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classical music Boulder, Colorado

Guest Musicians

Andrew Cooperstock

Piano

Pianist Andrew Cooperstock performs widely as soloist and chamber musician and has appeared throughout Europe, Australia, Latin America, and in most of the fifty states. In addition to performances at New York’s Alice Tully, Merkin, and Weill concert halls, and at the United Nations, he has been featured in recitals and concerto appearances at the Chautauqua, Brevard, and Round Top international music festivals, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, and in such global centers as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Baltimore, London, Hamburg, Nice, the Hague, Riga, Canberra, Lima, Kiev, Beijing, Seoul, Sapporo, and Vladivostok.

He has performed on National Public Radio, WFMT Chicago, WQXR New York, KUT Austin, and on Minnesota Public Radio, Radio France, and the Australian and British Broadcasting Corporations. An advocate for new music, Dr. Cooperstock has premiered works by such American composers as Robert Starer and Aaron Copland.

With violinist William Terwilliger, as Opus Two, he has recorded the complete works for piano and violin by Copland and performed them worldwide. The award-winning Opus Two has been internationally recognized for its “divine phrases, impelling rhythm, elastic ensemble and stunning sounds,” as well as its commitment to expanding the violin – piano duo repertoire. The duo has appeared throughout North and South America, Europe, and Australia, and it made its Asian debut in 2006 with performances across China, Korea, Japan, and the Russian Far East. With cellist Andres Diaz, Opus Two has also recorded chamber music by Lowell Liebermann (Albany Records) and Paul Schoenfield (Azica Records).

Dr. Cooperstock has also performed with the Takács and Ying Quartets, and he is a founding member of Trio Contraste, which specializes in commissioning and performing contemporary music for piano, violin, and clarinet. He has served as juror for the New Orleans International Piano Competition, the Music Teachers National Association national competitions, and the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artists Competition, among others. A graduate of the Juilliard School and the Cincinnati and Peabody Conservatories, he studied with Abbey Simon, David Bar-Illan, and Walter Hautzig, as well as with collaborative pianist Samuel Sanders. Dr. Cooperstock is a member of the faculty at North Carolina’s Brevard Music Center, and he chairs the keyboard department at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Read more about Andrew here.

Szilvia Schranz

Soprano

Ms. Schranz was born in Budapest, Hungary into a family of musicians that had worked for generations in the Hungarian National Opera and Hungarian Festival Orchestra. At the age of 10, her family escaped their country's oppressive communist government to relocate in Boulder, Colorado where her father's string quartet, the Grammy-winning Takács Quartet, were appointed as musicians-in-residence at the University of Colorado School of Music.

Ms. Schranz schooled in Boulder at the foot of the majestic Rocky Mountains and later studied voice at the University of Colorado. With her rare strength and clarity in the upper coloratura ranges, she won First Prize in the school's prestigious Anderson Vocal Competition and received a full talent scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival. In 1998, she received a bachelor's of music.

After graduating from the University of Colorado, Ms. Schranz performed at the Denver Center for Performing Arts with their Tony-award winning theater company in the Tempest. She then went to further her studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London where she studied with Vera Rózsa, who also taught such renown singers as Kiri Te Kanawa and Anne Sofie Von Otter. After a year's study in London, she received a post-graduate diploma in vocal training.

While in London she appeared several times with the London Chamber Soloists, including solo performances of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, as well as in Mozart's Requiem and Haydn's Creation at St. Martin in the Fields. She also sang at a charity concert for the Kensington Housing Trust at the Leighton House in London.

Back in Boulder, she performed Il Tramonto by Respighi with the Takács Quartet before moving to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music, where she was taught by the world-renowned Mignon Dunn, best known for her mezzo performances at the Metropolitan Opera. While at Manhattan, she performed as Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Papagena in Die Zauberflöte. She also went to the International Institute of Vocal Arts where she sang in L'Enfant et les Sortileges and won a scholarship to the International Vocal Arts Institute in Montreal. In 2003, she received a Master's of Music from the Manhattan School of Music.

Read more about Szilvia here.

Gregory Walker

Violin

Since a marathon performance of Bruch’s Kol Nidre, an original arrangement of Ora No Omboko, and his own Bad Rap for Violin and Chamber Orchestra with the Colorado Symphony in 1996, Gregory Walker has charted his own creative course while developing unique collaborations with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Breckenridge Festival Orchestra, the Ft. Collins Symphony, the Yaquina Chamber Orchestra, and the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, as well as Poland’s Filharmonia Sudecka and the Encuentro Musical de los Americas in Havana, Cuba.

A professor at the University of Colorado Denver and concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, his CRI, Orion, Leonarda, and Albany discography showcases the "precision and rapturous immediacy" described by the American Record Guide. An official NS Design electric violin artist, he has also appeared with pop star Lyle Lovett.

His Electric Vivaldi Newport Classic enhanced compact disc, an interpretation/remix of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Boulder Philharmonic, was released in 2006. Walker appears on the cover of the April 2007 International Musician magazine. In 2009, he made his debut with the Philadelphia orchestra performing on the 1718 “ex- Székely” Stradivarius, and in 2010 his recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker’s Violin Concerto with the Sinfonia Varsovia in Warsaw, Poland was released by Albany Records. He is currently working with filmmaker Charles Fryberger on Song of the Untouchable, a documentary film project that will take him to Kerala, India, to perform with Dalit caste musicians.

Read more about Gregory here.

Inbal Segev

Cello

Inbal Segev has established herself as one of the most well-respected young cellists today. She can be heard around the world as a soloist, with chamber ensembles, in recitals and on recordings.

Following debuts with the Israel Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, both under the direction of Zubin Mehta, Ms. Segev has enjoyed an international career. In Europe, Ms. Segev has played with the Helsinki Philharmonic, Radio Symphony of Helsinki, Reutlingen Symphony, Dortmund Philharmonic, and the Orchestre National de Lyon. In the Far East, she has played with the Bangkok Symphony, and in Tokyo, Osaka and elsewhere in Japan in multiple engagements with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. In addition, Ms. Segev has performed with all the major orchestras in Israel, her native country.

Ms. Segev made her Lincoln Center debut at Alice Tully Hall playing Dvorak's cello concerto with the Juilliard Symphony. Elsewhere in North America, solo engagements have included concertos with the Cape Cod Symphony, the Lawton Philharmonic and the Banff Festival Chamber Players, among others. Given her interpretative artistry and virtuosic technique, Inbal is often asked to premiere new works. She gave the American premiere of Sir Arthur Sullivan's cello concerto and performed David Baker's cello concerto at Town Hall in New York City. Max Schubel wrote a cello concerto especially for her.

Ms. Segev devotes much of her time to chamber music and has collaborated with such artists as Emanuel Ax, Glenn Dicterow, Augustin Dumay, Pamela Franck, Gilbert Kalish, Michael Tree and the Vogler Quartet. Recent recitals and chamber music performances have included engagements at the Dumbarton concert series (Washington DC), the Tannery Pond series (upstate NY), Israel's Tel Aviv Museum, Bargemusic (NY), the Kosciuszko Foundation (NY), the Guggenheim Museum (NY), the Maine Center for the Arts and Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, where she gave her debut recital in 1997. Ms. Segev has been a member of the Jupiter Chamber Players since 2005 and previously toured with the American Chamber Players, a piano quintet, throughout the United States.

Ms. Segev's third solo CD, a compilation of Jewish music, was released under the Vox label in April 2004. Her other solo recordings include Boccherini and Beethoven sonatas and the cello concerto written for her by Max Schubel, recorded with the Polish Radio National Symphony. Both recordings are under the "Opus One" label. She also recorded excerpts for the movie sound track of "Bee Season", starring Richard Gere.

Since first receiving the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship at age seven, Ms. Segev has received numerous prizes and awards. Ms. Segev claimed prizes at the Pablo Casals International competition in Kronberg (2000), The Juilliard Concerto competition (1998), the Paulo International competition in Helsinki (1996), and the Washington International competition (1995), among others.

Ms. Segev appears regularly in live broadcasts. She has appeared on Radio France, Helsinki Television, NPR in Washington and New York, WQXR in New York, the Myra Hess concert series in Chicago and "Kol Hamusica" in Jerusalem. Ms. Segev has also performed in festivals around the globe. She has played at and participated in the Banff, Ravinia, Bowdoin, Olympic and Cape & Islands festivals in North America, the Sienna, Rolandseck and Montpelier festivals in Europe, and Jerusalem's "Mishkenot Sha'ananim" and the Upper Galilee festivals in Israel.

Ms. Segev began her studies in Israel and, with the recommendation of Isaac Stern, came to the United States to continue her studies at the age of 16. She holds a Bachelor's degree from The Juilliard School and a Master's degree from Yale University, where her teachers included Joel Krosnick, Harvey Shapiro and Aldo Parisot. She also studied with Bernard Greenhouse.

Ms. Segev's Cello was made by Francesco Rugeri in 1673.

Read more about Inbal at www.inbalsegev.com.