Earplay P.O Box 192125 San Francisco, CA 94119-2125 (415) 469-5000 earplay@thecity.sfsu.edu

A San Francisco-Based New Music Ensemble

Founded in 1985, EARPLAY is an ensemble of composers and musicians dedicated to the performance of new American chamber music. EARPLAY encourages composers nationwide to write for the ensemble, offering audiences a unique opportunity to hear eloquent, vivid performances of some of today's finest chamber music.

Particularly interested in opera as well as new music, Mary Chun conducted the Canadian and European premieres of John Adams's earthquake romance, I was Looking at the Ceiling and then I saw the Sky at the Festival de Theatre des Ameriques in Montreal, the Festival d'Automne in Paris, and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, with the Finnish contemporary ensemble AVANTI. She was invited by the East Slovakian State Opera to conduct the European premiere of American composer Martin Kalmanoff's Insect Comedy and American Stage Director Peter Sellars and composer Tan Dun asked for her musical assistance with Dun's latest opera, Peony Pavilion. This season she conducted sold-out performances of Puccini's Madama Butterfly in Honolulu wiht the Hawaii Opera Theater and has been asked by the composer to conduct the world premiere of Carla Lucero's opera, Wuornos, in San Francisco in 2001. She was the Music Director for the Texas Shakespeare Festival 2000 where she conducted the world premiere performances of Mort Garson's Revoco. She has been a member of the conducting staffs of notable opera companies in the United States and France including the San Francisco Opera, the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, The Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Chatelet Theatre in Paris and the Opera de Lyon, where she was also the Director of Musical Studies for Music Director Kent Nagano. Her recording credits include music direction for two CDs of orchestra works by American composer Peter Allen and a 30 second commercial for Disney.

Originally hailing from Bulgaria, pianist Aglika Angelova received her musical training at the Music Schools in Varna and Sofia, graduating with honors in 1991. During this time, Ms. Angelova won numerous prizes in national competitions and performed a great number of solo and chamber music recitals, including appearances and recordings for the Bulgarian National Television and Radio broadcasts. In 1997, Ms. Angelova received her Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees from the Hamburg Academy of Music where she studied under the eminent pianist and pedagogue, Volker Banfield. During her studies in Germany, Aglika Angelova served as vocal coach for the Hamburg Academy, was Musical Director of the Bremen State Theater's production of Rein. Sachlich. Boese. by Berthold Brecht, and intensified her performing career, winning First Prize in the 'Maritim Musikpreis' Instrumentalist Competition, First Prize in the Elise Meyer Piano Competition, and the Accompanist's Special Prize in the Mendelssohn Cello Competition, amongst others. Ms. Angelova has appeared as soloist with the Berliner Symphoniker e.V., the Magdeburg Philharmonia and the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and as Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, the Olympic Music Festival in Washington, and the Moab Music Festival in Utah. She has been a featured performer on numerous radio broadcasts, including KPFA in Berkeley and NPR's Performance Today. Currently living in San Francisco, Aglika Angelova is on faculty at the Conservatory of Music and continues to be an active recitalist and chamber musician in addition to being a founding member of the Jupiter Piano Trio.

Terrie Baune, violinist, is Concertmaster of the Women's Philharmonic, Associate Concertmaster of the Oakland-East Bay Symphony, and a member of the Empyrean Ensemble, a professional new music ensemble in residence at the University of California, Davis. Ms. Baune's professional credits include concertmaster positions with the Fresno Philharmonic, Santa Cruz County Symphony and Rohnert Park Symphony. She was a member of the National Symphony Orchestra for four years; she also spent two years as a member of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra of New Zealand, where she toured and recorded for Radio New Zealand with the Gabrielli Trio, performed with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and toured the country as solo violinist with the Concert By Candlelight Orchestra. Ms. Baune has performed as concertmaster with many of the San Francisco Bay Area's orchestras, and has been heard in recital throughout Northern California. Her recording of the Maddalena Lombardini Violin Concerto #5 with the Women's Philharmonic is available on the Newport Classic label.

Ms. Baune has been on the faculty of Sonoma State University, California State University, Stanislaus, and UC Davis. She has served as string program coordinator for the Cazadero Music Camp and taught at Humboldt State University Preparatory Academy. She is on the coaching staff of the Humboldt and Sequoia Chamber Music Workshops, and is a frequent performer on the HSU Faculty Artist Series. Ms. Baune graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1978, having attended summer festivals in Aspen and Taos. As a student she won the Oberlin Concerto Competition and the Marin Symphony Association Award as well as a full scholarship to the Aspen Festival Orchestra and Grand Prize in the Joseph Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

James Bergman, bassist, is a graduate of the Juilliard School and Student of David Walter. He regularly performs with the San Jose Symphony and other Bay Area symphonies, operas and theaters and has recorded and toured extensively in contemporary music and popular music groups.

Tod Brody, flutist, has enjoyed a career of great variety. His early flute studies were with Marie Moulton (Chicago Lyric Opera) and Walfrid Kujala (Chicago Symphony). He later studied with Paul Renzi at San Francisco State University, and also with Merrill Jordan and Lloyd Gowen. He was a member of the Sacramento Symphony for many years, where he was a frequent soloist on both flute and piccolo. Mr. Brody currently teaches flute and chamber music at the University of California, Davis, where he also performs with the faculty wind quintet and with the Empyrean Ensemble, a contemporary chamber ensemble in residence at UCD. With the Empyrean, and also in recent years with EARPLAY and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Mr. Brody has participated in many world premieres, and has been recorded on the CRI, Centaur, Arabesque, and Magnon labels. When not performing contemporary music, he will often be found in the orchestras of the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Ballet, and in other chamber and orchestral settings throughout northern California.

Percussionist David Carlisle, a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, finished a Master's Degree at the University of Toronto, where he studied percussion with Russell Hartenberger of Nexus. David's wide range of musical abilities includes drum set, orchestral percussion, contemporary music, and steel pans. He also enjoys West African drumming and North Indian tabla drums. He has performed with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, The Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, the Chamber Music Society of Sacramento, EARPLAY, the Empyrean Ensemble, Nexus, Bob Becker, the Toronto production of Miss Saigon in addition to participating in several Banff Center Music and Music Theatre residencies in Canada. He also freelances in the Bay Area as a symphonic percussionist and as a session drum set player. David composes and performs regularly with SqueezPlay, a group for accordion (Douglas Schmidt), piano (Adrienne Park) and percussion. In addition to the release of their first CD, rubber horn, and their first video with Bravo, SqueezPlay performed at the prestigious Winnipeg New Music Festival 1998.

Tim Dent is a Bay Area freelance percussionist. Since earning his Masters degree from the San Francisco Conservatory in 1999 he has played with many of the orchestras and chamber ensembles in the area including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Berkeley Symphony, Marin Symphony, The Sprocket Ensemble, Santa Rosa Symphony, California Symphony among others.

Clark W. Fobes (Eb, bass clarinet) received his MM degree from the San Francisco Conservatory in 1983 and has been an active member of the Bay Area musical community since that time. Mr. Fobes performs regularly as a free lance clarinetist with the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet, San Jose Symphony, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Skywalker Ranch Orchestra and is the bass clarinetist with the California Symphony. He enjoys the variety of a career that can find him playing Principal clarinet on one day and contra bass clarinet on the next. Mr. Fobes is also an internationally recognized clarinet technician and maker of fine mouthpieces for the clarinet family. He has published several articles regarding clarinet repair and acoustics.

Jean-Michel Fonteneau (Ôcello) is a founding member of the award-winning Ravel String Quartet, winner of two prizes in the Evian String Quartet Competition in 1989 as well as the ÒLes Victoires de la Musique ClassiqueÓ award for the best French chamber music ensemble in 1993. Mr. Fonteneau has toured and performed throughout the United States, Japan, Australia, Southeast Asia, Central and South America and Europe. He has been assistant professor of chamber music at the Conservatoire National SupŽrieur de Musique in Lyon since 1991 and a member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music faculty since 1999. Mr. Fonteneau studied at the Ecole Normale SupŽrieure de Musique de Paris with Dimitry Markevitch, Mark Drobinsky and Dominique Hoppenot.

Hall Goff, trombone, received his B.A. from Oberlin College and M.M. from Yale University School of Music, where his principal teacher was John Swallow. Other teachers include Tom Cramer, Douglas Edelman, Tyrone Brenninger and Med Meredith. Mr. Goff has been a member of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra since 1977, and a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players since 1981. In addition, he has performed locally with such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera, nationally with the Eastern Brass Quintet, the Wall Street Quintet, and the New York City Ballet and internationally at the Spoleto Festival and the Macerata Opera of Italy. Raising his bell in the popular realm, he has performed with the likes of Frank Zappa, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Hope, Nelson Riddle, Diane Carroll, Vic Damone and Manhattan Transfer. Recordings include Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet and Paul Chihara's The Tempest with the San Francisco Ballet, music by Earle Brown and Morton Feldman with the San Francsico Contermporary Music Players, and occasional recording for film and TV. In his spare time, Mr. Goff likes to collect vinyl records, tinker with things and spend time outside.

Ellen Gronningen received degrees from both the Juilliard School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. Her principal teachers were Szyman Goldberg, Raphael Bronstein, and Anne Crowden. In addition to freelancing in New York City, Ellen toured and travelled with opera and Broadway musical companies from 1989 to 1993. Since her return to native soil in 1993, Ms. Gronningen has enjoyed a wide variety of freelance work ranging from standard orchestral and opera to contemporary chamber groups such as the Empyrean Ensemble. Ellen is also a founding member of the Speakeasy String Quartet and the first woman to ever play in the big band Peter Mintun Orchestra.

Peter Josheff (clarinet/bass clarinet) is a founding member of EARPLAY. He is also a member of the Empyrean Ensemble and has performed with many of the new music groups in the Bay Area, including the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Berkely Contemporary Chamber Players, the Left Coast Ensemble, and Composers, Inc. He has performed at the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Pacific Rim Festival in Santa Cruz and the Sacramento Festival of New Music. In August 2000 he performed music of Hi Kyung Kim as part of Asian Music Week 2000 in Yokohama, Japan. In the past year he has played in the ODC Theater production of Erling Wold's opera A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil and with the Lawrence Pech Dance Company.

Josheff has an active interest in popular and improvised music. He has performed and recorded with Club Foot Orchestra and Beth Custer's Clarinet Thing, and has collaborated with many artists, poets and dancers. His playing can be heard on recordings by EARPLAY, the Empyrean Ensemble, the Club Foot Orchestra, Beth Custer, Hi Kyung Kim, Richard Festinger, and others on the Elektra, CRI, Centaur, Arhoolie and Rastascan record labels. He has works dedicated to him by David Rakowski, Ross Bauer, Allen Shearer, Mark Winges, Michiko Kawagoe, and others. Also a composer, Josheff is currently writing a work commissioned for the Empyrean Ensemble to be performed in February 2001. His song cycle, Remembering, will be performed in November in the Bay Area by Schwungvoll. Josheff teaches clarinet privately and at San Francisco State University.

Daniel Kennedy (percussion) holds a master's degree from California Institute of the Arts, and a doctoral degree in percussion performance from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His primary teachers have included the contemporary music specialist Raymond DesRoches, hand-drum artist John Bergamo, and tabla maestro Swapan Chaudhuri. Daniel has been the founding member of several contemporary music ensembles, including the Califormia E.A.R. Unit, Tabla Rasa, and the Talujon Percussion Quartet, and has performed throughout the United States, Europe, India, Bali, and Japan. He is currently a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and also performs with the Empyrean Ensemble, Earplay, Music Now, and Tabla Rasa.

Daniel has performed with a variety of renowned artists such as Dawn Upshaw, Tod Machover, David Starobin, Fred Sherry, Harvey Solberger, Charles Wuorinen, Paul Hillier, and Dennis Russell Davies, and has recorded for the Musical Heritage Society, Koch International, New Albion, Bridge, Centaur, Harmonia Mundi, CRI, and New World Records. In addition to being a specialist in twentieth-century music, he has also explored the music of a variety of other cultures, including India, the Middle East, and Indonesia, and is an active performer of these musical styles. His teaching experience has included faculty positions at Dominican College and the University of Bridgeport, and he is currently on the faculty at California State University, Sacramento, where he is the Instructor of Percussion and the artistic director of the Festival of New American Music.

Though she has strayed far from where she was planted, Carla Kihlstedt has strong roots in classical music. She studied at the Peabody, the San Francisco, and the Oberlin Conservatories of Music. Since moving to the Bay Area 7 years ago she has been exploring the range of her violin in many settings. She has played with John Zorn, and members of the Rova Saxophone Quartet and has contributed to the recordings of Mr. Bungle, The Grassy Knoll, and Tom Waits' soundtrack for the Academy Award winning short film, Bunny. She has written several scores for choreographers Jo Kreiter (Flyaway Productions) and for Shinichi Momo Koga (Ink Boat). She has appeared several times on Phillip Glass' series, MATA, both performing her own compositions, and music commissioned for her, and in the Bay Area she performs on many contemporary music series including Earplay, Composer's Inc., and the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players. This Spring, she looks forward to performing both in Vienna and at the Library of Congress with clarinetist, Don Byron.

Carla is a founding member of Tin Hat Trio (an accordion-violin-guitar trio whose two CDs are out on Capitol's Angel/EMI Records), one of three singers in the band Charming Hostess, and a founding member of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, an 'art-rock' band that uses both traditional and homemade instruments. Most recently, she has embarked on a solo project, Two Foot Yard, which incorporates both her violin and her voice. In the coming year, she will record a cd of her own music for the Tzadik label, and is working on a solo program of contemporary music for violin, and violin/voice.

Noriko Kishi holds a B.M. from the Eastman School of Music, a M.M. from the New England Conservatory and has studied at Rutgers University. Her principal teachers were Irene Sharp, Robert Sylvester and Bernard Greenhouse. A native of San Francisco, Ms. Kishi returned to the Bay Area after a residency with the New World Symphony, where she served as co-principal cellist. She has been a member of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, Alternate Currents Performance Ensemble, the Sacramento Chamber Orchestra, Sacramento Symphony and the Spoleto Opera Orchestra in South Carolina and Italy. In the past six years, she has performed with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Music in the Mountains Chamber Orchestra, Desert Foothills Chamber Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic, San Jose Symphony, Trio Del Sol, Sonus Imaginorem, Clavion Quartet, and completed a recording for Warner Brothers with the Stratos Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Kishi has also been giving solo and duo recitals in L.A. and the Bay Area for the last four years. She currently teaches privately and at the School of the Arts in San Francisco, and is on the faculty at the San Francisco Community Music Center. She also coaches chamber music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Prep. Dept.

Over the past decade, composer/pianist John McGinn has achieved widespread acclaim as a performer of new and recent music, appearing with such groups as EARPLAY and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, American Camerata, Opera Americana and the Kennedy Center Orchestra (Washington, D.C.), the Orchestra of St. Luke's (New York), and operatic and theatrical groups around the United States and Europe. The AmCam label recently released his tenth commercial recording, The 20th Century Piano, an album of solo works plus three improvisations. Other recording credits include several works by Berkeley composer John Adams (Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, Fearful Symmetries), song cycles by Russell Woollen with soprano Linda Mabbs, and numerous chamber works with American Camerata. In 1999, Mr. McGinn received his D.M.A. in composition from Stanford University, where he currently serves as a Lecturer in theory and piano.

Thalia Moore, cello, is a native of Washington D.C. She began her cello studies with Robert Hofmekler, and after only 5 years of study appeared as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. She attended the Julliard School of Music as a scholarship student of Lynn Harrell, and received her Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in 1979 and 1980. While at Juilliard, she was the recipient of the Walter and Elsie Naumberg Scholarship and won first prize in the National Arts and Letters String Competition.

Since 1982, Ms. Moore has been Associate Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and in 1989 joined the cello section of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. She has continued to concertize extensively, appearing as soloist at Avery Fisher Hall, (Lincoln Center), Carnegie Recital Hall, Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Herbst Theater, (San Francisco), and San Francisco Legion of Honor, among others. She has also performed as guest artist at the Olympic Music Festival, (Seattle, Washington), the Lake Tahoe Summer Music Festival, and the Music in the Vineyards Chamber Music Festival, among others. In 1991, Ms. Moore appeared in the last episode of the TV series, Midnight Caller, and in 1993 was featured as soloist with the San Francisco Chamber Symphony under the direction of Roger Norrington. In 1996, she performed one of the first Bay Area performances of the composer's version of Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. She has performed with the Dunsmuir Piano Quartet, and is a member of the Empyrean Ensemble, with which she has recorded works by Mario Davidovsky and Maria Niederberger. Recently, she was named a Cowles Visiting Artist at Grinnell College, Iowa, and in 1999 won election to the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Donelle Page, harpist, studied music at California State University in Long Beach where she majored in both piano and harp. Donelle has performed with the Lakewood Philharmonic, the Bellflower and Compton Symphonies, the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and the New Composers International Symposium. She currently plays with symphony orchestras in Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Oakland, San Jose, Napa and Modesto, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, the San Joaquin, Oakland and Santa Rosa ballets, the San Francisco Camerata, the Pacific Repertory Opera Company and the San Francisco Opera. She is a featured performer at the Mendocino Music Festival and a regular at the Tahoe Summer Music Festival. She has also done work for the Townsend Opera Players, the San Francisco Chorale Society, the California Symphony, the Carmel Bach Festival and the Bear Valley Music Festival and has also performed with such varied artists as Frederika von Stade, Neil Sedaka, Chanticleer, Steve and Edie Gorme, Bob Hope, Maynard Ferfuson, the Moody Blues, the Carpenters and rap artist E.B. Chill. In the spring of 1997 Donelle played in Pharoah Sander's jazz orchestra for the world premier of Alonzo King's production of Three Stops On The Way Home, with the Lines Ballet Company.

Donelle is often called upon for studio recording work and played on the newly released Oh! That Cello for First Impressions Music. She was in the orchestra for the recent world premier and CD release of the San Francisco Camerata production of Carlos Franzetti's opera Corpus Evita. Donelle can be heard on the Clarity Sound & Light recordings, I, Omar and Egyptian Suite, the Rebelle Records CD, The Easter Bunny, Sex, and Santa Claus, Multi-Cultural Music Fellowship's Festival of Harps Live, Mareid Sullivan's Love's Caress--A Celtic Journey, 7th Wave Production's A Very Green Christmas: Artists for Earth and with her trio, Page Three, has produced her own CD titled, Fixin' A Hole: The Beatles Set. She performed on the soundtrack for the 1998 television special, The Brian Boitano Christmas Skating Spectacular, and can be seen and heard on the video of Kristi Yamaguchi's benefit skating concert, A Golden Moment.

Andrea Plesnarski, oboe, received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she studied with John de Lancie and Richard Woodhams. She performed as second oboe with the Sacramento Symphony before moving to the Bay Area. In the Bay Area, she has been a regular performer with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra as well as appearing on occasion with the San Francisco Symphony. For the past three seasons, Ms. Plesnarski has been principal oboe of the Oakland East Bay Symphony. She is also a member of the contemporary chamber music group, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. She has participated in many summer festivals including Tanglewood, Pacific Music Festival in Japan, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany and Spoleto Music Festival in Italy. Last summer at Pacific Music Festival, she was a member of an orchestra, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, composed of alumni of the past ten festivals. Ms. Plesnarski has won the Florida Orchestra, Savannah Symphony and Carmel Music Society Competitions.

After studying at the Oberlin Conservatory, Dana Putnam ('cello) received her Bachelors and MastersÕ Degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her main teachers include Bonnie Hampton, Ronald Leonard and Peter Rejto. As a member of the Round Top Festival String Quartet, Ms. Putnam performed concerts all over the United States and England, including a prize performance in the National Portrait Gallery, as well as having live performances broadcast on National Public Radio. Ms Putnam has soloed with the Galveston Symphony, the Pacific Palisades Symphony, the Crossroads Chamber Orchestra, the Round Festival Orchestra and the Sewanee Festival Orchestra. Featured appearances include live performances with Robert Mann, Joel Krosnick, Jorja Fleezanis, Ian Swensen, and Andrew Jennings. Ms. Putnam has appeared as a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the La Jolla Summer Fest, and the Amadeus String QuartetÕs Summer Course. Dana is active in the Bay Area and has appeared on the Noontime Concerts Series, was a former member of the Sacramento Chamber Orchestra, and worked with the Lawrence Peck Dance Company. As a former member of the San Francisco ConservatoryÕs New Music Ensemble, Dana was part of the west coast concert premiere and the premiere recording of Andrew ImbrieÕs Spring Fever. She also participated in the premiere recording of David ConteÕs Gift of the Magi. As an educator, Ms. Putnam has taught for the Oberlin Prepatory Program and currently is a member of the cello faculty for the Preparatory and Adult Extension Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Last Fall, Ms. Putnam was invited by the American School of San Salvador, El Salvador to perform and give masterclasses.

Violist Ellen Ruth Rose relocated in 1998 to the San Francisco Bay Area from Cologne, Germany, where she spent several years immersed in experimental contemporary music. As member of the contemporary and experimental ensembles Musik Fabrik and Thurmchen Ensemble and as frequent guest with Frankfurt's Ensemble Modern, she premiered and recorded countless works as chamber musician and soloist. She has performed as a soloist with the West German Radio Chorus and appeared at the Cologne Triennial, Berlin Biennial, Salzburg Zeitfluß, Brussels Ars Nova, Venice Biennial and Budapest Autumn festivals.

She has interpreted more traditional chamber music repertory at the Marlboro Music, the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England, the Banff Center for the Arts, and at chamber music festivals in Germany, Italy and Finland. She is presently a member of the Empyrean Ensemble, a new music ensemble in residence at UC Davis, and EARPLAY, and has appeared with several other area ensembles, including Left Coast Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Santa Cruz New Music Works, Composers, Inc., the Sacramento Chamber Music Society, and at the San Francisco Other Minds Festival.

Ms. Rose holds an M.M. in viola performance from the Juilliard School, an artist diploma with highest distinction from the Northwest German Music Academy in Detmold, Germany, and a B.A. with honors in English and American history and literature from Harvard University. Her viola teachers have included Heidi Castleman, Nobuko Imai, Marcus Thompson and Karen Tuttle. She teaches privately in Berkeley and also at UC Davis.

Pianist Karen Rosenak is an almost-native of the San Francisco Bay Area. She is particularly interested in the contrast between early fortepiano music, especially of C.P.E. Bach, and the most recently composed piano and chamber music. She was a founding member and pianist for many years with the San Francisco-based new music ensemble EARPLAY and the Davis-based Empyrean Ensemble, and has performed in countless premieres with these and other new music groups. She studied fortepiano with Margaret Fabrizio at Stanford University, and has participated in master classes with Malcolm Bilson. She studied modern piano with Carlo Bussotti and Nathan Schwartz. She is on the faculty at University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches musicianship and contemporary chamber music. She will be performing with the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players in their concert at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. in May, 2001.

Thomas Schultz has established a reputation both as an interpreter of music from the classical tradition - particularly Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert - and as a champion of 20th century music. His solo appearances are notable for their adventurous programming, and include recitals devoted to the music of Cage (1992), an all-Rzewski recital (1994), a recording of works by Rzewski and Hyo-shin Na for Belgian Radio in Brussels (1994), a program pairing Bach's Goldberg Variations with recent works by Rzewski and Takahashi performed in New York and San Francisco (1997-98), and a recital pairing works by Schubert with Asian and American composers performed in New York, San Francisco and Kyoto (1998-99). His programs have also featured works by Schoenberg, Webern, Eisler, Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Wolff, Feldman, Schnittke, Ustvolskaya, Jonathan Harvey, Boudewijn Buckinx and Walter Zimmermann. Mr. Schultz has worked closely with such eminent composers as Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Rzewski, Harvey and Elliott Carter (in performances of the Double Concerto at Alice Tully Hall in New York and at the Colorado Music Festival).

Mr. Schultz is also active as a chamber musician: he is pianist with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and has performed with the Da Camera Society of Houston, with Robert Craft's 20th Century Classics Ensemble, and with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Among his recent engagements are a performance of the Joan Tower Piano Concerto, performances of Stockhasen's Mantra, solo recitals at Vanderbilt University, Stanford University, San Francisco State University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. During the 2000-2001 season he will play solo recitals in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, and at the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna. His recording of Stravinsky's Concerto for Two Solo Pianos is on the MusicMasters label; he can be heard in chamber works of Earle Brown on a Newport Classics recording, and in solo and chamber works of Hyo-shin Na on a Seoul Records CD. Mr. Schultz's musical studies were with Philip Lillestol, John Perry and Leonard Stein. He has been a member of the piano faculty at Stanford University since 1994.

Bay area native, Lisa Weiss, violin, has earned international recognition as a chamber musician, including awards in the Portsmouth and Coleman competitions, and as a participant of the Marlboro Festival. She performs as concertmaster and soloist with Philharmonia Baroque, and is also a member of American Bach Soloists, the Arcadian Academy, and BWV 2000. As a guest artist, she has appeared with many chamber ensembles including the Artaria Quartet, Musica Pacifica, American Baroque and Philomel. In 1997 she founded the Berkeley Schubert Quartet, which performed Schubert's complete works for string quartet in honor of the composer's 200th birthday.

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