2012 CAST & CREW

Flutist STEPHANIE JUTT’s elegant artistry and passionate intellect have inspired musicians and audiences around the world. Her groundbreaking performances of new music, transcriptions, and traditional repertoire have made her a model for adventurous flutists everywhere. New Brahms transcriptions by Ms. Jutt were recently published by International Music Publishing and an all-Brahms recording with pianist Jeffrey Sykes, Stolen Moments, was released in January 2005 on Centaur. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, her teachers were James Pappoutsakis, Paula Robison, and Marcel Moyse. Ms. Jutt won the Concert Artist Guild and Pro Musicis International Soloist awards and has performed in recital throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. She has served as a board member and program chair for the National Flute Association. A dedicated teacher, Ms. Jutt is on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is principal flute of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and co-produces the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society summer music festival for three weeks with Jeffrey Sykes in Madison.

Pianist JEFFREY SYKES is known as "a commanding solo player, the most supportive of accompanists, and a leader in chamber music," by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Western Europe. The San Francisco Examiner praised his recent appearance with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players as "a tour-de-force performance [that was] the evening's major delight." He made his Carnegie Hall debut with oboist Gerard Reuter and flutist Stephanie Jutt under the auspices of the Pro Musicis Foundation. A founder and artistic director of BDDS, Dr. Sykes also serves as the music director of Opera for the Young, a professional opera company that gives hundreds of performances a year to schoolchildren in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Dr. Sykes holds degrees with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Franz Schubert Institut in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria, and the UW-Madison, where he received his doctorate. His numerous awards include the Jacob Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education and a Fulbright grant to study at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He serves on the music faculty of the University of California-Berkeley and California State University East Bay. He is a member of the San Francisco Piano Trio and co-produces the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society summer music festival for three weeks with Stephanie Jutt in Madison. www.sfpianotrio.com

Violinist SUZANNE BEIA, a native of Reno, Nevada, began her musical studies on viola at the age of ten. Three years later she shifted her attention to the violin and made her solo debut at age fourteen with the North Lake Tahoe Symphony. She has appeared frequently as soloist with orchestras throughout the U.S. Before coming to Madison to join the Pro Arte Quartet as second violin, she held the position of principal second violin in the Wichita Symphony and has held concertmaster positions in the Reno Philharmonic, the Reno Chamber Orchestra, the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic, and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. Her chamber music experience has been extensive; she performed for seven years in the Verano Trio and more recently for two years with the Wichita-based Sedgwick String Quartet. She has been invited to perform in such festivals as Chamber Music West, the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, and the Festival de Prades, and has served on the faculties of the Rocky Ridge Music Center and Florida International University. In addition to her duties with the Pro Arte Quartet, Ms. Beia performs with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and is concertmaster of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.

KATARZYNA BRYLA, violinist, was born in 1982 in Poznan, Poland. After graduating with bachelor's and master's degrees from the Academy of Music in Poznan, she entered the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland, where she now studies with Maestro Herbert Greenberg. Ms. Bryla has won an impressive number of national and international violin competitions. Among them are first prizes in the National Children's Art Competition in Warsaw at the age of eight; National Violin Competition in Gdansk; National J. S. Bach competition in Zielona Gora, where she was also awarded a special prize for the best performance of Bach; and the International Contemporary Music Competition in Warsaw. In addition to her solo career, Ms. Bryla is also an active chamber music player. She has received top prizes in many chamber music competitions for her trio and quartet playing. Ms. Bryla has already performed with many major Polish orchestras and appeared in music centers in Poland, Germany, France, Spain, England, Gran Canaria, and the U.S. Her recent activities include her appearance as a soloist in the International Maazel/Vilar Conducting Competition and her performance of "Tzigane" by M. Ravel with the Sinfonietta Cracovia.

Executive director SAMANTHA CROWNOVER is now in her 13th year with Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society. She balances these duties with various art and historic preservation consulting projects. Together with Stephanie Jutt, artistic director of BDDS, she launched the Arts Enterprise Initiative on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. She serves as president of the Friends of the UW-Madison Geology Museum board and is a past president of the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation and the First Settlement Neighborhood, a part of the Capitol Neighborhoods Association. Ms. Crownover received a B.A. and M.A. in art history from UW-Madison and served as curator at Tandem Press, a fine-art print-making studio which is part of UW-Madison's art department. She has been on the staff of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy.

Cellist JEAN-MICHEL FONTENEAU is a founding member of the Ravel String Quartet, which was awarded two prizes at the Evian String Quartet Competition and won the first French Grammy Award "Les Victoires de la Musique Classique." The quartet has toured extensively around the world and created the first ever string quartet residency program in France. Mr. Fonteneau performs frequently with such artists as Leon Fleisher, Menahem Pressler, Gilbert Kalish, Claude Frank, Peter Frankl, Kim Kashkashian, members of the Amadeus, Juilliard, Pro Arte, and Fine Arts Quartets. He served on the faculty of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon, France, until 1999, when he moved to the United States to join the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He appears regularly at summer festivals, including the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Domaine Forget, and Oberlin at Casalmaggiore. Mr. Fonteneau's recordings can be found on the Musidisc-France and Albany Records labels. www.sfpianotrio.com

Pianist RANDALL HODGKINSON, grand prize winner of the International American Music Competition sponsored by Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Foundation, has performed with orchestras in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, and Cleveland and abroad in Italy and Iceland. In addition, he has performed recital programs spanning the repertoire from J.S. Bach to Donald Martino. He is an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and performs the four-hand and two-piano repertoire with his wife, Leslie Amper. Festival appearances include Blue Hill-Maine, Bargemusic, Chestnut Hill Concerts (Madison, Connecticut), Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest (Portland, Oregon), and Mainly Mozart in San Diego. Mr. Hodgkinson's recordings include a live world premiere of the Gardner Read Piano Concerto for Albany Records and a recently released a CD of solo piano music on the Ongaku label. Mr. Hodgkinson serves on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and the Longy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pianist LAYTON JAMES recently retired after forty-one years as principal keyboard with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Specializing in harpsichord and organ continuo realizations, he is featured on many recordings, including Handel's Messiah, conducted by Robert Shaw. Mr. James has recently been a soloist with the Duluth-Superior Symphony and guest conductor of the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra, and has composed a Baroque piece for the Blue Baroque Band. He has appeared at Music in the Vineyards, Aspen Music Festival, Music at Gretna, Lake Placid Sinfonietta, AlexFest and the Brainerd Music Festival. He is also cantor and organist of Bethel Lutheran Church in Hudson, Wisconsin.

Baritone TIMOTHY JONES has appeared as a soloist with major symphony orchestras in the United States, including the Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony, and the Jacksonville Symphony, and has performed abroad in Ecuador, Mexico,and the Czech Republic. In opera houses he has sung leading roles in The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, The Magic Flute, Cosi fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Don Pasquale, La Boheme, Falstaff, Macbeth, and La Traviata. Mr. Jones has been a frequent guest soloist with the Victoria Bach Festival, New Texas Festival, Round Top Music Festival, Ars Lyrica Houston, Cactus Pear Music Festival, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. As a committed performer of contemporary music, Mr. Jones has commissioned and premiered compositions by leading composers of our time. He lives in Houston, where he serves on the faculty of the University of Houston. www.singjones.com

Textile artist CAROLYN KALLENBORN works with fabric and metal to create flowing garments and sculptural pieces. She shows her award-winning, hand-painted garments and sculptures in galleries and exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her work has been shown in Beijing, China; Cheong-ju, Korea; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona; Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana; and other shows and galleries in St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta and Cambridge, Mass. In addition, her work has been featured in such magazines as Fiberarts, Surface Design Journal and Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot. She received her BA and MFA in Textile Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ms. Kallenborn taught textiles and design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before jointing the faculty at Kansas City Art Institute. She is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Design Studies Department. She was an assistant professor in the Fiber Department at the Kansas City Art Institute from 2001 - 2007. Ms. Kallenborn currently serves as the coordinator for "Off The Grid," the 2009 Surface Design Association international textile conference. She was conference coordinator for "Uncovering the Surface," SDA's 2005 conference and was coordinator and juror for two major exhibitions for the SDA's 2003 conference.

Cellist PARRY KARP is artist-in-residence and professor of chamber music and cello at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is director of the string chamber music program. He has been cellist of the Pro Arte Quartet for the past 35 years. Mr. Karp is an active solo artist, performing numerous recitals annually in the U.S., and he has recorded seven solo CDs. He is active as a performer of new music, participating in the premieres of dozens of works, many of which were written for him, including concerti, sonatas, and chamber music. Unearthing and performing unjustly neglected repertoire for cello is a passion of Mr. Karp's. In recent years he has transcribed for cello many masterpieces written for other instruments. This project has included performances of all of the Duo Sonatas of Brahms. With the Pro Arte Quartet he has performed more than 1,000 concerts throughout the Americas, Europe, and Japan. His discography with the group includes more than two dozen recordings, among them the complete string quartets of Ernest Bloch, Miklos Rosza, and Karol Szymanowski. Many of these recordings received awards from Fanfare and High Fidelity magazines. Former students of Mr. Karp's are now teachers and members of professional string quartets and major orchestras throughout North America.
CD Reviews: Late Romantic Music for Cello and Piano (Jonathan Woolf), Violoncello Music by Ernest Bloch (Jonathan Woolf, Rob Barnett)

Winner of the 2006 Avery Fisher Career Grant, violinist ERIN KEEFE has also been the grand prize winner in the Valsesia Musica (Italy), Torun Schadt (Poland) and Corpus Christi international violin competitions, and was the silver medalist in the Carl Nielsen (Denmark), Sendai (Japan), and Gyeongnam (Korea) competitions. In recent seasons, Ms. Keefe has appeared with the New Mexico Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Korean Symphony Orchestra, the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, the Sendai Philharmonic and the Göttingen Symphony and has given recitals throughout the United States and in Austria, Italy, Germany, Korea, Poland, Japan and Denmark. She has collaborated with such artists as Richard Goode, Menahem Pressler, Leon Fleisher and the Emerson String Quartet, and she has recorded for Naxos and Deutsche Grammophon. She has made festival appearances at Ravinia, Music@Menlo, the Marlboro Music Festival, and Music from Angel Fire, and has performed at the Seattle, OK Mozart, Mimir, Bravo! and Bridgehampton chamber music festivals. Ms. Keefe is an artist member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She earned a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute. www.erinkeefeviolin.com

Violist DANIEL PANNER enjoys a varied career as a performer and teacher. As violist of the Mendelssohn String Quartet, he concertized throughout the United States and Israel. He has served as the principal violist of the New York City Opera and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at music festivals in Marlboro, Tanglewood, and Aspen. Mr. Panner has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri and Juilliard string quartets. An active performer of new music, he is a member of Sequitur and the Locrian Ensemble and has performed with such new-music groups as Speculum Musicae, the Da Capo Chamber Players, and Transit Circle. Mr. Panner received the 1998 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and served as teaching assistant to the Juilliard String Quartet for two years. After receiving a bachelor's degree in history at Yale University, Mr. Panner continued his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School. He currently teaches at the Juilliard School, the Mannes College of Music, SUNY Stony Brook and the Queens College Conservatory of Music.

Violinist WILLIAM POLK joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2007, after serving for two years as associate principal second violin of the Minnesota Orchestra. Previously, he was guest principal second violin of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Polk has performed as an orchestral musician with the San Francisco Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony. and has participated as a chamber musician in the Mainly Mozart Summer Festival in San Diego and with the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society. In 2002 he and his wife, violist Kerri Ryan, founded and performed with the Minneapolis Quartet, which was awarded a McKnight Artist Fellowship in 2006. In 2007 he and Ms. Ryan performed as soloists in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with the Minnesota Orchestra.

Cellist BETH RAPIER began her professional career at age sixteen as an apprentice with the Louisville Orchestra. After studying at Indiana University and in New York with Janos Starker, Fritz Magg, and Timothy Eddy, she performed, toured, and taught. Ms. Rapier joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 1986 and assumed her current position as assistant principal in 1991. She has been a featured soloist with the orchestra in works by Haydn and David Ott and has appeared with the Colorado Philharmonic and Louisville Orchestra, as well as with numerous regional ensembles. An award winner at several chamber music competitions, she has performed in Taiwan, Japan, Europe and througout the U.S. She was a founding member of the Rosalyra String Quartet, a 2000 winner of a McKnight Foundation award. Ms. Rapier is a frequent guest at chamber music festivals, including Cactus Pear, Music in the Vineyards, and BDDS. Ms. Rapier has recorded quartets by Beethoven, Bartók, Shostakovich, and Brahms. In April 2005, Ms. Rapier was again named a McKnight Foundation award winner for her performance of cello duos with her husband, Anthony Ross. In 2006 she will appear as soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra in the world premiere of "Sinfonia Concertante" by Kevin Puts.

Percussionist DANE RICHESON has performed worldwide as solo marimbist, chamber music percussionist, ethnic percussion artist, and jazz drummer. Mr. Richeson has performed with such diverse artists as Lukas Foss, Bobby McFerrin, and Gunther Schuller; and at festivals including Ravinia, the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the Beijing Music Festival. Mr. Richeson has performed on more than 100 recordings and regularly performs with BDDS and the chamber ensemble CUBE in Chicago. He is currently associate professor of music at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he is director of percussion studies. Under his direction, the Lawrence University Percussion Ensemble has been awarded state and international honors. Mr. Richeson earned his bachelor's degree from Ohio State University and his master's degree from Ithaca College, with additional studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Drummers Collective, New York City. He has also studied drumming in Ghana, Cuba, and Brazil.

Cellist ANTHONY ROSS has been a member of the Minnesota Orchestra since 1988. Through the years he has soloed at subscription concerts in works of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saens, Lalo, Bloch, and David Ott. A graduate of Indiana University, where he studied with Fritz Magg, Mr. Ross also earned a degree at the State University of New York. Mr. Ross was awarded the bronze medal at the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, prompting Pravda to praise his "exceptional mastery" and "brilliantly sensitive cello performance." His numerous other prizes include the Stulberg Award, the G.B. Dealy Award, and the Parisot International Cello Competition. Before coming to Minnesota, Mr. Ross served as principal cellist of the Rochester Philharmonic in New York and taught at the Eastman School of Music. In addition to serving on the faculties of the Aspen Music Festival, Grand Teton Orchestral Seminar, and Madeline Island Music Camp, he has performed in many festivals throughout the U.S. and in Greece and France. Mr. Ross has recorded Rachmaninoff and Carter sonatas for Boston Records and the Bernstein "Meditations" with the Minnesota Orchestra.

Violist KERRI RYAN joined the Philadelphia Orchestra as assistant principal viola in 2007. She came to Philadelphia from the Minnesota Orchestra, where she was assistant principal viola for seven seasons. Ms. Ryan and her husband, violinist William Polk, are founding members of the award-winning Minneapolis Quartet. Following her graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1998, she served as associate concertmaster of the Charleston Symphony. Ms. Ryan also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a member of its Young Artist Program.

Violinist STEPHANIE SANT'AMBROGIO is assistant professor of violin and viola at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a member of the Argenta Trio. She is the founder and artistic director of Cactus Pear Music Festival, which is celebrating its 15th season. Ms. Sant'Ambrogio is the former concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony and was previously first assistant principal second violin of the Cleveland Orchestra. In 2010, she was appointed concertmaster of the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States as well as in Canada, Estonia, Sweden, Italy, Ghana, Peru, Chile and Mexico. With over sixty orchestral and chamber music CDs, her discography includes the recent releases Late Dates with Mozart, Klassics4Kids, and Going Solo: Unaccompanied Works for Violin & Viola. www.cpmf.us

Tenor GREGORY SCHMIDT recently appeared with Madison Opera as Peter Quint in The Turn of the Screw and Steuermann in The Flying Dutchman. Other recent engagements include Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) and Almaviva (The Barber of Seville) with Opera Tampa, Nemorino (The Elixer of Love) with Tulsa Opera, Alfredo (La Traviata) with St. Petersburg Opera, and Ferrando (Così fan tutte) with El Paso Opera. Mr Schmidt has also appeared with Tacoma Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Chattanooga Opera, Nevada Opera, Skylight Opera Theater, Nashville Opera, and Opera Carolina. He made his professional debut with Washington National Opera in the role of Count Belfiore in Mozart's La finta giardiniera and returned to the Kennedy Center the following season as Tamino in The Magic Flute. He apprenticed with Santa Fe Opera and was a Metropolitan Opera Audition National Finalist.

Soprano ANNA SLATE is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she developed an interest in early music as a student of Mimmi Fulmer and sang such roles as Oberto in Handel's Alcina, the soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah and Bach's Mass in B Minor, and Liesgen in Bach's Coffee Cantata with harpsichordist John Chappell Stowe. Last summer Ms. Slate attended the Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute, where she performed as the Second Spirit (The Magic Flute), Blonde (The Abduction from the Seraglio), and Nannetta (Falstaff), and in November she made her professional debut as Atalanta in Berkeley West Edge Opera's Xerxes. In 2011 Ms. Slate was the featured soprano soloist in the Madison Festival Choir's February concert and performed with the UW-Madison Black Music Ensemble.

Percussionist ANTHONY DI SANZA is a recognized international performer and educator, has performed, presented master classes, and held residencies in North America, Europe and Asia. He has appeared as a visiting artist at over 35 colleges, universities and conservatories, and has performed as soloist and chamber musician in some of the world's most important concert halls. Active in a wide variety of Western and non-Western percussive areas, he can be heard on numerous CD recordings with various artists and ensembles, including a solo CD, which features works for multiple percussion, marimba and darabukka, on the Equilibrium label. Anthony has performed with numerous orchestras as timpanist or percussionist and currently serves as principal percussionist with the Madison Symphony Orchestra. He regularly studies and performs music from Brazil, Cuba and the Middle East and is regularly involved in the premiering of new works from a wide variety of composers. Currently Associate Professor of Percussion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he is an endorser of Sabian Cymbals, Black Swamp Percussion, Remo Drumheads and Encore Mallets, as well as an educational endorser of Pro-Mark Drumsticks.

In 1998, violinist AXEL STRAUSS became the first German artist ever to win the Naumburg Violin Award. Mr. Strauss joined the San Francisco Conservatory of Music faculty in 2001. Since then he has performed throughout North America as recitalist and soloist with major orchestras. His concerto appearances have taken him to Germany, Japan, China, and Eastern Europe. Mr. Strauss is frequently invited to music festivals in the U.S. and abroad, including the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, International Music Festival of Saga in Japan, and the Kammermusiktage Mettlach in Germany. His recordings include Kodály's Duo for Violin and Cello, Brahms' Sonatas, Op. 120, Sibelius' Violin Concerto, and Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words. In December 2009 Naxos released his recording of the 24 Caprices by Pierre Rode. Mr. Strauss performs on a violin by J.F. Pressenda, Turin 1845, generously loaned to him by the Stradivari Society in Chicago. www.sfpianotrio.com

Pianist CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR has concertized around the globe, performing throughout Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. In the United States he has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Houston Symphony, and Boston Pops. As a soloist he has performed at New York's Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall, Washington's Kennedy Center, and the Ravinia and Aspen festivals. He was named an American Pianists' Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996, the bronze medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, first prize in the 1990 William Kapell International Piano Competition, and one of the first Irving Gilmore Young Artists' Awards. Mr. Taylor now serves as Paul Collins Associate Professor of Piano at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

At the recommendation of Isaac Stern and Alexander Schneider, violinist CARMIT ZORI came to the United States from her native Israel at the age of fifteen to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Ms. Zori is the recipient of a Levintritt Foundation Award, a Pro Musicis International Award and a top prize in the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition. She has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Rochester Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and in recital at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston and the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. Her engagements abroad have included performances in Latin America, Europe, Israel, Japan, Taiwan and Australia. In addition to appearances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ms. Zori has been a guest at the Chamber Music at the "Y" series in New York City, the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico, Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and the Marlboro Festival in Vermont. Ms. Zori is the artistic director of the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, which she founded in 2002. She has recorded on the Arabesque, Koch International, and Elektra-Nonesuch labels.