"a dynamic new music ensemble"
The New York Times
Madeleine Shapiro, director / cello
Airi Yoshioka / violin
Mayuki Fukuhara / violin
Veronica Salas / viola
Dawn Buckholz / cello
Matthew Goeke / cello
Peter Zummo / didjeridoo / trombone
Bill Schimmel, accordion
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Madeleine Shapiro, Cello
Madeleine Shapiro's concerts have included numerous premiere performances of recent works for cello, and cello and electronics, many of which were written specially for her by a wide variety of American, European and Asian composers. She is a recipient of two Performance Incentive Awards from the American Composers Forum to assist in the premieres of new works. Recent appearances include two tours of Italy with performances and masterclasses at The American Academy and the Nuovi Spazi Musicali festival in Rome; the Orsini Castle in Avezzano, and the conservatories of Parma and Castelfranco Veneto.
Madeleine is presently an adjunct professor at the Mannes College of Music, New York City, where she directs the Contemporary Music Ensemble and teaches classes in the performance practice of twentieth century music.
Madeleine has recorded for New World Records, CRI, Mode and Harvestworks.
Madeleine plays a Betts cello c. 1790 MORE ==>
Veronica Salas, Viola
Veronica Salas, viola, a native of Chile, received her B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Lillian Fuchs. She has appeared as soloist with the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, the Southern California Symphony, and the Great Lakes Music Festival. In addition, she has traveled to Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Taipei where she has given recitals and master classes on State Department tours. An active performer of contemporary music, she has premiered chamber works with the Group for Contemporary Music and the New Music Consort. The principal violist of Opera Orchestra of New York and the Colonial Symphony, she is also a member of the Pierrot Consort Chamber Ensemble, and Lyrica Chamber Players. She is currently on the faculty of LI University.
Peter Zummo, Dijeridoo
Peter Zurnmo has been composing since 1967 and has performed his works for solo trombone and ensemble worldwide. His work has been associated with the contemporary classical tradition, in combination with or juxtaposition to the minimal, jazz, world music, and so-called art-rock styles. He has pioneered new approaches to, and uses for, extended instrumental technique on the trombone and also uses the valve trombone, dijeridoo, euphonium, synthesizers and other electronics and his voice in performance.
His many compositions for ensemble build on original melody and melodic fragments, and generate interactive situations in which musicians explore the boundaries of common and extended practice, without, however, having to act arbitrarily.
Venues for performances of Zummo's pieces have included the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival (Radical Filtering); City Center, Dance Theater Workshop; Interpretations Series/Merkin Hall (The Time Land Forgot), Lincoln Center Out Of Doors; Lotus Fine Aits (Semiotic Handgun); New Arts Program/Kutztown; Walker Art Center; Danspace; The Joyce Theatre; LaMama (Experimenting With Household Chemicals); New Music America among many others. MORE ==>
Airi Yoshioka
Airi Yoshioka has concertized throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Canada. Deeply committed to chamber music, Ms. Yoshioka is the founding member of the Damocles Trio and Modigliani Quartet. Her orchestral credits include performances with the American Sinfonietta and engagements as concertmaster and soloist with the Manhattan Virtuosi and concertmaster of one of the festival orchestras at the Aspen Music Festival. An enthusiastic performer of new music, she was one of the original members and concertmasters of the New Juilliard Ensemble and has performed annually in the school's FOCUS! Festival as well as with the ModernWorks!, Lower Eastside Ensemble for Contemporary Music and Continuum.Of a performance with the New Juilliard Ensemble, the New York Times wrote, Airi Yoshioka played the violin solo touchingly. A native of Japan, Ms. Yoshioka came to the United States at the age of 12 and received her early training as a student of Honorary Distinction at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She holds a B.A. in English from Yale University, where she received the Branford College Arts Award for outstanding contribution to the arts, M.M. and DMA from The Juilliard School. Summer festivals, attended include Meadowmount, Encore, Sarasota, Banff, and Aspen. Educational outreach has been a vital aspect of Ms. Yoshiokas professional life through her work as a teaching artist for the New York Philharmonic and the Lincoln Center Institute. While at The Juilliard School, she won the concerto competition. Among her teachers and coaches have been Jorja Fleezanis, Glenn Dicterow, Joey Corpus, Stephen Clapp, Syoko Aki, Felix Galimir, Paul Kantor, Jerome Lowenthal, and Seymour Lipkin, as well as members of the Juilliard and Tokyo String Quartets. She currently teaches at University of Maryland Baltimore County as an assistant professor of violin.
William Schimmel is a virtuoso accordionist, author, philosopher and composer. He is one of the principle architects in the tango revival in America, the resurgence of the accordion and the philosophy of Musical Reality (composition with pre-existing music). He received his diploma from the Neupauer Conservatory of Music and his BM, MS and DMA degrees from the Juilliard School. He has taught at the Juilliard School , Brooklyn College CUNY, Upsala College, New School University, Neupauer Conservatory (dean) and has lectured on accordion related subjects at Princeton , Columbia , Brandeis, University of Missouri , Duke University, Manhattan School of Music, the Graduate Center CUNY, Santa Clara University, The Janacek Conservatory in Ostrava, Czech Republic and at Microsoft.
Regarded as the world's greatest accordionist by National Public Radio, he has performed with virtually every major symphony orchestra in America (and the Kirov ) including a longstanding relationship with the Minnesota Orchestra, as well as virtually every chamber music group in New York including Ensemble Sospeso and the Odeon Jazz Ensemble. Pop star colleagues range from Sting to Tom Waits, who has made the legendary statement: “Bill Schimmel doesn't play the accordion, he is the accordion”. He is founder of the Tango Project, which, in addition to his hit recordings with them, has appeared with Al Pacino in the film: Scent of a Woman, for which Pacino won an Oscar. The Tango Project also won the Stereo Review Album of the Year Award, received a Grammy nomination and rose to number I on the Billboard Classical Charts. He can be heard in other films including True Lies, Kun Dun and many others including films that he both scored and performed and a series of films for the Nature Conservancy which have won numerous prizes in documentary categories.
Matthew Goeke, cellist, performs as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player in a broad range of musical styles. He is a member of the Stamford Symphony, Musica Sacra, Eos Orchestra, the Cross Town Ensemble, SEM Ensemble, North/South Consonance, and the Kitchen House Blend. He is cellist in the award winning trio Eight Strings and a Whistle (flute, viola, cello), which will be performing at Merkin Hall in May, 2003 as winners of the Artists' International Award. Solo performances include the Dvorak and Brahms "Double" concertos with the Centre Symphony, and the Shostakovitch first concerto with the New York Repertory Orchestra. He also performs and records with the bands Church of Betty (Tripping with Wanda, Fruit on the Vine), GIANTfingers (GIANTfingers) and Voltaire (The Devil's Bris, Almost Human, Boo-Hoo). Classical recordings include North/South Recordings (Howard Rovics: Retrospective, and Elan) and 4Tay, Inc. (Elodie Lauten: The Deus Ex Machina Cycle) He has also recorded for Opus One Records, Polygram, Elektra, Tzadik and Koch International Classics.
Dawn Avery, associate professor of music at Montgomery College is also a world-renown cellist, composer and vocalist. She was both cellist and vocalist on the 1998 Grammy nominated recording Breath of Heaven with Grover Washington. Her own music is frequently based on indigenous themes and is performed around the world. Ms. Avery is composer in residence with the NYC based theatre ensemble, The Shakespeare Project, as well as Englewinds located in New Jersey. Alex Ross of The New York Times wrote, "Ms. Avery’s work evokes the confusion and pathos of city life, incorporating thorny jazz textures, folk songs, fierce rock rhythms, and performance-art set pieces. The composer dominated her instrumental ensemble, drawing weird sounds from her cello and singing forcefully."
Dawn Avery has worked with such greats as Phillip Glass, Luciano Pavarotti, John Cage, John Cale, Sting, David Darling, Baba Olatunji, Sussan Deyhim, Glen Velez, Charles Wuorinen, and Tanya Leon, among others. Having come from a classical background, she performed with the NJ Symphony Orchestra, NYC Opera Orchestra, New American Chamber Orchestra and the New Amsterdam Symphony. Dawn Avery currently tours with her own group as she promotes her most recent CD TRUE (available at cdbaby.com) which includes original and arranged music from Zimbabwe, Brazil, Native America, Mexico, Greece and Australia. She also performs Persian "Jazz" regularly with Sussan Deyhim. Dawn Avery is part of the NY based cello quartet, ModernWorks. Dawn Avery has performed in great international events such as the Montreux Jazz, Helsinki Jazz, Prague, Saalfelden, Copenhagen, and Banlieu Bleu Festivals. She has performed in the great venues of NYC, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Knitting Factory, The Kitchen and the Bottom Line. As an educator, she has taught at NYU, Columbia Grammar & Preparatory Schools, Harlem School of the Arts. Barnard College and Hunter College Campus Schools. She holds a MFA from NYU and a BM from Manhattan School of Music. Dawn Avery holds grants and awards from Meet The Composer, ADF Composer Award at Duke University, Mu Phi Epsilon Excellence and Scholarship, NYU Excellence in New Music and several fellowship awards. She can be heard on countless CDs, films and radio programs.
To learn more about Dawn or her current events you can check her website.
