January 10, 2008
Oboe, piano trio featured in upcoming School of Music concerts
The School of Music will present two concerts in the next week, both in the school’s Brechemin auditorium. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 10, oboist Roger Cole and pianist Robin McCabe entertain, while at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 13, the Brechemin Piano Trio will take the stage.
Cole, principal oboist of the Vancouver Symphony and the CBC Radio Orchestra, presents “An Oboe Player’s Hit Parade,” featuring sonatas by Saint-Saens, Poulenc, Hindemith, and Telemann, and the Schumann “Romances.”
Cole has been principal oboist of the Vancouver Symphony and the CBC Radio Orchestra since 1976. He received his early musical training in Seattle, where he studied with Bernard Shapiro, principal oboist of the Seattle Symphony. He went on to become a scholarship student at Yale University and The Juilliard School, where he studied with the renowned American oboist Robert Bloom. He teaches at the University of British Columbia and the Vancouver Academy of Music.
Cole was named music director and senior orchestra conductor of the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra in June 2003. In past summers, he has taught and performed at the Courtenay Youth Music Centre, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Marrowstone Music Festival, and the Banff Centre. He has been the principal oboist of the Carmel Bach Festival in California since 1998.
McCabe is the director of the UW School of Music. A Puyallup native, she earned her bachelor of music degree summa cum laude at the University, where she studied with Bela Siki, and her master’s and doctorate degrees at the Juilliard School of Music, where she studied with Rudolf Firkusny. She joined the Juilliard faculty in 1978, then returned to the UW in 1987 to accept a position on the piano faculty. In 1994 McCabe was appointed director of the School of Music. She continues to teach as professor of piano and head of the school’s keyboard division, and was one of two Ruth Sutton Waters Professors of Music for 2002-05. In addition, McCabe is a persuasive arts ambassador and advocate for arts audience development.
Tickets are $10 and are available at the door.
The School of Music’s Brechemin Piano Trio consists of graduate students Tonya Siderius, piano; Julia Tai, violin; and Miriam Shames, cello. They will perform works by Haydn, Saint-Saens, and Dvorak.
Siderius is a doctoral student in piano performance at the University, studying with Craig Sheppard. In 2002, she was a national finalist in the American MTNA/Steinway Piano Competition and a semi-finalist in the Corpus Christi International Competition in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Julia Tai is a doctoral student in instrumental conducting with Peter Eros and violin with Ronald Patterson. Tai plays a 1740 Calcanius violin, loaned to her by the CHIMEI Culture Foundation in Taiwan. She is the co-concertmaster of the UW Symphony and the conductor of the UW Contemporary Ensemble. In 2006, she conducted the UW Opera production of Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, and was the assistant conductor and chorus master for UW Opera’s production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Tai is also the assistant conductor of the Rainier Symphony, and has premiered many works for the Seattle Experimental Opera and the Washington Composers Forum.
Shames is studying for a doctoral degree with Toby Saks. She plays a George Panormo cello (London, c. 1820) generously loaned to her for these performances by the Carlsen Cello Foundation in Seattle. She served as assistant principal of the Tacoma Symphony for three years, and has played with Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Northwest Sinfonietta, and Seattle Choral Company. Passionate about teaching, Shames has established a full-time teaching career in Seattle, at the Community Music School at University of Puget Sound, and on Mercer Island.
Tickets are $5 and are available at the door.
