David Cedel
holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of
Charleston, where he was a Trustee Scholar, and a Master of Music degree from
Florida State University, where he received a teaching
assistantship. He has coached with Leonard Rose and Zara Nelsova,
and has studied under Jules Eskin of the Boston Symphony, John
Martin of the National Symphony, and Robert Marsh of the Atlanta
Symphony. Currently he is coaching with Burton Kaplan at the
Manhattan School of Music.
Mr. Cedel has served as principal 'cellist of the Jacksonville
Symphony Orchestra since 1979. Prior to that, he was principal
in Charleston, Savannah, and Augusta. He began his
professional career as assistant principal in Charlotte.
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Donald Hageman
has taught privately
and performed in the Dayton, Ohio, area for
more than forty years. He has studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music,
the University of Dayton, and the College-Conservatory of Music at the
University of Cincinnati. His piano studies were with Ada Clyde Gallagher,
Beryl Rubinstein, Frances Bolton Kortheuer, and Madeline Bostian Rider, a
pupil of Tobias Matthay. He is a past President of the American Matthay
Association, he served as a member of the piano faculty at Wright State
University from 1976-83, and for seventeen years he was Director of Concerts
for the Dayton Art Institute. He is also the Founder/Director of the Soirées
Musicales Piano Series, which is now in its thirty-first season,
Since 1963, he has appeared every year but one as a recitalist and/or
lecturer at the annual Matthay Festivals held throughout the United States
and in Canada. In 1999 he appeared as soloist with Dayton's Miami Valley
Symphony Orchestra in two performances of the
Tchaikovsky G Major Concerto and again in February of 2001 in two
performances of the Mozart Concerto K. 467 and Chopin's Andante Spianato
and Grande Polonaise Brilliante.
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Marie Hasse
holds a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance from the
University
of Central Florida, where she studied with Gary Wolf. She is Head of Keyboard Studies at Polk
Community College and she also teaches privately in the Winter Haven Area. She is currently the
President of the Bach Festival of Central Florida, a past president of the Florida State Music
Teachers Association, and
she frequently adjudicates for FSMTA student events. As Southeastern Regional Junior Festivals
Chairman, she is also active in the student events of the Florida Federation of Music Clubs. Ms.
Hasse is presently serving as Secretary for the American Matthay Association for
the second time and has frequently lectured at the AMA's annual festivals. She performs in
chamber music recitals in the area and lectures on piano pedagogy. In recent years, she has
worked extensively to publicize the contributions of Helen Parker Ford, a Matthay pupil who
specialized in teaching his principles to younger children. Ms. Hasse is also the organist for
First Presbyterian Church in Haines City.
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Robert Henry
won First Prize in the 1997 Clara Wells
Scholarship Auditions, as a student of former AMA President David Watkins. Since that time he
has won numerous competitions and at the age of 27, he promises to become an artist of international stature.
Last spring he won first place in the New Orleans International Piano Competition,
receiving cash prizes as well as performance engagements with the Louisiana Symphony, Acadiana Symphony,
and solo performances at Louisiana State University and Loyola University.
This past year he was also a prize winner in the prestigious Cleveland International Piano Competition,
and he won third prize in the 1999 Ibla-Grand Prize International Piano Competition, held in Ragusa-Ibla, Italy. A
native of Marietta, Georgia, he has appeared as soloist with the Atlanta Community Orchestra, and recently to sold-out houses, he performed Rachmaninoff's
Third Concerto and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
with the
Cobb Symphony Orchestra. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Kennesaw State University, where
he studied with David Watkins, and he continued his Matthay-based studies with Anne Koscielny
at the University of Maryland, where last spring he earned his Master of Music degree. Currently he is pursuing the DMA
at Maryland as a student of Larissa Dedova. You can visit Robert's self-designed web site
(and hear him play) at www.roberthenry.org.
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Leonard Hokanson
is a welcome guest in the world's major music capitals, and is internationally recognized as a recitalist, soloist,
and chamber musician. One of the last pupils of Artur Schnabel, he also studied with Karl-Ulrich
Schnabel, Claude Frank and Julian DeGray. He is currently a professor of
piano at the School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington
and a permanent guest professor at the Tokyo College of Music.
Having lived for much of his professional career in
Germany and Austria, he has become known to audiences through his numerous
recordings and concert appearances.
Mr. Hokanson has performed with such major ensembles as the Philadelphia
Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Vienna
Symphony. Winner of the Steinway Prize of Boston and a prizewinner at the
International Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy, he has performed at the
festivals of Aldeburgh, Berlin, Echternach, Lucerne, Prague, Ravinia,
Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Tanglewood, and Vienna, to name a few.
He is a founding member of the Odeon Trio and resident pianist for Bay
Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine. He has been guest artist with such
ensembles as the Vermeer Quartet, the Fine Arts Quartet, the Ensemble Villa
Musica, and the Wind Soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic and frequently
performs duo recitals with violinist Miriam Fried, clarinetist
James Campbell, and hornist, Hermann Baumann. As a collaborator in
song recitals, he has played with such renowned artists as Martina Arroyo,
Grace Bumbry, Franz Hawlata, Edith Mathis, Edda Moser and Hermann Prey.
A prolific recording artist, his recordings in the last few years have
included the complete piano works of Walter Piston, Haydn sonatas, Mozart
concertos, Brahms intermezzi, Schubert's complete works for violin and
piano with Edith Peinemann, Brahms sonatas for clarinet and piano with
James Campbell, Beethoven's complete songs with Hermann Prey and Pamela
Coburn, and previously unrecorded early piano works of Schubert. He
recently recorded Norbert Burgmüller's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra for
the MDG label.
Recording labels with which he has been associated include: Bayer,
Capriccio, Denon, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Erato, Marquis, MDG,Naxos,
Northeastern, Philips, RCA, and Sony.
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Anne Koscielny
is a native of Florida and she began
her piano studies at the age of six. Since then, she has performed in solo recitals, with
orchestras, and in chamber music ensembles throughout the United States, in Central and South
America, Europe, and Asia. Winner of many awards and prizes, including first prize in the
Kosciuszko Chopin Competition in New York City, and first prize in the
National Guild of Piano Teachers Recording Competition, she received the Bachelor of Music
(with Distinction) from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Cecile Genhart.
She then received a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music, where she earned her
Master of Music studying with Robert Goldsand. She has also studied with Frank Mannheimer and she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for study in Vienna. Her London debut in 1972 was received with great critical success. The Daily Telegraph described her performance as filled with "Fire and feeling. Outstanding interpretations. Power and control. This was a remarkable debut." Koscielny has also performed the complete cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas in eight recitals at the University of Hartford, University of Maryland, and Centenary College (Shreveport, Louisiana). At Yale University, she has performed the complete cycle of Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Syoko Aki. Well-known in the greater Washington area, Koscielny has performed for the Washington Performing Arts Society (Kennedy Center), the National Gallery of Art, and the Phillips Collection. As convention artist for several state Music Teachers Associations, she has performed and lectured in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Connecticut. Other concerts, master classes, lectures, and workshops have taken her to more than sixty college and university campuses. She has appeared as festival artist for the Maryland International Piano Festival, the American Matthay Association, and the Frank Mannheimer Festival.
In chamber concerts, Koscielny has performed with the New Hungarian, American, Emerson, New
World, and Guarneri String Quartets. For twelve years, she was Artist-in-Residence at Taos
School of Music (New Mexico), a renowned summer school for strings and piano. Having served
often on the Fulbright Screening Committee, she has also adjudicated the Gina Bachauer
Competition, the Maryland International Piano Competition, the Young Keyboard Artists'
Association and numerous other competitions throughout the United States, Canada and Brazil.
Over the years, many of her students have won major competitions and gone on to establish
careers in teaching and performing. Formerly a professor of piano at the Hartt School of
Music (University of Hartford) Anne Koscielny joined the faculty of the University of
Maryland at College Park in the fall of 1988. Since then, she has been active as a recitalist,
orchestral soloist, chamber musician (pianist of the Altair Trio) and lecturer. Most recently,
she was awarded a Creative and Performing Arts grant to record the thirty-two Sonatas of
Beethoven. She resides in Washington with her husband, pianist and teacher Raymond Hanson.
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George Loring
is currently Vice-President
of the American Matthay Association, and has formerly served as the Association's Secretary.
He
holds a Master of Music in Piano Performance with Honors from the New England Conservatory of
Music and a B.A. cum laude (in Music) from Harvard with additional study at the
Eastman School of Music and Oberlin. His early training was with Albion Metcalf, a pupil
of Dame Myra Hess and Tobias Matthay. He also studied for three summers in England with
Denise Lassimonne, the ward of Tobias Matthay and former faculty of the Tobias Matthay
Pianoforte School and the Royal Academy of Music, London. Other teachers include Leonard
Shure, Jacob Maxin, and Dusi Mura. Formerly Director of Keyboard Studies at St. Paul's
School, he is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire,
where he teaches Applied Piano, Piano Ensemble, Piano Pedagogy, and Music Theory. Mr. Loring
appears frequently throughout New England as a solo recitalist, collaborative artist,
chamber musician, lecturer, and adjudicator. He has appeared in England, Portugal, Spain,
and Hawaii, on New Hampshire public radio and television and on numerous concert series in
New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He has also appeared in concert at the Crane School of Music,
at Harvard University, at the Addison Gallery of Art, at the Bronson-Hutensky Theater in
Hartford, at Roulette and Symphony Space in New York City, and at Jordan Hall in Boston.
Highlights of recent seasons include performances of two Bach Concertos (on harpsichord),
Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 ("Emperor"), and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467
with the Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra, and Carnival of the Animals with both the
Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra and the New Hampshire Philharmonic. Last season, he appeared
in concert as pianist for the Monadnock Chorus at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In April
1999 he was the pianist for a performance ot the "Trout" Quintet by Franz Schubert with noted
string players, including violinist Adrian Levine of the Academy of St-Martin in the Fields
and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and 'cellist Judith Serkin, daughter of the late pianist
Rudolf Serkin.
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Terry McRoberts
is Professor
of Music at Union University in Jackson,
Tennessee, where he teaches private and class piano and related courses.
He also serves as coordinator of keyboard studies and of concerts and
recitals. He is President-Elect of the Tennessee Music Teachers
Association, and he was the editor of the Tennessee Music Teacher for a
number of years. He performs frequently as a soloist and a
collaborative musician, and as a member of the Jackson Symphony
Orchestra. He was a presenter at the International Conference of The
College Music Society in Kyoto, Japan, and was keyboard soloist in a
performance of Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto with the Jackson
Symphony Orchestra in November 2001.
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Mary Pendleton
has performed as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral
keyboardist, and accompanist in the United States, Mexico, and England. She made her London
solo debut at the prestigious Wigmore Hall in 1984, and she has appeared as a soloist with
the Phoenix Symphony, and the Amarillo and Lubbock Symphonies. Since 1989 she has been
Keyboardist for the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and Principal Keyboardist for the Sun Cities
Symphony. She is currently Keyboardist for The Florida Orchestra in Tampa. She is a member
of many chamber ensembles, including the Bel Canto Players, and frequently performs with
singers. Her summer festival appearances include the Sedona Chamber Music Festival, the New
Hampshire Music Festival, and the Park City International Chamber Music Festival.
She began to play the piano before she was three years old, studying with her father, Samuel Pendleton, a
student of Tobias Matthay. At the age of five, she was the youngest performer ever to participate in the Berkeley
(California) Bach Festival, and she later was a prize winner in the Chicago Young Artists Competition.
She graduated as Salutatorian from Interlochen Arts Academy, and completed Bachelor and Master
of Music degrees at Texas Tech University. She studied in England with Denise Lassimonne,
Martino Tirimo and Gwenneth Pryor, completing graduate diplomas at the Royal College of Music
and the Royal Academy of Music. She is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts
degree at Arizona State University. She has taught at Texas Tech University, Arizona State
University, and in the Maricopa County (AZ) Community Colleges. She is married to Warren
Hoffer, a professor of voice at ASU, with whom she often performs.
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Richard Reber
is Professor of Piano at the University of Kansas,
where he has taught piano and piano literature since 1964. He is a graduate of the
Eastman School of Music, where he studied piano with Cecile Staub Genhart. In 1962
he received a Fulbright Scholarship for study at the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria.
He furthered his studies with Frank Mannheimer and in 1973 became a
founding member of the Mannheimer Piano Festival Association. Mr. Reber is an active
recitalist and is recognized as an outstanding lecture-recitalist in the field of twentieth-century
piano music as well as the traditional repertoire. He presents recitals,
lecture-recitals, and workshops throughout the United States and recently lectured and
performed in Japan. His orchestral appearances include the premieres of two concertos,
and he has performed with the Dorian Wind Quintet. Mr. Reber has received numerous research
grants from the University of Kansas. His recording of intermediate level twentieth-century
piano music, entitled Kanzona, was the result of one such grant.
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Neil Rutman
has distinguished himself as a top prize winner in several
international
competitions including the Busoni, Kapell, Casadesus, Joanna Hodges, Concert Artist Guild,
and International Johann
Sebastian Bach Competition. Mr. Rutman has received awards from the National Endowment for
the Arts and a grant
for Artistic Excellence from the Astral Foundation. He has appeared in Carnegie Hall, Alice
Tully Hall, Queen Elizabeth
Hall, and Tokyo's Bunka Kaikan. He has recorded two Mozart Piano Concerti on the ASV label
and an all-Poulenc CD,
with Emmy-Award-winning actor, Tony Randall providing the narration for The Story of Babar
the Little Elephant.
The Washington Post has written that his playing "met the highest standards and his
spotless articulation gave the whole
program unusual polish and virtuoso marks," and recently the New York Times stated
that "he won the audience over for
himself with exquisite performances—both commanding and full of character." A native of
California, Mr. Rutman is
Artist-in-Residence at the University of Central Arkansas. This year Mr. Rutman gave 64
narrated concerts to the children
of the Arkansas public schools throughout the state. A former collegiate boxer with an
amateur record of 6-0, Mr. Rutman
coaches the University of Central Arkansas Boxing Club.
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Ann Sears
is Professor of Music and Director of Performance at Wheaton
College in Norton, Massachusetts, where she teaches piano and courses in European and American
music, including African-American music and American musical theater. She holds degrees from
the New England Conservatory of Music, Arizona State University, and The Catholic University
of America, where her doctoral dissertation was about American art song in turn-of-the-century
Boston. She is well-known for her performances and publications in American music, and has
presented papers and lecture recitals at national meetings of the Sonneck Society for American
Music, the College Music Society, and the American Matthay Association. Concert appearances
include the Badia di Cava Music Festival in Italy, the Master Musicians Festival in Kentucky,
the Sumner School Museum and St. Patrick's in the City in Washington, D.C., the Gardner Museum
and the French Library in Boston, and various schools and universities in the United States.
Her research interests are American art song, the concert tradition in African American music,
and American opera and musical theater. A compact disc, Deep River: The Art Songs and
Spirituals of Harry T. Burleigh, in collaboration with Oral Moses, bass, originally on
Northeastern Records, has been reissued by Albany Records; and a new disc, Fi-yer! A
Hundred Years of African-American Song, with tenor William Brown, was recently released
by Albany. She is currently review editor of the College Music Society journal Symposium
and membership secretary of the American Liszt Society.
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Stephen Siek
is the current President of the American Matthay Association.
He has studied with Stewart Gordon, Donald Hageman, Frank Mannheimer, and Denise Lassimonne. He has concertized extensively throughout North America and in 1986 he performed the 24 preludes of Rachmaninoff in New York's
Lincoln Center. He made his London debut in 1988. His
numerous articles have appeared in such journals as the American Music Teacher and the
Piano
Quarterly, and in the summer 1993 issue of American Music he presented new research
concerning musical figures active in
post-Revolutionary Philadelphia. He is also a
contributor to the second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
and
other recent articles include pieces for the American Musical Instrument Society
Journal
and Symposium, the journal of the College Music Society. His recording of
The Philadelphia
Sonatas of Alexander Reinagle (c.1750-1809) was released on the Titanic label in 1998.
Siek's
interests have also extended to other areas of American history and culture, and he has
published and lectured widely on the earlier work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He holds
the B. Mus.
and the M. Mus. degrees from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. from the
College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati. He currently serves on the
faculty of Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.
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Dan Franklin Smith
has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and vocal
accompanist throughout the U.S. in venues such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the
Distinguished Artist Series at the Cleveland Museum, and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. He has been acclaimed
for his extreme refinement as an interpreter of Chopin and other Romantic composers. Recently, he returned from
Germany where he performed in the Kurt Weill Zentrum in Dessau and the Lucas Cranach Hof in Wittenberg. He
made his European debut as a solo recitalist to a standing ovation in Sweden's Mariefred Kyrkan in 1997. In September
he released the premiere recording of Kurt Atterberg's Concerto, which he also performed in Sweden in October 1998,
with Arne Johansson conducting the Sofia Orchestra. Svenska Dagbladet described his performance as marked by a
"sensitive ear, strong sense of style and fine musicianship . . .more than anyone could wish for." The performance was also
televised throughout Sweden. Other European engagements have included orchestral appearances in England with the
Bournemouth Sinfonietta, and solo recitals in London, Stockholm, and Leipzig.
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Elizabeth Vandevander
received her B.S. degree in music education from
Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, and her M.A. from Goddard College in Vermont She has worked extensively
with Donald Hageman, who introduced her to the Matthay principles. She has served as Archivist for the
American Matthay Association and is currently the Editor of the Matthay News, a position she has held since 1987.
Mrs. Vandevander has performed for concert series at the Dayton (Ohio) Art Institute, the Dayton Music Club, the
Sigma Alpha Iota women's professional music sorority, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Dayton, and First Church in
Belfast, Maine. She has also played on the Shiloh Church Concert Series in Dayton. Presently she is a member of the piano
faculty at the University of Dayton, and she also maintains a thriving piano studio in Dayton.
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Gary Wolf
is a former President of the American Matthay Association and is a frequent
recitalist and ensemble musician who performs throughout the
United States and Europe. Major cities where he has been heard include New York,
Toronto, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Salzburg, Brussels, and Merida. He frequently conducts
workshops, master classes and clinics at numerous colleges and universities.
Dr. Wolf holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music
where his piano study was with Cecile Staub-Genhart. He previously studied with Gordon
Terwilliger and Adrian Pouliot at Wichita State University and also with Kurt Neumuller as
a Fulbright Scholar at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He is active in many
professional organizations and has taught many award-winning students. Dr. Wolf holds
the rank of Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Central Florida.
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Qiao-Shuang Xian
was born in the city of Shanghai in the Peoples Republic of China, and she began playing the piano
at the age of four. After graduating from the pre-college division of the Shanghai Conservatory of
Music, she received a scholarship in 1992 to pursue her musical studies at the Schwob School of Music at
Columbus State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Music degree
in piano performance as a student of Steve Clark in 1996.
She then
received the Master of Music degree in piano performance at Louisiana State University as a
student of Constance Carroll, and she
is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance at LSU.
Since arriving in the United States, Ms. Xian has concertized extensively and has been a winner or
finalist in numerous piano competitions. In 1998 she was declared national winner of the
MTNA Collegiate Artist Piano Performance Competition in Nashville. Ms. Xian (Tracy) is now serving as staff
accompanist for the Schwob School of Music and teaches piano through the Columbus State University
Music Conservatory.
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