Overtones: Spring 2017

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NOTATIONS NOTATIONS ALUMNI 1950s RONALD LEONARD (Cello ’55) performed Beethoven’s complete Cello Sonatas and Variations with pianist Fabio Bidini, his colleague at the Colburn School, in two sold-out concerts in December. JOSÉ SEREBRIER (Composition ’58) has been co-commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and the BIS record label to compose a piano concerto, Symphonic BACH Variations, to be recorded by pianist Yevgeny Sudbin. 1960s DAVID BROWN (Piano ’67, Composition ’73) received a 2016 Steinway and Sons Top Teacher Award from Jacobs Music for outstanding instruction and leadership in piano education. 1970s NANCY BEAN (Viola ’71), DAVID CRAMER (Flute ’75), LLOYD SMITH (Cello ’65), and ANNE SULLIVAN (Harp ’81) performed a recital in March as part of the 1807 & Friends series in Philadelphia. Lloyd and Nancy are members of the Wister Quartet, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this season. The quartet will present a recital in April with guest artist KERRI RYAN (Violin ’98), Alumni may share news of recent professional activities and personal milestones by e-mail to alumnirelations@curtis.edu or by post to Laura Sancken, Curtis Institute of Music, 1726 Locust St., Philadelphia, PA 19103. Notes are edited for length and frequency. and in May with guest artist CYNTHIA RAIM (Piano ’74). JAMES ADLER (Piano ’73, Composition ’76) performed his piano concerto, A Walk Through an English Garden, with James Adler Queer Urban Orchestra (QUO) under Julie Desbordes last April at Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City. The work was recently published by Alfred Music. As a member of the Amerigo Trio, KAREN DREYFUS (Viola ’79) performed at the Westchester Chamber Music Society in Rye, N.Y. in November and at Music on the Mountain in Ojai, Calif. in December. She joined Glenn Dicterow, Wendy Putnam, and MICHAEL REYNOLDS (Cello ’77) in a Concord Chamber Music Society performance in March. This April, she will participate in a collaborative concert at the Manhattan School of Music with faculty and students in the orchestra performance program. She will teach at the Music Academy of the West this summer. DAVID FISHER (Cello ’79) is the chairman of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital at Harvard Medical School. David continues to perform, and recently participated in a performance of Schubert’s String Quartet in C major in Boston. He and his wife Claire and family of four sons suffered a tragedy last June when their second-oldest son, Samuel, died suddenly at age 24 after completing a charity triathlon. Their oldest son, Jonathan, married in December. Chin Kim CHIN KIM (Violin ’79) gave a recital at the Mannes School of Music in November. Over the summer, he performed and taught at the Summit Music Festival in New York and at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina. 1980s MICHAEL LUDWIG (Violin ’82) has been appointed artist in residence and professor of violin at Montclair State University. He began teaching in September. In August, DAVID BERNARD (Clarinet ’84) was appointed music director of the Massapequa Philharmonic in New York. In November, he led the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony and a chorus of 200 voices in a performance at Carnegie Hall that included the New York premiere of Jake Runestad’s Dreams of the Fallen and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with BRIAN KONTES (Opera ’00) as the bass soloist. DARON HAGEN’s (Composition ’84) Cantabile for koto and cello was premiered by Duo Yumeno in May at the George Nakashima House in New Hope, Pa. The piece was then performed on tour in Japan and the United States, culminating in a September performance at Bargemusic in New York. In August and September PAUL BRANTLEY (Composition ’85) held a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, where he completed his concertino The Royal Revolver, for cellist Eric Jacobsen and the University of Michigan Symphony. His work for cello and piano, My Dream of the Lost Schumann Romances (which Clara burned), was performed on a winter tour by cellist Peter Seidenberg and pianist Hui-Mei Lin. Paul premiered and performed new solo cello pieces on his Bach Legacy Recital for the Washington Heights Musical Society in October. DAVID DePETERS (Timpani and Percussion ’85) was named CEO of the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colo. beginning in April. In June DAVID McGILL (Bassoon ’85) was a guest artist and clinician at the Glickman Popkin Bassoon Camp in Little Switzerland, N.C. In July, he travelled to the Ravenna Festival of Music in Italy to teach and to perform Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto and a newly-discovered 1853 work by Francesco Cappa, premiered under the direction of Riccardo Muti. Upon returning home to Evanston, Ill., he received a last-minute request from Daniel Barenboim to substitute as principal bassoon on a 30-day tour of Argentina, England, Austria, Switzerland, and Spain with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and pianist Martha Argerich. He says, “it was the greatest summer of my life! Being asked to perform with two of my former music directors was a thrill and an honor, especially since I retired from orchestral playing in 2014.” AUDREY AXINN (Accompanying ’88) taught a master class in collaborative piano at Oberlin Conservatory in October. Audrey teaches collaborative piano and performance practice at Mannes School of Music. She is also a member of the chamber music faculty at the Juilliard School. 1990s ZVI CARMELI (Viola ’90) was appointed senior lecturer for viola and chamber music at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance in Israel. MIGUEL HARTH-BEDOYA (Conducting ’91), chief conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, made guest appearances with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in February and the Bremen Philharmonic in March. He will conduct the Orquesta National de España in April and the Montreal Symphony in May. MICHELE HEMMINGS (Voice ’91), J’NAI BRIDGES (Opera ’12), and ELIZABETH ZHAROFF (Opera ’12) performed together in Phillip 34 OVERTONES SPRING <strong>2017</strong>
NOTATIONS Glass’s Akhnaten with the LA Opera in November. J’nai sang the role of Nefertiti, and Michele and Elizabeth were Daughters of Akhnaten. Michele Hemmings, J’nai Bridges, and Elizabeth Zharoff PAOLO BORDIGNON (Organ ’96, Harpsichord ’96) directed the choir of St. Paul’s Methodist Church in music of Stanford and Walton, with orchestra, last June at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Houston. Also in June, they performed the Duruflé Requiem with chamber orchestra and BRYAN ANDERSON (Organ ’15). For a week in July, the choir was in residence at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh, Scotland. ALISON BUCHANAN (Opera '96) performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra in December on its “Glorious Sound of Christmas” program at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall. Boston Opera Collaborative premiered Always by JONATHAN BAILEY HOLLAND (Composition ’96) during its Opera Bites festival of ten-minute operas in November in Cambridge, Mass. Nikola Mijailovic NIKOLA MIJAILOVIC (Opera ’96) performed the role of Zurga in Bizet’s Pearl Fishers at Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv last June. TIMOTHY FAIN (Violin ’98) appeared as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony in January 2016 and with the National Orchestra of Spain last April. He performed at Forbes’s Under 30 Music Festival at the Tower of David in Jerusalem in April and joined pianist Simone Dinnerstein in recital at Bitterroot PAC in Missoula, Montana in November. SARAH IOANNIDES (Conducting ’98), music director of Symphony Tacoma, is finishing her twelfth and Divergent Paths Curtis is renowned worldwide for the musical education it provides its students. But how exactly does that training inform those students’ later careers—including those careers that take an unusual turn? This is the first in a series that seeks to answer this question and, in doing so, to show the diversity and richness of the Curtis alumni experience. Always More to Learn BY WILLIAM SHORT (BASSOON ’10) NATHAN VEDAL (’10) and DEREK ZADINSKY (’11) have a lot in common. Both are from Seattle, and both entered Curtis in 2006 to study double bass. Their subsequent paths have diverged, but provide a perfect example of how universally applicable the Curtis experience is. After graduating, Derek won a section bass position with the Cleveland Orchestra and now teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, and Cleveland State University. Nathan, having studied Chinese in high school and through Curtis’s reciprocal agreement with the University of Pennsylvania, is now in his final year of study toward a Ph.D. in Chinese history at Harvard University while working as a freelance bassist in Boston. Nathan and Derek share remarkably similar sentiments about what made their Curtis experience significant. “I had never been in an environment before where everybody was at the same or higher level of playing than I was,” says Derek. The “constant influence” of peers “was crucial to how much I was able to improve at Curtis.” That could have been intimidating, Nathan and Derek agree, if it weren’t for the collegial The devotion Nathan felt from his culture of the bass studio. Nathan recalls that ALEXANDER HANNA (’07)—now principal teachers at Curtis is “something that bass of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra— “wrote us e-mails before we even got to I hope I can replicate for my own Curtis, just asking, ‘Hey, do you have any questions? I’m happy to help however I can.’” students in a very different arena.” This down-to-earth quality was modeled by Curtis’s bass faculty, HAROLD HALL (“HAL”) ROBINSON and EDGAR MEYER. “Whatever Hal did as a bass player or as a person, we wanted to emulate,” recalls Derek. “When you were face-to-face with him, it was as if you were the only thing that mattered to him. Now that I’m a teacher myself, I try to recreate that environment as much as I can.” This sentiment is echoed by Nathan. In teaching Chinese history to undergraduates at Harvard, he says, the devotion he felt from his teachers at Curtis is “something that I hope I can replicate for my own students in Nathan Vedal Derek Zadinsky a very different arena.” In fact, Derek notes, his time at Curtis provided a starting point for virtually every aspect of his teaching. When invited to join the faculties of the schools where he now teaches, he faced a conundrum: “I never read a book or took a class on how to become a good teacher. But I couldn’t turn down the opportunities just because I was inexperienced as an educator.” He soon realized he could start by recalling his work with his Curtis teachers, “stealing some things from both of them and fusing them together into something new.” Lessons Nathan learned from the compassion and demands of the Curtis bass studio (and also, he emphasizes, from conductor OTTO-WERNER MUELLER) still directly influence his work as a freelance bassist. But his academic pursuits, too, bear the stamp of his time at Curtis. As with playing music, research in 15th-century Chinese history is “not something that I will ever complete. There’s always going to be more to learn,” he says, adding that the intensely discerning self-criticism Hal Robinson worked to instill in him remains central to his work today. “When I write something, I have to apply standards of logic. I might think that I’m making a really compelling argument, but realize that there’s some flaw in the logic, like a flaw in intonation. In order to make it a really outstanding product, you need to address that.” When learning an instrument, he continues, “on a bad day, you feel like you can’t play, and it’s very frustrating. But on a good day, it’s exciting to know that there’s new repertoire, new styles to explore.” The same applies to his studies in Chinese history: “It’s nice to know that I’m never going to get bored, that there’s always something new to learn.” William Short is principal bassoon with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. OVERTONES SPRING <strong>2017</strong> 35
Page 1 and 2: Vol. XXXXI, No. 2 Spring 2017 Commi
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS FALL 2016 AT CURTIS Opposi
Page 5 and 6: NOTEWORTHY Images from the orchestr
Page 7 and 8: NOTEWORTHY Curtis Sweeps Musical Am
Page 9 and 10: MEET THE FACULTY diverse musical ta
Page 11 and 12: MEET THE STUDENTS Anastasiia Sidoro
Page 13 and 14: MEET THE STUDENTS instead simply de
Page 15 and 16: It’s not exactly common to see th
Page 17 and 18: first few months as a fellow, condu
Page 19 and 20: Performers and audience share six M
Page 21 and 22: The six ensembles made a joint deci
Page 23 and 24: 1 3 CURTIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA The M
Page 25 and 26: Every now and then in a rehearsal f
Page 27 and 28: Ms. Saariaho’s residency in Octob
Page 29 and 30: Students are not shy about taking a
Page 31 and 32: THE COMPLEAT MUSICIAN These days, i
Page 33 and 34: MEET THE ALUMNI Enterprising Ideas
Page 35: MEET THE ALUMNI “It is very rare
Page 39 and 40: NOTATIONS the Indianapolis Symphony
Page 41 and 42: NOTATIONS STUDENTS In November, HÉ
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Overtones: Spring 2017

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