Here’s the latest from the RCICW office for interested conductors.
Third Annual Rose City International Conductors Workshop
July 24-29, 2007
Applications are currently being accepted for the Third Annual Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop. The deadline for priority consideration is March 22nd, 2007.
The 2007 symposium and masterclass will be held on the campus of Warner Pacific College in beautiful Portland, Oregon from July 24-29, 2007 . Returning faculty include David Hoose, Director of Orchestral Studies at Boston University and Music Director of Cantata Singers, Christopher Zimmerman, Music Director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas and Chair of Orchestral Conducting at the Hartt School of Music, and director Kenneth Woods, Music Director of the Oregon East Symphony and Chorale and the Surrey Mozart Players.
The musicians of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra, the Pacific Northwest’s Player-run Professional Orchestra, will be joined by guest soloists Rick Rowley, pianist, Alexis Hamilton, mezzo soprano and Brennen Guillory, tenor. The Emerging Artists program offers a rigorous course for advanced conductors completing their studies or already in the early stages of their careers. Repertoire includes Beethoven Symphony No. 7, Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, Varese Octandre, Stravinksy L’Histoire du Soldat Suite and Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Students in the Emerging Artists Program work only with complete orchestrations- no reductions are used. All participants in the Emerging Artists program conduct all of the repertoire and work with all the faculty members, and everyone has an opportunity to conduct in a final showcase concert.
The Discovery Program offers younger conductors, advanced instrumentalists just starting their study of conducting and music educators a chance to work with the faculty and the orchestra in Haydn’s Symphony no. 92, Stravinsky’s Soldier’s March from L’Histoire du Soldat and the first movement of Beethoven Symphony no. 1. The Haydn and Stravinsky are done with full orchestrations, the Beethoven is done in a piano reduction played by our guest soloist, Rick Rowley.
All conducting sessions are professionally videoed with CD-quality audio, and DVDs of each session are available to review and keep on the same day.
The Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop has quickly established itself as one of the leading conductor training programs in the world, and draws applicants and participants from Argentina, Israel, Venezuela, Korea, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, Canada and Spain.
Both classes include sessions in score study, physical movement and career development. Tuition for the Emerging Artist Program is $690, Discovery Program $490. Priority application deadline is March 22nd, 2007, after which applications may be considered on a space available basis.
Faculty Bios-
Christopher Zimmerman-
Of his professional debut, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The Daily Telegraph of London wrote, “Contact with the orchestra seemed immediate, the result a reading in which the playing responded keenly to gestures which themselves were expressive both of the symphony’s fiery vigour and of its finer nuances. Christopher Zimmerman revealed a sharp interpretative profile and control of orchestral timbre….a most auspicious London debut.”
Christopher Zimmerman graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Music, and received his Master’s from the University of Michigan. He also studied with Seiji Ozawa and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood, and at the Pierre Monteux School in Maine. Zimmerman served as an apprentice to Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony and in Prague as assistant conductor to Vaclav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Zimmerman made his professional debut in 1985 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, followed by engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He has also conducted the Prague Symphony, the Slovak Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Edmonton Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, the El Paso Symphony, the Ohio Chamber Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra among many other orchestras. In opera he has worked as the assistant conductor for “Carmen” at the Nimes Festival and as the assistant conductor for “Salome” at the Mexico City Opera, where he was immediately re-invited to conduct a production of “Gianni Schicchi”. In 1989 he co- founded and became Music Director of the City of London Chamber Orchestra.
In 1993 Christopher Zimmerman became Music Director of the Cincinnati Concert Orchestra. He made his U.S. operatic debut conducting this orchestra in a production of “Susannah” by Carlisle Floyd, and has since conducted “The Turn of the Screw,” “Gianni Schicchi,” “Suor Angelica,” “Don Pasquale,” “The Song of Majnun,” and “Julius Caesar,” the last two winning the National Opera Association’s First Prize. In 1999 Zimmerman was a featured conductor in the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Conductors’ Preview with the Utah Symphony Orchestra.
Mr. Zimmerman was appointed to succeed Werner Torkanowsky as Music Director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in 1994 and in 1999 was appointed Music Director of the Hartt Symphony. In 2001 Mr. Zimmerman was appointed Music Director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas.
Kenneth Woods, director
Hailed by the Washington Post as an “up-and-coming conductor” and a “true star” of the podium, Kenneth Woods is Music Director and Conductor of the Oregon East Symphony and Chorale, Principal Guest Conductor of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra and a regular guest conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Mr. Woods has also been a member of the conducting staff at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Pops.
Already known in America as one of the most exciting conductors of the new generation, Kenneth Woods is quickly becoming recognized as major talent on the international scene. He has worked with many orchestras of international distinction including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra. He has also appeared of the stages of some of the world’s leading music festivals, including Aspen, Lucerne, Round Top and Scotia. His work on the concert platform and in the recording studio has led to numerous broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, National Public Radio, and the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation.
In the spring of 2001, Kenneth Woods was selected by Leonard Slatkin as one of four participants in the Kennedy Center National Conducting Institute. At the completion of the Institute, he led the National Symphony Orchestra in a debut concert, drawing great critical acclaim. Toronto Symphony Music Director Designate Peter Oundjian has praised Woods as “a conductor with true vision and purpose. He has a most fluid and clear style and an excellent command on the podium… a most complete musician.”
Woods’ activities as an active proponent of contemporary music include collaborations as a conductor or cellist with such figures as John Corigliano, Krystopf Penderecki, Peter Lieberson, Oliver Knussen and many others. He is a highly regarded teacher of conducting who has been a clinician for masterclasses offered by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and in 2005 was asked by the musicians of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra to found a new training institute for emerging professional conductors, the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop.
As a cellist he has been recipient of the Aspen Fellowship (Mr. Woods has received the Aspen Fellowship as both a cellist and conductor), the Dale Gilbert Award (the only musician to win this award in consecutive years), the Strelow Quartet Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Rural Residency Grant and has recorded and toured extensively as soloist and chamber musician. He has played chamber music with members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Cincinnati, Chicago and Toronto symphonies, and the Minnesota, Gewandhaus and Concertgebow orchestras. As a student, he coached with members of many of the worlds leading quartets, including the Tokyo, Vermeer, La Salle, Pro Arte, Borodin, Emerson and Vegh.
Mr. Woods pursued his advanced conducting studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and has also studied at leading summer institutes and workshops around the world. He has studied conducting with Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, Jorma Panula, Murry Sidlin, Robert Spano, Gerhard Samuel, and Larry Rachleff.
David Hoose is Music Director of two distinguished Boston musical institutions, the Cantata Singers & Ensemble, a organization whose repertoire reaches from Bach and Handel to the music of today, with all in between, and Collage New Music, a chamber ensemble devoted to music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and whose members include musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As well, Mr. Hoose has recently completed eleven years as Music Director of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. He is Professor of Music at the Boston University School of Music where he is Director of Orchestral Activities and Chairman of the Conducting Department.
Mr. Hoose has just been awarded the 2005 Alice M. Ditson Conductors Award, given in recognition of his commitment to the performance of American Music. He has also received the Dmitri Mitropoloulos Award and, as a member of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet, the Walter W. Naumburg Award for Chamber Music. Mr. Hoose’s recordings appear on the New World, Koch, Nonesuch, Delos, CRI and GunMar labels. His recordings of John Harbison’s Motteti di Montale with Collage New Music and Harbison’s Four Psalms and Emerson with the Cantata Singers & Ensemble have been recently released by New World Records, and his recordings of Peter Child’s chamber opera Embers and of the complete chamber music of Donald Sur are forthcoming. The recording of the Harbison Motteti di Montale has been nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award.
Mr. Hoose has conducted the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony, Utah Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, Korean Broadcasting Symphony (KBS), Orchestra Regionale Toscana (Florence), Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony, Opera Festival of New Jersey, and at the Warebrook, New Hampshire, Monadnock and Tanglewood music festivals. In Boston he has appeared as guest conductor with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Handel & Haydn Society, Back Bay Chorale, Chorus Pro Musica, Fromm Chamber Players, Dinosaur Annex, Auros, and many times both with the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and with Emmanuel Music. For many summers he has conducted the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Orchestra, and he has been guest conductor at New England Conservatory, Eastman School, Shepherd School of Rice University and University of Southern California.
David Hoose studied composition at the Oberlin Conservatory with Walter Aschaffenburg and Richard Hoffmann (student and amanuensis of Arnold Schoenberg), and at Brandeis University with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero. His horn studies were with Barry Tuckwell, with Joseph Singer, principal horn of the New York Philharmonic, and with Richard Mackey of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His principal study of conducting was at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he studied with Gustav Meier and worked with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.
