Saturday, October 4

American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has fast been gaining international attention as a commanding and charismatic artist, and as one of the most compelling women pianists performing today. Since being featured by The New York Times as an artist “poised for a breakthrough,” Ms. Dinnerstein has performed to a sold-out audience at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, debuted with the American Symphony Orchestra under Leon Botstein and signed a recording contract with Telarc International, which released her much-anticipated recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations worldwide in August 2007. The CD earned the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales and has remained highly ranked since then. It was called “precisely the kind of playing that the early 21st century most needs, infused as it is with a deep and pervasive sense of beauty and tenderness of heart which is often profoundly affecting,” by Piano Magazine.

The disc has appeared in “Best of 2007” lists including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Time Out New York, WNYC New York Top 10 CDs of 2007, WGBH Boston Top 10 CDs of 2007, Southern California’s KCRW Top Tune (first classical track ever chosen), iTunes “Editor’s Choice Best Classical,” Amazon.com Best CDs of 2007, ArkivMusic 25 Best Classical Recordings of 2007, Soundstage.com’s Top 12 CDs of 2007, and Barnes & Noble's Top 5 Debut CDs of 2007 (along with Amy Winehouse, Andy Davis, Chrisette Michele, and Grace Potter).

Recent highlights include Ms. Dinnerstein’s debut recital at the Salle Cortot in and at the Copenhagen Music Festival, as well as the opening concert of the Moselfestwochen in Germany. During the 2007-2008 concert season, she gave debut recitals at London’s Wigmore Hall, Berlin’s Philharmonie, and at the National Philharmonic Hall in Vilnius. In New York, she will give recitals at Town Hall in April and at the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center in May. She will tour with the Dresden Philharmonic under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and with the Czech Philharmonic under Leos¹ Svárovsky´, and will perform with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Jerusalem. Ms. Dinnerstein and cellist Zuill Bailey performed the complete Beethoven Sonatas at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in October, and will repeat the program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in April. Highlights of fall 2008 include performances with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. In the spring of 2009, Ms. Dinnerstein will make her recital debut at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Ms. Dinnerstein graduated from The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. Her other teachers include Solomon Mikowsky and Maria Curcio. Ms. Dinnerstein makes her home in Brooklyn, NY, where she lives with her husband and son.

Photo credit: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

For more information, visit simonedinnerstein.com

Sunday, October 19

Ed East is Panamanian. His upbringing in Panama City meant noise, hustle, bustle, and those chaotic smells and sights so characteristic of any Third World metropolis. It also meant a fierce need for individuality and lots of musical innovation and creativity. Karin Stein, his Columbian partner, brings to the music of Calle Sur the perspective of her rural upbringing. Very rural, that is. She is a cowgirl from the eastern Llanos or plains of Columbia. While he rode buses and watched TV, she rode horses and watched the red ibis stalk across emerald green rice fields. His veins were filled with the fusion of world beats converging in a big city. Her soul harbored haunting cowboy tunes from her traditional Llanero culture, a fascinating people whose music remains one of Latin America’s best kept secrets. Ed and Karin met in Iowa, of all places. They discovered they both had moved to Iowa on student scholarships, had stayed, and had built a life in their foreign but welcoming land, where their Latin heritage began to blend with their predominantly Anglo-Saxon surroundings. They have been pioneers in a state that has only recently seen a significant influx of Latinos. They travel wherever their music takes them and have composed the film score for three documentaries, some of which aired worldwide. Recently, one of Karin’s compositions was chosen for a feature-length movie, The Air I Breathe. In addition, Karin has won Parents’ Choice and other awards for her trilingual children’s album, Camaraca.

For more information, visit callesur.com

Sunday, October 19

Internationally acclaimed composer, lecturer, authors and recording artist Alfredo Rolando Ortiz was born in Cuba. When he was eleven, he immigrated with his family to Venezuela where he began studying the Venezuelan folk harp. A year later he became a pupil of Alberto Romero on the Paraguayan harp. Just two years after his first harp lesson, he began medical studies in Colombia and began performing professionally and recorded his first album. Music supported his medical studies until graduation. For eight years he worked as a medical doctor as well as a harpist and recording artist until his wife became pregnant. (Alfredo considers his “most important concert” playing the harp in the delivery room during the birth of his second daughter.) In order to have time for his growing family, he then decided to dedicate his life only to them and to his first love: the harp. His multicultural repertoire covers folk, classical and popular music of many countries and he has performed for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. He has recorded over forty albums and is the winner of a Gold Record in South America. He has lectured on a variety of subjects at universities, colleges and schools, is the author of several books and articles and his compositions have been performed and recorded by classical and folk harpists in many countries.

For more information, visit alfredo-rolando-ortiz.com

Saturday, November 1

Born March 4, 1928 in Mannheim, Germany, Samuel Adler came to the United States in 1939. Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2001, Samuel Adler is the composer of over 400 published works, including 5 operas, 6 symphonies, 12 concerti, 8 string quartets, 4 oratorios, many other orchestral, band, chamber, choral works, and songs, which have been performed all over the world. He is also the author of three books: Choral Conducting, an anthology (Holt, Reinhart, and Winston 1971, second edition Schirmer Books 1985) Sight Singing, (W.W. Norton 1979, 1997) and The Study of Orchestration, (W.W. Norton 1982, 1989, 2001). He has also contributed numerous articles to major magazines and books published in the U.S. and abroad.

Adler was educated at Boston University and Harvard University, and holds four honorary doctorates (Southern Methodist University, Wake Forest University, St. Mary.s Notre-Dame, and the St. Louis Conservatory). His major teachers in composition were: Herbert Fromm, Walter Piston, Randall Thompson, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland; in conducting Serge Koussevitzky.

He is Professor-emeritus at the Eastman School of Music where he taught from 1966 to 1995 and served as chair of the composition department from 1974 until his retirement. Before going to Eastman, Adler served as professor of composition at the University of North Texas (1957-1977), Music Director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, TX (1953-1966), and Instructor of Fine Arts at the Hockaday School in Dallas TX (1955-1966). From 1954-1958, he was music director of the Dallas Lyric Theater and the Dallas Chorale. Since 1997, he has been a member of the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Adler has given master classes and workshops at over 300 Universities worldwide, and in the summers has taught at major music festivals such as Tanglewood, Aspen, Brevard, Bowdoin, as well as others in France, Germany, Israel, Spain, Austria, Poland, South America, Korea, and China.

Some recent commissions have been from the Cleveland Orchestra (Cello Concerto), the National Symphony (Piano Concerto #1), the Dallas Symphony (Lux Perpetua), the Pittsburgh Symphony (Viola Concerto), the Houston Symphony (Horn Concerto), the Barlow Foundation-Atlanta Symphony (Choose Life), the American Brass Quintet, the Wolf Trap Foundation, the Berlin-Bochum Bass ensemble, the Ying Quartet, the American String Quartet to name only a few. His works have been performed lately by the St. Louis Symphony, the Los Angels Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Mannheim National Theater Orchestra. Besides these commissions and performances, previous commissions have been received from the National Endowment for the Arts (1975, 1978, 1980, and 1982), the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the City of Jerusalem, the Welsh Arts Council and many others.

Adler has been awarded many prizes including a 1990 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Charles Ives Award, the Lillian Fairchild Award, the MTNA award for Composer of the Year (1988-1989), Special Citation by the American Federation of Music Clubs (2001. In 1983, he won the Deems Taylor Award for his book The Study of Orchestration. In 1988-89, he was designated Phi Beta Kappa Scholar, in 1989 he received the Eastman School's Eisenhard Award for distinguished teaching, in 1991 he was honored being named the Composer of the Year by the American Guild of Organists. Adler was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1975-1976), he has been a MacDowell Fellow for five years, and during his second visit to Chile, he was elected to the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts (1993). In 1999, he was elected to the Akademie der Keunste in Germany for distinguished service to music. While serving in the United States Army (1950-1952), Adler founded and conducted the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra, and because of the orchestra's great psychological and musical impact on European culture, he was awarded the Army's Medal of Honor. In May 2003, Adler was awarded the Aaron Copland Award by ASCAP on the occasion of Adler's 75th birthday for life-time achievement in Composition and Teaching.

Adler has appeared as conductor with many major symphony orchestras both in the U.S. and abroad. His compositions are published by Theodore Presser, Oxford University Press, G. Schirmer, Carl Fischer, E.C. Schirmer, Peters Edition, Ludwig Music, Southern Music Publishers, Transcontinental Music Publishers: and recorded on Naxos, RCA, Gaspara, Albany, CRI, Crystal, New World, and Vanguard.

For more information, visit samueladler.com

Saturday, December 13

The University of Northern Iowa Children’s Choir is comprised of second through eighth grade students from throughout the Cedar Valley. The group provides a performance outlet for the children and also serves as a teaching tool for music education majors at UNI. Concerts featuring the choir offer a variety of musical selections and often include choreography and costuming. Approximately 80 in number, the ensemble is under the direction of Michelle Swanson, music education instructor at UNI.

Saturday, February 7

In the space of a few short years, Wolfgang David has ensconced himself on the international stage, both as a recitalist, and as a guest soloist with many leading orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Berne Symphony Orchestra, New York Virtuosi etc.

He has been well received by the press — the Washington Post wrote that he "scaled the heights of musicmaking” and The Strad described his playing “as emotionally wide-ranging as one could hope for”.

Admitted to the University for Music in Vienna at the age of eight, David studied there for many years with Rainer Küchl, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Later he continued his studies at the Musikhochschule in Cologne with Igor Ozim and with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music in London.

The winner of many competitions and prizes, David has performed in major halls such as Konzerthaus and Musikverein Hall in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York, Cerritos Center in Los Angeles, the Wigmore Hall in London, and Philharmonie in Cologne. Having concertized in over 30 countries, he will be performing and touring throughout 2007 in Austria, Italy, Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the United States, Canada, Ecuador, South Korea, Japan, China, and Thailand.

Highlights of his carrier included concerts at the Great Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York in the presence of Secretary General Kofi Annan, and a concert in Bangkok, given for the Queen of Thailand.

Besides focusing on the traditional main repertoire, Wolfgang David also enjoys collaborating with a number of living composers, such as David Gompper, Noel Zahler, Ching-chu Hu, Joseph Dangerfield, Jeremy Dale Roberts, John Allemeier, etc. He has commissioned, premiered, and recorded works specially written for him.

Wolfgang David has recorded a CD with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Emmanuel Siffert and two albums with the American pianist David Gompper.

He performs on a violin built in 1715 by Carlo Bergonzi, Cremona, on exclusive loan to him from the Austrian National Bank.

For more information, visit wolfgangdavid.com

Saturday, March 7

Prominently established as a unique and masterful instrumentalist, Edgar Meyer delights his audiences both as a vibrant performer and an innovative composer. Hailed by the New Yorker as, "...the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchronicled history of his instrument," Mr. Meyer's unparalleled technique and musicianship in combination with his gift for composition have brought him to the fore, where he is appreciated by a vast, varied audience. His uniqueness in the field was recognized by a MacArthur Award in 2002.

As a solo classical bassist, Mr. Meyer has released a concerto album with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra featuring Bottesini's Gran Duo with Joshua Bell; Meyer's Double Concerto for Bass and Cello with Yo-Yo Ma; Bottesini's Bass Concerto No. 2 and Meyer's Concerto in D for Bass along with an acclaimed album of Bach's Unaccompanied Suites for Cello.

Fruitful collaborations are a major aspect of Mr. Meyer's work. Music for Two is the latest collaboration with banjoist Béla Fleck and features live performances from the duo's tours together from October 2001 to September 2003. The recording also features a DVD with footage documenting the tour and the development of their collaboration on specific works in the program. Prior to that, Mr. Meyer joined with violinist Joshua Bell and legendary bluegrass musicians Sam Bush and Mike Marshall to form a quartet featuring a unique fusion of classical and bluegrass musical styles. The album, Short Trip Home, released in Fall 1999, was nominated for a Grammy award in the category of Best Classical Crossover album and the group was subsequently invited to perform live at the 42nd annual Grammy Awards. Shortly before this collaboration, Mr. Meyer was involved in an inventive trio project with Béla Fleck on banjo and Mike Marshall on mandolin, performing original compositions marrying bluegrass, classical and other traditional styles. In October 1997, the Fleck/Marshall/Meyer trio opened the 1997-98 season of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in conjunction with the release of their SONY disc, Uncommon Ritual. Earlier in Mr. Meyer's career, from 1986-1992, he was a member of the progressive bluegrass band "Strength in Numbers," whose members included Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, and Mark O'Connor. Mr. Meyer also works with pianist Amy Dorfman, his longtime accompanist for solo recitals, featuring both classical repertoire and his own compositions. To further explore his interests in a variety of musical genres, Mr. Meyer's vast musical interests have also led him to be a widely sought after guest bass player for an assortment of recording artists, such as Garth Brooks, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Hank Williams, Jr., Emmylou Harris, James Taylor, Lyle Lovett, Reba McIntyre, the Indigo Girls and the Chieftains.

An exclusive Sony Classical artist who is ever involved in imaginative projects, Mr. Meyer's latest venture is a collaboration with himself. This recording, entitled Edgar Meyer, presents him performing 14 all new instrumental pieces he has created for himself to perform, on an array of instruments, through multi-track recording.

On Sony Classical, Mr. Meyer and colleagues Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O' Connor have been widely acclaimed for the release of Appalachia Waltz, which soared to the top of the charts and remained there for 16 weeks. Appalachia Waltz toured extensively in the U.S., and the trio was featured both on the David Letterman Show and the televised 1997 Inaugural Gala. The follow-up recording, Appalachian Journey, was released in March 2000. This time, their tour took them not only to major venues across the U.S. but also to Europe and parts of Asia. Appalachian Journey won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album that season. In October 1999, Mr. Meyer's violin concerto written for violinist Hilary Hahn was premiered and recorded by Ms. Hahn with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra led by Hugh Wolff.

Mr. Meyer began studying bass at the age of five under the instruction of his father, and continued further to study with Stuart Sankey. He is the winner of numerous competitions. In 1994 he became the only bassist to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant and in 2000 became the only bassist to receive the Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Meyer premiered his bass concerto in 1993 with Edo de Waart and the Minnesota Orchestra, and in 1995, he premiered his Quintet for Bass and String Quartet in collaboration with the Emerson String Quartet, which was later recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Also, in 1995, he premiered his Double Concerto for Bass and Cello, in collaboration with Carter Brey, cello and Jeffrey Kahane conducting the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival Orchestra. Mr. Meyer has also performed with the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa, featuring the premiere of one of his own works, the Meyer Double Concerto for Bass and Cello with Yo-Yo Ma, and most recently premiered an exciting new concerto for Banjo and Double Bass with co-composer Bela Fleck and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. A frequent guest at music festivals, Mr. Meyer has appeared as performer and composer at Aspen, Tanglewood, Caramoor, Chamber Music Northwest, and Marlboro. At the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, he was a regular guest from 1985-1993, and composed six works for the festival during that time. In 1994, Mr. Meyer joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and continues to perform regularly with this ensemble. Currently, he is also Visiting Professor of Double Bass at the Royal Academy of Music and at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Photo credit: Jimmy Ienner, Jr.

For more information, visit edgarmeyer.com