Performer, Violist
Samuel Rhodes is a consummate artist, well known as recitalist, soloist with orchestra, recording artist, composer and teacher. His artistry has become well recognized and his playing has received international critical acclaim. The New York Times has called him “a remarkably sensitive violist”; the Washington Post has described him as a “master of the viola fit to stand with the instrument’s greatest”; the Boston Herald wrote, “the texture of his sound is in itself a wonder”; in London they praised his “stunning range of color”; and in Paris he was called “a violist of the very first rank.”
Mr. Rhodes is celebrating his 34th year as a member of both the Juilliard String Quartet and the faculty of the Juilliard School. He serves, along with Karen Tuttle, as co-chair of the viola department.
He also has been a participant of the Marlboro Music Festival since 1960 and is a faculty member of the Tanglewood Music Center.
His solo appearances have included several recitals at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and an unaccompanied recital at the Juilliard School highlighted by world premieres of works by Milton Babbitt and Arthur Weisberg. In 1985, he supervised and performed in a recital series at Weill Hall, New York City, celebrating the 90th birthday of Paul Hindemith. In 1996, he organized and performed in a similar recital series at Miller Theatre, Columbia University, commemorating Hindemith’s 100th anniversary.
In 1998, he gave the world premiere of Donald Martino’s Three Sad Songs for viola and piano with Thomas Sauer at the Library of Congress. In June, 2001, Mr. Rhodes was invited to play a recital consisting of the Babbitt, Play it Again, Sam and the Vieuxtemps Sonata at the 10th anniversary of the “Viola Space” series at Casals Hall, Tokyo, Japan.
Since 1998 Mr. Rhodes had the honor to be invited to join the late Isaac Stern to be a coach at his Chamber Music Workshops in Jerusalem, Israel; Miyazaki, Japan; and Carnegie Hall, New York.
Mr. Rhodes, a native New Yorker, studied the viola with Sydney Beck and Walter Trampler. He has a B.A. from Queens College of the City University of New York and an M.F.A. from Princeton University, where he studied composition with Roger Sessions and Earl Kim.
As a composer, he wrote a String Quintet for two violins, two violas and cello, which has been performed by the Blair, Composer’s, Galimir, Pro Arte and Sequoia Quartets. The quintet was recently recorded by the Pro Arte Quartet with the composer as guest.
As a member of the Juilliard String Quartet, Mr. Rhodes toured throughout Europe, North and South America, the Near East, Asia, Australia and New Zealand; has recorded an extensive catalogue of the string quartet literature on the CBS Masterworks, Sony Classical, Wergo, and CRI labels; has won three Grammy Awards for the Debussy and Ravel Quartets, the complete Schoenberg Quartets, and the complete Beethoven Quartets; has commissioned and performed the world premieres of works by Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Mario Davidovsky, Henri Dutilleux, Alberto Ginastera, John Harbison, Fred Lerdahl, Donald Martino, Morton Subotnick, Stefan Wolpe, and Richard Wernick. In 2002, the quartet gave the world premieres of newly commissioned works by Ralph Shapey and Gunther Schuller.
In 2003, the Quartet will celebrate 40 years of residency at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC by performing a Beethoven cycle combined with distinguished American works by Shapey, Schuller, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and including the world premiere of the Horn Quintet by Richard Wernick.
Mr. Rhodes has also been artist in residence at Michigan State University and has been awarded honorary doctorates by Michigan State, the University of Jacksonville, and the San Francisco Conservatory.
He has appeared as a guest artist with the Beaux Arts Trio, the Mannes Trio, the American, Blair, Brentano, Cleveland, Galimir, Guarneri, Mendelssohn, Pro Arte and Sequoia String Quartets.
Performer, Violinist
Violinist Harumi Rhodes is in her second year of New England Conservatory’s Master of Music program studying with Donald Weilerstein.
Ms. Rhodes has performed as a soloist with the Juilliard Symphony in Alice Tully Hall, Kenosha Symphony, Long Island Sound Symphony, Northern Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Rockland Symphony, Prometheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Broadway Bach Ensemble.
This March, Ms. Rhodes will be performing Bach’s a minor Violin Concerto in Jordan Hall. This May, she is looking forward to her second appearance with the Broadway Bach Ensemble performing Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with her father and violist, Samuel Rhodes.
As a chamber musician, Ms. Rhodes has been a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival for the past three summers and has concertized with the “Musicians from Marlboro” this past spring on a tour including New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Washington D.C.’s Freer Gallery, Philadelphia’s Convention Center, and Boston’s Gardner Museum. Most recently, Ms. Rhodes was asked to be a member of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society Two program giving her the great honor of working with her some of the most renowned chamber musicians of our time.
Ms. Rhodes has also performed on numerous occasions on the Bargemusic Series in Brooklyn, New York and has been a guest with the Boston Chamber Music Society, Walden Chamber Players, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Ms. Rhodes has performed a variety of newly composed works by many of her peers as well as many of the great established composers still living today. This past summer, the first recording of Milton Babbitt’s Sixth String Quartet was released on the Tzadik Composer Series Label with Ms. Rhodes as the first violinist.
Ms. Rhodes received her Bachelor of Music from the Juilliard School studying with Earl Carlyss and Ronald Copes and studied with Shirley Givens at Juilliard’s Pre-College Division.
Conductor, Performer
Robert Alan Radmer lives in Austin, Texas, where in 1998 he founded and became Music Director of the Balcones Community Orchestra, now in its fourth season. He has conducted youth, festival, community and professional orchestras in ten states, and maintains an active schedule of high-school orchestra clinics and workshops.
Mr. Radmer’s primary conducting teacher is Gurer Aykal, and he has received additional training at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen under the direction of David Zinman and Murray Sidlin.
Mr. Radmer holds the position of Instructor of Viola at Southwest Texas State University, and has served on the music faculties of the College of Saint Scholastica and Eastern New Mexico University, where he was Music Director of the ENMU Symphony Orchestra for ten seasons.
Mr. Radmer has performed as a violist with the Paganini Duo since 1981, and has been a member of chamber ensembles and orchestras in over two thousand performances in North America and Europe. This season he will serve as violist in the Arco Voce String Quartet in San Antonio and The Roundabouts in San Marcos, Principal Violist in the Sun Valley (ID) Orchestra and Chorale, and violist in the Broadway Bach Ensemble in New York City.
Performer, Theremin
ARMEN RA, Theremin, is an Armenian performance artist and Thereminist born in Iran.
Raised by a concert pianist mother and aunt a renowned opera singer and Ikebana master, it was no surprise that Armen flourished, not only as one of New York’s leading aesthetes, but also as a self-taught master of the theremin.
By combining both the visual and aural aspects of his craft, Armen Ra has developed an art form that is truly his own and is something quite amazing to behold. Fusing Armenian folk music with modern instrumentation, along with melodic lounge standard’s and classical arias. His unique and elegant recitals transport the listener to a time and place of beauty, emotional healing, and of course sacred glamour.
The U.N.,Lincoln Center,CBGB’s, Knitting Factory, Joe’s Pub, La Mama, etc… Featured on and appeared in: CNN, HBO, MTV, Vogue, Glamour, Amica, NY Times, NY Post, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Time Out, etc. …and so on..
_____________ “Am I scaring you?” he asked the crowd, which had been lulled into such a trance they weren’t even cruising each other. It was spooky and fabulous . . . (from a review by Michael Musto) –
. . . . Ra’s incredible command of the theremin, the unusual electronic instrument on which the player creates sound by seemingly manipulating the air around the instrument.
Most familiar to mainstream listeners as the source of the “weird” sounds heard on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and in countless ’50s sci-fi films, the theremin has an expressive potential that is only now being fully explored by a small but dedicated band of visionary musicians.
Performer, Violinist
Violinist Nurit Pacht was selected as one of the “Stars of the Year 2000” by Le Monde de la Musique and since then her career has blossomed with appearances in London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Moscow’s Great Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, The People’s Hall of China in Beijing and at Ravinia’s Rising Stars Series. Chosen by director Robert Wilson to be the featured musician in his multi-media piece Relative Light featuring solo violin works by John Cage and J.S. Bach, Nurit is equally at home in the standard repertoire as in the contemporary.
Last season, Nurit performed as soloist in collaboration with the dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones in one of Europe’s greatest cathedrals, the Duomo in Milan as well as at Kennedy Center and on tour in many U.S. capitals with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company culminating in performances at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival. She is now in her third season serving as the artistic director of the Alliance Players, a dynamic group of musicians who perform innovative programs in New York City.
Nurit performed in duo recitals with Philip Glass playing the composer’s works for violin and piano. She commissioned and premiered works from other leading composers including, Michael Hersch, Noam Sheriff, Annie Gosfield and Octavio Vazquez.
Nurit has toured as soloist with the Israeli Chamber Orchestra. She also performed the world premiere of Noam Sheriff’s Violin Concerto Dibrot, a work dedicated to her, with the Israeli Contemporary Players in a radio broadcast from Jerusalem and in the Contemporary Music Festival in Tel Aviv. Nurit was also the soloist on a tour of China with the Young Israel Philharmonic, performing in the major concert venues of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. In the United States she has been a soloist with the Rhode Island Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Des Moines Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Alliance Players, American Youth Symphony and Santa Rosa Symphony. In Italy she performed with the Filarmonica di Roma, in Poland and Germany with the Wroclaw Chamber Orchestra, with most of the major orchestras of Romania including the Georges Enesco Philharmonic and with the National Symphony of Columbia.
In the spring of 1996, immediately following the cease-fire, she concertized in six of the worst war-devastated cities of Bosnia to enthusiastic audiences of the three ethnic minorities, with the sponsorship of the United Nations and the European Mozart Foundation. At the invitation of the European Commission she also performed on the occasion of the inauguration of the European Monetary Union in Bruxelles.
She was heard at the festivals of Santa Fe, Mecklenberg Vorpommern, Divonne, Stresa, Kfar Blum, George Crumb, Tartini, Monadnock and, at the invitation of Christoph Eschenbach, performed in Ravinia’s Rising Stars Series. One of her live performances from Wigmore Hall was released by Nimbus records.
Nurit Pacht grew up in Texas and made her first solo public appearance on national television at the age of 12. In 1990, at age seventeen, she made her U.S. solo debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra and has since won top prizes in international competitions in Europe and the United States, including the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition in Switzerland.
She plays on a violin made by P. Guarneri in 1750.
Flautist, Performer
A long-time Broadway Bach Ensemble member, Renée Oakford has been a soloist with the Goldman Memorial Band and the LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts Orchestra.
Renée performs regularly in New York with the Amato Opera Company and is a past member of the Brooklyn Lyric Opera, the Riverside Orchestra, New Amsterdam Orchestra and the The Eastern Winds.
Among others, Ms. Oakford has studied with Judith Mendenhall, Michael Parloff and Trudy Kane and has participated in master classes by Julius Baker, Robert Dick, Thomas Nyfinger, and Jeanne Baxstresser.
Renee holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music and the Mannes College of Music.
Performer, Vocalist
Scott Murphree is a distinguished singer of the concert, recital and opera stage.
As a featured soloist, he appeared in Handel’s “Saul” for the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. Paul Griffiths of The New York Times reported that he “gave an excellent performance as Jonathan, radiant and expressive, completely in command,” as well as declaring his opening aria as “one of the musical high points… [which] gave everyone a lift.” His other solo concert engagements include appearances with the Eos Orchestra of New York, the Newberry Consort of Chicago, the Friends and Enemies of New Music, the Mirror Visions Ensemble, the Symphony of Southeast Texas, the Holy Trinity Bach Foundation and Bachworks.
He has been a featured soloist in concerts of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Mass in B minor. He also has appeared in concerts at several summer music festivals, including the Cape May Music Festival, the Music Festival of the Hamptons, the Aspen Music Festival as well as the Pacific Music festival in Japan.
In Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Mr. Murphree gave a solo recital of songs commissioned by the late Alice Esty. He also has appeared at Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd Street Y and Town Hall, singing the songs of Ned Rorem with the composer at the piano.
He has worked closely with other composers such as Robert Beaser and Richard Hundley, and has premiered works written especially for him by Yehudi Wyner, Christopher Berg, Tom Cipullo and Richard Pearson Thomas. Mr. Murphree often gives song recitals and has been heard in New York at Florence Gould Hall, Cooper Union and the Kosciuzsko Foundation among others. In addition, he has given recitals abroad in Paris, London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Stockholm.
Mr. Murphree has participated in several world premieres of operas. This spring he sang the role of Percy Bysshe Shelly in the premiere of Allan Jaffe’s opera, “Mary Shelley,” at the Ethical Culture Society. He also sang the role of Arviragus in the premiere of “Cymbeline” by Christopher Berg, and he sang the title role for the premiere of Tina Davidson’s “Billy and Zelda” with Opera Delaware. Furthermore, he has sung roles in the acclaimed productions of Britten’s “Paul Bunyan” with the Glimmerglass Opera, and in Jonathan Miller’s staged version of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Among his honors, he was given the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Award, and was selected as finalist for both the Joy in Singing Award and the PoulencPlus! Centennial Competition.
He received his education at the University of North Texas, Yale University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Performer, Pianist
Hailed for his “splendid powers of concentration” (The Washington Post) and performances that are “exciting to watch and hear” (The San Diego Union-Tribune), Michael Mizrahi has won acclaim for his compelling performances of a wide-ranging repertoire and his ability to connect with audiences of all ages. He has appeared as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and music educator across the United States and in Europe.
Mr. Mizrahi has performed as soloist with the Houston Symphony, National Symphony, Haddonfield Symphony, Sioux City Symphony, and Prince Georges Philharmonic Orchestra, performing in venues such as the Kimmel Center, the Kennedy Center, and Houston’s Jones Hall. In 2005 Mizrahi appeared as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto K488 with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Leon Fleisher. Mizrahi is a founding member of the Moët Trio, which is quickly establishing itself as one of today’s most exciting young piano trios. The Moët Trio is in residence at the New England Conservatory this season. Equally at home with contemporary music, Mizrahi is a founding member of NOW Ensemble, a chamber group devoted to the commissioning and performing of new music by emerging composers. A winner of Astral Artistic Services’ 2005 National auditions, Mizrahi joined Astral’s artist roster that year.
In January 2007 Mizrahi was selected to join The Academy: A Program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute (ACJW). Under the auspices of this ground-breaking new program, Mizrahi teaches music at a New York City public school one and-a-half days a week, participates in workshops with leading classical musicians and entrepreneurs, and appears with other Academy members in chamber music concerts at Carnegie Hall and throughout New York City.
Michael Mizrahi began piano studies at the age of four. He received a B.A. in music and religion from the University of Virginia and a Doctoral degree in piano performance from the Yale School of Music. Former teachers include Robert Wyatt, Eric Himy, Mary Kathleen Ernst, and George Francois.
Performer, Vocalist
Karen Leah Mason is a graduate of the University of Colorado and continued her musical studies in Tampa Florida before moving to New York. She has sung leading roles with the Village Light Opera, Encompass Theatre, 1010 Players, Sylvan Opera and Masque Theatre.
Favorite roles include Mad Margaret in Ruddigore, Elsie in Yeomen of the Guard, Mabel in Pirates of Penzance, Yum-Yum in The Mikado, Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun and Susan in Home and the River — a world premiere performance.
An interesting sideline in her career has been the opportunity in a marketing venture for Ada Core Technologies portraying Lady Ada Lovelace in musical productions and recitals in London, Sweden, Spain, Berlin and throughout the USA.
Performer, Violinist
Curtis Macomber is recognized as one of the most versatile soloists and chamber musicians before the public today, equally at home and committed to works from Bach to Babbitt, and with a discography which includes the complete Brahms String Quartets as well as the Roger Sessions Solo Sonata.
A featured lecture/recitalist in the first American Violin Congress in June of 1987, he was Second Prize winner in the 1980 Rockefeller Foundation International Competition for the Performance of Twentieth Century American Violin Music.
Mr. Macomber has appeared in recital at Carnegie Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Miller Theatre, and the Kennedy Center , and has been soloist with the Musica Aeterna Orchestra, the Juilliard Symphony, Great Neck Symphony, Westchester Philharmonic, Vermont Symphony, and at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.
As first violinist of the award-winning New World String Quartet for 11 years (1982-1993), Mr. Macomber performed most of the standard repertoire as well as numerous contemporary works in performances i11 major halls throughout the United States and Europe, and with the Quartet was appointed Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University from 1982-1990; with that group he also recorded 14 discs and performed numerous times on Public Radio and Television in this country, and the BBC in Great Britain.
A founding member of the Apollo Piano Trio and the Bridge Horn Trio, and a member of the 20th-Century music ensemble Speculum Musicae since 1991, Mr. Macomber has also appeared with the Sea Cliff Chamber Players, New York New Music Ensemble, Group for Contemporary Music, New York Chamber Soloists, and in chamber music series across the country and in Europe.
He has recorded for Nonesuch, Koch International, Vanguard, Pickwick, and Musical Heritage; CRI has recently released his second solo recording, entitled “Songs of Solitude”, which the New York Observer named one of 1996’s best instrumental solo discs; and the Violin-Piano Sonatas of Amy Beach and John Corigliano, with pianist Diane Walsh, are available on Koch.
Mr. Macomber is a member of the chamber music faculty of the Juilliard School and the violin faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, and has also taught at Utah State University, Montclair State College and Calvin College.
He holds his B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees from the Juilliard School , where he was a scholarship student of Joseph Fuchs and winner of the Morris Loeb and Walter Naumburg Prizes. (October 28, 2001)
