Strings Faculty
Described by the world’s press as "a sensational force” (La République, France), and "technical virtuoso" (Berliner Morgenpost, Germany), violinist Eugenia Choi has been attracting international recognition since her solo concerto debut with orchestra at age ten. Miss Choi regularly performs at major performing arts centers such as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, Symphony Hall in Boston, Kravis Center in Palm Beach, Dame Myra Hess series in Chicago, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Vienna Saal-Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, Teatro Municipale in Santiago, Chile, Tokyo International Forum in Japan, Palais de Fontainebleau in France, and numerous others worldwide.
In recent seasons, Miss Choi has performed as soloist with orchestras in Europe, Asia, North and South Americas, and has been featured on national television and radio broadcasts on five continents for CBC, BBC, Sender Freies Berlin, Bravo!, Kenyan National Radio, and more. An avid supporter of contemporary music, Miss Choi has given the world première performances and recordings of several new compositions to critical acclaim, including a work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynold, commissioned Canadian work by Alan Gordon Bell, and rediscovered Viennese serialist composer Adolph Loos. A particular highlight has been performances at Juilliard for Elliott Carter of his own solo violin work. Constantly expanding her musical milieu, she collaborates with a wide range of artists, including American soprano Dawn Upshaw, tap artist Savion Glover, Lincoln Center’s “Great Performances” series, Ondine Musique in France, major motion picture recordings for 20th Century Fox, and on tour as guest first violinist of the Borealis String Quartet. She has also recorded in collaboration with several groups including with the American String Project on MSR Classics and Turning Point Ensemble on ATMA Classique.
Dedicated to community outreach, Eugenia has represented New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Juilliard School in six seasons of interactive concerts at impoverished urban community and health-care facilities. Of the many venues she has experienced, the most adventurous was playing solo Bach on the magnificent glaciers of the Norwegian Arctic above 79 ºN latitude, as captured by National Geographic: last year, Eugenia was invited by the Aspen Institute, National Geographic, and Lindblad Expeditions to perform concerts and to represent the performing arts and younger generation of conservationists at a 10 day climate change summit in Norway alongside some of the most influential leaders in politics, business, science, and philanthropy including President Jimmy Carter, Hon. Madeleine Albright, Ted Turner, CEOs and founders of Google, DuPont, Monsanto, eBay, and many others. Highlights included performing for the Norwegian government in Olso at the Nobel Peace Prize Hall and several other concerts on the 1714 General Kydd – ex-Itzhak Perlman Stradivarius violin that was given to Eugenia for the occasion. President Carter describes hearing Eugenia on his trip report here.
Born in Canada from Korean heritage, Miss Choi began violin studies at the age of three with Yoko Wong and James Keene. Her performing career was nurtured at an early age under the guidance of renowned concert violinist Ruggiero Ricci, and pianist-conductor Philippe Entremont, with whom she continues to collaborate. She received her Pre-college, Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School in New York under Joel Smirnoff and Sally Thomas. In 2007, she also received her Doctorate degree in music from The Juilliard School as a recipient of the C.V. Starr Foundation Fellowship, from which her dissertation entitled Pricing Patterns of Stradivarius Violins since the Eighteenth Century: From Musician’s Instrument to Institutional Investment has received much acclaim from the fine violin industry and music press. She currently serves as a strategic adviser to high-end violin collectors and foundations. Eugenia is also an alumna of Dartmouth College, where she studied Government. Dedicated to academics in addition to her performing career, in 2004, Dr. Choi was appointed Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of British Columbia, as one of the youngest members to join in the faculty’s history. She also joined the artist faculty at New York University since the summer of 2009.
Jennifer John (Violin, M.M., University of Michigan, B.M., Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Post-graduate studies at Yale University and in Lausaunne, Switzerland) serves on the faculty at the Aspen Music Festival and School and is co-founder of The New Millennium Conservatory for Strings in Lafayette, CO. She is a former board member of the Colorado American String Teachers National Association (CASTA) and Professor of Violin at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Wichita State University. She was concertmaster for the Prague International Chamber Orchestra, Great Lakes Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra, and both Wichita and Flint Michigan symphonies. Ms. John has appeared as soloist with orchestras and presented solo recitals, chamber music recitals, and workshops at universities, schools, conventions, and festivals around the country.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, László Mező gained national recognition as one of the top musicians of his generation when he won First Prize in the “Kertész Ottó
Memorial Competition” at the young age of 18. Since then, he has won numerous
other competitions including the Fourth Prize in the “Antonio Janigro Junior
International Competition” in 1998, Second Prize in the “International Dávid Popper
Competition for Young Cellists” in 2000, the Special Prize in the “International Dávid
Popper Cello Competition” in 2004, and First Prize in the “Ima Hogg International
Competition” in 2008.
László Mező has forged a career as a soloist, recitalist, master teacher, chamber musician and conductor. He has performed extensively in Europe, Asia and North and South America. Always eager to pass on his knowledge, László has conducted master classes in Japan, Switzerland and Hungary. He was Assistant Teacher at the University of Southern California between 2007 and 2008.
László Mező has been invited to give master classes at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest and in Japan at Hirosaki University, the Tokyo University of Arts, and the Yokohama Music University. He has also given classes at colleges and high schools as well as at the Goppisberger Music Festival, Switzerland and the Baja Music Festival, Hungary.
Since 1997, Maestro László Mező has conducted orchestras in Hungary, Switzerland, and Japan, including the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music Orchestra, the Kodaly Orchestra, the Goppisberger Festival Orchestra, the Hirosaki University Orchestra, as well as the Irvine Classical Players/Seraphym Symphony in Irvine, California. László Mező holds master degrees from the Liszt Ferenc University of Music in Budapest and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München. He graduated from the class of Ralph Kirshbaum at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His CD recording of David Popper’s works, on the Hungaroton label, includes several first time ever recordings of the master’s cello works.
David Rife, a native of South Carolina, received a Bachelor of Music Degree in Violin Performance from the Eastman School of Music and a Master of Music Degree in Violin Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. He has studied with Donald Weilerstein, Mazuko Ushioda, Jerry Lucktenburg, Dennis Bourret, and members of the Cleveland Quartet. David moved to Tucson in 1983 to join the Tucson Symphony Orchestra where he is presently the Assistant Concertmaster. He is a dedicated violin teacher and first violinist of the Tucson Symphony String Quartet and the Southwest String Quartet. The Southwest String Quartet is very active throughout the State of Arizona as performers and clinicians. In the summer of 2007 the quartet was invited to be the quartet in residence at the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra Festival. In 2005 David was awarded the teacher of the year of the state of Arizona by the American String Teachers Association. His students have won local and statewide competitions and are presently attending major music schools throughout the country.
William Terwilliger - violin (YAS)
Violinist William Terwilliger has established an exceptionally active and diverse
career as a performer and teacher on five continents. With pianist Andrew
Cooperstock as the duo called Opus Two, he performed throughout seven Latin American
countries on a 1993 Artistic Ambassador tour. The duo has also performed throughout
the United States and in Europe on repeated tours, including concerts throughout
France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, England, Scotland, Sweden and Latvia and the
Ukraine. Recent appearances include recital debuts in New York at Merkin Hall, in
London at St. John's, Smith Square, as well as performances at the Piccolo Spoleto
Festival (SC), the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (Queensland), Round Top
(Texas), Brevard (NC), and Rocky Ridge (CO).
In 2006, the Opus Two made its Asian debut with two months of recitals, master classes and concerto appearances in China, Korea, Japan and Russia. Their performances have been heard over NPR, the BBC, Radio France, as well as Latvian and Australian National Radio. Their discography includes the Complete Works of Aaron Copland for Violin and Piano (Azica), Chamber Music of Lowell Lieberman (Albany), and from 2006, Souvenirs: Music of Paul Schoenfield (Azica), a project which won a Copland Foundation Recording Grant and "showed a sheer joy of music-making" from a review in the American Record Guide. Coming out in November of 2010 is a recording of the music of Leonard Bernstein on the Naxos label, which includes a brand new suite from Candide and other Broadway arrangements with singer Marin Mazzie.
Philip Wharton - violin, viola (JSS1 & 2)
Few artists enjoy such high praise for both of their disciplines as composer /violinist Philip Wharton. Of his playing, The New York Times proclaimed, “a rousing performance!” and The Waterloo Courier wrote, “a golden tone with breathtaking execution.” His compositions, heralded from coast to coast, are described by the New York Concert Review as, “…decidedly contemporary…both engaging and accessible.”
Philip’s recent composition, The Prairie Sings, was a prizewinner in the 2008 NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) artsong competition. Lori Laitman, the final judge, described it as “interesting throughout and very sensitive to the text.” Carol Mikkelson, NATS coordinator thanked him, “Your contribution to the world of song is greatly appreciated.” The Prairie Sings was commissioned for an art show opening of prairie images by Iowa artist, Kristi Carlson. So well received was this cycle of songs on poems by Carl Sandburg, Wharton expanded it into a full symphonic work.
Combining art, music, poetry and dance is quickly becoming Philip’s specialty. His 2007 chamber symphony, Passing Season, used titles from his grandfather Orville M. Running’s woodcut prints. His narrated symphonic poem on the book, The Giant Jam Sandwich, captured the author’s verse and illustrator’s design so well that author Janet Burroway sent Philip another poem. The resulting work for voice and piano trio on her story, The Perfect Pig, was premiered in September 2008 to an audience further delighted by seeing a dancer using costumes—tickling both eyes and ears. In the summer of 2005, the Santa Fe Opera mounted Two Saintes Caught in the Same Act as part of their apprentice scenes program. In 2005, the Grammy-nominated Borealis Wind Quintet premiered his Quintet and continue to perform it on their concert tours.
Remaining active as a violinist, in Spring 2007 Philip premiered his composition, Oh, But Everyone Was a Bird, a fantasy for violin and string orchestra, with the Iowa City String Orchestra. In the same concert he performed a Vivaldi concerto for violin and two orchestras with great élan. The following summer, the Moscow Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra premiered Verdant Twilight and then accompanied Philip as soloist in Bernstein’s Serenade. Last season saw repeat performances of Mozart's First Violin Concerto with cadenzas of his own devising.
Wynne Wong-Rife - violin (JSS2)
Wynne Wong-Rife has a multi-faceted career as a member of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, The TSO String Quartet and the Southwest String Quartet. In addition, she teaches a large class of violin students, several of whom have placed in competitions and soloed with local orchestras. After studying with John Ferrell at The University of Arizona for one year, she transferred to the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Peter Salaff of the Cleveland Quartet, and was awarded a B.M. with Distinction in Violin Performance. At Eastman she met and became engaged to David Rife, and in 1981, both decided to attend New England Conservatory of Music. Wynne graduated from the New England Conservatory in 1983 with a M.M. in Violin Performance, and then returned to Tucson with David to marry and start a family. Wynne and David have two daughters, Melissa and Molly (both ‘cellists) and four cats. In addition to teaching and performing, Wynne also enjoys photography, knitting and Starbucks (not necessarily in that order).
Violist Andrew Picken is associate principal violist of the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, and Principal Violist of the Pasadena Symphony as well as the Glendale Symphony. A native of Los Angeles, Mr. Picken received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California in Los Angeles and a master’s degree from Northwestern University in Chicago. Mr. Picken has served as principal violist with the Long Beach Symphony, American Ballet Theater, the San Francisco Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, and the Joffrey Ballet. He has performed with numerous other orchestras in southern California including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and Orange County’s Pacific Symphony.
Mr. Picken is associate principal violist of the Los Angeles Master Choral Orchestra, with which he has appeared as a soloist in Bach’s St. John’s Passion and Britten's Cantata Misericordium. For the past several years, he has served as principal violist of the eastern Sierra Summer Festival in Mammoth Lakes. He is a faculty member at the Colburn School in Los Angeles and at Loyola Marymount University. He is active in the television and motion picture recording industry, having performed on myriad soundtracks including “Lost,” “Ratatouille,” and “Star Trek.” In addition, he has performed on the albums of numerous recording artists such as Barbara Streisand, Prince, and Josh Grobin.
As a conductor, Andrew has lead ensembles throughout the Los Angeles area. Recordings of his performances have been heard in live Ballet productions in New York and elsewhere. He has studied with the renowned conducting pedagogue Jorge Mester in Los Angeles, as well as Samuel Krachmalnick and Richard Rintoul.
Andrew is an active chamber musician as well. With a string quartet, he toured the former Soviet Union, visiting Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and Estonia, as well as Finland. He has toured in Germany, Mexico, and Taiwan and performed at the Nevada Chamber Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Ojai Music Festival as well as other festivals throughout the United States. He is a faculty member and frequent performer at the Chamber Music Unbound series in Mammoth Lakes, California. He is married to Pasadena Symphony concertmaster Aimee Kreston.
Daniel Sweaney made his New York debut in Avery Fisher Hall at the 1999 Mostly Mozart Festival performing with world renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman. “..extremely talented and highly trained...poised and accomplished...” said Strings Magazine. Mr. Sweaney began his musical studies at age eleven and has since had a diverse education in the United States and Europe. He has won many prizes and performed across the globe.
Daniel Sweaney has won prizes at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the Down Beat Magazine Chamber Music Competition, was a two time recipient of the Interlochen Arts Academy Fine Arts Award for Outstanding Performance in Viola, he was the recipient a Frank Huntington Beebe Grant, and winner of the Fifth Annual Sister Mary Faustina Memorial Concert in Marylhurst, Oregon. He has been teaching assistant to Heidi Castleman and a chamber music coach at The Perlman Music Program. He participated in exchange programs through The Perlman Music Program on trips to Tel-Aviv and Shanghai. Mr. Sweaney has held faculty positions at the Cleveland School for the Arts, Rice University Preparatory Department, The Boulder Arts Academy, teaching assistant at the University of Colorado, and is currently on the faculty of the North American Viola Institute, Rocky Ridge Music Center, and The University of Alabama. He has given master classes at the University of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Southern Illionois, Bowling Green State University, and the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana Cuba.
Mr. Sweaney has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Ani Aznavoorian, Ron Leonard, Stefan Milenkovich, Merry Peckham, and Peter Sellers. While living in Austria, he performed regularly with the Camerata Salzburg under Sir Roger Norrington, anne Sophie Mutter, Leonidas Kavakos, Walter Weller, and Heinrich Schiff. Recent venues and festivals include, Salzburg Mozarteum Grossersaal, Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein, KKL Lucerne, Bilbao and Madrid, Spain, Athens Megaron, Camerata Salzburg’s Beethoven and Haydn Begegnung, Vienna Festwochen, Salzburg Mozart Woche, Bergen Norway Festspiel, Schubertiad Bezau, Austria, Würzburg Mozart Festival, Singapore Arts Festival, The Best of the Nordrhein-Westfalen series, The Beethoven House in Bonn, SUNY Purchase, Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Series, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Orchestra Hall in Chicago, and an open workshop with Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He has recorded with the Camerata Salzburg for Universal the complete works for flute and orchestra with soloist Andrea Griminelli and works by Mozart with pianist Sebastian Knauer and violinist Daniel Hope. In 2007 Daniel Sweaney was heard in a live broadcast with the Signum String Quartet on West German Radio.
Daniel Sweaney studied at the Interlochen Arts Academy, The Cleveland Institute of Music, Rice University, the Universität Mozarteum, Salzburg, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has participated in many summer festivals such as The Sewanne Summer Music Center, The Quartet Program, The Aspen Music Festival and School, and The International Musician’s Seminar, Prussia Cove. His major teachers include Heidi Castleman, David Holland, Thomas Riebl, Martha Strongin-Katz, Roger Tapping, Erika Eckert, and Geraldine Walther. In his spare time he enjoys competitive swimming.
Ilona Vukovic-Gay - viola (JSS2)
Ilona pursues a career as a composer and a performing musician. In the Tucson Symphony Orchestra she is the Young Composer’s Project Instructor, the Assistant Principal Viola and the violist in the TSO String Quartet. She is also on the Arizona Commission on the Arts roster as the violist in the Southwest String Quartet. She has a Bachelor of Violin Performance from Manhattan School of Music and a Masters of Musical Arts in Viola and Composition from Yale University. She studied the violin with Rafael Bronstein, viola with Walter Trampler and composition with James Drew and Yehudi Wyner. She was awarded a Fulbright Grant for further study in London.
Ilona’s compositions include a series of musical dramatizations of Susan Lowell’s children’s books such as the “Three Little Javelinas.” These compositions feature the TSO string quartet performing as soloists with the orchestra. Every year one of these musical stories is the main composition on the TSO’s week long KinderKonzert series. In addition to the Young Composer’s Project, Ilona is actively involved as a music educator in Tucson. She has created a class of Kinder Komposition for the very young student, been an instructor in Tucson’s “Opening Minds through the Arts” program and taught creative composition classes in Arizona residencies. She teaches and performs at over thirty schools in the Tucson area each year. Previously she had been on the New College (Sarasota, Florida) faculty teaching music theory and composition. Her other compositions have been performed in the United States and Europe, with a premiere of her composition “Mladost” at London’s Wigmore Hall.
Ilona has been the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Young Composer’s Project instructor for the past eight years. The class is a living laboratory of music composition that has several hundred alumni. Many have continued as composition majors at the college level and have been winners and finalists in the Morton Gould ASCAP Foundation awards. The Young Composer’s Project is a unique and nationally recognized program that has been a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts grant for the last four years and was lauded last year by cellist YoYo Ma.
Mary Beth Tyndall - cello (JSS1, JSS2)
Mary Beth Tyndall is the Assistant Principal Cellist in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and performs in the symphony’s string quartet. She is also on the Arizona Commission on the Arts roster as a member of the Southwest String Quartet. As a chamber musician she has performed a wide variety of string quartet works from the classical to contemporary periods. She is also actively involved in educational programming and performances for young people. She is known for her portrayals of the more outrageous characters in the children’s books of Susan Lowell (such as Josefina Javelina), which the quartet dramatizes annually as soloists in the Tucson Symphony Kinderkoncerts series.
The chamber music festival created by the Southwest String Quartet is a two week workshop in Tucson for middle and high school students. Mary Beth is one of the original founders of this festival and is the primary cello coach and orchestra conductor. She has also taught at the Chamber Music in the Mountains camp on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, the Northern Arizona University Summer Music Camp in Flagstaff, Arizona, the Tucson Cello Congress, the Valley of the Sun Suzuki Workshop in Phoenix, Arizona, and the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra Summer Festival in Alaska. She is frequently a sectional coach for Tucson adult amateur orchestras and youth orchestras. She is an accomplished pianist and accompanies her students in recitals and competitions.
Mary Beth has a Bachelor’s degree in Cello Performance and Music Education from Ball State University and a Master’s Degree in Cello Performance from the University of Arizona. She has studied with Joseph Saunders, Gordon Epperson, Claus Adam, Martha Gerschefski and Hans Jorgen Jensen.
She maintains a large studio of cello students of all ages and levels! Many of her students have performed as soloists with local orchestras and are continuing their studies in music conservatories around the country. As a performer and teacher her philosophy is one of joy, self-expression and personal growth through music.
Michael Fitzmaurice - double bass (YAS, JSS1 & JSS2)
For the past 24 years, bassist/composer Mike Fitzmaurice, has been a member of the Irish folk group Colcannon who celebrated the release of their 8th CD in 2010 on the Oxford Road Records label. Colcannon’s reputation has grown steadily over the years with a distinctive, inventive, and contemporary musical style while still keeping in firm touch with the heart and essence of traditional Irish music. The band's recent CD “The Pooka and the Fiddler” received a Parent’s Choice Award for its artful interweaving or music and storytelling. The Emmy®-award winning PBS special, “Colcannon in Concert,” filmed at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts has aired nationwide.
As well as contributing tunes to the band's CDs, Mike has composed two large works for Colcannon and orchestra, the first of which “The Red Kite” had its premier in April of 1998 and has been performed several times since. One of Mike’s recent works “Short Stories” for Solo Bass and String Orchestra had its premiere in April 2007 with The Mercury Ensemble followed by a repeat performance in February 2010.
As an active freelance musician, Mike performs many different styles of music, and as an orchestral musician, he has performed, at one time or another, with all of the professional orchestras along the Front Range. Mike is currently Associate Principal Bass with the Greeley Philharmonic and has been working them for almost 20 years.
Mike also released his first CD of all original music, “The Continuing Adventures of Hajji Baba”in 2007. With such an active performing schedule, Mike doesn’t keep a regular teaching schedule, but still manages to squeeze in students because he also loves sharing his clues. Mike looks forward spending time teaching and performing again at Rocky Ridge this coming summer.
A Rocky Ridge Day
