Author Archives: Steven Snowden

P. Kellach Waddle enjoys a widely lauded career as a solo bassist, composer, chamber musician, orchestra musician, conductor, and concert director. His music has been performed over 700 times in nearly 40 states and in 10 foreign countries. With over 40 premieres scheduled for the calendar year 2011 alone (ranging from solo works to chamber works to pieces for full orchestra and now over 370 works composed as of Fall 2011), Waddle continues to maintain his position as one of the most prolific and performed composers of his generation. He has been called “… an amazing, incredible virtuoso…” by famed Austin radio personality John Aielli; and after his ovation-garnering solo concert at the 2009 International Society of Bassists Symposium, convention officials declared “… (Waddle) is now obviously one of the great solo bassists of the world.” Waddle has continued to achieve a lifetime goal of following in the footsteps of such composers at Paul Hindemith and Lars-Erik Larsson by writing a concerto, sonata or major chamber music part for every single standard orchestral instrument except for Timpani. Waddle has been a member of numerous professional and festival orchestras including his current position with The Austin Symphony, which he has held since 1992. He has been nominated three times as a possible finalist for The Pulitzer Prize in Music and twice nominated for State of Texas Musician of The Year. He also serves as the “part-time Bach” in his position as Composer/Artist in Residence at Ascension Lutheran Church in Austin, Texas.

Mr. Waddle’s music has been published exclusively by TfV Inc. of Concord, Massachusetts and Wyatt Brand of Austin, Texas manages his publicity. Both of these companies are proud to be commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Waddle’s first published words during the 2011-12 season. Reviews of Waddle’s playing in recent solo concerts in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia cited his performances as ” magnificent”, ” amazing”, ” inspiring” and “creatively thrilling.” The March 2011 premiere of his orchestral work “A Walk Through The Vampire’s Garden” in Maryland was cited as ” compelling.. interesting… magnificent and mesmerizing…” paving the way for more orchestral music of Waddle’s being premiered along with his regular plethora of solo and chamber music during the 2011-12 season.

For more than 50 years, the Baylor Percussion Department has held a reputation of excellence in training talented young performers and educators in the field of percussion. Graduates of the department have established successful professional careers, holding prominent positions with orchestras, universities, and public school programs throughout the world.

The Baylor Percussion Group is the Department’s primary performance ensemble and annually presents concerts of the most significant percussion works of the 20th and 21st centuries. A central focus of the ensemble is to foster relationships between composers and performers through collaborations and commissions. The group presents regional and world premieres of works by both emerging and established composers on each of its concerts. The BPG has been featured at the Round Top International Festival-Institute, Baylor University’s Distinguished Artist Series, and the 2007 Texas Music Educators Association Convention.

Under the current direction of Todd Meehan, the Baylor Percussion Department is taking a leading role among university percussion programs in commissioning new works from contemporary composers and cultivating a platform for the exchange of ideas among prominent professionals and talented students.

Cellist Leanne Zacharias’ approach to musical life has been compared to extreme sport— from soloist to collaborating across genres with choreographers, writers, architects, visual artists and musicians of all stripes, she has emerged with a uniquely vibrant and contemporary voice.

A versatile performer, she has been artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts, San Francisco’s Odyssey Works and Sweden’s Elucian Ensemble, apprentice with Montreal’s Nouvel Ensemble Moderne and shared stages with the Houston Symphon Orchestra, Toronto’s Aradia Ensemble, the Hylozoists,Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, the Boundary Ensemble, Toca Loca, Whitehorse’s Longest Night Ensemble, Wiretap’s Jonathan Goldstein, the Miro Quartet, Edgar Meyer and the Weakerthans. With longtime cohort, songwriter Christine Fellows, she has toured the continent and contributed to original music for video, modern dance, five albums on Six Shooter Records and the Winnipeg Arts Council-sponsored Reliquary performance project. She is also on the artistic direction team of the Brandon Chamber Players.

A strong advocate for the new, Dr. Zacharias has premiered dozens of compositions, commissioned several handfuls, and worked with leading composers including Arvo Part, Krystof Penderecki, Joan Tower, John Adams and George Tsontakis. She also curates Music for Spaces, a site-specific performance project with installations presented at the Cohen New Works Festival, Orford’s Sound Art Workshop, Germany’s Intersymp 2008 and New York City’s AMP Music Series to great acclaim. Other collaborative projects include gallery installation at the Sutherland Gallery of Art, Austin’s Creative Research Lab and a premiere at the Big Range Dance Festival. She served as composition/performance chair of Austin’s Gamma-UT musicology conference, and performance chair of the IIAS Arts + Humanities Sessions in Baden-Baden, Germany. Recordings have beenbroadcast across CBCRadio, NPR and BRAVO.

Originally from Morden, Manitoba, she studied with Arek Tesarczyk and Paul Marleyn at the University of Manitoba before receiving a Masters Degree from Rice University as a student of Desmond Hoebig. She received her Doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin, where her interdisciplinary performance research was supported by the Getty Foundation, a Roberts Endowed Presidential Scholarship, the Manitoba Arts Council, the Amati Foundation and a prestigious Graduate Continuing Fellowship. While there, she was a company member of the American Repertory Ensemble, the Movable Feast performance collective, and worked closely with Josh Gindele of the Miro Quartet, composer Dan Welcher and musicologist Phil Ford.

Dr. Zacharias has been Brandon University’s cello professor and orchestral director since 2008, where she also teaches Aural Skills and Chamber Music. An energetic teacher, she is popular as a guest lecturer and adjudicator. Since returning to Canada, she has performed in the Agassiz, Ottawa and Ritornello Chamber Music Festivals, Nuna (now), X-Avant and BU New Music Festivals. Other collaborations have resulted in work with visual artists Shary Boyle and Ben Davis, poet Di Brandt, performance artists Jaclyn Pryor and Abe Burickson, sound artist Steve Bates, the Mountain Goats, John K. Samson and Regina’s Boundary Ensemble. She also spearheaded the newly-formed Correction Line Ensemble, melding narrative songwriting with contemporary chamber music.

She recently appeared as a featured performer in the International Cello Festival of Canada, across Canada with Christine Fellows, at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival and in residency at the Banff Arts Centre as part of the first-ever Banff Research in Culture workshop. Upcoming performances include the Boundary Ensemble, Nicole Lizee’s SaskPower, and Winnipeg’s Groundswell new music series.

Leanne’s Set at Fast Forward Austin 2012:

1. Etude Borealis #1  -John Cage

2. Event Horizon  -Nicole Lizee (arr. Leanne Zacharias)

3. Pizzicato Etude  -Eugene Friesen

4. Etude Borealis #4  -John Cage

Leanne Zacharias, cello

Katherine Hodges, dancer/choreographer

Owen Weaver performs adventurous, versatile, and portable percussion music that utilizes recycled objects and electronic sounds ranging from the visceral to the sublime, clangorous to hypnotic–to form a complex sound world.  As a soloist he has appeared twice in the New York-based Wordless Music Series as well as the Gershwin Hotel’s Contagious Sounds Series, the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at MassMoCA, and the Percussion Festival at Round Top.  In 2011 Owen was featured on National Public Radio’s All Songs Considered South by Southwest music festival preview for a showcase presented by the UK’s Nonclassical label.

Dedicated to diversity in venue and audience, he has shared concert bills with artists from Gabriel Prokofiev, Calder Quartet, and Percussion Group Cincinnati to internationally renowned turntablist DJ/rupture and indie rockers WHY?.  In 2008, with the University of Texas Percussion Group, Weaver collaborated with Conspirare: A Company of Voices for a television special aired nationally on PBS, the recording of which was released on the Harmonia Mundi label and nominated for a Grammy award.

In addition to performing, Owen is a passionate educator. He has served as percussion instructor at Texas Lutheran University, director of the University of Texas at Austin Steel Pan Ensemble, assistant director of the Hartt Percussion Ensemble, in addition to conducting master classes at the universities of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Central Florida, Connecticut, and the Hartt School.  He currently directs a middle school-aged percussion ensemble at The Renbrook School while pursuing a DMA in percussion at the Hartt School as a student of Benjamin Toth.

Canadian pianist Vicky Chow has performed extensively as a classical and contemporary soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble member, and has been described as “brilliant” (New York Times), “a monster pianist” (Time Out New York) “virtuosic” (New Jersey Star Ledger) and “sparkling” with a “feisty technique” (MIT Tech). She is the pianist for the New York based eclectic contemporary sextet, Bang on a Can All-Stars and has performed with other groups such as Wordless Music Orchestra, Opera Cabal, Wet Ink Ensemble, ai ensemble and AXIOM. Her passion has propelled Vicky to work with an A-to-Z of leading composers and musicians such as John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Nik Bärtsch, Don Byron, Bryce Dessner (The Nationals) Michael Gordon, Glenn Kotche (Wilco), David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), David Lang,  Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn. In 2010, Ms. Chow did a performance tour in China, Italy, Germany, and Holland with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, a performance tour in Malaysia with the Perak Performing Arts Society, and performances in Chicago with Opera Cabal. Recent performances include a recital tour across Canada of a newly commissioned work of Montreal based composer Eliot Britton alongside other new piano works with the support of a touring and commissioning grant from Canada Council for the Arts, Evan Ziporyn’s opera ‘A House in Bali‘ at BAM, solo appearances at Carnegie Hall, The Stone, and Merkin Hall, world premiering Louis Andriessen’s work with video titled “Life” written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, performance tour to Australia, Portugal, Hong Kong, London and Portugal, collaborations with Kronos Quartet, performances with Detroit New Music ensemble at the Detroit Institute of Art, performance at the American Composer’s Alliance Festival at Symphony Space, and with eighth blackbird at Carnegie Hall performing Pulitzer-Prize-winner Steve Reich’s Double Sextet and 2×5 (written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars). Upcoming concert appearances include tours to Poland, Germany, France and Scotland.

Ms. Chow has performed across North America, Europe and Asia in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, The Guggenheim Museum, The Stone, le Poisson Rouge, Galapagos Art Space, Syphony Space, Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, Tonhalle in Zurich, Oriental Arts Center in Shanghai, The Polytheater in Beijing, Chan Center for the Performing Art in Vancouver and has been a guest artist in the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Music Festival, Golandsky Institute International Piano Festival, musicacoustica festival (in association with Electro-acoustic Music Association of China and China Electroacoustic Music Center)  in Beijing, E-music Week in Shanghai, Big Ears festival in Knoxville, the f(x) New Music Marathon in Miami, Desert Chamber Music Society in Palm Springs, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Music on Main series in Vancouver, and Las Vegas Music Festival. She has received grants and support from Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, Fromm Foundation, and the Vancouver Foundation.

She has recorded for the tzadik, Cantaloupe, and altavoz labels. In addition to performing, Ms. Chow also produces and curates “Contagious Sounds”, a new music series focusing on adventurous contemporary artists and composers at the Gershwin Hotel in New York City.

Originally from Vancouver Canada, Ms. Chow studied at The Juilliard School with Yoheved Kaplinsky and Julian Martin(B.M, M.M. ‘Piano Performance’) before continuing studies at Manhattan School of Music (M.M., P.S. ‘Contemporary Performance’) with Christopher Oldfather. Previously, she studied at the Vancouver Academy of Music with Lorraine Ambrose. Starting the piano at age 5, she was invited to perform at the age of 9 at the International Gilmore Music Keyboard Festival where she performed a solo program of Chopin, Debussy, Bartok and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. She made her orchestral debut at the age of 10 with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and her last orchestral appearance was at Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard Symphony performing Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Other orchestral engagements include the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Symphony, The Vancouver Academy Orchestra, White Rock Festival String Orchestra and the B.C. Sinfonietta. She has performed under numerous conductors, including George Manahan, James Conlon, JoAnne Falleta, Bramwell Tovey, Victor Feldbrill, and Jeffrey Milarsky. As a chamber musician, she has collaborated with New York Philharmonic flutist Renee Siebert and Metropolitan Opera soprano Janet Hopkins at the Desert Chamber Music Society and cellist Andre Emelianoff of the Da Capo Chamber Players.

As a competitor, she placed first in the Canadian Music Competition four consecutive years. She took top prize the Toronto Symphony Piano Competition and Juilliard concerto competition, second prize in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Piano Competition, third prize in the Pacific International Piano Competition, and a finalist and honorarium prizewinner of the San Antonio International Piano Competition.

Ms. Chow has performed in master classes with a number of distinguished pianists, including Menahem Pressler, Jerome Lowenthal, Ruth Laredo, Ursula Oppens, and Angela Cheng.

Ms. Chow resides in New York City.