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Robert McDuffie
Robert McDuffie has appeared as soloist with most of the major orchestras of the world, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Utah, St. Louis, Montreal, and Toronto Symphonies, the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minnesota Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the North German Radio Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Mexico, and all of the major orchestras of Australia.
Recent appearances abroad have been at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, in France with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquetaine, at the Philharmonie in Cologne with the Bochum Symphoniker, in Seoul with the KBS Symphony, in Taipei with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, in Hamburg with the Hamburg Symphony followed by a 22 city US tour,.and with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. He returns to Rome each June as the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of The Rome Chamber Music Festival. The Mayor of Rome has recently awarded Robert McDuffie the prestigious Premio Simpatia in honor of his contribution to the cultural life of that city. www.romechamberfestival.org
Robert McDuffie will open his summer season playing the annual Memorial Day Concert with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. which will be televised nationally live from the East Lawn of the Capitol. Besides the Rome Chamber Music Festival, he returns to the Aspen Music Festival and he will take part in the Brevard Music Festival, the Amelia Island Festival, play the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the Atlanta Symphony in Encore Park and perform with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Mineria in Mexico City.
His 2008-2009 season is highlighted by performances of Miklos Rozsa’s Concerto and Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade with the Jerusalem Symphony in Israel and on a 16 city US tour.. Future engagements include the premiere of The American Four Seasons, a new work by Philip Glass written for Mr. McDuffie - the North American premiere with the Toronto Symphony, the European premiere with the London Philharmonic, the festival premiere in Aspen. He will tour Europe, North America, and Asia with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, pairing it with the Vivaldi Four Seasons.He will record both works for Telarc
McDuffie is a Grammy nominated artist whose acclaimed Telarc recordings include the violin concertos of Mendelssohn, Bruch, Adams, Glass, Barber, and Rozsa, and Viennese favorites. He plays a 1735 Guarneri del Gesu violin, known as the "Ladenburg".He has been profiled on NBC's "Today", "CBS Sunday Morning", PBS's "Charlie Rose", A&E's "Breakfast with the Arts", and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Robert McDuffie is a Distinguished University Professor of Music at Mercer University in his hometown of Macon, Georgia. The Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University had its official opening at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year. (www.mercer.edu/mcduffie ) He lives in New York with his wife and two children. Updated 3/28/08
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Amy Schwartz Moretti
Violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti is the third generation of professional musicians in her family. She began playing violin at age four, appearing with the Winston-Salem Symphony at twelve playing Kabalevsky. Since then, she has made her Carnegie Hall concerto debut and performed across the United States as a soloist and chamber musician in addition to her orchestral career as concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony and The Florida Orchestra. She helped establish and was first violinist of the Oregon Symphony String Quartet and co-founded Bay Area Music Summer Chamber Workshop for young musicians in Florida.
Winner of solo prizes in the Irving M. Klein International String Competition and the D’Angelo Young Artist Competition for Strings, Amy Schwartz Moretti holds the Bachelor of Music degree and the Master of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with founding first violinist of the Cleveland String Quartet Donald Weilerstein, graduated valedictorian, and in 2005, was honored with the Alumni Achievement Award. She was coached by some of the finest chamber musicians of our time as a Fellow at the Aspen Center for Advanced String Quartet Studies and a participant in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Workshop in Carnegie Hall as well as the Intensive String Quartet Seminars at the Cleveland Institute. Earlier studies were with Suzuki pedagogue Joanne Bath, in Greenville, North Carolina, and with longtime Juilliard faculty member Margaret Pardee, at the Meadowmount School. In the Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, she studied with former concertmaster of the SF Opera Orchestra Zaven Mekikian, who continues to be her mentor.
Dedicated to teaching as well as performing, Amy Schwartz Moretti recently joined Mercer University as Director of the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings where she holds the Caroline Paul King Violin Chair. She also serves as Artistic Director of the Bay Area Music Chamber Workshop in St. Petersburg, Florida. She resides in Macon, Georgia, with her husband, jazz drummer and percussionist Steve Moretti.
Ms. Moretti’s many recent festival invitations include Chamber Music Northwest, Olympic, Martha’s Vineyard, Seattle, Amelia Island, and Rome, Italy. She has also performed at the Aspen, Margess of Switzerland, San Miguel de Allende, Hamakua in Hawaii, Colorado, and Sarasota music festivals; and in many venues as diverse as the Dali Museum, Edinburgh Castle, and the Crystal Cathedral. In addition to the Robert McDuffie & Friends Labor Day Festival at Mercer, she will collaborate with her McDuffie Center colleagues in several performances during the summer: with Chris Rex for the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival and the Madison-Morgan Music Festival, with the Diaz Trio performing Brahms at the Brevard Music Festival, and with Robert McDuffie in Prokovfiev’s Sonata for Two Violins for Chamber Music Northwest as well Mendelssohn and Vivaldi at the Rome Music Festival. Concerto appearances next season include the Salem Chamber Orchestra, OSU-Corvallis Symphony, Olympia Symphony, Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and the Omaha Symphony.
Andrés Díaz
The Denver Post raved about Andrés Díaz’s “luminous performance of Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major.” Mr. Díaz was born in Santiago, Chile and began studying the cello at the age of five. As a child his family moved to Atlanta. He graduated from the New England Conservatory, where he continues to play an active role in chamber music performances with the conservatory's faculty. He served for five years as Associate Professor of Cello at the Boston University and Co-Director of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Quartet Program. He is currently artist in residence at Brevard Music Center in North Carolina, and was recently appointed head of the string department at Southern Methodist University.
Mr. Díaz gave the world premiere of Gunther Schuller’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra with the Brevard Festival Orchestra. He performed the American premiere of Frank Bridge’s Oration for cello and orchestra at Boston University, and premiered Thomas Oboe Lee's Cello Concerto (written expressly for Díaz) with the Boston Civic Symphony. He gave the Boston and Washington, D.C. premieres of Leon Kirchner's Music for Cello and Orchestra. Mr. Díaz later performed the piece with the National Symphony Orchestra for which it received the First Prize Friedham Award.
The Díaz/Sanders Duo, with the late pianist Samuel Sanders, performed at venues across the U.S. and abroad. The duo recorded works by de Falla and Schumann for MusicMasters and, for Dorian, released Brahms's Sonatas for Piano and Cello, Russian Romantics (a compilation of short Russian works), and American Visions, featuring works of Barber, Bernstein and Foote.
Mr. Díaz's solo appearance on Dorian, featuring the Villas-Lobos Cello Concerto No. 2 with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and conductor Enrique Diemecke, won a 1996 Allegro Music Award for Best Orchestral Release. His latest recording, in memory of his collaborator Samuel Sanders, features the works of Martinu, Lutoslawski, and Rachmaninoff, and won the Classical Recording Foundation 2003 Award. Andrés Díaz is very active with the Díaz String Trio, featuring violinist Andres Cardenes and violist Roberto Díaz. At Carnegie Hall the trio performed the world premiere of a string trio written for them by Guther Schuller and, at Isaac Stern’s invitation, played at Carnegie Hall's Centennial Celebration. From 1994-96 it served as Trio in Residence at the Florida International University.
Mr. Díaz plays a 1698 Matteo Goffriller Cello with a bow made by his father, Manuel Díaz.
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David Halen
David Halen, concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, is living a dream that began when he first saw the St. Louis Symphony perform in his home town of Warrensburg, Missouri. His musical influences began at home: his father, Walter Halen, was also his violin professor at Central Missouri State University, Mr. Halen began playing the violin at age six, graduated from high school at sixteen and two years later, at the age of eighteen, he won the Music Teachers National Association Competition and was granted a Fulbright scholarship for study in Germany with Wolfgang Marschner at the Freiburg Hochschule für Musik; the youngest-ever recipient of this award.
Mr. Halen’s career has included title positions with the Houston Symphony under Christoph Eschenbach, and he has served as concertmaster in St. Louis under Leonard Slatkin, the late Hans Vonk, and currently David Robertson. He has appeared extensively as soloist with the St. Louis Symphony and the Houston, San Francisco, and West German Radio (Cologne) symphonies. In addition to serving on the faculty and as concertmaster (under David Zinman) at the Aspen Music Festival, he is a visiting artist at Yale University, artistic director of the Innsbrook Institute, and a Distinguished Artist of the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University.
Mr. Halen plays a 1753 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin, made in Milan, Italy.
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Christopher Rex
Christopher Rex joined the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as Principal Cello in 1979, the same year in which he became the first cellist ever to win the string prize in the biennial Young Artists Competition of the National Federation of Music Clubs and since then has appeared as recitalist and chamber musician across the nation.
He took up the cello at age eight, completing a family string quartet in his hometown of Winter Park, Florida. Following his studies at the Curtis Institute of Music with Orlando Cole and at The Juilliard School with Leonard Rose, he was a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra under director Eugene Ormandy for seven seasons. He has taught at Gettysburg College, the New School of Music in Philadelphia, Georgia State University, and the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In the summer of 1988, he shared Acting Principal duties for the New York Philharmonic's European tour, replacing Lorne Munrow. He is a founding member of the Georgian Chamber Players, whose concerts have included guest performers such as Emanuel Ax, Andras Schiff, Misha Dichter, Yefim Bronfman, Robert McDuffie, Lynn Harrell, Ruth Laredo, Lee Luvisi, and Janos Starker. In 1994,
Mr. Rex, together with his brother, Charles Rex, Associate Concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, premiered a new double concerto for violin, cello and orchestra by Stephen Paulus to sold-out audiences at four concerts in Lincoln Center with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic. The Rex brothers presented a program in Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall in February 2001, as a tribute to their father, Charles Gordon Rex, Sr. At this recital only music that was composed by their father was performed. Christopher Rex also performed in Carnegie Hall as sololist with the Manhattan Philharmonic again with his brother Charles in the "Poet and the Muse" by Camille Saint Saens.
Mr. Rex's most recent solo appearances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra include performances of the Shostakovitch Concerto No. 1, Strauss' Don Quixote, the Victor Herbert Concerto #2, Dvorak Concerto, and the Elgar Cello Concerto. Mr. Rex is Founder and the General and Artistic Director of the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival. He is Artistic Director of the Madison Chamber Music Festival and on the Board of Directors of Chamber Music America.
Mr. Rex is a regular performer at the Highlands Chamber Music Festival and has been Principal Cellist of the orchestras at the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and the Grand Tetons Music Festival in Jackson, Wyoming. He has performed as soloist at the Brevard Music Festival and Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina and the Chatauqua Festival in New York. He has been invited to play at the Montreal Chamber Music Festival in May 2007. In March of 2008 he will be the featured soloist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in the Cello Concerto of Samuel Barber. In the fall of 2007, Mr. Rex will become the Cello Chair of the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.
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Sabina Thatcher
Sabina Thatcher began her tenure in 1989 as principal violist of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has been a soloist with the SPCO on numerous occasions, performing a wide variety of repertoire, including Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, John Harbison’s Viola Concerto, and Lachrymae by Benjamin Britten.
An active chamber musician as well, Ms. Thatcher is a member of the Rosalyra String Quartet, which made its New York debut in 1996 and has released an album of Bartók and Beethoven quartets on the Boston Records label. In 2000, Rosalyra received a McKnight Artist Fellowship that facilitated a second recording featuring two Shostakovich quartets.
Ms. Thatcher is a faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and School, a Distinguished Artist of the McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University, and has performed in festivals throughout the United States and abroad, including the Spoleto Festival and the Mozart Festival in Lille, France. She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and studied further with Lillian Fuchs at The Juilliard School.
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Paul Murphy
Currently the associate principal violist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Paul Murphy previously held principal positions with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Kansas City Philharmonic, the Caracas (Venezuela) Philharmonic, and was a regular player with the St. Louis Symphony. He has also performed as guest principal viola for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Mr. Murphy is a native of Pensacola, Florida, where he studied with the renowned Anna Tringas. He later graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where his principal teachers were David Cerone and Robert Vernon. Mr. Murphy has performed extensively with the Emory Chamber Music Society, the Atlanta Chamber Players, the Georgian Chamber Players, and the Minneapolis Artists’ Ensemble. He is also an Artist Affiliate at Emory University.
Mr. Murphy has recorded extensively with the rock bands R.E.M and Collective Soul and has also worked with Stone Temple Pilots, Indigo Girls, Usher, Widespread Panic, and Outkast.
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