Festival 2004 Bios

Matthay Festival 2004
University of Richmond
Richmond, Virginia


Recitalists and Presenters





John Kenneth Adams

received his early musical training in Birmingham, Alabama, where he studied piano with Guy and Elizabeth Allen at the Birmingham College of Music. After moving to Kansas City, Missouri, he continued his training with Mary Newitt Dawson at the University of Kansas City. During this time he also studied with Carl Friedberg, one of the last students of Clara Schumann, and with Joanna Graudan at the Aspen Festival. A Victor Wilson Scholar at the Yale School of Music, he studied with Bruce Simonds, and twice won the Concerto Competition and was awarded the Lockwood Prize for the best piano recital. A Fulbright Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music followed, where he studied with Hilda Dederich, and in 1960 he attended the Casals Festival in Zermatt in 1960 as an accompanist. From 1961 until 1971 he studied with Frank Mannheimer, especially during his renowned series of summer sessions in Duluth, Minnesota. Mr. Adams has played on many important series throughout the USA, and during the 1970s made many tours for the United States Information Service in South America, Spain, Italy, and Central America. He made an extensive tour for Gioventu Musicale throughout Italy in 1976 and in 1978 he made his New York debut with an all-French program in Carnegie Recital Hall.

His concerts in South Carolina over the past four decades now number in the hundreds, and he is especially well know as an interpreter of French piano music. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the French Piano Institute in Paris, and has documented the piano music of Debussy in a series of articles for the Piano Quarterly. In 1985-6 he performed all of Debussy's piano music in five recitals at the University of South Carolina. He received the Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Missouri in 1981. In 1997 he was awarded the Mungo Award for distinguished teaching of undergraduates by the University of South Carolina, and in 1999 was made a member of The Guardian Society by USC President John Palms. He is a regular visitor to South Korea, where he has made seven visits since 1986. In 1997 he visited Sophia, Bulgaria where he gave masterclasses at the National Conservatory and was a guest of the Varna International Choral Festival in Varna, Bulgaria. This past year he visited France, Italy and South Korea for concerts, masterclasses and private lessons. In addition to his solo recitals, he often joins Ella Ann Holding (Artist in Residence at Campbell University) for duo-piano recitals in the Southeast. In April 2000 he will receive an Alumni Citation of Merit from Yale University. John Kenneth Adams is Distinguished Professor of Piano at the University of South Carolina School of Music, where he has served on the faculty since 1964.

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Richard Becker

is associate professor of music and head of piano studies at the University of Richmond. He is active as a recitalist, composer, chamber musician, and poet, having performed at over sixty colleges and at venues such as Alice Tully Hall, Town Hall, the Library of Congress, the National Gallery and the French Embassy. Abroad, he has performed at Cité Internationale des Arts, and in Salle Cortot, Paris. His solo playing has been broadcast on NPR, Voice of America, WNYC, WETA, and WGMS. His performance on a CRI CD of piano works of the acclaimed American composer, David Chaitkin is forthcoming. Becker holds degrees from the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music where he studied piano with Cécile Staub Genhart and from Boston University where he was assistant to Leonard Shure. Additional piano studies have been with Rudolph Serkin, Leon Fleisher, and most recently with Roy Howat and Noel Lee. A recipient of "Meet the Composer" grants, a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and a Nominee for a Music Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Becker has composed music that has been commissioned and performed by the Peabody Piano Trio, cellist James Wilson, pianist Nancy Burton Garrett, the Richmond Symphony Woodwind Quintet, the Richmond Symphony Woodwind Trio, and the Roxbury Players Clarinet Quintet and the Hillel Foundation of Rochester, N.Y. . His works have appeared at such venues as the Tanglewood Music Festival, Peabody Conservatory, National Gallery of Art, the Gardner Museum, Boston University School of the Arts, James Madison University, University of Texas, Williams College, Bennington College, l'Ecole Normal du Musique, Cite Internationale des Arts of Paris, France, the Eastman School of Music and frequently at the University of Richmond. The world premiere of his large, single-movement work for piano and cello, Crossing Pont Marie (1997-99), was hailed as "An Absolute Triumph" by the Richmond Times Dispatch. His latest solo piano composition, "Getty Square" (2003), is a single movement six-minute long tribute to the city of Yonkers, New York. As a chamber performer, Mr. Becker has appeared at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the 92nd St. Y, Washington University of St. Louis, Brattleboro Music Center, the Carpenter Center, and at Harvard University and Williams College. Some of the artists with whom he has collaborated are the Shanghai Quartet, the Richmond Sinfonia, Judith Serkin, vocalists Kathy Koan, Nan Nall, and Suzanne Stevens, violinists, Phil Lewis and Wei Gang and Hong Gang Li of the Shanghai Quartet, violist, Zheng Wang, and cellists James Wilson and Andor Toth Jr. Poetry by Richard Becker has appeared in AMERICA, Columbia, Visions International, and several other magazines and journals since 1993.

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Stephanie Burlington

is a graduate of Wheaton College and she also holds an M.F.A. from the Trinity Rep Conservatory at Rhode Island College. She currently serves as assistant professor of theatre at Wheaton, where she teaches acting and has directed a a number of productions. She also remains active as an actress, having appeared as Hedda in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Lady Teazle in Sheridan's School for Scandal.





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Constance Carroll

has received acclaim throughout the nation for her performances as a recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral soloist. The featured artist at conventions of the state Music Teachers Associations of North and South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, and Louisiana, she has also given lecture recitals at the national MTNA conventions in Houston, and most recently, in Kansas City. Equally adept as a teacher and lecturer, she numbers among her students winners of local and regional competitions, and has presented recitals, master classes and lectures at numerous universities and colleges throughout the country. In March 1998, her student Qiao-Shuano Xian was the National Collegiate Artist Winner of MTNA Young Chang Piano Auditions in Nashville. A native of Arizona, Ms. Carroll began piano studies at the age of five. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Arizona (with high distinction) and her Master of Music and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. Her piano studies have also included extensive work with Frank Mannheimer. Following study as a Fulbright Scholar in Vienna and Salzburg, she was appointed to the music faculty at Louisiana State University. Subsequently, she taught at Wisconsin State University and Lenoir-Rhyne College, and was artist-in-residence at Centenary College of Louisiana for twenty-one years. She was re-appointed to the faculty at Louisiana State University in 1995, and in 1996 became the first recipient of the Barineau Professorship of Keyboard Studies. In recent years, Ms. Carroll has been on the faculties of Brevard Music Center, the University of Houston High School Piano Camp, the Frank Mannheimer Festival, the American Matthay Association annual meeting, and served as artist-juror at the New Orleans Institute for the Performing Arts.

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Nigel Coxe

is a Jamaican-born, British-trained pianist living in the U. S. A Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he studied with Harold Craxton, he has also served as a professor at the Academy. He is currently professor of music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and he combines his teaching with an active schedule of recitals and lecturing. He has performed widely in Europe, Great Britain, and America. He has appeared as soloist with the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Hallé Orchestra, and many others. He has also given recitals for the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney and has made numerous solo and concerto appearances for the BBC London. The New York Times has written, "He goes to the heart of his music in modestly straightforward fashion, leading from expressive strength and shunning any sort of virtuoso exaggerations." The Times (London) has called him "a musician's pianist to the core." Mr. Coxe has made two very well-received CDs, both available on the Titanic label: Music of Percy Grainger and Showstoppers, a disc featuring the music of Gershwin, Grainger, and Eubie Blake. Both have received worldwide critical acclaim. Recently he was also a member of the International Jury for the Concours de Musique du Canada in Montreal.

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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 has just completed its thirty-fourth 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. In April 2003 he again appeared with the MVSO in a performance of Dohnanyi's Variations on a Nursery Tune, which he performed on a rare 90-keyed 1913 Érard, which he recently rebuilt.

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Christopher Harding

has studied with Milton Kidd and with Mannaheim Pressler at Indiana University, where he completed his Mus.D. He gave his first recital at the age of twelve, and since then he has given numerous solo and concerto performances in California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, and in the cities of Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. In 1992, he was chosen by then Artistic Director Mstislav Rostropovitch to perform Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Randall Craig Fleischer, a performance the Washington Post deemed “the highlight of the night.” He continues to perform with orchestras frequently, and recent seasons have included engagements with the San Angelo Symphony and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. He has completed three tours of Asia, collaborating with the Maestro Taijiro Iimori and the Tokyo City Philharmonic, and also performing lecture recitals and giving master classes in both Tokyo and Seoul. He has also collaborated with conductors John DeMain, Gisèle Ben-Dor and Fabio Machetti and with orchestras such as the Santa Barbara Symphony, the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, the Camerata Orchestra, the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra, and the Prince William Symphony Orchestra. His recent seasons included performances of the Schumann Concerto, the Beethoven "Emperor" Concerto, and the Ravel Concerto in G Major with orchestras in North Carolina, in addition to a full season of chamber music and solo performances in the United States and in South Korea. With cellist Thomas Loewenheim, he was featured on a live broadcast concert from Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, produced by the CBC and broadcast also in Israel. The 2004-2005 season will include another United States tour with Mr. Lowenheim as well as concerts at the Matan Festival in Israel, and solo tours to South Korea and China, as well as concerts around the U.S. Mr. Harding additionally has recorded two solo discs and one chamber music disc for the Brevard Classics Live Performance Series.

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Robin Harrison

was born in London, where he studied with Frederick Bailey of High Wycombe before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Harold Craxton. After being presented with the Silver Medal and Albanesi Prize, he was awarded an Italian Government Scholarship for further studies in Rome, where he was offered a place in Carlo Zecchi's class at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. Later, he studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and ultimately, he returned to London to work under the guidance of Ilona Kabos. He has been heard in frequent broadcasts for the BBC and other European and South American radio networks, and his many concerts include several appearances at the Cheltenham Festival of British Contemporary Music and the Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. On the occasion of his long-awaited debut at Carnegie Recital Hall the New York Times observed, "Robin Harrison is an impressive pianist." The former Head of Piano in the Department of Music at the University of Saskatchewan, Mr. Harrison has made guest appearances with leading Canadian orchestras and is well known to Canadian audiences for his many recital broadcasts on the CBC. He has performed at the Centre D'Arts Orford in Quebec and has been a guest artist for the American Liszt Society Festivals in Canada and the United States.

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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 has served as Secretary for the American Matthay Association 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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Ella Ann Holding

graduated cum laude from Salem College. She holds a Master of Music in piano performance from Yale University and she also studied at the Juilliard School of Music. She attended the Royal Academy of Music in London as a Fulbright Scholar, studying under Hilda Dederich. She has performed with many orchestras, including the Yale Symphony, the Raleigh Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, and the South Carolina Philharmonic. In addition, she has performed at the Spoleto Festival and for the Salem College Artists Series. She has recorded works by Hunter Johnson for Albany Records. In addition to numerous solo recitals each season, she performs as pianist with the Leros Trio. She recently received an honorary degree from Campbell University where she served as Artist in Residence for many years.

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Elizabeth Lauer

holds a B.A. from Bennington College, where her teachers included Julian DeGray and Claude Frank, and an M.A. from Columbia University. She also studied composition with Otto Luening and Lionel Nowak. She spent all six years at these schools on full scholarship. She then received a Fulbright Scholarship to study with composer Phillip Jarnach, who was Director of the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. Upon her return from Europe, she worked at Columbia Records as Assistant to the President, Goddard Lieberson. She is highly active as a composer, and her compositions are principally in the area of chamber music and vocal works. She has also written orchestral pieces, an opera, music for dance and ballet, incidental theatre music, plus an assortment of pieces for various solo instruments. She does a great deal of arranging as well. Her compositions are published by Arsis Press, Carl Fischer, Boston Music Company and Kjos Publishers; they are also obtainable in A.C.A.'s Composer Editions. Recordings on CD are available on the Newport Classics, Capstone and I Virtuosi labels, the last of which is an all-Lauer disc of piano works entitled "Five Flower Rags." played by the composer. Lauer's compositions are widely performed, and have been well reviewed, both in this country and abroad. She has won many prizes and several commissions, and has served as composer-in- residence. She has been the subject of two one-woman concert programs, both of which were performed in New York City and Connecticut. A busy pianist, both as soloist and chamber music player, she has appeared in concert halls, on television, radio and in video format from Maine to Florida, from New York to Michigan. This includes fifteen solo recitals at Lincoln Center. As a teacher, she has worked most recently for years as Professor in the Music Department of the University of Bridgeport, with responsibilities for piano, theory, ear training, and computers-in-music. She pioneered a muIti-disciplinary course which featured works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Mann and Nietzsche, on the subject of revolution in the arts. She has also taught Music Appreciation at Norwalk Community College.

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Thomas Mastroianni

is currently professor emeritus and a former dean of the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music at Catholic University. He has studied with Beveridge Webster, Bela Nagy, and Sidney Foster, and is known for his numerous concert appearances and master classes throughout the United States, Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America, China, Korea, and Russia. He is a recipient of the Franz Liszt Medal of the Hungarian Liszt Society, and presently serves as executive secretary of the American Liszt Society. He holds two degrees from The Juilliard School and a Mus.D. from Indiana University. He is a frequent adjudicator and presenter of master classes and workshops on memory, technique, and performance anxiety.



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Ann Sears

is the current President of the American Matthay Assoiciation and she also serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Music 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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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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Christopher Ungerer

is directly connected to the pianistic legacies of Tobias Matthay and Artur Schnabel through his teacher, Eunice Norton. Mr. Ungerer made his solo debut at the age of 13 and his orchestral debut with members of the Pittsburgh Symphony at the age of 18. He has performed throughout the United States; and in the United Kingdom, Germany and Israel. His playing has been heard on NPR in the United States; on WDR in Germany; on the BBC in the United Kingdom; and playing the music of Brahms, on the soundtrack for the motion picture Particles of Truth, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in May of 2003. Notable venues among Mr. Ungerer’s performances in recent years are the Tönhalle in Düsseldorf; St. Paul’s Cathedral in Jerusalem; Carnegie Hall, The Benedum Center, Frick Auditorium, and The Byham Theatre in Pittsburgh; Rockefeller University, The Music in Chelsea Series, and The Trinity Wall Street Series in New York. Mr. Ungerer made his Carnegie Hall recital debut at Weill Recital Hall in December of 2002. On September 11, 2001, Mr. Ungerer’s apartment was destroyed by the collapse of the World Trade Center necessitating the cancellation of most of his 2001-2002 Season. He made a triumphant return to the concert stage in April of 2002. Recent important engagements include a concert at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York under the auspices of the Kenneth Leighton Trust, where he gave the American premiere of Kenneth Leighton’s 4 Romantic Pieces. The New York Times praised his “appealing boldness and drama,” and wrote, “Mr. Ungerer, who studied with the Schnabel student Eunice Norton, admirably captured the music’s restless motoric drive, and in the third movement, a contrasting sense of stillness rendered in gorgeous Messiaen-like pastels.” Mr. Ungerer made his London recital debut at Wigmore Hall in October of 2003 and appeared on BBC Radio 3’s acclaimed “In Tune” program. He also made his Chicago recital debut on the prestigious Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Preston Bradley Hall at the Cultural Center which was broadcast live on WFMT-FM radio. Mr. Ungerer resides in New York City.

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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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