The Schubert Club's Courtroom Concert Series
2007-2008 Season
Thursday, October 25, 12:05-1:00 P.M.
FREE Admission
Landmark Center, Cortile
651-292-3267
Northwind Trio
Polly Meyerding, flute; Tina James, oboe; Tim Wells, bassoon
Divertimento II, Op. 44 (1956) Juan Orrego-Salas
Andantino
Adagio
Allegro
Pofadder Variations for Flute, Oboe & Bassoon (1977) Allan Stephenson
Fanfare: Allegro pomposo
Var. 1 (Flute)
Var. 2 (Oboe)
Var. 3 (Bassoon)
Marcia funebre quasi eroica
Var. 5: Scherzando
Var. 6: Alla Schoenberg
Var. 7: Passacaglia
Var. 8: Waltz
Var. 9: Alla Siciliana
Var. 10: Alla Goulash
Var. 11: March
Finale: Allegro Moderato-Presto
Sarah Kwak &Vali Phillips, violins; Dean Billmeyer, piano
Double Concerto for 2 violins in d minor - Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Vivace
Largo, ma non tanto
Allegro
ARTIST BIOS:
Tina Brazelton James currently freelances in the twin cities area and has maintained a private oboe studio out of her home for over ten years. James was formerly on faculty at Saint Cloud State University, Weber State University School of Music and has held a position as Visiting Artist with the Illinois Summer Youth Music programs. Previous performance engagements have included the Utah Symphony Orchestra, Ballet West, Colors of the Baroque, Sinfonia da Camera, and the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra. James has recorded with the NightPro Symphony Orchestra, and has played for several feature film scores. In 1992, she was a finalist in the National Composers' Association Young Performers' Competition in Los Angeles, CA. James has received degrees in music performance from the University of Illinois and Louisiana State University. James currently lives in Eagan, Minnesota with husband Kristofer and daughters, Kathryn, Mahala, and Victoria.
Tim Wells is a founding member of The NorthWind Trio and Bassoon/Contrabassoon with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra & Chorale. Other ensembles include South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra, Saint Cloud Symphony Orchestra, Fargo-Moorhead Symphony, Mississippi Valley Orchestra, Saint Paul Civic and the Minnesota Valley Mid-Sommer Festival. He also enjoys doubling on flute, clarinet, bass clarinet and bari sax for the Bloomington Civic Theatre. In the summer of 2005, he joined the River City Saxophone Quartet, and they had their Thursday Musical debut in April, 2007.
Tim taught Applied Bassoon and Music Theory at Saint Cloud State University from 1997-2003; currently, he is the Administrative Assistant for Music Organizations and Music Department at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Instructors include Charles Ullery, Dr. Steven Konechne, Dr. Timothy Perry, Dr. Patricia Hoy, and Norbert Nielubowski (bassoon) and Gus Sandberg (saxophone). He completed his BA in Instrumental Music at Bemidji State University in 1986.
Polly Meyerding, a native of Saint Paul, earned music and music education degrees at the University of Minnesota and the Eastman School of Music.
Polly has performed in music festivals in Italy and Germany and has toured in France with a professional flute choir. Locally, she has played with the Minnesota Orchestra, Minnesota Opera, VocalEssence, Bach Society, Minnesota Dance Theatre, Minnesota Composers Forum, Symphony of the Lakes, Dale Warland Singers, Evita, Schubert Club, Thursday Musical, and numerous other large and small ensembles. She and her husband, flutist Russell Dedrick, perform together as the Dedrick Flute Duo, and with cello as the Monarch Trio.
Currently the President of the Upper Midwest Flute Association, Polly teaches flute at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls and maintains a teaching studio in her home. She has taught at the Lutheran Summer Music Program in St. Peter, MN, for the last two summers and is the creator and director of the Summer Flute Intensive and Flute Fling in St. Paul.
First Associate Concertmaster Sarah Kwak, a Minnesota Orchestra member since 1988, has been soloist with the symphony orchestras of Philadelphia and Houston as well as the Minnesota Orchestra, performing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending and Brahms’ Double Concerto— and, in April 2006, the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ Sinfonia concertante.
Kwak’s national and international tours have included a three-and-a-half-week tour of China. She was a founding member of the Rosalyra String Quartet, which gave its New York debut in 1996 and was awarded a McKnight Artist Fellowship in 2000. With this group, Kwak recorded a CD of Bartók and Beethoven quartets on the Boston Records label. On the Artegra label, she and the Rosalyra Quartet released a CD featuring the music of Shostakovich; a Brahms disc is scheduled for release in late 2006. She has also participated in the Marlboro Music Festival, the Pensacola Festival, Pittsburgh Summerfest, Bargemusic of New York and Festival Mozart in France.
A native of Boston, Kwak began violin studies at age four and attended the Vienna Hochschule für Musik before graduating from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music in 1983. Among her teachers were Joseph Sivo, Ivan Galamian and Szymon Goldberg. The first artist to ever capture all three memorial awards at the Washington International Competition, Kwak also won the 1989 Young Artist Competition sponsored by WAMSO. Before coming to the Twin Cities, Kwak served on the faculty of Princeton University.
Vali Phillips joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 1997 as principal second violin. He made his solo debut with the Orchestra with Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in 2001, and has since performed Dvorák’s Romance and the Summer concerto from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. During Sommerfest 2004 he played Shostakovich’s Trio in E minor with André Watts. In November 2007 he will be soloist with First Associate Concertmaster Sarah Kwak in Bach’s Double Violin Concerto at concerts led by Gilbert Varga.
Before coming to Minnesota, Phillips served as concertmaster of the Savannah Symphony Orchestra and as associate concertmaster of both the Erie Philharmonic and the Charleston Symphony. He has appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as in recital at Carnegie Hall. He spent two summers at the Tanglewood Festival and has performed at the Grand Teton Music Festival.
Phillips is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where he studied under Charles Castleman. He began his musical training at Project STEP (String Training and Education Program), a non-profit program for minority children in his native Boston. Joining the program in its first year, Phillips studied with the project’s artistic director, Farhoud Moshfegh. Phillips gave a benefit recital for the project several years ago at the New England Conservatory.
With three colleagues from the Minnesota Orchestra, Phillips was a founding member of the Minneapolis Quartet.
Dr. Dean Billmeyer is University Organist at the University of Minnesota. He studied at the Eastman School of Music, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, as a Fulbright Scholar. He joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota in 1982 following completion of his doctorate at Eastman.
Winner of the First Dublin International Organ Festival Competition in 1980, Dean’s performances have been consistently praised by juries and critics in the United States and abroad. A Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, he was the winner of the AGO’s S. Lewis Elmer Award, given for the highest scores in the nation on the Guild’s Professional Certification examinations, in two consecutive years. Having completed twenty-five years as head of the organ program at the University of Minnesota, Dean is acknowledged as one of the most highly respected teachers in the Midwestern United States. His teaching and research interests include theory, counterpoint, and the pedagogy of memorization. He was recently on leave from the University to pursue research in cognitive theory and memorization in performance. The former Region VI Councilor for the AGO, he now serves on the AGO Committee on Professional Certification.
Dean has performed regularly with the Minnesota Orchestra as organist and harpsichordist since 2000. He completed a recital tour of Norway in 2006, and also performed at the University of Minnesota’s Elliott Carter Festival. |
