Events for Thursday, March 26, 2009

The Music of Henry Cowell

Event Time

8:00 pm

Click names for performer biographies.

Performers

• The Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet
• Formed in 1996, Pacific Rims is comprised of Gunnar Folsom, Paul Hansen, Matthew Kocmieroski, and Rob Tucker, leading players in new, chamber, and orchestral music and dance, theater, and film in the Pacific Northwest. Individually they can be heard performing with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, the 5th Avenue Theatre, and on numerous major motion picture and video game sound tracks, from Die Hard with a Vengence to Valkyrie and from Halo to Warcraft. Pacific Rims performs music from the 1930s to the present, from Cage to Xenakis to Takemitsu to Reich to Roldán. As well as producing their own concerts, they have appeared with the ensembles Sonora, the Seattle Chamber Players, and the Seattle Creative Orchestra; on series such as the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Society, the Cornish Music Series, the Auburn Symphony chamber music series; and numerous times at the Seattle Asian Art Museum and at St. James Cathedral, where they helped celebrate Messiaen’s 100th birthday in 2008. Educational performances have included the Seattle Symphony “Tiny Tots” series, Seattle Public Schools, Federal Way Public Schools, and the Imperials Percussion Festival as well as working and performing with percussion students at Music Works Northwest and with student composers and choreographers at Cornish College of the Arts.
• Gunnar Folsom
• Gunnar Folsom studied with Christopher Lamb, Duncan Patton, and Don Liuzzi at the Manhattan School of Music. He is a member of both the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra and the Bellevue Philharmonic. As a freelance percussionist, Folsom performs regularly with the Seattle Symphony, the Seattle Opera, the Tacoma Symphony, the Northwest Sinfonietta, and the Seattle Chamber Players. He has also performed with the Festival Chamber Music Society, John Taverner and the Tallis Scholars, the Ensemble Sospeso in New York City, the Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble in Berkeley and Los Angeles, and the Vaasa City Orchestra of Finland in Seattle.
  
  Folsom has held positions at the University of Puget Sound, UPS Community Music Programs, Music Works Northwest, Marrowstone Summer Music Festival, Marrowstone-in-the-City, and Midsummer Musical Retreat. He is currently the percussion coach for the Seattle Youth Symphony and a faculty member of the New England Music Camp in Sidney, Maine. Paul Hansen has been active for thirty years as one of the top percussionists in Seattle’s music and theater circles, having performed with popular talents such as Mr. Rogers, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mathis, and Burt Bacharach. As a concert musician he performs regularly with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, and Auburn Symphony. His Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra was premiered by the Northwest Sinfonietta with Paul as soloist in 2002. He has been a mainstay in Seattle’s top pit orchestras at the Paramount and 5th Avenue theaters with over 70 musicals to his credit. He has also composed film scores for his wife, filmmaker Janice Findley. Hansen serves as Managing Editor for Freehand Music Publishing and is co-founder of the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet.
• Paul Hansen
• Paul Hansen has been active for thirty years as one of the top percussionists in Seattle’s music and theater circles, having performed with popular talents such as Mr. Rogers, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mathis, and Burt Bacharach. As a concert musician he performs regularly with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, and Auburn Symphony. His Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra was premiered by the Northwest Sinfonietta with Paul as soloist in 2002. He has been a mainstay in Seattle’s top pit orchestras at the Paramount and 5th Avenue theaters with over 70 musicals to his credit. He has also composed film scores for his wife, filmmaker Janice Findley. Hansen serves as Managing Editor for Freehand Music Publishing and is co-founder of the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet.
• Matthew Kocmieroski
• Matthew Kocmieroski, Drums Along the Pacific festival curator, is principal percussionist with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra. He regularly performs with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, and the Auburn Symphony, and is on the faculty of the Cornish College of the Arts. He is the President of the International Guild of Symphony, Opera and Ballet Musicians. In the field of chamber music, he served for ten years as Artistic Director and percussionist of the New Performance Group, and was a founding member of Taneko and the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet. In the Northwest he regularly performs with the Seattle Chamber Players, and has appeared at the Seattle Chamber Music Society festivals, Icicle Creek Music Festival, Marrowstone Summer Music Festival, Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, Seattle International Chamber Music Festival, and the Bellingham Festival of Music. Internationally he has appeared at the Bergen, Moscow Autumn, Moscow Cold Alternativa, St. Petersburg Sound Waves, Kiev MusicFest, and Warsaw Autumn festivals.
• Rob Tucker
• Rob Tucker performs frequently with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, and Pacific Northwest Ballet orchestras. He has performed with the Bellingham Festival of Music, the Seattle Chamber Players, Seattle International Music Festival, and the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival. Tucker is a founding member of the Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet and Quake. He has recorded for New World Records, and can be heard on more than 100 movie sound tracks. He attended the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Southern California, and currently teaches percussion at Western Washington University.
• Stephen Drury, piano
• Stephen Drury, piano, named 1989 Musician of the Year by the Boston Globe, has concertized throughout the world with a repertoire that stretches from Bach to Liszt to the music of today. He has given solo performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at New York’s Symphony Space, and from Arkansas to California to Hong Kong to Paris.
  
  A champion of twentieth-century music, Drury’s performances have received the highest critical acclaim. He has appeared at the MusikTriennale Köln in Germany, the Subtropics Festival in Miami, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, and the North American New Music Festival in Buffalo, as well as at Roulette and the Knitting Factory in New York. Drury has commissioned new works for solo piano from John Cage, John Zorn, Terry Riley, and Chinary Ung. Drury tours frequently with the John Zorn Ensemble, performing in Paris, New York, London, Madrid, Vienna, Brussels, and Cologne, and has conducted Zorn’s music in Bologna, Boston, and San Jose (Costa Rica).
  
  Drury has performed or recorded with the American Composers Orchestra, the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Boston Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Springfield (Massachusetts) and Portland (Maine) symphony orchestras, and the Romanian National Symphony. In 1999 he appeared onstage with choreographer Merce Cunningham and Mikhail Baryshnikov as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.
  
  Drury is Artistic Director of the Callithumpian Consort, and he created and directs the Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano Performance at New England Conservatory. He has recorded the music of John Cage, Elliott Carter, Charles Ives, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Colin McPhee, John Zorn, and Frederic Rzewski, as well as works of Liszt and Beethoven, for Mode, New Albion, Catalyst, Tzadik, MusicMasters, and Neuma. He teaches at New England Conservatory in Boston.
• John Duykers, tenor
• John Duykers, tenor, made his professional operatic debut with Seattle Opera in 1966. Since then he has appeared with many of the leading opera companies of the world including The Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Netherlands Opera, the Grand Theatre of Geneva, Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Frankfurt Opera, Opera de Marseille, Canadian Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Opera, San Diego Opera, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia.
  
  He is well known for his performances of contemporary music, having sung in 96 contemporary operas including 61 world premieres. Among these, in 1987 he created the role of Mao Tse Tung in John Adams’ Nixon in China, premiered with Houston Grand Opera, and has performed it throughout the world. Nixon in China won an Emmy for the PBS “Great Performances” telecast, and a Grammy for the Nonesuch recording.
  
  Philip Glass has written three roles for Duykers, including The Visitor (In the Penal Colony) and the Older Galileo in Galileo Galilei (by Philip Glass and Mary Zimmerman) at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and on the Next Wave Series at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Duykers recently performed The Narrator in the premiere of Lou Harrison’s Young Caesar with the Ensemble Paralelle at Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.
  
  Independently produced new works include The Tyrant by Paul Dresher and Jim Lewis, with the Seattle Chamber Players, the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, and Cleveland Opera, and Mordake, a new solo work written for Duykers by Erling Wold, which premiered in 2008 at the San Francisco International Arts Festival.
  
  Recordings include Chairman Mao in John Adams’ Nixon in China, Callin’ Home Coyote by Janice Giteck, Perilous Chapel and Rapunzel by Lou Harrison, and several works by Paul Dresher.
• Kathryn Weld, mezzo soprano
• Kathryn Weld, mezzo soprano, has performed extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. Her credits include two solo appearances with the New York Philharmonic, one with Charles Dutoit conducting and the other under the direction of Kurt Masur. She made her Carnegie Hall debut to critical acclaim in a performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor with Musica Sacra. While living in Germany, Weld was a featured soloist with such prominent ensembles as the Bavarian Radio Choir, the Consortium Musicum of Munich, and the Prague Philharmonic. Other international performances include those with the Sapporo Symphony and the Osaka Chamber orchestras in Japan, the Mark Morris Dance Company, and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. In the Northwest, Weld has appeared with the Seattle Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Helena Symphony, Wyoming Symphony, and Portland Baroque Orchestra.
  
  Recent recital tours have included guest appearances in Paris, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. She has premiered the works of prominent composers such as John Harbison, Hans Gefors, and Bern Herbolsheimer. Weld serves as an Affiliate Artist Voice Faculty at Western Washington University and at Cornish College of the Arts.
• Richard Eckert, cello
• Dr. Richard Eckert, cello, has performed frequently with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra in addition to his work as a studio musician for feature-film sound tracks such as Valkyrie and The Incredible Hulk. He has a doctorate from the Eastman School of Music and a master’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and maintains a private teaching studio in the Seattle area. Eckert is noted for his work with the Bird Tribe Orchestra, with whom he has recorded two CDs, and for his alter-persona, Richard III, who introduces classical music to the twenty-first century via innovative programs and/or presentations that borrow material and techniques from popular idioms.
• Michael Lim, violin
• Michael Jinsoo Lim, violin, enjoys a dynamic musical career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral performer, recording artist, and teacher. Co-founder of the renowned Corigliano Quartet, he is in demand as a chamber musician and as a performer of new and experimental music. He is a member of Open End, a new music and improvisatory group, and holds a first violin position in the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra in New York City. As a member of the Corigliano Quartet, Lim has won the grand prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and the ASCAP/CMA Award for Adventurous Programming, and has performed in the nation’s leading music centers, including Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, and the Kennedy Center. The group’s most recent CD was named as one of The New Yorker’s Top Ten Classical Recordings of 2007.
  
  Lim received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Indiana University, where he studied with legendary pedagogue Josef Gingold. Lim also held a faculty position at Indiana as a Visiting Lecturer. Later, he taught chamber music at the Juilliard School as an assistant to the Juilliard String Quartet. Lim currently serves on the faculty of Cornish College of the Arts, where he teaches violin, viola, and chamber music.
• Sean Osborn, clarinet
• Sean Osborn, clarinet, appearing on Windows XP, is the most widely-heard clarinetist in history. He has traveled North America, Europe, and Japan as soloist and chamber musician, and traveled the world during his eleven years with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He has also appeared as guest principal clarinet with the New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the American Symphony Orchestra. With over three dozen concertos in his repertoire, Osborn has also recorded nearly forty CDs for London, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, CRI, and others. He has premiered works by John Adams, John Corigliano, Chen Yi, and Phillip Glass, to name a few. Osborn is also an award-winning composer whose chamber works have been played by members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Marlboro Music Festival, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic among others.
• Paul Taub, flute
• Paul Taub, flute and Drums Along the Pacific festival curator, has been a leading performer of chamber and contemporary music in the Northwest since his arrival in Seattle in 1979. Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts, Taub was trained at Rutgers University and the California Institute of the Arts; his teachers include Marcel Moyse, Samuel Baron, Michel Debost, and Robert Aitken. He is a founding member and Executive Director of the Seattle Chamber Players.
  
  Taub is also an active soloist and recitalist, with extensive work in American, Soviet/Russian, and international contemporary repertoire. He has appeared in venues throughout the U.S. Northwest and Southeast, Western Canada, Southern France, Greece, Costa Rica, and Russia, Ukraine, and Estonia. He has given world and U.S. premieres of music by Henry Brant, John Cage, George Crumb, Janice Giteck, Sofia Gubaidulina, Toru Takemitsu, Peteris Vasks, and many others. He has a solo CD on Periplum of twelve commissioned works, and has also recorded for New Albion, New World, Mode, and CRI. He is a member of the boards of directors of Chamber Music America and the National Flute Association.
• Adrienne Varner, piano
• Adrienne Varner, piano, lives in Seattle and is a devoted performer of contemporary and experimental solo and chamber works. Highlights of the past year included a solo recital of music by Lou Harrison, John Cage, Jarrad Powell, and Toru Takemitsu; performances of chamber music by Frank Oteri and improvised music by Seattle composer Gust Burns; and recordings of solo and chamber music by both Jarrad Powell and Eyvind Kang. Varner also studies and performs Javanese gamelan music as a member of Gamelan Pacifica, with whom she gave the Northwest premiere of Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan in February 2008. Her love for Indonesian music led her to study gamelan in Java during the summer of 2006. A 2007 graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, Varner studied piano with Dr. Peter Mack and Oksana Ezhokina and holds a bachelor of music in piano performance.

© 2009 Cornish College of the Arts