Guest Musicians
Michael Thornton
Horn
Michael Thornton has held the position of Principal Horn with the Colorado Symphony since 1997. Prior to joining the Colorado Symphony, Michael left his studies at The Juilliard School for the Principal Horn position with the Honolulu Symphony. In addition to solo engagements with the Colorado Symphony, he has appeared with various Front Range orchestras and on several occasions performed with the New York Wind Soloists Quintet, a group comprised of members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Michael especially enjoys playing chamber works for flute and horn with his wife, Colorado Symphony Piccolo Julie Duncan Thornton. Mr. Thornton became a member of the horn faculty at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1999. His students come from around the country, and have gone on to major conservatories and orchestral positions. Mr. Thornton has presented master classes at conservatories and universities throughout the United States. He studied at The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music and Temple University and his main teachers have included Jerome Ashby, Randy Gardner, Julie Landsman and J. C. Leuba. Mr. Thornton has recorded on the Angel/EMI, Koch International, Naxos, Vox Classics, and Albany labels. He is a Conn/Selmer artist, and performs on an Elkhart Conn 8D.
David Korevaar
Piano
David Korevaar successfully balances an active performing career as a soloist and chamber musician with teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is Associate Professor of Piano. Korevaar began his piano studies at age six in San Diego with Sherman Storr, and at age 13 he became a student of the great American virtuoso Earl Wild. By age 20 he had earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Juilliard School, and he completed his Doctor of Musical Arts from the Juilliard School. Korevaar has performed as guest artist with the Takács, Manhattan and Colorado Quartets, among other groups and was a founding member of the Young Concert Artists Award-winning piano and wind ensemble Hexagon, with which he toured for many years. David Korevaar's broad musical interests and extensive repertoire are reflected in his recordings, ranging from the two books of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier to the piano music of Lowell Liebermann. Korevaar has also performed and recorded music by composers including Paul Schoenfield, Mike Barnett, Aaron Jay Kernis, George Rochberg, Aaron Copland, and many more. He gave the New York premiere of three of Harrison Birtwistle's Harrison's Clocks as part of the Juilliard School's Piano Century series in 2000, and he is a frequent participant in the University of Colorado's Pendulum new music series. David Korevaar is a Kawai artist and now resides in Boulder, CO with his family.
Erika Eckert
Viola
Violist, Erika Eckert, is currently Associate Professor of Viola at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ms. Eckert has also been on the faculties of The Cleveland Institute of Music, Baldwin Wallace College, and the Chautauqua Institution in New York where she served as the coordinator of the chamber music program for the Music School Festival Orchestra for three summers. As co-founder and former violist of the Cavani String Quartet, Ms. Eckert performed on major concert series worldwide, garnered an impressive list of awards and prizes, including first prizes at both the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Competition and the Cleveland Quartet Competition. In recent seasons, Ms. Eckert has performed as guest-violist with the Takacs String Quartet and also soloed with such engagements as the Boulder Bach Festival, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, the Garth Newell Music Festival, Vail Bravo!, and more. She has taught presenting viola and chamber music pedagogy sessions, and coordinating the chamber music program at the American String Teachers Association International Workshops in Brisbane, Australia and Stavanger, Norway; serves on the faculties of the Perlman Music Program, The Quartet Program, and the Takacs String Quartet Seminar; and coaches chamber music at many conferences including the Suzuki Association of the Americas, Inc. Ninth Conference, and the International School for Musical Arts.
Silas Huff
Conductor
Silas Nathaniel Huff has conducted outstanding music orchestras for over ten years including the L’Orchestre de L’Institut Musical de Provence-Aubagne (Aix-en-Provence, France), the Republic of Adegya National Philharmonic Orchestra (Maikop, Russia), the New Symphony Orchestra (Sofia, Bulgaria), and many more- as well as youth, university, and professional ensembles throughout the United States. Mr. Huff’s past conducting positions include Assistant Conductor of the California State University Orchestra, Assistant Conductor of the Pacific Palisades Symphony (CA), Assistant Conductor of the Greenwich Village Orchestra (NY), and Music Director of the Southwest German Youth Orchestra (Trossingen, Germany). In 2008, Mr. Huff will take the helm of the newly founded Round Rock Symphony (TX), and in 2009, Mr. Huff will debut as guest conductor with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra (CO) and the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble (NYC), even as he continues in his positions as the Music Director of the Astoria Symphony and Conductor of the Lost Dog New Music Ensemble (NYC). A native Texan, Mr. Huff studied classical guitar at Texas State University before moving to Los Angeles where he earned a Master of Music degree in music theory and composition at the University of California at Los Angeles. Mr. Huff has also taken lessons with some of the world’s finest maestros, including Kirk Trevor, Gustav Meier, Mariusz Smolij, and others. Mr. Huff loves European espresso, jogging, and his novelist wife Taylor Morris, with whom he currently lives in New York City.
Geraldine Walther
Viola
Before joining the Takács Quartet at the University of Colorado, Geraldine Walther was Principal Violist of the San Francisco Symphony for 29 years. Early in her career she served as assistant principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Miami Philharmonic, and the Baltimore Symphony. She studied at the Curtis Institute with Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet and at the Manhattan School of Music with Lillian Fuchs. She has been on the music faculty of The San Francisco Conservatory, Notre Dame de Namur University, and Mills College and conducted master classes at numerous universities and festivals. Ms. Walther has performed as soloist on numerous occasions with the San Francisco Symphony and given the US premieres of Michael Tippett’s Triple Concerto in 1981, Tôru Takemitsu’s A String Around Autumn in 1990, and Peter Lieberson’s Viola Concerto and George Benjamin’s Viola, Viola, both in 1999. In May 2007 she was soloist in William Schuman’s Concerto on Old English Rounds, the American premiere of the Robin Holloway Viola Concerto, and the Britten Double Concerto for Violin and Viola. She has collaborated with such artists as Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, and Jaime Laredo, and appeared as a guest artist with the Vermeer, Guarneri, Lindsay, Cypress, Tokyo and St. Lawrence quartets. In 2001 she joined the Tokyo Quartet on a tour of Spain and Italy and she joined the Takacs Quartet as a regular member in the fall of 2005.
Maurizio Moretti
Piano
Born in Cagliari, Maurizio Moretti studied under Ida Allegretto at the Conservatory of his town and then for five years with Aldo Ciccolini, who wrote about him: "an extraordinary rhythmical vitality, a special inborn musical treatment of sound and a great technical capacity which characterize his pianism. He is surely one of the most talented and original exponents of Italian pianism”. As a young pianist, his excellent performances and incredible musical interpretation have won him many awards including the Mozart fellowship from the Musikhochschule Mozarteum Salzburg, the International Piano Competition “Sergey Rachmaninov”, and the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia. He studied and toured for three years with director Peter Maag, recognized worldwide as the best interpreter of Mozart’s music, and together they played all major Mozart’s piano concertos in front of several demanding European audiences. Maurizio Moretti is currently artistic director of the International Chamber Music Festival of the roman theater of Nora, artistic director of the Ente Musicale di Nuoro, and principal guest soloist of the Orchestra Sinfonica de L´Aquila. He is also the art director and the guest soloist of the Europa Philarmonie Orchestra in Magdeburg, one of the best young orchestras in Europe, and music director and guest soloist of the renowned chamber orchestra I Solisti di Perugia. He is currently full professor of pianoforte at the Conservatorio di Musica in Cagliari, where he also teaches piano Master classes. Maurizio Moretti currently lives near Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia (Italy), with his wife, the pianist Angela Oliviero with whom he often plays duets, and their son Niccolò.