Fall 2008 Musician Biographies

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August 17

MaryLou Rector, soprano soloist, completed her college work and two years of musical study in Germany prior to her many years of singing experience in the Los Angeles area. Opera performances include La Boheme, Bartered Bride, Candide, Der Fledermaus, Die Entführung, and The Sorcerer with the Richard Sheldon G & S Light Opera Co., Euterpe Opera Club, Los Angeles Civic Opera, Los Angeles Music Center and the Klagenfurt Opernhaus in Austria. She was also a member of the American Guild of Musical Artists and a featured soloist with the Burbank Symphony, Pasadena United Methodist Church and the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

Some of her performances include Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Verdi's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, and Jewish High Holy Days. She also taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District as a credentialed Secondary Choral and Instrumental music teacher. She has been a featured soloist with the San Diego Festival Chorus and Orchestra in Vivaldi's Gloria and Schubert's Mass in G.

Ilana Mysior, piano, was born in Israel and returned there to create a department of Accompanying at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music. For twenty-five years she was Professor of Music at the University of San Diego, where she created an Opera Workshop. As a person with Marfan Syndrome, she devotes much of her time giving recitals for the National Marfan Foundation, including a 1994 performance in London at St. Johns Smith Square, traveling on the Concorde so as to preserve strength. At present, she teaches piano and coaches singers from her home in San Diego.

Composer Robert Fürstenthal was born in Vienna, Austria in 1920, emigrated to England in 1939 and to the United States in 1940. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945, he became a Certified Public Accountant and worked a number of positions for the U.S. Government. His works, comprising mostly chamber music and art songs, have found increasing acclaim from New York, Washington D.C., Germany and his native Austria.

September 28

Violinist Päivikki Nykter, a native of Finland, is a graduate of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. She has held positions in many orchestras including the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Ms.Nykter was a founding member of the Finnish contemporary ensemble AVANTI! and has maintained her passion for new music, premiering numerous works written for her. She has worked with such notable composers as Brian Ferneyough, Roger Reynolds, Will Ogdon, Rand Steiger, Yoji Yuasa, Chaya Czernowin, Kaija Saariaho, Jonathan Harvey and David Burge. She has appeared as a guest artist in several festivals, including Giacinto Scelsi Festival in New York City, Darmstadt New Music Festival in Germany and International Mountain View Festival of Chamber Music and Song in Calgary, Canada. She is an artistic director of a Chamber Music Concert Series in Lappeenranta, Finland. Ms. Nykter served as an Artist-in-Residence at the University of California, San Diego Music Department from 1994 to 2006. She is now a freelance violinist maintaining a busy concert schedule. She has recorded the complete violin duos by Béla Bartók with violinist János Négyesy on Neuma Records. The same duo has also recorded seven duos written and dedicated to them on Acourant Records. She has also recorded on the CRI, Old King Cole and Mode labels.

Cecilia Kim (cello) is a native of Daegu, Korea, where she began performing at a young age. Ms. Kim received a bachelor's degree and later a master's segree from the Daegu Catholic University as a full scholarship recipient. In the following years, she became involved with the Daegu Symphony Orchestra and received a faculty position at Daegu Catholic University. Simultaneously, she made highly acclaimed solo appearances with numerous orchestras in South Korea. After moving to America, she received a master's degree from San Diego State University and was appointed to a faculty position at the University of San Diego. Currently, Ms. Kim has been giving performances in San Diego County.

Anna Savvas-Katkov is a performing artist and music educator living in San Diego. She is of Greek heritage. She studied at the University of Michigan and the Juilliard School, and earned her Master of Music degree from Mannes College of Music, and bachelor and doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Savvas-Katkov has performed as soloist and chamber musician across the United States, on the East Coast primarily in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia, as well as in the Midwest, in Michigan and Minnesota, and on the West Coast, with performances at most of the colleges and universities in the San Diego area. She is the pianist with the locally-based Annarocele Quartet. She maintains a private piano studio and is a frequent adjudicator at piano competitions. She has taught on the faculties at the University of Minnesota and the University of San Diego.

October 12

Fine Arts Trio

Robert Hart, piano/composer, debuted as a piano soloist with the San Diego Symphony at 20, studying with Ilana Mysior. From a musica family, he also studied clarinet, cello, and has built a harpsichord. Hart holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of San Diego. He studied composition with Daniel Kessner at California State University, Northridge and recently with Rudolph Palmer at the Mannes School of Music in New York City. He currently has two film scores in production.

Willis Frisch, cello, began his early studies with Edward Clay of La Mesa, and later continued with Professor Paul Anderson at San Diego State University and Stephen Kates. Frisch was a member of the San Diego Symphony from 1968 to 1971. He has played with the Allegro String Quartet and other chamber groups.

Tom Johnson, violin, a native of San Diego, studied violin with Mary Gerard and viola with Professor Henry Kolar. Johnson earned his Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance from The University of San Diego. He was a member of Symphony West and the Monteverdi Chamber Orchestra. Johnson has been performing professionally for 35 years in San Diego,Mexico City and elsewhere abroad.

October 26

Joshua Vincent is a tenor based in Del Mar, California. He began singing at an early age in children's choirs in Minnesota. He attended St. John's University in Minnesota, where he studied vocal performance under the tutelage of Dr.Axel Theimer, with whom he began his exploration of French art song and German lieder. He continued his study of voice at Indiana University with Costanza Cuccaro, giving numerous recitals and performing several operatic roles with Indiana University Opera Theatre. After completing a Master of Music Degree from Indiana University, Mr. Vincent joined the chorus of the Lyric Opera in Chicago, where he performed from 2001 to 2007. Recently he moved to the San Diego with his wife Jean and has just finished his first season with the San Diego Opera chorus. In addition to his musical pursuits, he is also an avid student, practitioner and teacher of Hatha Yoga. He currently teaches both private and public Hatha Yoga classes in North County San Diego.

Anna Savvas-Katkov is a performing artist and music educator living in San Diego. She is of Greek heritage. She studied at the University of Michigan and the Juilliard School, and earned her Master of Music degree from Mannes College of Music, and bachelor and doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota. Dr. Savvas-Katkov has performed as soloist and chamber musician across the United States, on the East Coast primarily in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia, as well as in the Midwest, in Michigan and Minnesota, and on the West Coast, with performances at most of the colleges and universities in the San Diego area. She is the pianist with the locally-based Annarocele Quartet. She maintains a private piano studio and is a frequent adjudicator at piano competitions. She has taught on the faculties at the University of Minnesota and the University of San Diego.

November 9

Eldred Marshall began his piano studies at six, and began playing in public at seven. He frequently won piano competitions, traveling the United States as pianist during his earliest years. He made his piano and orchestra debut at 16, playing Brahms's Second Piano Concerto.

He has performed in recital in Italy, Spain and the Republic of San Marino. A landmark in his career was to become the first African-American/Black pianist to perform the complete 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven in public, from memory, as a concentrated series. He first performed the feat in 2007 in Portland, Oregon. He repeated it in San Francisco in 2008.

The complete piano sonatas of Mozart figure prominently into Marshall's 2008-2009 season, as he performs it in a five-part concert series in Los Angeles. The season also has Marshall delving deep into Schubert's piano literature, performing all-Schubert ("Schubertiade") concerts throughout the United States.

He is frequently sought out to perform chamber music: most recently he closed the Western Society of Chamber Music's 2006-2007 and the 2007-2008 seasons playing Brahms's Piano Quartet no. 3 and Schubert's "Trout" Quintet, respectively. He often accompanies instrumentalists and singers in concert.

In January 2008, his first CD, Eldred Marshall: Live and Uncut in Recital, was released. The recital consists of works by Liszt, Haydn, Bach-Busoni and Schumann. A second CD, devoted entirely to Brahms, is in the works.

A multifaceted performer, Marshall is also singled out as a teacher and lecturer. He is an honor graduate of Yale University, and his teachers include Barbara Hall, Brigitta Steidl, Elizabeth Parisot, Daniel Pollack, and John Khouri. For CD sales, booking, upcoming performances and other information, please visit his Web site, www.eldredmarshall.net.

Composer Elia Alessandro Calderan was born August 1, 1984. His uncle, a singer, taught him the fundamentals of music and jazz chords when he was seven years old. After a few years, he began composing after listening to Liszt's Paganini Etude no. 3 "La Campanella" and studying piano and organ at his local day music school. As a composer, he is self-taught.

Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in Mathematics at the University of Trieste. He is interested in minimalist and "symbolic" music à la John Cage, whose music is based on diagrams, but not controlled by indetermination, while trying to maintain late 19th- and early 20th-century sonorities.

His scores are notable for their lack of dynamic or phrasing markings. The idea is that his pieces can transmit more than one image, and he wants the performer to think alongside of him to create colors that aren't expressed on the page.

Six Sphragidion (2007) is a collection of six contrasting miniatures. Eldred Marshall's performance marks the world premiere of this piece. Other pieces he has composed include Preludio (2005), Faeries (2007) based on Irish legends, and Three Etudes (2006).

Calderan's scores are available online, and he can be reached at catraga@gmail.com.

Composer Mario Godoy was born in 1988 in Riverside, California. He is currently a junior at the University of Redlands, studying saxophone performance with Dr. Eddie Smith, and composition with Dr. Chung Shih Hoh. He plays every type of saxophone, and he also plays the piano, guitar and flute.

Godoy considers himself a post-minimal/experimental composer influenced by various minimalist composers including John Adams and Philip Glass, as well as post-rock/ minimalist rock groups such as Explosions in the Sky, The Album Leaf and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

Prelude to a Crash (2007-8) is Godoy's first major piano work. It is divided into three movements with small interludes between them. The first movement utilizes a simple passacaglia-like bass motif which becomes the main theme. The movement unfolds in rhythmic variations, and builds into an exciting climax.

The second movement is marked "slowly, freely … rhythms are suggestions". This marking allows the performer to create his or her own distinct interpretation of the piece. This movement utilizes a sustaining effect created by the sostenuto pedal and also includes harsh strumming of the piano harp (the strings on the inside of the piano).

The third movement is a bit more violent, utilizing mixed meter and strong accents, and really seems to sum up the other two movements. Prelude to a Crash was premiered by David Hedgecock at the University of Redlands in December, 2007. This is its first performance since the premiere.

Other compositions by Godoy include Lush and Terminal for solo instrument and delay pedal, Dreaming in High Definition for saxophone quartet, and The Nightmare Before Christmas Suite for saxophone quartet. You may contact Mr. Godoy by e-mail at Mario_Godoy@redlands.edu.

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