John
Kenneth Adams
received his early musical training in Birmingham, Alabama, where
he studied piano with Guy and Elizabeth Allen at the Birmingham College of Music. After moving
to Kansas City, Missouri, he continued his training with Mary Newitt Dawson at the University of Kansas City. During this time he also studied with
Carl Friedberg, one of the last students of Clara Schumann, and with Joanna Graudan at the Aspen Festival. A Victor Wilson Scholar at the Yale School of Music,
he studied with Bruce Simonds, and twice won the Concerto Competition and was awarded the Lockwood Prize for the best piano recital. A Fulbright Scholarship
to the Royal Academy of Music followed, where he studied with Hilda Dederich, and in 1960 he attended the Casals Festival in Zermatt in 1960 as an accompanist.
From 1961 until 1971 he studied with Frank Mannheimer, especially during his renowned series of summer sessions in Duluth, Minnesota.
Mr. Adams has played on many important series throughout the USA, and during the 1970s made many tours for the United States Information Service in South America,
Spain, Italy, and Central America. He made an extensive tour for Gioventu Musicale throughout Italy in 1976 and in 1978 he made his New York debut with an all-French program
in Carnegie Recital Hall.
His concerts in South Carolina over the past four decades now number in the hundreds, and he is
especially well know as an interpreter of French piano music. He is a member of the Board of
Directors for the French Piano Institute in Paris, and has documented the piano music of Debussy
in a series of articles for the Piano Quarterly. In 1985-6 he performed all of Debussy's
piano music in five recitals at the University of South Carolina. He received the Alumni
Achievement Award from the University of Missouri in 1981. In 1997 he was awarded the Mungo
Award for distinguished teaching of undergraduates by the University of South Carolina, and
in 1999 was made a member of The Guardian Society by USC President John Palms. He is a regular
visitor to South Korea, where he has made seven visits since 1986. In 1997 he visited Sophia,
Bulgaria where he gave masterclasses at the National Conservatory and was a guest of the Varna
International Choral Festival in Varna, Bulgaria. This past year he visited France, Italy and
South Korea for concerts, masterclasses and private lessons. In addition to his solo recitals,
he often joins Ella Ann Holding (Artist in Residence at Campbell University) for duo-piano
recitals in the Southeast. In April 2000 he will receive an Alumni Citation of Merit from Yale
University. John Kenneth Adams is Distinguished Professor of Piano Emeritus at the University of South
Carolina School of Music, where he has served on the faculty since 1964. Now retired, he has recently devoted more time to
masterclasses, including two in May 2003 at Samford University and Shepherd College. He recently recorded a CD of piano
music of Debussy and Poulenc, and this spring is recording a CD of piano music of Schubert. He plans to
continue his active concert life, but devote more time to writing and recording, as well as working with very young students.
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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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Charles “Corky" Chocallo
at the age of 14, is the 2002 winner
of the Clara Wells Scholarship Auditions. He moved with his family to the Atlanta area in 2001, after living in Gulf Breeze, Florida,
for five years.
He is a home-schooled eighth grader, and studies piano with David Watkins at Kennesaw State University.
At the age of 11, Corky was featured in a segment of “Wiz Kids” on WEAR TV, and performed as soloist with the
Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra. In July of 2002, he was the subject of an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
and in August, he was featured on CNN in a story about gifted children.
In addition to winning the Clara Wells, he was also selected as one of twelve finalists in the 2003 auditions for the Curtis Institute of Music
in Philadelphia, and he was Winner of the Southern Division (9 states) of the Music Teacher’s National Association’s Junior High Competition, for
which he competed at the National Convention in Salt Lake City in March 2003. Corky has performed several times locally in Atlanta,
including a forty-minute concert on the Horowitz piano for the Atlanta Steinway Society, a concert at the Jimmy Carter Presidential
Library for the Pro-Mozart Society, and a concert for the Encore Society. In March, he performed a 90-minute concert to raise
funds for the Pensacola Music Teachers' Association in Pensacola, Florida. He is a chamber musician as well, and has performed as
pianist in a quintet at Kennesaw State University in the spring semester, 2003. In May he will attend the Sergei Babayon Piano Academy at the Cleveland Institute of Music,
and later this summer, he plans to attend Tanglewood.
In his spare time, Corky enjoys ping-pong, movies, and
his computer, and he hopes to make a career of music in the future.
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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.
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Warren Hoffer and Mary Pendleton
have performed extensively together throughout the United States.
WARREN HOFFER, tenor, has performed internationally as a specialist in art song and oratorio, with music ranging from the sixteenth
century
to the present. In addition to performing with many choral organizations, he has sung with the Pittsburgh, Hartford, Portland,
Lubbock, Las Vegas and Phoenix Symphony Orchestras, Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of Santa Fe. During his
military service Mr. Hoffer was a soloist with the United States Army Chorus, in Washington, D. C. He has premiered new vocal
works as a member of the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, a group organized by the composer/conductor
Lukas Foss to create and perform avant-garde music. His summer festival appearances have included the New Hampshire Music
Festival, Santa Fe Bach Festival, Park City International Chamber Music Festival, Buffalo Bach Festival, and the Flagstaff Summer
Festival. In Phoenix, he has been a frequent performer with the ensembles Bach West, Musica Dolce, and the Phoenix Bach Choir.
His conductors have included Lukas Foss, Sir David Willcocks, Margaret Hillis, Richard Page, Sören Hansen, Vance George, Anders
Öhrwall, Thomas Dunn, and Jon Washburn.
Mr. Hoffer is an Emeritis Professor of Music at Arizona State University, and former Vice President of Discretionary Funds and
Field Activities of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. He is also the creator of BRITISH SONG FA LA LA, an
Internet Web site database of over 6,000 British songs.
MARY PENDLETON
has performed as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral
keyboardist, and accompanist in the United States, Mexico, and England. She made her London
solo debut at the prestigious Wigmore Hall in 1984, and she has appeared as a soloist with
the Phoenix Symphony, and the Amarillo and Lubbock Symphonies. For nine years she served as
keyboardist for the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, playing piano, celesta, harpsichord and organ, and since 1998,
she has been the fulltime Keyboardist with the Florida Orchestra in Tampa Bay. She is a member
of many chamber ensembles, including the Bel Canto Players, of which she is a founding member, and she frequently performs
with
singers. Her summer festival appearances include the Sedona Chamber Music Festival, the New
Hampshire Music Festival, and the Park City International Chamber Music Festival.
For the Arizona Arts Commission and
the NEA, she toured Arizona and northern Mexico in solo and chamber music performances.
She began to play the piano before she was three years old, studying with her father, Samuel Pendleton, a
student of Tobias Matthay. At the age of five, she was the youngest performer ever to participate in the Berkeley
(California) Bach Festival, and she later was a prize winner in the Chicago Young Artists Competition.
She graduated as Salutatorian from Interlochen Arts Academy, and completed Bachelor and Master
of Music degrees at Texas Tech University. She studied in England with Denise Lassimonne,
Martino Tirimo and Gwenneth Pryor, completing graduate diplomas at the Royal College of Music
and the Royal Academy of Music. She is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts
degree at Arizona State University, which she wil receive in December 2003, with majors in both solo piano performance and collaborative piano.
In addition to maintaining a private piano studio, she has taught at Texas Tech University, Arizona State
University, and in the Maricopa County (AZ) Community Colleges. She is a frequent adjudicator and workshop presenter, and is a member of Phi Kappa Lambda and the MTNA.
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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 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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Lynn Rice-See
has appeared as recitalist, concerto soloist, and chamber musician in the United States and in Europe. She has appeared three times with the
Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra in Ostrava, Czech Republic. In the United States she made her Carnegie Recital Hall debut in 1982, and
since then she has appeared as soloist with the Gulf Coast Symphony, the
Huntsville Symphony, the Johnson City Symphony, and the Kingsport Symphony. In 1992, she appeared in recital in Brussels, sponsored by the
Ministere de la Communauté Français, and her 1993 recital tour of Germany was sponsored by the German-American Institute in Saarbrücken.
She was a member of the Tennessee Arts Commission touring roster from 1991 through 1994.
She holds the Bachelor of Music degree from Peabody Conservatory, where she studied with Walter Hautzig, the Master of Music from the Juilliard
School where she studied with Beveridge Webster, and the Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Southern California, where she studied
with John Perry. Currently she coaches with Walter Hautzig and Sheila Paige. She is currently Professor of Piano at East Tennessee State University.
She is also a member of the faculties of the Adamant Music School in Vermont and the
Piano Wellness Seminar .
Prior to coming to ETSU, she worked as an opera coach/assistant conductor at the opera houses of Münster and Essen,
Germany as well as at Michigan Opera and Dayton Opera in the United States. She has also taught at the Manhattan School of Music in
New York and at William Carey College.
In celebration of the Tennessee Bicentennial she and mezzo-soprano Sharon Mabry issued a compact disc (on the Heartdance label) of works by
Tennessee composers. This disc contains world premiere recordings of works for solo piano and mezzo-soprano and piano by Kenton Coe of
Johnson City, Michael Alec Rose of Nashville, Jeffrey Wood of Clarksville, and Michael Linton of Murfreesboro. The song cycle by Kenton Coe,
A Family Gathering, was commissioned by Rice-See and Mabry and received its world premiere at ETSU in 1998.
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Ann Sears
is the current President of the American Matthay Association. She also serves as Professor of Music and Director of Performance at Wheaton
College in Norton, Massachusetts, where she teaches piano and courses in European and American
music, including African-American music and American musical theater. She holds degrees from
the New England Conservatory of Music, Arizona State University, and The Catholic University
of America, where her doctoral dissertation was about American art song in turn-of-the-century
Boston. She is well-known for her performances and publications in American music, and has
presented papers and lecture recitals at national meetings of the Sonneck Society for American
Music, the College Music Society, and the American Matthay Association. Concert appearances
include the Badia di Cava Music Festival in Italy, the Master Musicians Festival in Kentucky,
the Sumner School Museum and St. Patrick's in the City in Washington, D.C., the Gardner Museum
and the French Library in Boston, and various schools and universities in the United States.
Her research interests are American art song, the concert tradition in African American music,
and American opera and musical theater. A compact disc, Deep River: The Art Songs and
Spirituals of Harry T. Burleigh, in collaboration with Oral Moses, bass, originally on
Northeastern Records, has been reissued by Albany Records; and a new disc, Fi-yer! A
Hundred Years of African-American Song, with tenor William Brown, was recently released
by Albany. She is currently review editor of the College Music Society journal Symposium
and membership secretary of the American Liszt Society.
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Stephen Siek
is a past President of the American Matthay Association.
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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Dan Franklin Smith
has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and vocal
accompanist throughout the U.S. in venues such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the
Distinguished Artist Series at the Cleveland Museum, and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. He has been acclaimed
for his extreme refinement as an interpreter of Chopin and other Romantic composers. Recently, he returned from
Germany where he performed in the Kurt Weill Zentrum in Dessau and the Lucas Cranach Hof in Wittenberg. He
made his European debut as a solo recitalist to a standing ovation in Sweden's Mariefred Kyrkan in 1997. In September
he released the premiere recording of Kurt Atterberg's Concerto, which he also performed in Sweden in October 1998,
with Arne Johansson conducting the Sofia Orchestra. Svenska Dagbladet described his performance as marked by a
"sensitive ear, strong sense of style and fine musicianship . . .more than anyone could wish for." The performance was also
televised throughout Sweden. Other European engagements have included orchestral appearances in England with the
Bournemouth Sinfonietta, and solo recitals in London, Stockholm, and Leipzig.
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Jane Luther Smith
has received the Licentiate Performer's Diploma in Piano from London's
Royal Academy of Music. Her work with first-generation Matthay students
includes extensive study with Denise Lassimonne in England and additional work with the late Frank Mannheimer.
She received her Bachelor of Music
and Master of Music Degrees (cum laude Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of
South Carolina where her teachers included John Williams
and John Kenneth
Adams. Miss Smith was also a student of the late Elizabeth Newell at Coker College
in Hartsville, South Carolina.
Her experience as a performer has been varied, including appearances
in England, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, California,
Minnesota, and Canada.
In 1976 she was the winner of the AMA's Clara Wells Piano Auditions
held at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and she was the
recipient of a Chattanooga Cotton Ball Fellowship for advanced study in music
in competitions held at the University of Tennessee (Chattanooga). She has
been a featured performer both on the South Carolina Educational TV and Radio
networks. She was the winner of the 1996 "Woman of Achievement Award" in the
area of fine arts presented by the YWCA of the Upper Lowlands, Inc.
In addition to her demand as a solo recitalist, she is on the music
faculty of the University of South Carolina, Sumter, and has taught Music
Fundamentals for Central Carolina Technical College. She is owner of Jane
Luther Smith Piano Studios in Sumter.
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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 is currently the Editor of the Matthay News, a position she has held since 1987.
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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