"Folk Elements in Music and Art"
DATE: January 8 2006, 3 PM
SITE: NC Museum of Art Map
2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh
TICKETS: $10 General Public; $8 NCMA Members & Students
INFORMATION & TICKET SALES
- NCMA Box Office (919) 715-5923
- Raleigh Chamber Music Guild (919) 821-2030
PROGRAM
Elizabeth Beilman, cellist, is a native of Wichita, Kansas. She joined the cello section of the North Carolina Symphony in 1988 and was appointed by Music Director, Gerhardt Zimmerman as the Symphony's permanent Assistant Principal Cello in the spring of 2001. Since coming to Raleigh, she has participated in numerous recitals and performed extensively with ensembles in North Carolina. She has also appeared as a soloist with the North Carolina Symphony.
Before her arrival in North Carolina, Ms. Beilman was Artist-in-Residence for two years at the Banff Centre for the Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada. During that time, she toured throughout Canada, performed with Felix Galimir and with Menachem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio, and was featured at the Shawnigan Lake Festival in British Columbia. While in Banff, she performed as soloist and ensemble player under the guidance of composers Witold Lutoslawsky, Morton Feldman and lannis Xenakis, and, today, maintains a working relationship with the composers, Robert Ward and Mark Scearce.
Ms. Beilman holds both a Bachelor and a Master degree in Music Performance (summa cum laude) from the Indiana University School of Music, where she served as Associate Instructor and Assistant to Fritz Magg. Other teachers include Paul Tortelier, Aldo Parisot and Anner Bylsma, with whom she studied the music ofJ.S. Bach. Studies in chamber music, an area of particular interest to Ms. Beilman, were conducted with Rostislav Dubinsky of the Borodin String Quartet, with the pianist, Menachem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio and with the violinist, Josef Gingold.
Ms. Beilman grew up in a musical family, performing as a teenager with her two older brothers in the Beilman Trio. Her brother Douglas has remained a musician, as violinist with the New Zealand String Quartet. Music remains a family passion; Together with husband, Jimmy Gilmore, Principal Clarinet of the North Carolina Symphony, she co-founded the chamber music ensemble, AURORA MUSICALIS in 1991. This ensemble, a variable mix of piano, violin, cello and clarinet and other instruments, enjoys a dedicated following and has received critical acclaim for its performances, being twice listed in the "Top Ten Concerts of the Year" by both the News and Observer and the Spectator. "Echoes of America; Chamber Music of Robert Ward" was the group's first compact disc, on the Albany label. The disc's title work was dedicated to AURORA MUSICALIS by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and the CD received excellent international review by the publication, Fanfare.
Ms. Beilman is active in the Triangle music community, having served on the boards of the Raleigh Music Club and the Triangle Youth Philharmonic, and as Senior Division Coordinator of the Lamar Stringfleld Chamber Music Camp. For many years, she organized and often performed in the well-attended Lamar Stringfield Series of Concerts, Master Classes and educational programs, bringing in many internationally recognized artists to our area during the summer. In addition, she has been a dedicated teacher of private cello students in her home. She performs on a cello made in 1932 by Pierre Claudot.
Ms. Beilman is the mother of an eight-year-old son, Carl. She is an avid reader, gardener and volunteer at her church and in her son's class.
Before joining the North Carolina Symphony, Brian Reagin was Assistant Concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony, under Music Directors Andre Previn and Lorin Maazel. A Chicago native, Reagin recently completed his sixteenth season as Concertmaster of the North Carolina Symphony.
Prior to joining the Pittsburgh Symphony, Reagin served as Concertmaster of the Cleveland Institute of Music Symphony Orchestra and served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. While on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon, he also regularly performed with the Piedmont Chamber Orchestra, based at the North Carolina School of the Arts. He made his solo debut with the Cleveland Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto while a student at the Cleveland Institute. Other solo appearances include performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Syracuse Symphony, and the Wheeling Symphony.
Since 1990 Reagin has made annual solo appearances with the North Carolina Symphony performing concertos by Vieuxtemps, Paganini, Sibelius, Bruch (Scottish Fantasy and G minor Concerto), Korngold, Mendelssohn, Barber, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Bach and Vivaldi. In May of 1999 he was invited to perform the Prokofiev D major Concerto with members of the Charlotte Symphony for the North Carolina Dance Theatre, under the direction of Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, a performance he repeated that summer with the Chautauqua Ballet Company.
Reagin has performed recitals in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Washington. He has toured Japan, China, Hong Kong, Europe, Canada and Puerto Rico with the Pittsburgh Symphony and performed numerous recital and chamber works in Europe, Africa and the West Indies. A highlight of his extensive chamber and recital career was a televised performance of the Brahms B major Trio with Andre Previn and Yo Yo Ma. In 1991 and 1992 he performed the Claude Bolling Jazz Suite for Violin with Mr. Bolling and his Trio, including a performance for French television. In the Fall of 2001, Reagin participated in a three-week tour of Europe with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Music Director Yuri Temirkanov, including performances in London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna.
After a two-week guest engagement in the summer of 1996, Reagin was named Concertmaster of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. He became only the fourth Concertmaster for that orchestra since its inception in 1929. With this appointment, he joins a highly distinguished list of musical leadership that includes the late Mischa Mischakoff, Toscanini's Concertmaster of the NBC Symphony. During the 1997 summer season, Reagin gave a performance of the Korngold Violin Concerto with the Chautauqua Symphony that was recorded and later broadcast on PBS radio. He has since performed concertos of Bruch, Bartok, Prokofiev and Stravinsky with that orchestra, and in the 1999 season gave a chamber concert with Principal Cellist Chaim Zemach and noted American pianist Lee Luvisi. During the 2002 season, Reagin performed the rarely heard Violin Concerto of Robert Schumann with the CSO, under the direction of JoAnn Falletta, Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic. Reagin also serves on the faculty of the Chautauqua School of Music.
On September 13, 2001, two days after the tragic attacks on America in New York City, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, Mr. Reagin was called on, with twenty-four hours notice, to substitute for Itzhak Perlman, who was stranded in Detroit, in a performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the North Carolina Symphony at their Gala season opening concert. Writing in the Durham Herald Sun, Carl Halperin said, "Regular symphony-goers ... are well-acquainted with (Reagin's) obvious mastery of the instrument", "reached levels of profundity I had not expected", and "the NCSO's hard-working concertmaster passed his baptism by fire with professionalism and aplomb". William Walker, writing for Classical Voice North Carolina said "Concertmaster Brian Reagin turned in a well-considered performance that lacked nothing in violin fireworks as was shown by the exactness of all those exposed high notes. The musical lines were respected .... Reagin's tone was firm and warm and the first movement cadenza was brilliant." After the intermission of that concert, Reagin resumed his seat at the front of the orchestra for a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnole, of which William Walker said, "Reagin was masterly in his five prominent solo episodes."
In November of 2003, Reagin traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, to record the world premiere CD of George Frederick McKay's Violin Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine under the direction of John McLaughlin Williams, and in February of 2004 he performed as soloist and concertmaster at the first Cayman Arts Festival in Grand Cayman, British West Indies. The McKay CD is scheduled for release on the Naxos label in early 2005, as well as the world premiere recording of Nat Stookey's (former composer in residence with the North Carolina Symphony) "Double", with NCS Associate Concertmaster Rebekah Binford, on the Albany label, a recording of meditative and therapeutic works for violin, including the popular "Meditation from Thais" by Massenet, with NCS harpist Anita Burroughs-Price, and a DVD of a live performance of the complete Vivaldi Four Seasons with Mr. Reagin performing as both violin soloist and conductor of the Chautauqua Chamber Players, accompanied by beautiful slide photographs of the four seasons at Chautauqua Institution in New York State. Mr. Reagin can also be heard in an earlier recording on the Alanna label in performance of Dvorak's "American" Quartet and works of Paganini and Irvin Kauffman, playing the Pittsburgh Symphony Stradivarius violin.
Reagin is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music where he earned a diploma in violin performance in 1976 and an artist diploma in 1977. For four years he participated in the Cleveland Chamber Music Seminar, coaching with the Guarnari Quartet and with Mischa Schneider of the Budapest Quartet. He spent seven summer seasons at the Meadowmount School of Music where he studied with Ivan Galamian, coached with Josef Gingold and served as both an assistant and faculty member.
Reagin has been a recipient of numerous prizes, including First Prize in the Ohio Music Teachers Association Collegiate Artist Competition, First Prize in the Cleveland Institute Concerto Competition, the Society of American Musicians Talman Award in Chicago, and the Jerome Gross Memorial Prize at the Cleveland Institute. In May of 2001, he served as a judge for the National Federation of Music Clubs Young Artist Competition finals in Atlanta, Georgia.
Reagin has held faculty and Visiting Artist positions with Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham College, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and East Carolina University. He currently teaches privately at his home. Many of his students have continued their studies at major conservatories, and several are currently performing with important orchestras nationwide including the Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Indianapolis Symphonies.
Reagin is an avid private pilot, with over 700 hours logged, including more than 200 in his homebuilt airplane, "Second Fiddle II", which he keeps at his own airstrip, "Fiddleair", in southern Johnston County, NC. Mr. Reagin performs on a Lorenzo and Tomasso Carcassi violin made in Florence, Italy in 1763.
Kari Miller began playing the piano at age five. She began her formal musical training at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and continued Graduate and Doctoral studies at the Indiana University School of Music. Ms. Miller has been a featured soloist with many orchestras in this country and Europe and has performed numerous concerts and solo recitals in the United States. Her extraordinary musical collaboration with other distinguished artists is well-known, and she has toured world-wide with many of these, including Fritz Magg and Eugene Rousseau. In 1983, she was awarded Second Prize at the prestigious Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition in Washington, D.C. Ms. Miller has recorded for the Coronet label. During the 2000-2001 year, Ms. Miller performed a critically-acclaimed series of lecture recitals to commemmorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. She has performed with Aurora Musicalis since 1997.
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