PhoenixPhest! Faculty

We are honored and privileged to have these amazing musicians on the faculty of the May 2012 Phest. In addition to coaching our chamber groups they will be performing in the faculty concert on Saturday, May 26 at 8:00 p.m. at Kerrytown Concert House. The concert is open to the public. Click here to reserve your tickets.

Grammy Award winning conductor Jerry Blackstone is Director of Choirs and Chair of the Conducting Department at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance where he conducts the Chamber Choir, teaches conducting at the graduate level, and administers a choral program of eleven choirs. In February 2006, he received two GRAMMY® Awards (“Best Choral Performance” and “Best Classical Album”) as chorusmaster for the critically acclaimed Naxos recording of William Bolcom’s monumental Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In 2006, the Chamber Choir performed by special invitation at the inaugural convention of the National Collegiate Choral Organization in San Antonio, and in 2003, the Chamber Choir presented three enthusiastically received performances in New York City at the National Convention of the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA). In addition to Professor Blackstone’s choral conducting work at the University, he has led operatic productions with the University of Michigan Opera Theatre, including productions of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. For his significant contributions to choral music in Michigan, he received the 2006 Maynard Klein Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACDA-Michigan chapter.

Professor Blackstone is considered one of the country’s leading conducting teachers, and his students have received first-place awards and been finalists in both the graduate and undergraduate divisions of the American Choral Directors Association biennial National Choral Conducting Awards competition.

He has appeared as festival guest conductor and workshop presenter in thirty states as well as New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Guest appearances for 2010-11 include festivals and conference presentations in Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Carolina, Nebraska, Illinois, New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Shanghai (China).

In 2004, Dr. Blackstone was named Conductor and Music Director of the University Musical Society Choral Union, a large community/university chorus that frequently appears with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and presents yearly performances of Handel’s Messiah and other major works for chorus and orchestra. In March 2008, he conducted the UMS Choral Union and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a special performance of the Bach, St. Matthew Passion. Choirs prepared by Dr. Blackstone have appeared under the batons of Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Leonard Slatkin, John Adams, Helmuth Rilling, James Conlon, Nicholas McGegan, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Peter Oundjian, and Yitzak Perlman.

As conductor of the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club from 1988-2002, Professor Blackstone led the ensemble in performances at ACDA national and division conventions and on extensive concert tours throughout Australia, Eastern and Central Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. The recently released UM Men’s Glee Club CD, I have had singing, is a retrospective of his tenure as conductor of the ensemble.

Santa Barbara Music Publishing distributes Dr. Blackstone’s acclaimed educational video, Working with Male Voices and publishes the Jerry Blackstone Choral Series, a set of choral publications that presents works by several composers in a variety of musical styles.

Prior to coming to the University of Michigan in 1988, Professor Blackstone served on the music faculties of Phillips University in Oklahoma, Westmont College in California, and Huntington College in Indiana. He holds degrees from the University of Southern California, Indiana University, and Wheaton College.

Gabriel Bolkosky is the executive director and founding member of The Phoenix Ensemble. Through this organization and other projects, he has worked with great composers such as William Bolcom, John Harbison, Thomas Ades, George Tsontakis, Bernard Rands, Sydney Hodkinson, Derek Bermel, Ned McGowan and Christopher Rouse.

At the University of Michigan, Gabe studied violin with Paul Kantor, and jazz with Ellen Rowe and Ed Sarath. He also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music under Donald Weilerstein. Gabe maintains a strong interest across many musical genres and regularly performs in both classical and improvised settings.

Over the past decade, Gabe has devoted much of his time to working with young people. He has worked with thousands of students, teaching violin and improvisation. He has served as guest artist at many workshops and schools around the country including Harvard, Brandeis, Dartmouth, Princeton, the University of Michigan, the Walden School and the Aspen Music Festival, where he played in the Contemporary Ensemble. He began teaching violin at the University of Michigan in 2009. For more information, see his web site: www.gabrielbolkosky.com.

A native of Detroit, Miriam Bolkosky began her cello studies at the age of four and made her solo debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at fifteen. Ms. Bolkosky has performed extensively with the Boston Pops, National Lyric Opera, Berkshire Opera, New York City Opera National Company, Music of the Baroque, Chicago Lyric Opera, and Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra as well as with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, and Chicago’s Symphony II. The Washington Post applauded her performance as soloist at the John F. Kennedy Center as one filled with a “poignant beauty born of pathos.” Her recording of Donald McCullough’s “Holocaust Cantata” can be heard on Albany Records. An active chamber musician, she has given numerous recitals including performances at Paul Hall, Harris Hall, the Cape May Festival, the Cayman International Chamber Music Festival, Avery Fisher Hall, Weill Recital Hall, and Carnegie Hall. She is a member of the Ann Arbor based Phoenix and Cassini Ensembles, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, Ohio, as well as Boston’s Radius Ensemble. She holds degrees from The University of Michigan and The Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Jeffrey Solow, Erling Blondal Bengtsson, and Alan Harris.

Ms. Bolkosky has served on the faculties of Northwestern University, the Music Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Montclair University, and the Suzuki School of Newton. She currently freelances and teaches in Boston.

Jason Duckles has an active life as a soloist and chamber musician. Jason has received numerous awards for his chamber collaboration, such as grand prize in the Concert Artists Guild Competition and top prize in the Munich ARD International Competition. Jason is a founding member of the Amelia Piano Trio. Jason has also been a member of the Avalon String Quartet, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and has appeared frequently as the cellist for the Mark Morris Dance Group which tours throughout the United States and Europe.

The Amelia Trio maintains a busy performance schedule, which has brought them throughout North America and Europe. Recently, National Public Radio invited the trio to spend a week in their headquarters in Washington D.C. as a young ensemble in residence. The trio loves to expand the boundaries of classical music, and has created a new collaboration with the Sean Curran Dance Company.

Dedicated to music of our time, Jason has commissioned works from many composers, including Pulitzer Prize Winner John Harbison. Jason is a recipient of Chamber Music America’s ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and can be heard on the labels Sony, Naxos, Channel Classics, Traditional Crossroads, and Cedille Records.

This past year Jason was involved in a bike accident that sent him over his handlebars. Luckily the accident happened right in front of the volunteer ambulance of the town of Durham, CT. On the way to the Yale/New Haven Hospital, the ambulance medics cut off all his clothes with a pair of enormous scissors. Three hours later, and all good news, found Jason and Anthea forty-five minutes from home without a wallet, cell phone, or clothes.

Scott Esty lives and teaches in Oregon, where he performs with the Oregon Symphony and the Portland Opera Orchestra and directs a teaching studio of 20 young violinists. Scott has performed across the country with some of today’s finest musicians, including the Shanghai String Quartet and pianists Brian Ganz, Adam Neiman, and Audrey Andrist. As violinist with the Portland-based modern ensemble Fear No Music, Scott premiered and recorded music by a wide range of contemporary composers, and gained the distinction of being one of the few violinists to perform upside down. Prior to moving to Oregon, Scott was Associate Concertmaster of the Kalamazoo Symphony. As a member of the KSO’s resident String Quartet, he appeared in regular concerts on the KSO concert series as well as touring area schools, community centers, and prisons with educational lecture/concert presentations of his own design. Scott has taught at Suzuki Institutes across the country, but PhoenixPhest is his favorite.

Dan Foster has taught violin at Eastern Michigan University since 1987. A student of Paul Rolland at the University of Illinois and of Angel Reyes at the University of Michigan, he holds degrees in violin performance from both schools. Since 1978, he has appeared frequently throughout the United States as a solo and chamber artist, with repertoire ranging from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. As a baroque violinist and violist, he has performed and recorded with Ars Music Baroque Orchestra, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Oriana, and Tafelmusik.

He is also a current and founding member of two early music groups: Xantippe, a trio for baroque flute/recorder, cello and violin, specializing in music of the late baroque and early classical periods, and La Gente d’Orfeo, a quartet for violin, cornetto, cello and early keyboards, specializing in Italian music of the early 17th-century. He currently serves as concertmaster of the Macomb Symphony, under Thomas Cook, and is a founding member of the Red Hot Lava Chamber Music Festival in Honolulu. He is a member of the Alexander Trio, faculty piano trio at Eastern Michigan University. Professor Foster’s teaching includes emphasis on musical values and expression, cultivation of free physical movements, and enhancement of the mind/body connection.

Annie Fullard is a founding member of the Cavani String Quartet, which is a winner of numerous awards and prizes including the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, Cleveland Quartet Competition and the Banff, Fischoff and Carmel competitions. Ms. Fullard and her colleagues in The Cavani Quartet were named Musical America’s Young Artists of the Year 1989 and received the 1998 ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, the 2005 Guarneri String Quartet Residency Award and four Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Grants. Ms. Fullard has toured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, including a Mozart 2006 tour of Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague. Other appearances include Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Corcoran Gallery and Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Ambassador Series in Los Angeles, Festival L’Epau in France, and the Ijsbreker Series in Amsterdam. Deeply committed to arts education, Ms. Fullard has given master classes and lecture demonstrations at music festivals, universities and public and private schools in communities across the country. As member of the faculty and Quartet-in-Residence at The Cleveland Institute of Music since 1988, Ms. Fullard in collaboration with her colleagues has developed the Apprentice Program, Intensive Quartet Seminar, New Quartet Project and M.A.P. (Music, Art & Poetry) PROJECT. Ms. Fullard is former artist-in-residence at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Texas and is currently visiting artist at the University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Ms. Fullard pursued additional studies at the Indiana University and Yale University. Her teachers and mentors include Donald Weilerstein, Josef Gingold, Franco Gulli, Earl Carlyss and Peter Salaff. A resident of Cleveland, Ms. Fullard has a son named Sam, a cat named Music, and four fish.

Diana Gannett, chair of strings and professor of double bass at the University of Michigan, specializes in double bass. She has spent most of her professional life on the East Coast as teacher and performer. As a chamber musician, she has performed with the artists of the Guarneri, Emerson, Laurentian, and Stanford Quartets and the Borodin Trio, as well as the Iowa Center for New Music, American Chamber Players, New Band, and the Oberlin Dance Collective. As a soloist, her programs have included over twenty contemporary premieres and several solo improvisations, as well as traditional repertoire. She is recorded on Irida records, has a solo CD titled Ladybass and a duo CD, Duetti Dolce. Previous appointments include the faculties of Yale University School of Music, Theatre & Dance and Hartt School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Connecticut, Oberlin College Conservatory in Ohio, University of Iowa School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and the University of South Florida. For many years she held the position of principal double bass at Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her students have been winners in many solo competitions (ISB, ASTA, EMF, Aspen, and various regional competitions) and have also won positions in many fine professional orchestras and teaching institutions.

Andrew Jennings’s principal teachers were Ivan Galamian, Alexander Schneider, Pamela Gearhart and Raphael Druian. He was a founding member of the Concord String Quartet, a new ensemble that quickly gained international recognition by winning the Naumberg Chamber Music Award in 1972 and which performed more than 1200 concerts throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Specializing in the performance of new works (with an emphasis on American composers), this Quartet gave more than 50 premieres and commissions; it also performed the standard repertory and 32 cycles of the complete Beethoven quartets and made numerous recordings, three of which were nominated for Grammy Awards. Mr. Jennings maintained his association with this Quartet until it disbanded in 1987. The Concord Trio, which Mr. Jennings subsequently formed with Norman Fischer and Jeanne Kierman, debuted in 1993.

Mr. Jennings’ teaching career began at Dartmouth College where members of the Concord Quartet were engaged as artists-in-residence from 1974 to 1987. Later he served on the faculty of Oberlin College. He currently devotes his summers to chamber music instruction at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts, where he holds the Beatrice Proctor Master Teacher Chair, and to the Musicorda School for Strings in Holyoke, Massachusetts. His recordings can be found on RCA, Nonesuch, Vox, Turnabout, Equilibrium, Danacord and MMO.

Melissa Kraut was appointed to the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the fall of 2006. Prior to that appointment, she was Associate Professor of Cello at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL.

Dr. Kraut has performed all over the world, including concerts in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Canada, France and throughout the United States. She has played under the baton of conductors such as Sir Georg Solti, Valery Gergiev and Semyon Bychkov, and has participated in many music festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and a summer at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Dr. Kraut plays with the Orlando Philharmonic, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the Winter Park Bach Festival Orchestra. Recent recitals have been in Delaware, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee. In addition to teaching at UCF, Dr. Kraut is Educational/Artistic Director for A Gift for Music- a string program that provides free instruments and instruction to 900 inner city children in Orlando.

Dr. Kraut was on the summer faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts for 9 summers and served as the Area Coordinator for Strings for 2 years. During the 2005-6 school year she was instructor of Cello at the Interlochen Arts Academy.

Dr. Kraut holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of Iowa and Northwestern University. Dr. Kraut’s principal instructors were Alan Harris and Hans Jorgen-Jensen. In addition, she has performed in master classes for such cellists as Yo-Yo Ma, Aldo Parisot, Tsuyoshi Tsitsumi, David Soyer and Frank Miller.

Violinist Anthea Kreston has received numerous awards for her chamber collaborations including honors at the Melbourne and Banff International Competitions, the Grand Prize at the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and Top Prize in the Munich ARD International Chamber Music Competition. The San Diego Reader said of her “…Anthea is a soloist of the Heifetz-Shaham-Vengerov caliber, whose musical instincts could make even a mere bagatelle thrill the soul and stir the senses to a frenzy.” She made her solo debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and tours actively with her piano trio, The Amelia Piano Trio. Anthea has won awards from Chamber Music America for her groundbreaking work with abused children and AIDS patients in Hartford, CT.

The Amelia Piano Trio has enjoyed a busy performance schedule since its forming. One of the brightest young groups in America, the Trio was honored as a recipient of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. She has also enjoyed touring as part of YoYo Ma’s Silk Road Project, which brought her from Las Vegas to Kazakhstan.

Anthea holds a B.A. in Women’s Studies from Cleveland State University and a performance degree from the Curtis Institute of Music. She is a professor of violin and viola at the Hartt School of Music. Anthea is actively involved with alternative music; she played in the Cleveland based rock band “Daria” for several years, and frequently performs with her violin and percussion duo, “Sweet Thunder”. Anthea can be heard on the labels New Tangent, Naxos, Cedille Records, Channel Classics, and Traditional Crossroads.

Anthea has started making cheese this year. She has made a lovely mozzeralla and has plans for a sharp cheddar. Anthea purchases her milk from a local dairy, which, despite her allergies, also serves as a twenty four hour petting zoo.

Merry Peckham is a founding member of the Cavani String Quartet and winner of numerous awards and prizes including the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. Ms. Peckham has toured extensively throughout the United States and abroad, including appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Corcoran Gallery and Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Ambassador Series in Los Angeles, Festival L’Epau in France, and the Ijsbreker Series in Amsterdam. Ms. Peckham has had the honor of performing with distinguished artists including members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Miami, Ying, Emerson, Borodin, Amadeus, St. Lawrence and Colorado String Quartets, the Weilerstein and Peabody Trios, Itzhak Perlman, Robert Mann, Anton Nel, Earl Wild, Stephanie Blythe and Charles Neidich. Ms. Peckham won the overall string category as well as the cello division of the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition. Ms. Peckham and her colleagues in The Cavani Quartet were named Musical America’s Young Artists of the Year, received the ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, the Guarneri String Quartet Residency Award, the Ohio Governor’s Award and five Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Grants.

Deeply committed to arts-education, Ms. Peckham has given master classes and lecture demonstrations at music festivals, universities and public and private schools in communities all over the world. As part of a cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program, the Chinese Government and the Committee of 100, Ms. Peckham taught and gave special classes at the Shanghai Conservatory and was featured in the documentary “Perlman in Shanghai” by Oscar winning director Allan Miller which ran on PBS in the U.S. As a member of the faculty and Quartet-in-Residence at The Cleveland Institute of Music since 1988, Ms. Peckham in collaboration with her colleagues has developed the Apprentice Program, Intensive Quartet Seminar, New Quartet Project and M.A.P. (Music, Art & Poetry) PROJECT. Ms. Peckham is Assistant Director of The Perlman Music Program, Director of The Chamber Music Workshop @ The Perlman Music Program and is on the cello and chamber music faculties at The Cleveland Institute of Music. She is former artist-in-residence at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Texas and is currently visiting-artist at the University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. Ms. Peckham is the host for the radio program Offbeat which is aired weekly on WCLV, 104.9 FM. She received her BM with honors from Indiana University and her MM degree from the Eastman School of Music and pursued additional studies at Yale University and Ohio State University. Her teachers and mentors include Janos Starker, Aldo Parisot, Paul Katz, Peter Salaff and Toby Perlman. Ms. Peckham resides in Cleveland, OH with her family, Robin, Jordan and Alex and in her free time enjoys making glass beads, arranging music and playing her guitar.

Peter Salaff was a founding member and second violinist of the Cleveland Quartet, which received a Grammy, seven Grammy nominations and “Best of the Year” awards from Time and Stereo Review for recordings of more than 50 chamber works. They also performed and toured the former Soviet Union, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, and Israel, in addition to U.S. and Canadian tours. Mr. Salaff has served on the faculty at the University of Concepcion (Chile), Cleveland Institute of Music, State University of New York at Buffalo, and Eastman School of Music. He has also taught at Interlochen, Chamber Music in the Mountain at Echo Glen, Aspen Music Festival, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, among others.

He has been a judge at many chamber music competitions, including the Yellow Springs Competition, the London International String Quartet Competition, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition. Ensembles coached by Mr. Salaff have garnered prestigious international awards, including the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation Chamber Music Award, Banff International String Quartet Competition, Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition, and Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, among others. These ensembles include the Anderson, Cavani, Chester, Colorado, Dakota, Franciscan, Lafayette, Lark, Lydian, Meliora, Rackham, and Ying Quartets.

Mr. Salaff was reappointed to the Cleveland Institute of Music faculty in September 1995 as director of string chamber music. He has also been a faculty member of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, since 1996.

A native of Ontario, Canada, Mari Sato joined the Cavani String Quartet in 1995. Ms. Sato received her Bachelor of Music degree with distinction from the Cleveland Institute of Music and pursued graduate studies at the University of Michigan. Her major teachers and mentors include Richard Lawrence, Ralph Aldrich, Julia Bushkova, David Cerone, David Updegraff, Paul Kantor, and Peter Salaff.

She is currently on the chamber music faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In her spare time, Ms. Sato enjoys cooking, jogging, and spending time with her husband and two children in Shaker Heights.

Derek Snyder has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in the United States and Europe, and has collaborated as a chamber musician with members of some of the country’s most exciting ensembles, including the Cavani and Cleveland string quartets, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Detroit, Montreal and Baltimore Symphonies. He is a founding member of The Phoenix Ensemble and cellist in the tango band Oblivion Project, which explores the music of Astor Piazzolla. In 2003, his arrangements of the music of Graham Nash were performed by the Contemporary Youth Orchestra with the composer. He has created numerous transcriptions and arrangements for cello ensembles, focusing primarily on the music of jazz great Dave Brubeck and nuevo tango master Astor Piazzolla. His arrangements of music by Brubeck (as performed by the Yale Cellos) can be heard on the Naxos label.

Derek’s principal teachers have been Tanya Carey, Erling Blondal Bengtsson, Laurence Lesser, and Colin Carr. He is the founder and education director of The Cleveland Cello School. For more about Derek, see www.cellocelli.com.