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 Emeritus at the University of South
Carolina School of Music, where he has served on the faculty since 1964. Now retired, he has recently devoted more time to
masterclasses, including two in May 2003 at Samford University and Shepherd College. He recently recorded a CD of piano
music of Debussy and Poulenc, and this spring is recording a CD of piano music of Schubert. He plans to
continue his active concert life, but devote more time to writing and recording, as well as working with very young students.
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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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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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James Fogle
is presently a professor of
music at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he teaches piano, courses in music history and literature, and
music research. He has degrees from Elon College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His principal teachers
include Louise Mathis, Gene Featherstone, Michael Zenge, and Francis Whang. He has studied and coached with John
Kenneth Adams, Claude Frank, David Burge, Barbara Rowan, Stephen Drury, and Seymour Bernstein. He has done much
collaborative work with area singers and instrumentalists. He has a special interest in contemporary music and is
currently developing a program focused on piano music emanating from New York during the 1920s. Longer range
plans include a series of workshops focusing on legacies of twentieth-century style with respect to piano literature.
Recitals and special programs during recent years have included the Beethoven Sonatas, Op. 31; a one-man show
based on Schumann’s Kreisleriana; a program on piano music from the far corners of the world (“The Global Piano”),
and a program on the relationship between George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. He has been an active member of the
North Carolina Music Teachers Association and is a past president of that organization.
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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. 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 1912 Erard, which he recently rebuilt. He performed with the MVSO again in
May of 2005, performing Liszt's Totentanz.
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Ann Holler
earned a B. A. in Mathematics from
King College and a B. A. in Music (Piano Performance) from Virginia
Intermont College in Bristol, Virginia, where she studied with
Kenneth Huber. She also holds an M. M. in Music Theory from the
University of Tennessee.
In her own compositions she draws upon
her previous studies in piano, voice, organ, theory, and mathematics
to create new music. Her music has been performed locally and in
the British Isles. The Appalachian Music Teachers Association named
her Composer of the Year in May 2004.
Two compositions were performed in "Artistic Reflections," a
multi-media program held at First Presbyterian Church in Bristol in
February 2004. This performance was featured in the May/June 2004
issue of Soundingboard, the journal of the American Composers Forum.
In this program, pianist Jane Morison played the piano solo
"Dreamshape" while the audience viewed two paintings by artist Dee
Sproll. During the sanctuary choir's performance of "Exultation and
Immortality," five paintings by Clara Thomas were shown to the
audience. Commissioned by the sanctuary choir of First Presbyterian
Church, this work is a setting of five poems of Emily Dickinson. In
May and June 2004, the choir sang this work at Iona Abbey, Sterling
Castle, and St. Giles Cathedral in Scotland, and also in York,
England.
Ann holds permanent certification in voice, piano, and theory, granted
by the Tennessee Music Teachers Association. She frequently judges at
piano auditions. She has written for the
American Music
Teacher and the
Tennessee Music
Teacher and is the co-author
of the Tennessee Music Teachers Association Written Theory Tests,
used throughout the state of Tennessee. She has been listed in
Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who Among American Teachers.
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Kenneth Huber
is a member of the piano faculty of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota,
having been appointed in 1990. He received his Bachelor of Music Degree from Indiana
University in 1967, and completed his Master of Music Degree with Honors in 1972. His study of the piano began at age four
with his aunt, and continued with Shirley Shaffer of the Matthay School. While at Indiana University, he studied with Gyorgy
Sebok and spent summers in Duluth, Minnesota, studying with the late Frank Mannheimer. From 1969 to 1973, he studied
privately with internationally-known pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher of the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.
Mr. Huber has concertized extensively throughout the United States since making his solo debut at age fourteen in Colorado
Springs. He appears frequently on radio and television, including a widely-broadcast video tape for the University of North
Carolina Public Television; a live radio broadcast on WQXR, New York City; and on Minnesota Public Radio including its prestigious "Live from Landmark" series. His performances have taken him to hundreds of cities in over thirty-five states including engagements at the Indianapolis, Toledo, and Minneapolis Museums of Art, the Bakken Library, the Walker Art Center, and Steinway Hall. In addition he has been heard frequently as soloist with regional orchestras, including the Colorado Philharmonic; the Gulf Coast Symphony; the Fairbanks, Alaska, Symphony; the Chattanooga Symphony; the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra; and the Richmond Sinfonia. He has also appeared in recital as accompanist for many leading singers, including opera stars of the Metropolitan, New York City, Vienna, and La Scala Operas.
In 1968 Mr. Huber began a four-year tour of duty as concert pianist with the United States Navy Band in Washington, DC.
In addition to numerous appearances with the Concert Band, he played over 350 engagements as accompanist for the Sea
Chanters, the official Navy Chorus, appearing at the White House, the State Department, and for world dignitaries and government officials throughout the United States.
Mr. Huber currently resides in New York City and Minneapolis, where he teaches privately in addition to his college
teaching appointments. He has been actively involved in music education since 1960 maintaining his own private studios,
college teaching positions, and appearing as guest lecturer and master teacher for colleges, universities, and professional
organizations. He counts among his former students many scholarship and prize winners who are actively pursuing
musical careers as distinguished performers, teachers, and church musicians. He is sought out by professional and
amateur performing pianists alike who continue to study well beyond their conservatory training.
During the 1989-90 academic year, Mr. Huber commuted to Princeton, New Jersey, where he served as Adjunct
Professor of Piano at Westminster Choir College. From 1974-1987 he was tenured Professor of Piano at Virginia
Intermont College in Bristol, Virginia, and was Founder and Director of Celebrity Concerts, a series which presented
an extensive array of internationally-acclaimed artists. He also served ten years on the piano faculty of Augsburg
College in Minneapolis. In 1987 he was Artist-in-Residence for the theater department at Gardner-Webb College.
During the summers he has presented lectures and recitals at both the American Matthay Association Festivals and
the Mannheimer Piano Festivals, for which he was Artistic Director. He is often asked to adjudicate for national
scholarship competitions and auditions, including the MTNA, the San Antonio International Keyboard Competition,
the Miss Kentucky Pageant, and St. Paul's Schubert Club. He is an active member of several professional musical
organizations and has served two terms as panelist for the Virginia Commission for the Arts.
During the 1977-78 season, Mr. Huber's recitals featured the United States premiere of the Piano Sonata
by Kenton Coe, distinguished American composer, including a performance at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, DC. The following season included the West Coast premiere of that work in a San Francisco debut recital
at the Old First Center for the Performing Arts. In 1981 he made his Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall)
debut with cellist Paul Lawrence in New York City.
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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 is organist at United Methodist
Church in Jackson. 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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Ann Sears
is the current President of the American Matthay Association. She also
serves as 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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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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Jane Luther Smith
has received the Licentiate Performer's Diploma in Piano from London's
Royal Academy of Music. Her work with first-generation Matthay students
includes extensive study with Denise Lassimonne in England and additional work with the late Frank Mannheimer.
She received her Bachelor of Music
and Master of Music Degrees (cum laude Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of
South Carolina where her teachers included John Williams
and John Kenneth
Adams. Miss Smith was also a student of the late Elizabeth Newell at Coker College
in Hartsville, South Carolina.
Her experience as a performer has been varied, including appearances
in England, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, California,
Minnesota, and Canada.
In 1976 she was the winner of the AMA's Clara Wells Piano Auditions
held at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and she was the
recipient of a Chattanooga Cotton Ball Fellowship for advanced study in music
in competitions held at the University of Tennessee (Chattanooga). She has
been a featured performer both on the South Carolina Educational TV and Radio
networks. She was the winner of the 1996 "Woman of Achievement Award" in the
area of fine arts presented by the YWCA of the Upper Lowlands, Inc.
In addition to her demand as a solo recitalist, she is on the music
faculty of the University of South Carolina, Sumter, and has taught Music
Fundamentals for Central Carolina Technical College. She is owner of Jane
Luther Smith Piano Studios in Sumter.
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Raymond Songayllo
earned his Bachelor
and Master of Music degrees in
piano from Northwestern University. He studied at Aspen, in New York with Alexander
Uninsky and Grant Johannesen, and in Boston with Alexander Borovsky. He has performed
throughout the U.S. and has appeared twice at Carnegie Recital Hall. As a composer, he
has had works presented in various venues, college and university events, festivals and
conferences, and in Fontainebleau, working in composition at the Conservatoire Americaine.
He won the Keyboard Category Award at the Delius Competition at Jacksonville University in
1976, 1992, and 1993. He has received grants from both the Minnesota Composers Forum and
Meet the Composer.
After 27 years of college/university teaching, he is currently performing, lecturing,
composing, and adjudicating. In June of 1990, he made his European debut with two solo
recitals in Geneva under the auspices of Concerts Atlantique of New York. Mr. Songayllo
is a founding member of the Iowa Composers Forum, and was the recipient of the 1993 Pyle
Commission for his Piano Quintet. In the summer of 1994 he was one of 18 pianists at the
French Piano Institute in Paris, appearing in recital at the Salle Cortot. In June 1995 he
performed a lecture/recital at the College Music Society International Conference in Berlin.
In July of 1996 he again performed at the Salle Cortot, and also premiered a new composition,
Hommage à Fauré, in the Salle Munch of the École Normale.
In the 1996-97 season, Mr. Songayllo has appeared as soloist and composer in various venues,
including, again, at the College Music Society Conference in Vienna. His compositions
include works for solo piano, harpsichord, piano with instrumental combinations,
songs, orchestral compositions. His style is eclectic, employing both tonal and non-tonal
styles.
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