Musicians - Guest Artists - 2011-2012 Season
Guest Artist
Ricardo Cobo
February 10, 2012
Ricardo Cobo is recognized as one of the world's leading virtuosi of the new classic guitar generation. He made his astonishing debut to American audiences as the first Hispanic ever to win consecutive medals at the Guitar Foundation of America’s Solo International Competition. Born in Cali, Colombia, to a musical family, he began playing at age 8 and studied classical guitar at the Conservatorio Antonio María Valencia. He gave his professional debut with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá at age seventeen on a nationwide telecast for an audience of over nine million.
Ricardo began undergraduate studies at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore with renown pedagogue Aaron Shearer and received his BM from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He received a Master of Music and was awarded a Doctoral Fellowship from Florida State University in Tallahassee where he worked with Bruce Holzman. While completing his Doctorate he won the 9th Alirio Diaz International Solo Competition in Caracas, Venezuela, and thus began touring as a concert and recording artist incessantly throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe.
Equally in demand as chamber musician, pedagogue and recording artist, Cobo's busy touring schedule has taken him from New York's Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall and 92St.Y to Korea's Ho Ham Hall, Los Angeles' Ambassador Auditorium, Madrid's Teatro Real, and Zaragoza's Palacio Real, to Venezuela's Teresa Carreño, and his native Colombia's National Library, among hundreds of others.
Cobo's versatility can be heard in his award-winning solo recordings of classical and children's music (Brouwer Vol.1 on Naxos and Guitar Lullaby on Ellipsis Arts), his orchestral and crossover recordings (Brouwer Concerti , Walking on the Water, and Café 1930 on Angel/Emi), and in hundreds of credits for commercial releases worldwide.
His diverse and innovative programming ranges from solo concerti with orchestra (Rodrigo, Brouwer) to historical chamber settings (Bocherini, Beethoven, Schubert) with, The Shanghai String Quartet, the St Lukes Chamber Orquestra, the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York, as well as Tango and Flamenco dance ensembles (Tango Vivo, Ballet Jazz of Montreal) , and Latin and world music concerts with Flutist Alexandra Hawley and Folk virtuoso Alfredo Lopez of “QuetzalCoatl”. His performance of the historic American Premiere of Leo Brouwer's Concerto de Toronto under the composer's own baton with the San Antonio Symphony was called "extrovert, lyrical and rhythmically alive...Cobo's performance was characterized by generosity of spirit, to say nothing of knockout virtuosity," added the San Antonio Express News.
Cobo has been decorated by the Colombian government on numerous occasions, receiving Colombia's "Order of Cañasgordas" and the "Order of Belacazar" for outstanding merit in cultural affairs. He is director of the classical guitar department at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and is cofounder of the “Guitar Series at UNLV”, now on its eighth consecutive season. Mr Cobo keeps a loyal studio of students from ages 12 to 70 whom study via the internet and in hundreds of workshops around the country. www.ricardocobo.com
Guest Conductor: Anna Binneweg
Holiday Program, Light Classics
December 9, 2011
Anna Binneweg has distinguished herself in the areas of symphonic and operatic conducting early in her career. She is the Music Director/Conductor of the Anne Arundel Community College Symphony Orchestra (Annapolis, MD) where she also serves as Associate Professor of Music, and is the Music Director/Conductor of the Londontowne Symphony Orchestra (Edgewater, MD). She holds a doctor of music degree in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University where she studied with Victor Yampolsky, while serving as the Music Director/Conductor of Chicago’s OperaModa, a company committed to producing and performing modern American opera. She has served on the conducting faculties at Loyola University (Chicago, IL) the Sherwood Conservatory of Music (Chicago, IL) and American University (Washington, DC).
Dr. Binneweg made her conducting debut at the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra in the 2005 National Conducting Institute, and presently serves as one of their cover conductors. She has worked with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, Daniel Barenboim, Robert Spano, James Paul, Michael Morgan, Duaine Wolfe, Nurhan Arman and David Effron through various engagements sponsored by the League of American Orchestras, the Conductors Guild, the Conductors Institute of New York and the Royal Conservatory of Music.
She is a graduate of the Meadows School of the Arts of Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX) where she completed a double master’s degree in conducting and music education while serving as the assistant conductor of the Meadows Symphony Orchestra. Dedicated to the development of music education, her youth orchestra experience includes various guest conducting and clinician appearances with orchestras throughout the United States and Canada, along with former positions with the Houston Youth Symphony (Houston, TX) and the San Luis Obispo Youth Symphony (San Luis Obispo, CA) where she fulfilled her undergraduate degree in music at Cal Poly State University. Binneweg is originally from Lake Tahoe, California.
Guest Artist: Deborah Fleischer
Holiday Program, Light Classics
December 9, 2011
Deborah Fleischer, Soprano, received both her Master of Music Degree in Vocal Performance and her Choral Music Teaching Credential from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she studied with Dr. Paul Kreider and Professor David B. Weiller. She received her Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, where she studied with Dr. Jo-Michael Scheibe and Dr. Edith Copley.
Deborah placed as an award winner in the Metropolitan Opera District Auditions in 1997 and can be heard on a recent recording of Daren Hagen’s Shining Brow, on the Arsis Record label performing as Townswoman #2 / Wife. Other operatic credits include Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, the Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors, Zweite Dame in Die Zauberflöte, Maddalena in Rigoletto, Mercedes in Carmen, Berta in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Nella in Gianni Schicchi, Sylvienne in The Merry Widow, Lizzie Borden in Lizzie Borden, Apollonia in La Cantarina and Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus. Deborah performs frequently with Opera Las Vegas and has been a soloist with the Vancouver, B.C. Symphony, the Marktoberdorf, Germany Symphony, the Las Vegas Philharmonic, the Las Vegas Music Festival Orchestra, the Performing Arts Society of Nevada, the Southern Nevada Musical Arts Society Orchestra and the Henderson Symphony.
Deborah has performed with Kenny Loggins on two occasions, Cybill Shepherd, and had the prestigious honor to be the rehearsal accompanist and to sing with Barbra Streisand in her 2000 millennium concert, under the direction of Marvin Hamlisch. Over the past nineteen years she has been on the voice faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the College of Southern Nevada, the Nevada School of the Arts, and has maintained a large, award winning private vocal studio. She is an active accompanist for several choral programs in the Clark County School District and is the pianist for the Henderson Symphony.
She is currently in her eleventh year as the choral director at Schofield Middle School in Las Vegas. Her choirs have received straight superior ratings at the Clark County School District Choral Festivals since the school opened in 2001. Her Madrigal Singers were chosen to perform at the 2007 NMEA Nevada Music Educators Association Convention and were very honored to have performed at the 2010 American Choral Directors Association Western Division Convention in Tucson, Arizona, and also at the 2011 American Choral Directors Association National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
Deborah was named the State of Nevada New Music Educator of the Year for 2007 and received the 2008-2009 Distinguished Educator of the Year Award for the Southeastern Region of the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, NV. She has served and currently serves as the chairperson for the ACDA / Clark County School District Middle School Honor Choir for the past eleven years, as chairperson for the NMEA Middle School All-State Choir for the past six years, as a board member for the Nevada Music Educators Association, as R & S Chair for the Nevada ACDA Middle School Honor Choirs and as the Clark County School District Middle School Choir Task Force Chair.
Deborah resides in Henderson, NV, with her loving husband, Eric, and their six-year-old daughter, Julia.
Guest Artist: Tod Fitzpatrick
Holiday Program, Light Classics
December 9, 2011
Baritone Tod Fitzpatrick is an active singer, teacher and student of the craft of singing. Interested in a wide variety of vocal repertoire, his performance experience includes over forty operatic and music theater roles in addition to a substantial number of oratorio and concert works. He also has a passion for song recitals and new works for voice. Currently an Associate Professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, he remains highly active as a performer and lecturer in America and abroad.
Frequently performing with distinguished organizations around the United States, a few of the ensembles with which he has sung include the Virginia Symphony, Virginia Opera, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera Pacific, the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, the Sacramento Choral Society, the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, the Utah Festival Opera Company, the Fort Collins Symphony, the Las Vegas Philharmonic, Long Beach Opera, and Los Angeles Opera where he was a resident artist for three years. He can be heard singing Quatre mélodies de Ronsard on a new compact disc recording by composer Judy Cloud and the song cycle A Journey After Loves by Virko Baley on a disc to be released later this year.
A native of California, he earned his Bachelor of Music degree in vocal performance from Chapman University. His Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees are from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music where he received the Marilyn Horne Voice Scholarship. Recent work includes studies in voice science and vocal pedagogy with Ingo Titze at the National Center for Voice and Speech where he earned a certificate in Vocology from the University of Iowa and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
He was a vocal fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and at the Verbier Music Festival in Switzerland. He performed in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program and studied at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in England. Dr. Fitzpatrick was also selected to be a National Association of Teachers of Singing intern at Ithaca College in New York.
As a teacher, his students routinely perform professionally in concerts and major productions based in Las Vegas and elsewhere. They win awards in regional and nationally recognized voice competitions and attend summer music festivals in the United States and Europe. He has served as a consultant/teacher for several Cirque du Soleil productions and singing artists in Las Vegas. This past summer he taught at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival on the island of Hawaii and again served as the General Director of the Big Bear Lake Song Festival. As an active member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, he has served as the Las Vegas Chapter of NATS, the Nevada District Governor and is currently the Cal-Western Regional Governor and national board member. In addition, he is also the coordinator for the upcoming Sixth International Physiology and Acoustics of Singing Conference to be held on the UNLV Campus in 2012.
Guest Conductor: Mykola Suk
A Celebration of Liszt
October 28, 2011
Mykola Suk, Assistant Professor of Music, received his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano Performance from Moscow State Conservatory, having studied with Lev Vlasenko. He also holds a combined Bachelor and Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance, Pedagogy, and Chamber Music from the Moscow State Conservatory. Before coming to the United States he served as Professor of Piano at the Kiev State Conservatory and Moscow State Conservatory.
Mr. Suk has given master classes at many festivals and music schools around the world. He has taught as an adjunct faculty member at various music schools such as the New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music (NY), Columbia University (NY), and the University of Southern Alabama. In 2001, he settled in Las Vegas, Nevada, taking responsibility for keyboard studies in the Music Department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
“An astonishing blend of muscular power, poetry and utter control - he will prove to be one of the more formidable talents to have appeared in this country in years.”
This assessment by the American Record Guide certainly describes well the Ukrainian-American pianist, Mykola Suk, who gained international recognition as the winner of the First Prize and Gold Medal at the 1971 International Liszt-Bartok Competition in Budapest, Hungary. His international career has spanned four continents, with performances in the most prestigious venues from the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory to Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York City. The Toronto Star comments on his "...enormous digital control... such an impressive technique was so completely subsumed in the task of musical characterization. Suk never used the piano to show off; he made it the servant of Liszt’s expressive ideas."
Mr. Suk has appeared as soloist with numerous leading orchestras, from the Russian National Symphony under Mikhail Pletnev to the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn under Roman Kofman. He has collaborated artistically with the world’s outstanding conductors, among them Charles Bruck, Janos Ferencsik, Arvid Jansons, Stefan Turchak, James DePreist and Carl St. Clair. Mr. Suk’s interviews, live performances, and CD recordings have been broadcast throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia on prominent radio stations and broadcast systems, such as WQXR and WNYC, New York, WMFT, Chicago, and WGBH Boston.