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 | Norman Fischer
Norman Fischer first graced the international concert stage as cellist with the Concord String Quartet, a group that won the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, an Emmy and several Grammy nominations, and recorded over 40 works. The New York Times recently said, "During its 16 years, the supervirtuosic Concord String Quartet championed contemporary work while staying rooted in the Western tradition." He has performed in 49 of the 50 United States and on 5 continents. His chamber music expertise has led to guest appearances with the American, Audubon, Blair, Cavani, Chester, Chiara, Ciompi, Cleveland, Enso, Emerson, Jasper, Juilliard, Mendelssohn and Schoenberg string quartets, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music International, Context, and Houston's Da Camera Society. Mr. Fischer joins pianist Jeanne Kierman and violinist Andrew Jennings as the Concord Trio, a group that has been performing together for over 30 years. Mr. Fischer also joins Ms. Kierman and violinist Curtis Macomber as co-artistic directors of the autumn chamber music festival Vermont Musica Viva headquartered in Norwich VT. A devoted teacher and mentor, Mr. Fischer is Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Violoncello and Coordinator of Chamber Music at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. Since 1985, he has taught at the Tanglewood Music Center where he holds the Charles E Culpepper Foundation Master Teacher chair and is also Coordinator of Chamber Music.
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 | Christopher Jenkins
Christopher Jenkins, violist, is a founding member of the Catalyst Quartet. Semifinalist in the 2003 and 2004 Sphinx Competitions and Third-Place Laureate of the 2005 Competition, Chris has been Dean of the Sphinx Performance Academy, Sphinx's summer music program, since 2007. In 2010, Sphinx gave him the Sanford Allen Award in recognition of his professional achievements as Dean. While he has played in the viola sections of the New York Philharmonic, the St. Louis Symphony, and the Virginia Symphony, Chris also enjoys performing outside of the classical world, having toured with Diana Ross, jazz great George Russell, singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens, and Invert, an alternative-rock string quartet. Classical performers with whom Mr. Jenkins has appeared in concert include Itzhak Perlman, the Guarneri Quartet, Ron Leonard, Mikhail Kopelman of the Borodin Quartet, Sanford Allen, Jesse Levine, and David Geber of the American String Quartet. In the spring of 2004, Chris graduated from the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned a Professional Certificate studying with Michael Tree and Karen Dreyfus on a scholarship from Sphinx. He earned his M.M. at New England Conservatory, where he studied with Martha Katz, and his B.A. at Harvard University, where he concentrated in music and psychology and studied with Michelle LaCourse of Boston University. In the spring of 2011 Chris earned a master's degree in international relations from Columbia University, where he concentrated in Human Rights and Conflict Resolution as a David Ottaway Fellow. rformance of Sir Roland Hanna’s Sonata for Violin and Piano at the Kennedy Center in Washington, joined by the composer.
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 | Raphael Jiménez
Raphael Jiménez is currently Director of Orchestras at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Praised for his "delicious buoyancy and impeccable taste" (Washington Times), Jiménez is celebrated for his work with orchestras around the world. Growing up in Venezuela, he has appeared to critical acclaim with all of that country's top ensembles. El Nacional (Caracas, Venezuela) praises his "great dynamic control and imagination," and El Carabobeño (Valencia, Venezuela) lauds his "abundance of grace and creativity due to the connection between the orchestra and the conductor." Versatile in the standard literatures of symphonic, ballet, and operatic repertoire, Jiménez is also a strong supporter of new music, as well as works by Latin American composers.Equally comfortable on the podiums of both professional and pre-professional ensembles, Jiménez is recognized for his deep commitment to education. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel writes "The [orchestra], conducted by Raphael Jiménez, played [with] a professional sheen rarely heard from student ensembles." His devotion to teaching began in Venezuela when he was a member of the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra and later served as a conductor with the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras (El Sistema), the famed international model for providing exceptional music instruction for children of all socioeconomic backgrounds. For his work as music director of the San Agustin Youth Orchestra in Caracas, Jiménez received the Jose Felix Ribas Medal, bestowed by the Venezuelan Government in 1988. Jiménez has held principal conducting positions with both the Caracas National Ballet and Ballet Florida in West Palm Beach. He earned is undergraduate degree in conducting from the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Musicales in Venezuela, and master and doctoral degrees in conducting from Michigan State University.
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 | Emil Kang
Emil J. Kang serves as University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Executive Director for the Arts, a senior administrative post created in 2005. In that year, Kang introduced and currently directs the University's first major multi-disciplinary performing arts program, Carolina Performing Arts (CPA). The creation and presentation of new work serves as a core value and in its first five years, CPA commissioned over fifteen new works in every conceivable genre. Kang is also Professor of the Practice in the Music Department and has taught courses in artistic entrepreneurship, the creative process and currently teaches a class on 'understanding the world through music.' Prior to Chapel Hill, Kang served as President of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has also held positions with the Seattle Symphony, American Composers Orchestra and was an Orchestra Management Fellow with the League of American Orchestras. Kang speaks often on the role of the arts in higher education and has conducted site visits evaluating the performing arts at other universities. He has also served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trust, and state arts councils across the country. He currently sits on the nominating committee of the board of the International Society of the Performing Arts (ISPA) and on the boards of directors of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP), the North Carolina Symphony, and the Kenan Institute for the Arts at the North Carolina School of the Arts.
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 | Jennifer Ross
Jennifer Ross joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as Principal Second Violin in 1998. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she was a student of the late Szymon Goldberg, she began her orchestral career as Associate Concertmaster of the Honolulu Symphony and went on to become a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She has also performed with the Indianapolis Symphony, l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. As a recitalist and chamber musician, Ms. Ross has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America and has collaborated with some of the world's great musicians including Pinchas Zuckerman, Lynn Harrell and Jaime Loredo. She has spent more than 30 summers at the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Ms. Ross teaches, coaches and gives master classes regularly at the National Orchestra Institute, The New World Symphony in Miami, the University of Michigan, and at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music where she was a full-time faculty member for the 2009 winter term. A certified yoga instructor, Ms. Ross has presented her Yoga for Musicians seminar to hundreds of young instrumentalists across the country.
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 | Daniel Bernard Roumain
Having carved a reputation for himself as an innovative composer, performer, violinist, and band leader, Haitian-American artist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) melds his classical music roots with his own cultural references and vibrant musical imagination. Proving that he's "about as omnivorous as a contemporary artist gets" (New York Times), DBR is perhaps the only composer who has collaborated and performed with Philip Glass, Cassandra Wilson, Bill T. Jones, and Lady Gaga. He's received commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), the Library of Congress, and the sports channel ESPN. He's appeared on American Idol (FOX), America's Assignment (CBS Evening News), E:60 (ESPN) and been voted one of the "Top 100 New Yorkers" (New York Resident), "Top 40 Under 40 business people" (Crain's New York Business), "Top 5 Tomorrow's Newsmakers" (1010 WINS Radio), and spotlighted as a "New Face of Classical Music" (Esquire Magazine). Most recently DBR has created a new evening length-work, Symphony for the Dance Floor, for the 2011 BAM Next Wave Festival and ASU Gammage, and composed music for the Atlanta Ballet, Home in 7, with the choreographer Amy Seiwert and the poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph.
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 | Steven Tenenbom
Steven Tenenbom's impeccable style and sumptuous tone have combined to make him one of the most respected violists performing today. He has appeared as guest artist with the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson and Beaux Arts Trios. As soloist, he has appeared with the Utah Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Brandenburg Ensemble. Mr. Tenenbom is the violist of the Orion String Quartet, the Quartet-in-Residence of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mannes College of Music and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. He is also a co-founder of the exciting piano quartet, OPUS ONE. Mr. Tenenbom is a member of the viola faculty of the Juilliard School and The Bard College Conservatory of Music. He is also is the Coordinator of String Chamber Music of the Curtis Institute of Music. His recent recordings of the complete Beethoven quartets with the Orion Quartet are available on Koch International. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Mr. Tenenbom's teachers have included Max Mandel, Heidi Castleman, Milton Thomas at USC, and Michael Tree and Karen Tuttle at The Curtis Institute of Music. Married to violinist Ida Kavafian, the Tenenboms live in Connecticut where they breed, raise and show champion Vizsla purebred dogs.
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