Performers for 2010 Season

July 6 - "Flute Feste"

Tom Wolf, Founder & Flautist

Our “FLUTE FESTE” starts off the 2010 season, featuring the following performers:

Demarre McGill, Laurie Sokoloff, Mimi Stillman, and Thomas Wolf, flutes; Marc Johnson, cello; Julie Smith, harp

MARC JOHNSON was cellist of the Vermeer Quartet for over three decades. He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. While still a student, he became the youngest member of the Rochester Philharmonic and performed as a soloist with the orchestra. Among numerous awards, he won first prize in the prestigious Washington International Competition. Before joining the Vermeer Quartet, he was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony. He has recorded for CRI records and has played recitals and made solo appearances with various orchestras in the United States and Europe. He served on the Resident Artist Faculty at Northern Illinois University at DeKalb which recently awarded him an honorary doctorate and is on the faculty of Boston University. With his wife, pianist Kathie Johnson, he serves as Co-Artistic Director of Bay Chamber Concerts’ Next Generation Youth Chamber Music Program, a summer program serving primarily young performers from the State of Maine.

Currently principal flutist of the San Diego Symphony, DEMARRE McGILLwas also acting principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony. Winner of a 2003 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has performed with the Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Juilliard orchestras. An active chamber musician, he was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s program for emerging young artists. He has been featured on a PBS “Live from Lincoln Center” program as well as on an Angel CD with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. McGill has participated in the Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Mainly Mozart, La Jolla and Marlboro music festivals. He has performed on the A&E Network Series “The Gifted Ones,” and was special guest on “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Art of Élan, a chamber music organization in San Diego and is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School.

Principal Harpist of the San Diego Symphony, JULIE ANN SMITH has established herself as one of the most prominent young harpists today, performing as both an orchestral musician and concert artist. Gaining international recognition for her charismatic performing style and diverse repertoire, Ms. Smith was the Silver medalist winner in the 2004 USA International Harp Competition and Bronze medalist in 2001. She made her National Symphony Orchestra debut in 2003 and has been honored in numerous competitions throughout the country. She is an active recitalist and soloist with orchestras across the country, captivating audiences with her dramatic presence and engaging style. Her appearances include performances with the San Diego Symphony, the New World Symphony Orchestra, the South Dakota Symphony, the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, the National Repertory Orchestra, and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. She has been the opening recitalist for the American Harp Society National Conference and the 2007 USA International Harp Competition. Equally experienced as a chamber and orchestral musician, Ms. Smith collaborates with renowned musicians across the country. A founding member of the San Diego-based Myriad Trio, she regularly appears in chamber concerts and festivals and has performed abroad in Italy and Japan. During the 2006-07 season she was the Acting Principal Harpist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and prior to that held the position of Principal Harpist for the New World Symphony Orchestra. As a teacher, Ms. Smith maintains a harp studio and works with students of all ages. She has served on faculty at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, regularly gives master-classes across the county and frequently performs outreach activities in the San Diego area and beyond, going into the schools, retirement homes and communities to share about the harp. Ms. Smith released her first album, The Rhapsodic Harp, which is available from her website, www.harpjas.com. Attending the Cleveland Institute of Music, she received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in harp performance where she studied with Yolanda Kondonassis. Her other primary teachers have included Alice Chalifoux and Patrice Lockhart. A native of Hastings, NE, Ms. Smith began studying the harp at age eleven.

LAURIE SOKOLOFF was born into one of Philadelphia’s leading musical families. Both her parents were on the piano faculty of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. At age fourteen, she was accepted into the program at the Curtis Institute, where she studied with William Kincaid, former principal flutiest of the Philadelphia Orchestra. By the time she graduated at age eighteen, she was already the contracted piccoloist with Philadelphia’s two opera companies and the Pennsylvania Ballet. During the years spent in Philadelphia following her graduation, Ms. Sokoloff performed in chamber music recitals with cellist Jay Humestan and pianist Peter Serkin, soloed with the Philadelphia Orchestra (ChaminadeFlute Concerto), and played numerous recitals with her father, pianist Vladimir Sokoloff as well as gave chamber music recitals for the Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine. Ms. Sokoloff has been the solo piccoloist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 1969, featuring concerti by Vivaldi and Liebermann. She has given piccolo master classes at the Peabody Conservatory and the Curtis Institute of Music and currently teaches flute and piccolo at Peabody. For several years, she was the chairperson of the National Flute Association’s Piccolo Committee and Coordinator of their Piccolo Artist Competition. In the summer of 2000, she premiered a piece written for her by Michael Daugherty at the National Flute Association Convention. For the past two years, she has served as Chairperson of the Baltimore Symphony's Players' Committee.

Mimi Stillman, flute, has been called “a magically gifted flutist, a breath of fresh air” (The Washington Post). She has performed as soloist with The Philadelphia Orchestra and, as recitalist and chamber musician, has appeared at The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, Verbier Festival (Switzerland) and other major concert halls and festivals. At 12, she was the youngest wind player ever admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music, where she received her Bachelors degree studying with Julius Baker and Jeffrey Khaner. She was the youngest wind player ever to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. Stillman is the founder and Artistic Director of the highly praised Dolce Suono Chamber Music Concert Series in Philadelphia. She holds an M.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania and is a Yamaha Performing Artist.

THOMAS WOLF has had a distinguished career as musician, educator, consultant, author and administrator. A soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of sixteen, he spent sixteen seasons as the principal flutist and company manager of his Uncle Boris Goldovsky’s touring opera company. A co-founder of Bay Chamber Concerts in 1960, he currently serves as its Executive and Artistic Director. He has performed with the Vermeer, Muir and St. Lawrence String Quartets and appears at the Montana Chamber Music Festival and Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound, Canada. He is currently Chair and CEO of WolfBrown, a consulting firm he founded in 1983 to assist arts organizations, foundations, government agencies and corporate giving programs. Thomas Wolf holds an Ed.D. degree from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard and Boston Universities. Wolf is the author of Presenting Performances and other books and serves as an Overseer of The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He is listed in the International Who’s Who of Musicians.

July 13 - Authentic New Orleans Jazz

The Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble, featuring the following artists, performs classic New Orleans jazz:

As is common practice for such jazz ensembles, the program will be announced from the stage.

The Artists:

CHARLIE FARDELLA: TRUMPET A virtuoso trumpet in the tradition of a century ago, Fardella is considered in New Orleans to a “musician’s musician” who can play all styles of early jazz.

JOHN JOYCE: DRUMS A founding member, Julliard graduate Joyce has performed with groups as varied as Pete Fountain and the New Orleans Philharmonic. Musicologist Joyce, who edits The Jazz Archivist, is music director of the LRJE.

FRED LONZO: TROMBONE A founding member of the LRJE and veteran of the Young Tuxedo and Olympia brass bands in New Orleans, Lonzo is the city’s leading exponent of the New Orleans “tailgate” style of trombone playing.

JOHN PARKER: BANJO/GUITAR Playing the long-forgotten six string banjo, Parker maintains a tradition inherited from his teacher, the LRJE’s late co-founder, John Chaffe, who in turn inherited it from HIS teacher, Dr. Edmond Souchon, Parker’s grandfather! A singer as well as string player, Parker is a lively presence on the New Orleans music scene.

TOM ROBERTS: PIANO Roberts came to New Orleans from his native Pittsburgh and now enjoys a highly successful career as soloist, ensemble player and duo with his clarinetist wife. His is a master of the works of the great “stride” pianists of the era 1900-1930.

FRED STARR: CLARINET/SAXOPHONE A founding member of the LRJE, Starr is a veteran of the river boats and the biographer of America’s first great composer, New Orleanian Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

ROBERT NUNEZ: TUBA Classically trained Nunez is principal tubist with the Louisiana Philharmonic. He comes by his jazz naturally, in that his great grandfather, Alcide “Yellow” Nunez, was a much-recorded pioneer clarinetist of the period 1915-22.

Jazz critic Al Rose called the Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble “The most authentic group on the scene today…I haven’t heard that sound for 40 years.” For 24 years the LRJE has been performing classic New Orleans jazz in absolutely authentic formats and on period instruments for audiences around the world. The nine members of the New Orleans-based Ensemble can trace their musical or family genealogies to the earliest days of jazz.

Veterans of years on Bourbon Street, Mississippi steamboats, and in local brass bands, the LRJE players are drawn from all the racial and ethnic groups that make up the New Orleans melting pot. Among them are former members of the bands of Lous Armstrong, Pete Fountain, and Duke Ellington.

Although their oldest player is 68, this is not a band of out-of-practice veterans playing a simplified repertoire for tourists. The LRJE has led in the rediscovery of lost musical treasures by King Oliver, the New Orleans Owls, Armand Piron, Sam Morgan, and Jelly Roll Morton.

The Louisiana Repertory Jazz Ensemble has performed at the Grammy Awards, given the prestigious Doubleday Lecture/Concert at the Smithsonian Institution, and with symphony orchestras from Boston to the Pacific. It has appeared at the major jazz festivals, including New Orleans, Chicago, and Atlanta and toured France, Japan, Poland, Hong Kong, and Russia. The Penguin Guide to Recorded Jazz praises its six recordings and gives one of them its highest possible rating….five stars.

Tuesday, July 20 - Haochen Zhang, Thirteenth Van Cliburn Piano Competition Gold Medalist

Shanghai-born pianist HAOCHEN ZHANG is, at nineteen, already a veteran of the concert stage, as well as a perennial prizewinner. He has been performing in public since the age of five, and he won his first major competition at thirteen. In 2007 he was awarded the grand prize at the Fourth China International Piano Competition. In 2009 he became the youngest participant and the first Chinese recipient to be awarded the prestigious Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He embarked on a worldwide tour and will release a CD on the Harmonia Mundi USA label. Mr. Zhang, who made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2006, played in New York’s Carnegie Hall for the first time in December 2008, as a soloist with the New York Youth Symphony. He has also been heard in recital and with orchestra throughout China in such major music centers as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzen, Xiamen, and Hong Kong. He has concertized in Poland and made his Paris debut as soloist on tour with the China National Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Zhang, who began his piano studies at the age of three and later attended the primary school of the Shanghai Conservatory, entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2005 and studies with celebrated pianist Gary Graffman.

Tuesday, July 27 - Passamaquoddy Bay Symphony Orchestra

The Passamaquoddy Bay Symphony Orchestra (PBSO) was founded in the spring of 2007 and performed its first concerts that summer. The orchestra grew out of a chamber music class at the University of Maine Machias when TROND SAEVERUD was teaching the class for the professor on who was on sabbatical leave. He saw that there were a number of able musicians in the area and suggested forming an orchestra. PBSO orchestra members range in age from 14 to 70+. They are Canadians and Americans. Among them are students, IT professionals, carpenters, teachers, professional musicians, psychologists and counselors, a boat builder-inventor, artists, and retired people of all backgrounds. There are no auditions. The Orchestra actively works to recruit young musicians and depends on the advanced players from the Eastport Strings, a youth string program.

During its regular year the Orchestra rehearses at the Eastport Arts Center and usually performs three concerts three times a year, two in Canada and two in the US. This spring the group will complete its ninth series of concerts.

This summer PBSO joins Summerkeys Summer Music Program to offer “Orchestra Weekends at Summerkeys”. Each of the three weekends (7/31-81; 8/7-8/8; 8/14-8/15) will offer rehearsals on Saturday and Sunday and a concert on Sunday afternoon. Summerkeys students will join the orchestra - adding the orchestral experience to their instrumental studies during the week. The Orchestra hopes that perhaps this program will encourage the local musical summerbirds to try out playing in the orchestra.

GENE NICHOLS, multi-instrumentalist, recently completed his 23rd year of instruction at the University of Maine at Machias, where he is Associate Professor of Music and advisor/arranger for the Ukulele Club. He was born and raised in Fulton, New York. He earned music degrees from Potsdam College (where he met Hokum W. Jeebs) and Northern Illinois University (where he met his wife, Lynn Brubaker; Gene and Lynn, with their daughters Daphne and Molly, gave a family concert on this series a few seasons back). He was a sideman/bandleader for the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus over a 4-year span, and will conduct the annual Downeast Center Ring Circus Band concert Friday in Bucksport. He has toured Japan with the USA School Band (under William Revelli) and the New York Ragtime Orchestra (under Masanobu Ikemiya). He has played with Glenn Jenks, Mr. Ikemiya and others in the Arcady Ragtime Revue. Prof. Hokum W. Jeebs' Original Gypsy Medicine Show featured Eugene Fakwad. He has performed with the Bangor, Syracuse and Passamaquoddy Bay Symphonies, the improvisation troupe Les Trois Étoiles, DREG, The Electric Starlight Space Animals, 43, Mel Seeps, and Kalliope. Gene is a composer/arranger with several commissions and awards; the Dana Brass Quintet recorded one of his pieces. He also gave a lecture/performance on Zappa and Beefheart at a poetry conference in Liege, Belgium. Gene's future musical plans include: composing a theatre piece for the Nor'Easter String Quartet (of last year's MBCC series); playing an upcoming piece for saw and orchestra by Trond Saeverud's father; making live-electronic music with lots of turntables and old, weird records; more ukulele fun; and negotiating worthless instruments.

Tuesday, August 3 - Bach and Beyond

ROBERT MERFELD, piano, is well known as a chamber musician having appeared at the Aspen, Marlboro, Ravinia, Caramoor and Olympic Music Festivals. Solo recitals have included Merkin Concert Hall in New York and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He has been a performing member of and teacher with the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music since 1969. A graduate of both the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and The Juilliard School, Merfeld has taught at Boston, Brandeis and Harvard Universities, Dartmouth College, the Juilliard School, and the Tanglewood Institute. He has collaborated with numerous prominent artists, including singers Lucy Shelton, Jan de Gaetani, Dawn Upshaw and Will Parker, as well as instrumentalists Arnold Steinhardt, Charles Neidich and Stanley Ritchie. He records for the Centaur and Sine Qua Non labels.

PETER ZAZOFSKY, violin and viola, has enjoyed a career as soloist, chamber musician and educator that spans twenty years and thirty countries on five continents. He has performed with great orchestras including the Boston Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. As a recitalist, Zazofsky has given programs in Carnegie Hall, Rio de Janeiro, Brussels and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. He is currently first violinist of the Muir String Quartet and Associate Professor at Boston University. Peter Zazofsky was born in Boston, where his father was assistant concertmaster of the Boston Symphony. Joseph Silverstein was his first teacher, and he later studied at The Curtis Institute. Beginning in 1974, Zazofsky won a series of prizes and awards culminating in the Gold Medal at the 1980 Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Grand Prize of the 1979 Montreal International Competition. (He remains the only American to win this award.) In 1985 he was honored to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Tuesday, August 10 - St. Lawrence String Quartet

According to Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker Magazine, “the St. Lawrence are remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making...but for the joy they take in the act of connection.” The Washington Post calls their spontaneous music-making “emotionally high charged but never out of control.” The St. Lawrence String Quartet has established itself among the world-class chamber ensembles of its generation. Recent tours of Europe have included London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris’ Theatre de Ville and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. The foursome is passionately committed to performing and expanding the works of living composers as well as playing traditional repertoire. The group’s initial recording of Schumann’s First and Third Quartets, released in May 1999 was the first in a series with EMI Classics and received the coveted German critics award, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, as well as Canada’s annual Juno Award. BBC Music Magazine gave the recording its “highest rating,” calling it the benchmark recording of the works. In October of 2001, EMI released the St. Lawrence’s recording of string quartets of Tchaikovsky and in 2002 their recording of “Yiddishbbuk” featuring the chamber music of the celebrated Argentinean-American composer, Osvaldo Golijov. The St. Lawrence String Quartet is Ensemble in Residence at Stanford University and records exclusively for EMI/ANGEL.

CHRISTOPHER COSTANZA, a member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, was a winner in 1986 of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York and a recipient in1993 of a Solo Recitalists Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has performed solo and chamber music performances in over forty of the United States, throughout Europe, Canada and the Caribbean. A participant in numerous summer festivals, including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Seattle and Vancouver, he has also participated in several Music from Marlboro tours and in radio broadcasts on WFMT in Chicago, National Public Radio in the U.S. and on the CBC in Canada. He is a former member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians and Chicago String Quartet, resident faculty quartet of the Taos School of Music in New Mexico. He is a faculty member at Stanford University in California.

Hailed by the New York Times as “intensely dynamic” with “stunning technique and volitality,” violinist GEOFF NUTTALL began playing the violin at the age of eight after moving to London, Ontario from College Station, Texas. In 1989, he co-founded the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Bay Chamber Concerts’ resident quartet, and a world-renowned foursome that has performed well over 1,500 concerts throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia and Asia. He has appeared in recital and with orchestras throughout Canada and following many summers of study at the Banff Centre for the Arts, he was appointed to the Jury for the International String Quartet Competition held at the Center. Nuttall has been a recipient of grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. He is a faculty member at Stanford University in California.

LESLEY ROBERTSON studied at the Curtis Institute of Music with Michael Tree. A founding member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, she has also performed with a wonderful array of artists including the Ying String Quartet, the Tokyo String Quartet, Musicians from Marlboro and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Ms. Robertson plays on a viola made in August 1995 by fellow Canadian John Newton. She is on the faculty at Stanford University in California.

SCOTT ST.JOHN, violin, the newest member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, is a graduate of The Curtis Institute and recipient of a 2003 Avery Fisher Career Grant. He was also a Prizewinner in the Munich International Violin Competition, winner of the Young Concert Artists Award and First Prize winner of the Alexander Schneider Violin & Viola Competition. Impressive debut performances with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra/Keith Lockhart and Toronto Symphony/Jukka-Pekka Saraste resulted in re-invitations. Other solo performances include those with orchestra in Calgary, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, Montreal, Philadelphia, Toledo, Utah and Winnipeg. Recital and chamber performances include Japan’s Casals Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. “Salon Parisien,” on CBC Records, is his newest recording release. He has been heard on CBC radio, NPR’s Performance Today and A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts.