On November 21, 2010, faculty, students, and alumni of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music came together to raise funds for victims of the summer's devastating floods in Pakistan. The program featured celebrated masterworks by Franz Liszt, Domenico Scarlatti, J.S. Bach, Aaron Copland, Franz Schubert, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and all proceeds went to the valuable work of Doctors Without Borders. Many thanks to all who played, listened, and made generous donations!
Here are some of the fantastic musicians that donated their time and talents to support this cause.
Mack Mcray, piano
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 9, "Pesther Carneval" - Franz Liszt
Mack McCray received his B.M. and M.S. from The Juilliard School, where he studied under Irwin Freundlich. He won the Silver medal in the International George Enesco Competition, first prize in the Charleston Symphony and San Francisco Young Artists competitions, Juilliard’s Edward Steuermann Memorial Prize, and a grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation - all in one season (1969-1970). He has been invited guest artist at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Seville’s Great Interpreters Cycle, the UNESCO Festival of International Artists at Monte Carlo, the Bucharest Philharmonic’s Bach/Beethoven/Brahms Festival, and the Hong Kong City Hall Series. He has performed under such conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, Edo de Waart, Josef Krips, Leon Fleisher and Arthur Fiedler. In 1991, he performed the United States premiere of John Adams’s Eros Piano. Recently he has performed with the Japan Philharmonic in Suntory Hall, Tokyo, at the Carmel Bach Festival and on the Trinity Church Concert Series in Manhattan. Mack McCray is artistic director of Zephyr International Chamber Music Festival, held annually in Courmayeur, Italy, and since 1971 he has been on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Corey Jamason, harpsichord
Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti
Corey Jamason, harpsichordist, is an active soloist and chamber music collaborator throughout the United States and Europe. About a recent performance, the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Jamason's clear-headed performance of the Italian Concerto rang in our ears....navigated easily through the work's contrapuntal maze and gave it the careful, due balance of objective detachment and lofty passion." He has collaborated with a variety of artists including Jean-Pierre Rampal, Wieland Kuijken, Eva Legêne, Joseph Silverstein and Marion Verbruggen, and has appeared numerous times on NPR's "Performance Today". He has performed with a variety of ensembles including San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Opera, American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelica, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, El Mundo, SF Bach Choir and Camerata Pacifica. Festival appearances include the Berkeley, Bloomington, Bach Aria, San Luis Obispo Mozart and Norfolk festivals. He received degrees in music from SUNY Purchase, Yale University, where he was a student of Richard Rephann, and from Indiana University, where he received a D.M. degree. Recent recordings include performances with the violinist Gilles Apap, El Mundo and American Bach Soloists. In the spring of 2007, Corey Jamason was named director of the San Francisco Bach Choir.Marc Teicholz, guitar
Chaccone in D Minor - Johann Sebastian Bach
Marc Teicholz won first prize in the 1989 International Guitar Foundation of America competition. He has toured extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Russia, receiving critical acclaim for his recitals and master classes. Mr. Teicholz also has toured Southeast Asia under the auspices of the U.S.I.A. Artistic Ambassador program and has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Spain, Portugal, California and Hawaii. He currently records for Naxos and Sugo records. Mr. Teicholz graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, received an M.M. from the Yale School of Music and a J.D. from the Boalt School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.Michael Williams, flute
Duo for Flute and Piano - Aaron Copland
Flutist, Michael Williams, began his musical training in Denver, Colorado and is a graduate of the Denver School of the Arts. He holds a B.M. degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with San Francisco Symphony principal flutist Timothy Day. He has served as co-principal flute of the Denver Young Artists Orchestra and joined the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra for their 2007-2008 season and European tour. Regarding a performance of Stravinsky’s Song of the Nightingale with the SFSYO, San Francisco Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman wrote, “The spotlight shone most brightly on flutist Michael Williams, who impersonated the avian title character with a stream of sweet but nicely potent birdsong.” While at the Conservatory, Mr. Williams was an active member of the Conservatory Orchestra, Chamber Music program and Conservatory Baroque Ensemble. He was a featured soloist with the Baroque Ensemble on numerous occasions and was a winner of the 2009 Conservatory Baroque Ensemble Concerto Competition. He led the ensemble in a performance of CPE Bach’s Concerto in D minor for Flute and Strings. In June of 2010, Mr. Williams performed Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring for 13 Instruments under the baton of Alasdair Neale with members of the San Francisco Symphony and Opera orchestras as part of the Conservatory’s annual gala. Mr. Williams is also an avid supporter of new music, premiering works by Jonathan Russell, Richard Warp, Max Stoffregen, Luciano Chessa, Damon Waitkus and Stefan Cwik and performing in the Switchboard Music Festival and Hot Air Music Festival. His other teachers include Alexa Still, international soloist and professor at the Sydney Conservatorium, and Catherine Lum-Peterson of the Colorado Symphony. He has performed in master classes with Carol Wincenc, Paula Robison, Keith Underwood, Jeffrey Zook, Martha Aarons, Jill Felber, Christina Jennings and Gro Sandvic as well as renowned baritone William Sharp and baroque oboist Debra Nagey. Mr. Williams greatly enjoys teaching and currently has a private studio at the Sunset Academy of Music in San Francisco.Sophie Huet, clarinet
Shepard on the Rock - Franz Schubert
Clarinetist Sophie Huet recently earned her Master's degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music studying with Luis Baez. Prior to her studies in San Francisco, she earned her BM in clarinet performance and BA in English at the University of Michigan, where she studied with Fred Ormand and Monica Kaenzig. An avid proponent for new music, Sophie has performed with Nothingset Ensemble, San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s New Music Ensemble, as well as the Magik*Magik Orchestra. She has also premiered works by Michael Daugherty, Eliza Brown, and Sahba Aminikia and performed in masterclasses with Mark Nuccio, Daniel Gilbert, Eli Eban, and David Krakauer.
Elyse Nakajima, soprano
Shepard on the Rock - Franz Schubert
Shepard on the Rock - Franz Schubert
Elyse Nakajima, soprano, recently made debuts with Berkeley Opera as Zerlina in Don Giovanni and with West Bay Opera covering Musetta in La Boheme. She spent the 2008-2009 season as a young artist at San Diego Opera, where she performed Despina in Cosi fan tutte, First Guide in Rumpelstiltskin, and numerous recital programs with the Education Ensemble. Her recent performances also include Don Quichotte with San Diego Opera, Copland's As It Fell Upon A Day with Art of Elan at the San Diego Museum of Art, opera arias/ensembles with the Golden State Pops Orchestra, the soprano solos in Mozart's Coronation Mass and Rutter's Requiem at Stanford University, Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem and Libby Larsen's Missa Gaia with Schola Cantorum, and Baroque arias/ensembles on the Bechstein Vocal Series and at St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery in New York City.
During the 2007-08 season, Ms. Nakajima toured the Seattle area as Marie in La Fille du Regiment with Northwest Opera in Schools, Etc., studied and performed Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with the Martina Arroyo Foundation, joined the the Opera Company of Brooklyn in its double bill of Suor Angelica/ Pagliacci, and New York Opera Forum as Papagena in Die Zauberflöte and Zerlina in Don Giovanni. Her operatic credits also include Feu/Princesse/Rossignol in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges (Intermezzo Opera), Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito (One World Symphony, cover), Romilda in Serse (New York Opera Studio), Second Woman in Dido and Aeneas (Oakland Lyric Opera), Venere in L’incoronatione di Poppea (BASOTI), and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance (Stanford University).
Equally at home in concert repertoire, Ms. Nakajima has also performed the soprano solos in Harmoniemesse (Haydn), Magnificat (Bach and Rutter), In terra pax (Finzi), Kleine Orgel Messe (Haydn), Serenade to Music (Vaughan Williams), and Cantata 79 (Bach). She has been a finalist in the Palm Beach Opera Competition (Junior Division) and a semi-finalist in the Florida Grand Opera Competition (Student Division), and won a 2009 Career Grant from The Opera Buffs. Originally from Seattle, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree, with double majors in Music and Linguistics, from Stanford University. She is a student of Carol and Nico Castel.
Brian Dowdy, conductor and benefit director/organizer
Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
-with San Francisco Conservatory of Music students and alumni-
"As a performing and teaching artist, I seek to be an
advocate for new kinds of music-making and the power of music to make a
difference in our world. I believe that music has a unique ability to create
and transform communities, and that I have the opportunity and responsibility
to be part of that creative process. I am committed to constant collaboration
with performers of my generation, to working with living composers to program
new works along side celebrated masterpieces, and to teaching the next generation
of musicians the skills, discipline, and character needed to make music
masterfully and passionately."
Conductor and guitarist Brian Dowdy leads a diverse musical
life, collaborating with some of today’s most exciting artists, teaching music
to both children and adults, and performing new compositions along side
established repertoire. Brian is a rising advocate for new music in
particular, and he is in constant collaboration with composers of his
generation. In recent years he has premiered more than a dozen new works for
guitar or conducted ensemble, performing in such series as Blueprint, the
Guitar Foundation of America Convention, Switchboard Music Festival, New Music
Works, Old First Concerts, and Noe Valley Chamber Music.
Brian spent the early years of his musical life in church choirs, school bands, and rock groups, taking his first guitar lessons from his father. While completing an English and East Asian Studies degree at Oberlin College, Brian entered the conservatory guitar studio of Stephen Aron, where he studied for two years. Brian then completed his undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate guitar studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, under the tutelage of David Tanenbaum. In his post-graduate year, he pursued additional studies in conducting, and he was invited to coach and rehearse the conservatory’s guitar ensemble. At year’s end he became the first guitarist to receive a Professional Studies Diploma from the conservatory. Since graduating, Brian has increased his focus on conducting, twice attending the Conductors Retreat at Medomak to study with Kenneth Kiesler, founding the Songs for Relief concert series, and premiering new works with various ensembles.