2012 Festival Artists

J. Lawrie Bloom [website]
Clarinet
Artistic Director, Chesapeake Chamber Music

Returning for the 26th season as Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, J. Lawrie Bloom is a member of the clarinet section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Originally hired by Sir Georg Solti, this year Lawrie has been pleased with the arrival, and beginning of the tenure of Ricardo Muti. Rave reviews at home and at Carnegie Hall bode well for this combination of the CSO and Muti, and Lawrie looks forward to the upcoming season, when he is soloing with the orchestra, and joining tours to Europe this fall and California in the winter, followed by Abu Dhabi and Italy in the spring.

Lawrie has been widely heard in chamber, orchestral and concerto programs on soprano and basset clarinets, basset horn, and bass clarinet. He performs with Civitas Ensemble in Chicago, and has appeared on the Winter Chamber Series at Northwestern University. In addition he has presented concerts for over 30 years in the Chicago Public Schools, senior and community centers and music schools. His festival appearances include Ravinia, Spoleto, Grand Teton, and the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York.

Lawrie consults for RICO International, helping develop reeds, and Buffet Crampon, where he is involved in the development of a new model bass clarinet. Lawrie is a Senior Lecturer in clarinet at Northwestern University, where he teaches clarinet and chamber music.

Marcy Rosen [website]
Cello
Artistic Director, Chesapeake Chamber Music

Artistic Director since the inception of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, Marcy Rosen is among the most respected of contemporary performing artists. She has collaborated with the world’s finest musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Andras Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, Peter Serkin, Isaac Stern, Robert Mann, Sandor Vegh, Kim Kashkashian, Jessye Norman, Lucy Shelton, Charles Neidich and the Juilliard, Emerson, and Orion Quartets.

She has played in recital and with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout Canada, Austria, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and all fifty of the United States. Ms. Rosen is a founding member of the ensemble La Fenice and of the renowned Mendelssohn String Quartet, which toured internationally for three decades. Long associated with the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, she first attended that festival in 1975, and has taken part in 19 “Musicians from Marlboro” tours and in concerts celebrating the 40th, 50th and 60th Anniversaries of the Festival.

Currently Ms. Rosen is Professor of Cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, and she serves on the faculty at the Mannes College of Music, New School University.

Christine Brandes
Soprano

Christine Brandes’ repertoire ranges from the 17th century to contemporary works. Her crystalline voice has been heard in performances with conductors including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sir Simon Rattle, Pierre Boulez, Sir Charles Mackerras, Hans Graf, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, and Christopher Hogwood.

On the operatic stage, Ms. Brandes has appeared with the Santa Fe, Seattle, Houston, Washington, Philadelphia, Minnesota, St. Louis, San Diego and Montreal operas, as well as with the Glimmerglass and New York City operas.

Lydia Brown [website]
Piano

Pianist Lydia Brown has performed in the Salle Cortot, the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall, 92nd St. Y, Caramoor, the Goethe Institute of NY, the Phillips Gallery, the Freer Gallery, the Miller Theater Lunchtime Concerts of Columbia University and Steinway Hall. Recital appearances include the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Weill Recital Hall, Grand Teton Music Festival, Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music Series, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts of Chicago, the Chamber Music Society of Little Rock and Santa Fe New Music. Miss Brown holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Yale University and The Juilliard School. Currently an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera, she is also a member of the vocal program of the Marlboro Music Festival.

Catherine Cho [website]
Violin, Viola

Praised for her “sublime tone” by The New York Times, Catherine Cho has performed worldwide with orchestras including the National Symphony Orchestra; the Montreal, Edmonton and National Arts Centre orchestras of Canada; the Seoul Philharmonic, the Barcelona Symphony, and the Orchestra of the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires. As a chamber musician she has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the Aspen and Marlboro music festivals, among many others.

Ms. Cho’s concert debut took place at age eleven with the Tivoli Symphony, Copenhagen. She is currently a member of the violin faculty at the Juilliard School.

Mindy Heinsohn [website]
Flute

Mindy Heinsohn hails from Easton, Maryland. She began formal flute studies at the age of sixteen and, two years later, made her solo debut with the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Heinsohn attended the Peabody Institute and has appeared with the Sewanee Festival Orchestra and the American Youth Philharmonic. She made her Carnegie Hall debut this year under the baton of Kryzstof Penderecki, and has worked with other notable conductors such as Marin Alsop, Reinbert de Leeuw, and Peter Oundjian. Ms. Heinsohn was a recipient of the Richard Franko Goldman Prize in Performance. She is an active member of Opus Nine, an innovative chamber ensemble based in New York City. Having just completed her graduate flute studies at Yale University School of Music under the tutelage of Ransom Wilson, Ms. Heinsohn resides in Germany, where she performs regularly as a solo recitalist and chamber musician.

David Jolley [website]
French Horn

David Jolley, a graduate of the Juilliard School in New York, is one of the leading horn players of his generation.  A founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, he has also collaborated with the Guarneri Quartet, the American String Quartet, the Beaux Arts Trio, Andre Watts, and Murray Perahia.

A former member of the Dorian Wind Quintet, Jolley founded the quintet Windscape in 1994 with four other eminent New York soloists.  Many works have been written for him, including Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s  Concerto for Horn and String orchestra,  John Harbison’s Twilight Music, and George Perle’s Duo for Horn and String Quartet.

Among his numerous recordings are more than two dozen CDs with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra – Gramophone hailed him in its performances of two Mozart concertos as a “soloist second to none”-- as well as solo discs containing the Strauss Horn Sonata with Samuel Sanders, works by Alec Wilder, and French Romanic repertoire.

Jolley also teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College of Music, the Hartt Schoool of Music and Queens College of the City University of New York.

Maria Lambros [website]
Viola

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and New York University, Maria Lambros is a member of the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She was a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Meliora String Quartet, a member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet and violist for the chamber ensemble La Fenice. Ms. Lambros has appeared at chamber music festivals around the world, including the Chateau Series in Turin, Aspen, Skaneateles, Bard, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.

Yura Lee [website]
Violin, Viola

Yura Lee, recipient of the 2007 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has performed as soloist with major orchestras in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Cleveland. She has won top prizes at the Hannover, Leopold Mozart, Indianapolis, and Paganini competitions.

Ms. Lee participates in many chamber music festivals, including Marlboro, Salzburg, Verbier, Caramoor, Ravinia, Kronberg, and Aspen.

A member of the Chamber Music Society Two at Lincoln Center, she plays the 1778 Joseph and Antonio Gagliano violin and a modern viola.

Julia Lichten [website]
Cello

Julia Lichten enjoys a varied career as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician. She has toured as soloist with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as well as Musicians from Marlboro and the American Chamber Players. Festival performances include Marlboro, Tanglewood, Taos, and Caramoor. Ms. Lichten has toured Europe as an "Artistic Ambassador" under State Department sponsorship.

In addition to degrees from Harvard-Radcliffe and the New England Conservatory, she has studied at the Mannes College of Music. She is on the cello faculty at Manhattan School of Music and the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College.

Robert McDonald [website]
Piano

As soloist and chamber musician, Robert McDonald has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and South America and has appeared with major orchestras throughout the Americas. For many years he was the recital partner to violinist Isaac Stern.

Mr. McDonald has played with the Borromeo, Vermeer, Juilliard, Takács, American and Shanghai string quartets, among others, and toured with Musicians from Marlboro. He serves on the piano faculty at the Juilliard School, and on the faculty of the Curtis Institute. He is artistic director and piano coach at the Taos School of Music.

Melissa Meell [website]
Cello

Melissa Meell twice won the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award, once as a founding member of The Primavera String Quartet, and again with The Mannes Trio.

She has commissioned and recorded new works, inspired and starred in an Off Broadway play by Tina Howe, directed by Andre Gregory. With appearances on Live from Lincoln Center, she regularly plays with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The New York Times has called her “A memorable cellist with a poetic sensibility."

Tara Helen O’Connor [website]
Flute

Tara Helen O'Connor is a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble, and flute soloist with the Bach Aria Group. She received Grammy nominations for her recording of Golijov’s "Yiddishbbuk.”

She performs regularly with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orpheus, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Spoleto, among others; and she collaborates with artists such as Jaime Laredo, Peter Serkin, David Shifrin, and Dawn Upshaw. She holds a Doctorate from SUNY Stony Brook and is flute professor at the Purchase College Conservatory.

Peggy Pearson [website]
Oboe

A member of the Bach Aria Group, Peggy Pearson is also solo oboist with the Emmanuel Chamber Orchestra, which has performed the complete cycle of sacred cantatas by J. S. Bach.

She is artistic director and oboist with the Winsor Music Chamber Series in Lexington, Massachusetts, a founding member of La Fenice, and principal oboe with the Boston Philharmonic.

Ms. Pearson is on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Emerson Scholars Program.

Daniel Phillips [website]
Violin

Daniel Phillips is an established chamber musician, solo artist and teacher. As a winner of the prestigious Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1976, he performed acclaimed debut recitals in New York's Alice Tully Hall and the 92nd Street "Y." Mr. Phillips has performed as soloist with many of the country's leading symphonies, and appears regularly at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Spoleto USA and the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England.

Mr. Phillips is a founding member of the Orion String Quartet, with residencies at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and at the Mannes College of Music.

Todd Phillips [website]
Violin

Todd Phillips made his solo debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony at age thirteen and his Carnegie Hall debut in 1982. He has since appeared with orchestras throughout the United States, Europe and Japan, including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He is a founding member, with his brother Daniel Phillips, of the Orion String Quartet, the quartet-in-residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Mr. Phillips serves on the violin and chamber music faculties at the Mannes College of Music and the Mason Gross School for the Arts, Rutgers University.

Diane Walsh [website]
Piano

Diane Walsh performs solo recitals, chamber music, and concertos worldwide. She has appeared with radio symphonies throughout Germany and soloed with orchestras in Brazil, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Russia.

Ms. Walsh’s performances at chamber music festivals include Chesapeake Chamber Music (annually since 1986), Marlboro, Santa Fe, Bard and Skaneateles, where she also served as artistic director from 1999 to 2004.

Her many awards include the top prizes at the Munich ARD International Piano Competition and the Salzburg International Mozart Competition. As a prizewinner in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, she won that competition’s chamber music award.

She recently appeared onstage as the solo pianist and musical director for 113 Broadway performances of Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations, starring Jane Fonda. Ms. Walsh has released fifteen discs, including Beethoven's Diabelli Variations (JDR), Complete Schubert Sonatas, Volumes I and II (JDR) and Sonatas and Preludes (Bridge), featuring solo works by Barber, Bartók, Prokofiev and Frank Martin. The latter was highly praised by Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times.

Hsin-Yun Huang [website]
Viola

Violist Hsin-Yun Huang came to international prominence in 1993 when she was winner of the top prize of the ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. These and other honors have propelled a career as soloist and chamber musician on stages of major concert halls throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East.

Ms. Huang has performed at prominent music festivals throughout the world, and has collaborated with many distinguished artists, including Yo-Yo Ma, Jaime Laredo, Joshua Bell, Joseph Suk, and Menahem Pressler, to name a few. Recent collaborations include performances with the Guarneri, the Juilliard, the Orion, the Brentano and the St. Lawrence String Quartets.

Ms. Huang was a member of the Borromeo String Quartet from 1994-2000, and recently founded the Variation String Trio with violinist Jennifer Koh and cellist Wilhelmina Smith.

Hsin-Yun Huang went to England at fourteen to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School, and later continued her studies at the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School. She lives in New York, where she serves on the faculties of The Juilliard School and the Mannes College of Music.