Teodora Adzharova
is the winner of
the 2007 Clara Wells Scholarship Auditions. Born in 1984 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, she began her musical studies at the age of 7, and at
12 she was accepted as a student of Svetlana Kosseva at the D. Petkov Music School in Plovdiv. After winning
many national and international piano competitions, she continued her studies at the National Music Conservatory in Sofia, where she worked with Anton Dikov.
She is currently a junior at the University of Central Arkansas, where she studies with Neil Rutman. She has concertized in Bulgaria, Macedonia, France, Germany,
and the Czech Republic, and she continues to excel in many competitions in both Europe and America.
.
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Rachel Anderson
began studying piano at the age of six,
and at 18, she won the Beryl Ferguson Trophy, awarded to the most outstanding instrumentalist in her class
at the Winnipeg Music Festival. She was subsequently invited to play on the C.B.C., and soon had earned a B.Mus. degree
from the University of Manitoba. She also holds an M. A. in Musicology from McGill University in Montreal. Now a prominent
teacher in Vancouver, she is highly sought as an adjudicator. She is also a member of Drosera, a contemporary music ensemble, and
has appeared annually at the Vancouver
New Music Festival since 2005. Since 2006, she has been performing four-hand and two-piano repertoire with Robin
Harrison, and they are currently planning tours of North America and Europe.
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Carl Angelo
has performed organ,
piano, and chamber concerts in Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Virginia, and Michigan. His organ teachers have included
Larry Smith, John D. Herr, and John Ferguson.
Dr. Angelo also received extensive piano training from pianist Nellie Whittaker (a pupil of Guy Maier), a graduate
of Julliard, and has coached additionally with Dr. Gary Wolf. Dr. Angelo has lectured and performed for the American
Matthay Piano Festival, and has also co-edited with Marie Hasse, materials based upon the ideas of Matthay pupil Helen
Parker Ford.
Dr. Angelo is the Minister of Music/Organist at First Congregational Church, Saginaw, Michigan where he directs a
comprehensive music ministry program consisting of adult and children’s choirs, handbell choir, recorder consort,
and Musical Arts Series. Prior to his arrival at First Congregational Church in Saginaw, Michigan, Dr. Angelo
served churches in Cuyahoga Falls, OH, Indianapolis, IN, and Winter Haven, FL. He is also the rehearsal pianist for
the Saginaw Choral Society. He is a 1991 graduate of Indiana University with a doctorate in organ performance. He has
a B.M. in Music Education and an M.M. in Sacred Music from Kent State University and is a member of Pi
Kappa Lambda National Music Honorary Society.
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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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Nancy Hill Elton
is a native of Columbia,
South Carolina, and she received the Bachelor of Music degree in piano and voice from
the University of South Carolina where she studied piano with
John Kenneth Adams. She holds a Doctorate of
Musical Arts in piano from the University of Texas where she studied with John Perry.
An accomplished singer, she also earned a DMA from Texas in voice. Further study
included chamber music and accompanying at the Music Academy of the West in Santa
Barbara, California, and study in Duluth with Frank Mannheimer.
She has been the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships and has competed at the
national level, including the Naumburg Piano Competition and the Music Teachers' National
Association (MTNA) piano competition, in which she was a national finalist in 1972. She
recently performed Beethoven's third Concerto with the Coastal Symphony of Georgia at St.
Simon's Island and will be returning there next year for solo performances as well as
another concerto. She has taught applied piano and voice, class piano, coach accompanying,
and sight-reading at Clayton State College in Morrow, Georgia, and the Georgia Academy of Music,
and she held an interim position last year teaching piano majors at Georgia State University.
Currently, she is teaching at the Atlanta Music Academy and also maintains a private studio in
her home in Atlanta.
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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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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. He now
resides in Saskatoon as a Professor Emeritus, teaching, concertizing, and frequently adjudicating.
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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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Anne Koscielny
has performed in solo recital, chamber ensemble, and with orchestra throughout the United States, in Mexico,
South America, Europe and Asia. Winner of many awards and prizes including first prize in the Kosciuszko Chopin
Competition in New York City, first prize in the National Guild of Piano Teachers Recording Competition, and a
Fulbright Award for study in Vienna, she received the Bachelor of Music Degree and Performer’s Certificate from
Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Cécile Genhart, and the Master of Music Degree from Manhattan School of Music.
She has also studied with Frank Mannheimer. The Daily Telegraph described
her 1972 London debut as "a remarkable debut, filled with fire and feeling, outstanding interpretations, power and
control."
Koscielny has performed the cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas at University of Hartford, University of Maryland,
Centenary College in Shreveport, and Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. At Yale University, Koscielny performed
solo recitals and the cycle of Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Yale faculty violinist Syoko Aki.
Well-known in the greater Washington, D.C. area, Koscielny has performed at the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery of
Art, and the Phillips Collection on numerous occasions. She has appeared as festival artist for the Maryland
International Piano Festival, Matthay Piano Festival, Frank Mannheimer Festival, Southern Missouri International
Piano Competition, and New Orleans International Piano Competition. In chamber concerts Koscielny has performed
with the New Hungarian, American, New World, Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets. For Twelve years, she was
artist-in-residence at Taos School of Music (New Mexico), a summer school for strings and piano.
She has served on the Fulbright Screening Committee in New York City and also on the screening committee of the
2003 Kapell International Piano Competition, the Gina Bachauer Competition, the Maryland International Piano
Competition, the Young Keyboard Artists’ Association, the New Orleans International Competition, the Southern
Missouri International Competiton, and the 2004 Kosciuszko Chopin Competition (NYC). Her students have won top
prizes in major international competitions and have established successful careers in teaching and performing.
Koscielny has held positions as professor of music at the Hartt School of Music, the University of Maryland, and as
visiting professor at Eastman School of Music. In May of 2002, she traveled to China and gave recitals, lectures and
master classes in several cities including Shenyang, Yantei, and Xiamin.
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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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John O'Brien
is Professor
of Accompanying at East Carolina University. He has studied with John Perry, Gwendolyn Koldofsky, and Jean Barr.
He has also studied harpsichord with Malcolm Hamilton, Elaine Funaro, and Arthur Hasshas. He has
collaborated with such artists as
Metropolitan Opera stars Hilda Harris and Victoria Livengood, violinist Eliot Chapo, tenor Bill Brown, flautist
Carol Wincenc (The Juilliard School), and clarinetist Deborah Chodacki (University of Michigan). He has performed in New
York's Merkin Recital Hall, at the Istanbul Festival with cellist Selma Gokcen, and his guest appearances include recitals
and masterclasses at the Interlochen Arts Academy, Florida State University, Columbus State University, and the
Southeastern Music Festival. He is active as both a pianist and harpsichordist and performs regularly with the Clarino
Consort and Baroque dance soloist Paige Whitley-Bauguess. He was a featured artist at the 2005 and 2006 Magnolia
Baroque Festival in Winston-Salem. Dr. O'Brien has also performed twice at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival with
the Chatham Baroque. He holds a DMA from the University of Southern California.
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Stephen Siek
is a past President of the American Matthay Association and
has recently completed Marley's Host: The Life and Teachings of Tobias Matthay, to be published
soon.
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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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 from 1987 to 2002, as the Editor of the Matthay News. She presently serves as
Secretary to the AMA.
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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Signe Sebo Zale
has studied with Cécile Genhart,
Frank Mannheimer, and Frank Glazer. She has taught privately
in the Rochester area for more than 30 years,
and adjudicated for the National Guild of Piano Teachers for more than 35 years. An active performer in the
Rochester area as both soloist and collaborator, she is a member of the Rochester Morning Musicale and the
Rochester Alumni Chapter of Mu Phi Epsilon. She is also District Director for Mu Phi Epsilon's Eastern Great
Lakes Province One and she mentors chapters at the Eastman School of Music and Ithaca College. She holds Bachelor’s
and Master’s degrees from Eastman in piano performance and pedagogy, and while there she performed as soloist
with the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra. She also holds a Master's degree in Counseling from the University of
Rochester and is the retired Director of Guidance for the Churchville-Chili Central School District in suburban
Rochester. In the summer of 2005 she presented a workshop for school counselors at the Eastman Summer Session
on "Career Counseling for Music Students.”
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