2011-2012:
- (in order of upcoming performance)
Pip Clarke
Masterworks Concert Three, ‘Romantic Extravaganza’, 17-18 March 2012
Over the past decade, Pip Clarke has been lauded by critics throughout the world as one of the finest violinists of her generation. Considered a highly expressive and romantic artist, last year Albany Records released a CD featuring Ms. Clarke performing the violin concerto by American composer Lee Actor, which she will be performing with the Auburn Symphony. Written for Ms. Clarke, the piece is an outstanding composition with lush contemporary romantic melodies and dazzling virtuosity. The passionate artistry, impeccable technique and luscious tone leave little doubt that Ms. Clarke is one of the brightest stars on the world musical platform. She is featured in the 2007 book, ‘The World of Women in Classical Music’ by Dr. Anne Gray and the revised 2004 edition of ‘The Great Violinists’ by Margaret Campbell. In recent seasons, Ms. Clarke has performed with the Calgary Philharmonic, the Regina Symphony, the Florida Orcehstra, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, to name just a few. On October 26th 2007, Pip gave her sold out debut in the Isaac Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall performing the violin concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold with the New York Pops. Critics have been unanimous about her playing. Her sound and style have been called “hauntingly unique” and “unforgettable” and her performances described as “commanding,” dubbing her “Superwoman of the Strings,” having a “fascinating presence.”
Kay KyungHa Lee
Chamber Players at the State Theatre, ‘Handel Introduces Bach to the English’, 19 May 2012
Violinist Kay KyungHa Lee, a native of Seoul, South Korea, has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and orchestra player. She was appointed as a violin instructor at Jefferson Music Academy (Prep) at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio and played with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Columbus Bach Ensemble, St. John’s Chamber Orchestra, Trinity Lutheran Seminary Chamber Orchestra and Auburn Symphony, where she has been featured a number of times as soloist and concertmaster. She founded Lee Trio with her sisters in 2006 and has performed in Asia and the United States. Prior to coming to the United States, she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Violin Performance at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea, where she was awarded a full scholarship, graduated as a valedictorian and won concerto competitions. While in South Korea, she frequently appeared in chamber ensembles and in symphony orchestras as a soloist and won several nationwide competitions. In 2009, she completed the Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) degree in Violin Performance at the Ohio State University, during which time she developed the range of teaching skills as a graduate teaching associate and received the 2008 outstanding teaching associate award. Her teachers include Kia-Hui Tan, Catharine Carroll, Catherine Van Hoesen and Taik-Ju Lee.
Dr. Lee currently lives in Davis, California and plays as a violinist of the Lee Trio as well as with symphonies in the Sacramento and San Francisco areas. She currently serves as concertmaster for the Auburn Symphony and Auburn Symphony Chamber Players, as well as principal for the Veridian Symphony Orchestra. She is maintaining an active teaching studio for violin and viola in Davis, and coaching chamber music for young musicians in the schools in the vicinity of Sacramento, California. She has also been serving as a judge for the Sacramento section of the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) National Solo Competition. Her China (Shanghai, Wuxi) solo debut tour is appointed in October 2011.
Matthew Grasso
Chamber Players at the State Theatre, ‘Great Classics’, 1 October 2011
Matthew Grasso, classical guitarist, composer, arranger, musical instrument innovator and improviser, performs on an extended 7-string guitar built by luthiers Gregory Byers and Waylin Carpenter, as well as a 25-stringed guitar built by Scott Richter.
Born in 1972 of Chinese and Italian ancestry, Matthew began playing guitar at the age of twelve. He attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied with Scott Tennant and Lawrence Ferrara. Matthew participated in master classes held by artists including Eliot Fisk, David Russell, and the L.A. Guitar Quartet. Matthew complemented this training by studying the classical music of North India at the Ali Akbar College of Music with the late Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
Matthew’s improvisational skills have taken him from the jazz world, to world fusion and back to Indian Raga. His understanding of the music of the east and west has created a tremendously flexible creative voice in improvisation. Matthew developed a new style of playing entitled Indian classical fusion. In this style he has conceived new talas (rhythmic cycles) such as 10 ½, 27 ½, 9 ¼, and 5½, as well as original ragas (melody forms). This music can be heard on his “Raga Guitar” with his group, Nada Brahma Music Ensemble.
Matthew was a soloist with the Solano Symphony, Davis High School String Orchestra, and has played with the Sacramento Youth Symphony Premier Orchestra. His recordings include two CDs of original compositions, Intimate Settings (1995) and Echoes of a Lake (1999) as well as his transcription of Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (2001), and Music for the Extended 7-String Guitar (2006) and The Five Deadly Talas (2008).
Matthew is on the faculty at Sacramento City College, American River College, California College of the Arts, The Experimental College of U.C. Davis, and he teaches privately. He currently resides in Davis, California.
Maquette Kuper
Masterworks Concert One, ‘Spirit of the North’, 29-30 October 2011
Maquette Kuper is a familiar figure to followers of the Auburn Symphony and from around the Sacramento region. Ms. Kuper, Principal Flute for the Auburn Symphony, is a founding member of Sacramento’s Capitol Chamber Players, in which she has played numerous chamber concerts in the Sacramento region including Auburn. She was the featured soloist in the Auburn Symphony’s 2006-2007 season and, last season, performed a concerto with the Auburn Chamber Players. This year, she will be performing Reinecke’s Flute Concerto. A Davis resident, she is the founder and director of the Davis Youth Flute Choir, which in August, 2010, was one of two youth choirs selected to perform at the National Flute Association Convention in Anaheim. Ms. Kuper is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, spent two summers as a fellowship student at Tanglewood (the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), and studied in Paris on a Fulbright fellowship. She has also appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra.
Konstantin Soukhovetski
Masterworks Concert Two, ‘Cathedrals of Sound’, 21-22 January 2012
One of the most popular guest musicians in Auburn Symphony history, world renowned Russian pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski returns this season to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor. Coveted as a soloist throughout the world, Mr. Soukhovetski has earned a reputation as a “young pianist who captivates” with his “distinctive lyricism”, “immaculate technique” and “vigor…refinement… and drama”. He has won numerous awards in his distinctive career, including the prestigious William Petschek Debut Recital Award (after which the New York Times headlined its review “Romanticism so intense it warms up Philip Glass”), the Silver Medal and Audience Prize winner of the 2010 Ima Hogg International Competition in Houston, Texas, and was the Bronze medalist at the 2011 Bosendorfer International Piano Competition, in Tempe, Arizona. He has recently performed with the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Baton Rouge Symphony, the Houston Symphony and the Manchester Music Festival Orchestra. Mr. Soukhovetski’s Johannesburg Debut Recital was voted the third of ten top most important cultural events of the years 2005 and 2007 by South African National Newspaper Die Burger. In 2008, Mr. Soukhovetski performed a solo benefit recital for the Auburn Symphony, playing a selection of works by Schubert, Strauss, Liszt, Chopin and Tchaikovsky. Mr. Soukhovetski was born in Moscow to a family of artists and began his music studies at the age of four. He studied at the Juilliard School where he has earned his BM, MM and AD degrees under the tutelage of celebrated American pianist Jerome Lowenthal.
Alexis Keller
KinderKonzert, 11 February 2012
Alexis Keller has been studying with Ben Dominitz for the past 3 years. Prior to that, she had been with a Suzuki teacher since the age of 4. She is currently starting her 5th year in the Sacramento Youth Orchestra Academic section and will be continuing her violin studies with Anna Presler. Her 1st competition was at the age of 8 with the Auburn Symphony Young Artists Competition where she received a commendation award. In her spare time she takes piano, sings in her church choir, studies French and is #1 in California in slalom water-ski competition. Alexis is 11 and will be starting 7th grade in the Fall.
2010-2011:
Michelle Xiao You
Michelle Xiao You, violinist, a native of Shanghai, China, began her studies with her father and continued studying with professors Situ and Z.L. Wang at the Central Conservatory of music in Beijing. After coming to the U.S., Ms. You furthered her studies with the legendary Dorothy Delay and Kurt Sassmanshaus at the University of Cincinnati. A multiple competition winner, Ms. You has been featured as a guest soloist with the Houston Symphony, the BBC Northern Symphony (England), and the Central Philharmonic of China. Last season she performed the Mendelssohn Concerto for Violin with the Apollo and Merced Symphonies as well as the Sacramento Philharmonic. Of the latter performance The Sacramento Bee proclaimed. ”The biggest artistic statement of the evening was made by violinist Michelle Xiao You, whose fiery approach enlivened a long concert evening. . . . You played brashly, with a clear tone. In the first movement, she sparkled on Mendelssohn’s cadenzas, and she gave the arpeggios and sliding notes a colorful, three-dimensional air. . . . throughout there was an enticing interplay between soloist and woodwinds.”
Steven Vanhauwert
Hailed by the Los Angeles Times for his “impressive clarity, sense of structure and monster technique”, Steven Vanhauwaert has garnered a wide array of accolades, amongst which the Maurice Lefranc award, the Rotary Prize, the Galiot Prize and the USC Concerto Competition. In October 2004 he won the Grand Prize at the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, which enabled him to tour through the US and Hungary. Steven performs frequently throughout Europe and the US, both solo as in chamber music groups. His performances are broadcast regularly on K-MZT, K-CSN, K-USC, WHKB, W-UOT, K-UAT and KLARA. Mr. Vanhauwaert studied in Brussels at the Royal Conservatory with Boyan Vodenitcharov. He continued his musical development in Los Angeles with professors Kevin Fitz-Gerald, James Bonn and John Perry at the USC Thornton School of Music.
He has appeared in major venues with orchestras such as the Pacific Symphony, the Flemish Symphony, the USC Symphony, Collegium Instrumentale, the Concord Jazz Ensemble, the Auburn Symphony, the Eastern Sierra Chamber Orchestra and Prima la Musica, amongst others. His China solo debut tour in June 2010 was received with great critical acclaim and lead to an immediate reinvitation for the next season.
Richard Cionco
The January 1997 artist/educator:
Richard Cionco, Professor of Piano, California State University, Sacramento, CA USA
Pianist Richard Cionco, praised by Donal Henahan of the New York Times for his “sensitive pianism”, first performed as soloist with orchestra at age nine, and has since performed with many orchestras including the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, the Oakland Civic Symphony, and with the Seijo Symphony of Tokyo in a Washington, D.C. concert that commemorated Japan’s admission to the United Nations. A New Mexico native, he has returned to New Mexico many times to perform as soloist with the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra and was featured with the Lawton Philharmonic Orchestra in Oklahoma as a winner in the Louise D. McMahon International Music Competition. In Europe he has performed concerti with the Czech State Chamber Orchestra and in Prague’s Smetana Hall with the North Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra as a winner in the Prague Spring International Music Competition. Most recently, he performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 on a seven-concert tour of Japan and Taiwan with the California Youth Symphony; the performance in Osaka is presently being produced for a LIVE and unedited CD recording which will be released in the Fall of 1996.
He has performed in recital in nearly every major U.S. city. His recent performances of Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Etudes have brought him rave reviews. Ed Roberts of the Washington Post wrote: “I have rarely heard as fine a piano recital as the one Richard Cionco gave on Sunday. The program was difficult and unusual. Cionco’s virtuosity was impressive and he drew beautifully varied tone colors from the instrument.”
