the concerts are free, with donations accepted. York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle, Inc., is the main underwriting sponsor of the series.

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of our colleague and friend, Stanley Iwin," says series director Eric Edberg. I think he would have wanted us to go ahead with the concert as planned, so we will, and will have a moment of silence in his honor."

Wednesday's concert includes the Duet for Violin and Viola in G Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the Sonata for Viola and Piano by the Russian romantic composer Anton Rubenstein. "The Mozart is a lively work, full of energy," says Edberg, "while the Rubenstein is gorgeous and lush. They'll make a great combination."

Nicole M. Brockmann enjoys a multifaceted career of performance, teaching, and scholarship. She received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MM, AD, and DMA from Yale University. Her viola teachers include Jesse Levine, Paul Silver, and Isaias Zelkowicz. Dr. Brockmann is a 4-time winner of the Yale Chamber Music Competition and has studied chamber music with members of the Tokyo, Vermeer, and Orion String Quartets and with Joan Panetti, Erick Friedman, Syoko Aki, Ransom Wilson, Ronald Roseman, Boris Berman, Gordon Gottlieb, and Nancy Allen.

She has been a member of professional chamber ensembles including the Brooklyn Chamber Players, the Lumina String Quartet, and the West Virginia Piano Quartet, and has performed at venues across the country and abroad, including Merkin Concert Hall and Carnegie Hall in NYC, SUNY Stony Brook, Brooklyn College, Ohio University, Emory & Henry College, Montana State University, and the Penn Alps (MD) Summer Festival. She has taught and performed professionally at summer festivals including the Blue Mountain Festival (NJ), Point Counterpoint Chamber Music Camp (VT), and the Lumina String Quartet Summer Festival (CT), and is an alumna of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, The Quartet Program, and Encore School for Strings. Her orchestral experience includes three years as Principal Viola of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony Orchestra (CT) under Gustav Meier, as well as extensive and varied work in the NYC metro orchestral and studio recording scene.

Violinist Allison Edberg is a specialist in early music and tours the United States frequently with Ensemble Galilei is a member of Olde Friends, Ensemble Galilei, ViVaCe, Ensemble Voltaire, the Mirabel Classical Quartet, and is concertmaster of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. She was a recipient of the Willi Apel Scholarship in baroque violin at Indiana University where she studied with Stanley Ritchie. With him she appeared in recital at Chicago's Quigley Chapel in 2002. The Chicago Sun Times called her performance of the Telemann Eb Fantasie "impeccable, with unerring intonation and an austere beauty." (November 11. 2002). She has collaborated in recent years with Apollo's Fire, the Washington Bach Consort, La Monica, and Early Music Southwest, and is frequently featured at the Bloomington Early Music Festival. Ms. Edberg has toured nationally and has recorded for the Electra and Centaur CD labels.

A frequent adjudicator and collaborative performer, Darcy McCoy has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Stewart Graduate Performance Grant, Young Artist Grand Prizes from the Lawton Philharmonic and the Bartlesville Symphony Orchestra, and the Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Award for achievement in performance and scholarship. She earned the Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees in Piano Performance and Literature from The University of Kansas, studying performance with Alice Downs and Jack Winerock. Earning the Bachelor of Music with Distinction from The University of Oklahoma, she studied performance with internationally acclaimed teacher and author Jane Magrath and pedagogy with E.L. Lancaster. While at OU, McCoy was selected as the Outstanding Undergraduate Pianist for three consecutive years.

With special research and performance interest in contemporary and Hispanic music, Dr. McCoy has performed as a featured guest artist of the American Association of Retired Persons, Oklahoma Music Teachers Association, Musical Research Society, Allied Arts and Humanities Council, Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau, University of Kansas Center for Latin American Studies, Wichita Historical Society, Wichita State University Center for Women’s Studies, Sigma Alpha Iota, American Guild of Organists (Back to Bach series), and universities and symphony orchestras throughout the Midwest.

An active and versatile collegiate and independent piano teacher and accompanist, Dr. McCoy serves as Part-time Assistant Professor of Music and Staff Accompanist at DePauw University. From 2001 to 2006, she served as Assistant Professor of Music at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, developing the keyboard studies and music history curricula along with establishing piano proficiency requirements. From 2000-2001, she served as the Interim Director of Piano Pedagogy and Lecturer in Music at The University of Kansas, which included her co-direction of the Adult Piano Program. She has additionally instructed at The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Indiana State University, Midwestern Music Camp Piano Academy, and The University of Oklahoma. McCoy is a member of the College Music Society, Indiana Music Teachers Association, Music Teachers National Association, Golden Key National Honor Society, and Pi Kappa Lambda.

Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando

2008-05-20T17:52:00.003-04:00

There's a nice story about the opening concert of the series in today's Banner Graphic, the local paper here in Greencastle. That concert is tomorrow, Wednesday May 21, at 7:30 PM.

And here's Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando's full bio.

Born in Concepcion, Chile, Mr. Urrutia began his piano studies and his formal studies of theory and harmony with his father Luis Urrutia. At the age of eleven, Mr. Urrutia made his concert debut with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Concepcion and in the following year won the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition and Concurso Jovenes Talentos.

In 1994 he began his studies at Columbus State University, Georgia with Dr. Betty-Anne Diaz and later at Butler University, Indianapolis, IN with artist-in-residence Panayis Lyras, participating in important Master Classes with Lee Luvisi, Anton Kuerti, Stephen Hough, Brice Morrison, John Browning, John O’Connor, Vladimir Feltzman and The Diaz Trio.

As a recitalist and chamber musician, Mr. Urrutia has performed an extensive repertoire in South America, the United States and Germany collaborating with violinists Alexander Kerr and Lorey Courney, cellist William Grubb, clarinetist David Bellman and bandoneonist Peter Soave. As a soloist, he has performed with the Butler Symphony Orchestra, Columbus State University Orchestra, The National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Chile, the New Millennium Orchestra of Indianapolis, The Akron Youth Orchestra, LaGrange Symphony (GA), Orquesta Sinfonica de Concepcion, Orquesta Clasica de Santiago(USACH), Akron Symphony Orchestra, Die NordwestDeutsche Philarmonie, Germany and the ProArte Chamber Orchestra of Indianapolis, collaborating with conductors Wilfried Junge, Luis Urrutia, Patricio Cobos, Kypros Marcou, Toshiyuki Kamioka, Luis Gorelik, Mathew Kendall Kraemer and Stanley DeRusha. Mr. Urrutia has been Radio and Television broadcasted in his native Chile more than a dozen times and has also video-recorded the Liszt B-minor Sonata for the Pencopolitan Project 2010. He is also co-founder and artistic director of The ProArte Chamber Orchestra of Indianapolis.

Mr. Urrutia was featured in a recital in Ojai Valley, Santa Barbara, California to commemorate the centennial celebration of Hungarian pianist Lili Kraus. He has done premieres of works by composer Paul S. Chihara and has just premiered the piano-string quintet “Encuentros” by renowned Chilean composer Juan Orrego-Salas.

Mr. Urrutia is an active teacher and has given Master Classes at academic venues and festivals here in the United States and in his native Chile.

Among his piano teachers are Marcella Mazzinni, Betty-Anne Diaz, and Panayis Lyras.
Mr. Urrutia is Director of Cultural Activities and Artist in Residence for SADCO Indianapolis.

Chilean Pianist to Open 2008 Summer Series

2008-05-13T21:03:00.004-04:00

The 2008 Greencastle Summer Classical Music Festival begins its series of 14 concerts this coming Wednesday, May 21, with a recital by the Chilean virtuoso pianist Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando. Concerts are held every Wednesday evening at 7:30 PM at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church. There is no admission charge; costs of the series are underwritten by York Chrysler Jeep Dodge of Greencastle and many other business and individual donors.

As a recitalist and chamber musician, Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando has performed an extensive repertoire in South America, the United States and Germany collaborating with violinists Alexander Kerr and Lorey Courney, cellist William Grubb, clarinetist David Bellman and bandoneonist Peter Soave. As a soloist, he has performed with the Butler Symphony Orchestra, Columbus State University Orchestra, The National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Chile, the New Millennium Orchestra of Indianapolis, The Akron Youth Orchestra, LaGrange Symphony (GA), Orquesta Sinfonica de Concepcion, Orquesta Clasica de Santiago(USACH), Akron Symphony Orchestra, Die NordwestDeutsche Philarmonie, Germany and the ProArte Chamber Orchestra of Indianapolis, collaborating with conductors Wilfried Junge, Luis Urrutia, Patricio Cobos, Kypros Marcou, Toshiyuki Kamioka, Luis Gorelik, Mathew Kendall Kraemer and Stanley DeRusha. Mr. Urrutia has been Radio and Television broadcasted in his native Chile more than a dozen times and has also video-recorded the Liszt B-minor Sonata for the Pencopolitan Project 2010. He is also co-founder and artistic director of The ProArte Chamber Orchestra of Indianapolis.

The May 21 program will include solo piano works by Mozart and Liszt, as well as Beethoven’s G minor cello sonata, with DePauw cello professor and series organizer Eric Edberg.

The complete series schedule includes:

May 21 Eugenio Urrutia-Borlando, piano, with Eric Edberg, cello Solo piano works by Mozart and Liszt, plus Beethoven’s G minor cello sonata.

May 28 Barbara Paré, soprano and John Clodfeter, piano Works by Barab, Bernstein, Previn and Waxman, with accompaniment by Allison Edberg, violin, and Eric Edberg, cello.

June 4 Nicole Brockmann, viola; Darcy McCoy, piano; and Eric Edberg, cello Works by Beethoven, Piston, and Rubenstein.

June 11 Claude Cymerman, piano; Corinna Nash-Wnuk, flute; Randy Salman, clarinet; Allison Edberg, violin; and Eric Edberg, cello Jazz-influenced works by Russian composer Nicholas Kapustin and Paul Schoenfeld’s amazing “Café Music.”

June 18 Eric Barnhill, piano The New-York based pianist performs improvisations in the style of Schubert, Brahms, and Chopin.

June 25 Donna Clark, viola and Espen Jensen, guitar The exquisite viola/guitar duo, a hit of our first season, presents “What’s New For Viola and Guitar?”

July 2 Gareth Guest, clarinet Works by Katchaturian, Milhaud, and Wieland.

July 9 Trio Russe Irina Povarova, violin; Vladimir Zukerman, cello; and Natalia Rachford, piano perform works by Rachmaninoff and others.

July 16 Matt Albert and Andrew McCann, violins Eighth blackbird violinist and Grammy-winner Albert is joined by McCann in violin duos by LeClair, Berio, Hartke, and Prokofiev.

July 23 Judith Edberg, piano Works by Bach, Chopin, Liszt, and Gershwin.

July 30 Eric Edberg, cello and Nariaki Sugiura, piano

August 6 Stanley Irwin, bass-baritone and Natalia Rachford, piano

August 13 Matthew Gianforte, piano Works by Beethoven, Brahms and Chopin

August 20 Duo Amabile Matvey Lapin, violin and Katya Kramer, piano