ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
NMW ENSEMBLE
FEATURED COMPOSERS
FEATURED ARTISTS
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ADIVSORY BOARD
PRODUCTION TEAM
Tom made his debut (age 12) in the title role of Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors for NBC television. He studied voice with the legendary Judy Davis in Oakland, piano with famed teacher Natalia Lepitskaya in Palo Alto, and violin with both Ruth Mueller and then Norman Masonson. He has worked with some of the area's finest theater and music groups as an actor and vocalist, including Cabrillo Stage (since 1982), Shakespeare Santa Cruz (since 1986), and New Music Works (since, like, forever).
Audrey Stanley
(Founding Artistic Director and Associate Director of SSC and a member of the Board of Directors) is Professor Emerita of Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz. She has directed for the Oregon (twice), Berkeley, Colorado, and Nashville Shakespeare Festivals. Directing for Shakespeare Santa Cruz includes Waiting for Godot (1991), Much Ado About Nothing (1987), Macbeth (1983), King Lear (1982), Hal and Falstaff (1984), and Rosalynde (1985). Festival acting includes the Duchess of Gloucester in Richard II (1986), Mariana in All's Well That Ends Well (1993), a flying Puck and Philostrate in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1991), and Gloucester's tenant in King Lear (1995). Her play Call Me Vincent on Van Gogh and Gauguin won a finalist award 2005-6 for New Plays of Merit in New York. In June 2007 she is attending the 50-57 year reunion of the University of Bristol Dramatic Society Summer Touring Company which she founded in 1951, directing The Taming of the Shrew. This group performed for villages and towns in the SW of England, two weeks at the Cheltenham Arts Festival, and one week for a large Youth camp in Germany at the invitation of the French Government.
Chi-Wan Park
Chi-wan is a member of the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. In addition to his activities as a traditional music player, he has premiered many new works, both as a soloist and as a core member of CMEK (Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea). He has also collaborated with Citywinds, New Music Works, the Atlas Ensemble, and the Pacific Chamber Symphony. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Park has made appearances at numerous venues including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Old First Concerts, and Herbst Theatre.
His musical studies were at the Seoul National University and Korean National University of Arts where he received a Master's degree. While piri is his main instrument, he plays other wind instruments such as tanso, saenghwang, and the Korean drum called changgu.
Kim Woongsik
Kim Woongsik is recognized as one of the most versatile percussionists in Korea. Most drummers in Korea specialize in one particular style such as sanjo or pansori accompaniment, percussion ensemble, folk style, or classical style. However, Kim is uniquely fluent and proficient in multiple styles, including contemporary crossover styles. He is one of the most sought after sanjo accompanists and performers of new compositions by both Korean traditional style and Western style composers.
Kim Woongsik started out as a Korean classical voice major at the National Korean Traditional Music High School, but after encountering samulnori, he switched his major to percussion and studied at the Danguk University, where he currently teaches. Kim concertizes close to 100 times a year, and since his first international concert tour of 1989, he has appeared in over 200 overseas performances in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He has also performed numerous times with the Traditional Orchestra of the KBS and frequently appears in various TV and Radio performance broadcasts.
Jim Kassis
Since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1987 to study with San Francisco Symphony percussionist Anthony Cirone, Jim has been teaching and performing both drum set and classical percussion throughout northern California. Jim serves on the faculty at Santa Clara University and the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View. He has played with New Music Works Ensemble since 2002.
Thalia Moore
Thalia Moore is a native of Washington D.C. She began her cello studies with Robert Hofmekler, and after only 5 years of study appeared as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. After two yearsí study with Chritopher Rex in Philadelphia, she enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music as a scholarship student of Lynn Harrell, and received her Bachelorís and Masterís Degrees in 1979 and 1980. While at Juilliard, she was the recipient of the Walter and Elsie Naumberg Scholarship and won first prize in the National Arts and Letters String Competition.
Since 1982, Ms. Moore has been Associate Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and in 1989 joined the cello section of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. She has continued to concertize extensively, appearing as soloist at Avery Fisher Hall, (Lincoln Center), Carnegie Recital Hall, Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Herbst Theater, (San Francisco), and San Francisco Legion of Honor, among others. She has also performed as guest artist at the Olympic Music Festival, (Seattle, Washington), the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Music in the Vineyards Chamber Music Festival. In 1991, Ms. Moore appeared in the last episode of the TV series, Midnight Caller, and in 1993 was featured as soloist with the San Francisco Chamber Symphony under the direction of Roger Norrington. In 1996, she performed one of the first Bay Area performances of the composerís version of Tchaikovskyís Rococo Variations with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. In 1998, she was named a Cowles Visiting Artist at Grinnell College, Iowa, and in 1999 and 2001 won election to the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Ms. Moore's interests range from early performance practice to contemporary music: in 1979, she was a founding member of the Aurora Baroque Ensemble, based in New York, and has performed many baroque and classical operas under such conductors as Nicholas McGegan, Sir Charles Makerras, and Roy Goodman. As a member of the new music groups Earplay and the Empyrean Ensemble, she has recorded works by Mario Davidovsky, Maria Niederberger, Ross Bauer, Cindy Cox, Jorge Liderman, Kurt Rohde, and David Rakowski. She has presented numerous premieres of works, including the 2005 world premiere of Laws of Motion, a concerto by Richard Festinger, written especially for her.
John Sackett
John Sackett received a B.M. from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied clarinet with Alan Balter and composition with John Adams. He received a M.A. in composition from Mills College, studying with Terry Riley, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Andrew Imbrie and Olly Wilson. He has also been a student of North Indian classical vocal music (raga) and studied with the renowned vocalist Pandit Pran Nath for twenty years. As a clarinetist he was a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra at age 16, he received a fellowship at the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, and he has performed with Terry Riley's group Khayal, and he is actively involved with new music performances in the San Francisco Bay Area. He premiered many of works written for him including Andrew Imbrie, Terry Riley, William O. Smith, David Evan Jones, Sung-Jae Lee, Young-Ja Lee, and Hi Kyung Kim. He has received a composition grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Charles Ives Award from the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters. He has been on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz since 1994.
~A Wooden Fish Story~
Back in 2003 a few friends in San Francisco played a concert and called themselves the Wooden Fish Ensemble. A fish with eyes always open... the possibility, the ideal, of being always alert. Another possibility maybe more natural to us: to be, in a certain sense, disorganized. No leader, no director, a malleability of direction, sound, audience.
The first Wooden Fish project was in 2003 for the 65th birthday of the Japanese composer Yuji Takahashi at Old First Concerts in San Francisco and at Stanford University, a concert of music for koto, shamisen, shakuhachi and piano. In 2005 there was a concert at Old First and the Intercultural Institute of California with an anti-war piece for Korean instruments and dancer along with Japanese and Korean folksongs. The third project, in 2006: concerts by the visiting ensemble of Korean traditional musicians JeongGaAkHoe, again at the Asian Art Museum and Old First; in addition a concert/demonstration at the San Francisco Public Library. This concert included a 60-minute long piece from 15th century Korea (no one really knows how old this piece is, but the first written reference to it appears in an encyclopedia published in 1493) juxtaposed with Hyo-shin Na's newly written "All The Noises In The World".
Now, with the arrival of 2008, we begin rehearsals for concerts with the Korean piri virtuoso Chi-wan Park and changgu player Woong-sik Kim. Park wanted to include a piece that a young Korean composer had written for him, as well as a new piece by Hyo-shin Na for piri and piano (possibly the first piece ever written for this unlikely combination). It seems by now to have almost become a tradition to play old music along with new pieces, so Park and Kim will play both court music ("Chwita", "Sangyoungsan", Yeomyangchoon") and folk music ("Piri Sanio", "Taepyungso Poongnyu") of Korea. Finally, Park joins seven local musicians (two pianos, percussion, double bass, koto, oboe and narrator)in Frederic Rzewski's "Coming Together".
Sam Adams (Wooden Fish Ensemble)
Sam is a senior at Stanford University, studies composition with Mark Applebaum and piano performance with Thomas Schultz. While a fulltime student at Stanford, Sam Adams also works as a freelance jazz artist, performing regularly throughout the West Coast at venues such as the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, and the Jazz school in Berkeley and at events such as the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival.
Sam is the recipient of numerous prestigious national awards, such as the Downbeat Award for Outstanding Performance (2005), The Stanford Jazz Workshop Scholarship for Outstanding Musicianship (2003), 2nd place in the US Open Piano Concerto Competition (2001), and the California Governor's Award for Achievements in the Arts (2003).
Sam has worked and performed with the likes of Miguel Zenon, Paul Dresher, Robert Hurst, Sharon Mann, James "Chip" Brimhall, Michelle Burr, Jean-Claude Risset, Mack McCray, Mos Def, and the Roots.
Kyle Bruckmann (Wooden Fish Ensemble)
Kyle Bruckmann's creative work spans a dizzying aesthetic range, from a traditional Western classical foundation into genre-bending gray areas encompassing free jazz, electronic music and post-punk rock. International touring and appearances on more than 30 recordings have led to his recognition as "a modern day renaissance musician" and "a seasoned improviser with impressive extended technique and peculiar artistic flair." Long-term affiliations include the electroacoustic duo EKG and the experimental "rock" monstrosity Lozenge. Bruckmann's quintet Wrack performs original compositions drawing equally from the traditions of contemporary jazz and classical modernism, cultivating an "ability to combine turned-up flame with clear-headed attention to texture and space." As a member of the Bay Area new music collective sfSound, he has performed works by composers including Andriessen, Berio, Braxton, Cage, Carter, Feldman, Penderecki, Sciarrino, Stockhausen, Varese, Webern, and Xenakis.
Since moving to San Francisco in 2003, he has performed with the SFSO, Quinteto Latino, and regional orchestras throughout the Bay Area while becoming firmly enmeshed in the vibrant local improvised music community; current working groups include Shudder (with Lance Grabmiller and Phillip Greenlief) and Pink Mountain (an outrock band with Sam Coomes, Gino Robair, Scott Rosenberg, and John Shiurba). From1996 until his westward relocation, he was a fixture in multiple sectors of Chicago's thriving experimental music scene.
Bruckmann was born in 1971 in Danbury, CT. He earned undergraduate degrees in music and psychology at Rice University in Houston, studying oboe with Robert Atherholt, serving as music director of campus radio station KTRU, and achieving academic distinction as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his Masters degree in 1996 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he studied oboe performance with Harry Sargous and contemporary improvisation with Ed Sarath.
Shoko Hikage (Wooden Fish Ensemble)
Shoko began her koto playing at the age of three, studying with Chizuga Kimura of the Ikuta-ryu Sokyoku Seigen Kai. With this foundation in Japanese traditional music, Shoko has expanded the repertoire and performance of the koto by incorporating components of Korean and Western experimental music. She has recorded extensively, both in her native country and in the US. She currently resides in San Francisco, where she keeps a busy schedule of teaching and performing.
Thomas Schultz (Wooden Fish Ensemble)
Thomas has established an international reputation both as an interpreter of music from the classical tradition‚ particularly Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt, and as one of the leading exponents of the music of our time. Among his recent engagements are solo recitals in New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Ghent, Seoul, Taipei and Kyoto, and at the Schoenberg Festival in Vienna. He has also appeared as a soloist at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, and in chamber music performances with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Da Camera Society of Houston, Robert Craft‚ 20th Century Classics Ensemble and the St. Lawrence String Quartet.
His recitals are notable for programming that celebrates the continuing vitality of the piano repertoire, juxtaposing the old and the new or focusing solely on new works. He has worked closely with such eminent composers as Cage, Feldman, Wolff, Rzewski, Earle Brown, Jonathan Harvey and Elliott Carter.
Since 2002, Schultz has included in his recitals works written especially for him by Frederic Rzewski (The Babble, 2003), Christian Wolff (Touch, 2002; Long Piano, 2005), Hyo-shin Na (Rain Study, 1999; Walking, Walking, 2003), Walter Zimmermann (AIMIDE, 2001/02), Boudewijn Buckinx (The Floating World, 2004) and Yuji Takahashi (For Thomas Schultz, 2001).
His recording of Stravinsky's Concerto for Two Solo Pianos is on the MusicMasters label; he can be heard in chamber works of Earle Brown on a Newport Classics recording and his recordings of works by the Korean composer Hyo-shin Na on CDs from the Seoul and TopArt labels have received special recognition.
Schultz's musical studies were with John Perry, Leonard Stein and Philip Lillestol. He has been a member of the piano faculty at StanfordUniversity since 1994.
John Smalley (Wooden Fish Ensemble)
John is a native of San Francisco. He received his B.A. in Classics from Santa Clara University and is completing a doctorate in Historical Musicology at Columbia University. He studied piano with Thomas Schultz, William Corbett-Jones, and Janis Mercer, and voice with Dorothy Barnhouse. As a vocal soloist, he has performed in various early and new music ensembles in San Francisco and New York and will be performing later this year in concerts devoted to the music of Mahler, Schumann, Hans Eisler, and John Cage. He is currently researching the relationship of Cage's music to the Bauhaus and Dada visual art movements.
Mark Veregge (Wooden Fish Ensemble)
Mark received his Bachelor’s of Music degree from San Jose State University, and his Master’s of Music at The Juilliard School in New York City. He has performed with the Caracas Philharmonic, Mexico City Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Jose Symphony, Opera San Jose, California Symphony and numerous other regional orchestras. Mr. Veregge has also been active in chamber music performances with Earplay, Composer's Inc., the Other Minds Festival, San Francisco Contemporary Players and other Bay Area ensembles. He currently teaches percussion at Stanford University, as well as, general music classes at Los Alamitos Elementary in San Jose where he resides with his wife and three children.
Andrew Zhou (Wooden Fish Ensemble)
Andrew is a junior at Stanford University majoring in Music and International Relations, with a minor in Modern Languages. Currently a student of Thomas Schultz, his musical activities include solo performance, chamber collaborations, composing, and teaching. His previous encounter with Rzewski was in performing "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues" from his "North American Ballads" in 2006. With the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, he will be performing Stravinsky's "Symphony in Three Movements" this spring. With his advisor Talya Berger, he is to complete a research project involving the creation of a new notation method for music. He will be studying in Berlin in the spring and summer of 2008.
Kathleen Purcell
Kathleen Purcell has played Principal Flute under the batons of Leopold Stokowski’s associate conductor Maurice Dubonnet, choral and orchestral conductor Robert Shaw, and Richard Woitach of the Metropolitan Opera. Ms. Purcell has toured Europe as Principal Flutist and soloist with the United States Honor Band, and has toured the U.S. as Principal Flutist with the Idaho Bicentennial Orchestra as part of the United States Bicentennial Celebration. She holds a Bachelors degree in Flute Performance from the Lionel Hampton School of Music, where she assisted National Flute Association President Richard Hahn in the construction of historical flutes, and a Masters degree in Flute Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied with Robert Cole while developing a new course on flute performance. Additionally, Ms. Purcell has played with the Universtiy of Idaho Facutly Quintet, was Principal Flutist with the Washington Idaho Orchestra, and has coached with Samuel Baron, Julius Baker and Jean-Pierre Rampal. Today, she concertizes, plays with guitarist Mesut Ozgen in Duo Espressivo, and runs a flute studio in Santa Cruz.
Jennifer Cass
Jennifer Cass holds Master's degrees in both music and mathematics. She has performed with UCSC faculty and ensembles, New Music Works, Santa Cruz Chamber Players, Cabrillo Stage, and Ensemble Monterey and with local symphonies. Jennifer teaches mathematics at Cabrillo College in her spare time.
Rebecca Jackson
A native of California, Rebecca Jackson has performed throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Romania, South Korea, Japan, China, and Taiwan. Ms.Jackson is a graduate of the Juilliard School and UC Santa Cruz. She is a member of Vols String Quartet, Florida's Sarasota Opera Orchestra and regularly performs with the San Francisco Opera. Her most recent tour took her to perform at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Besides classical music, Ms. Jackson has performed with Eddie Daniels, Allen Vizzutti, Josh Groban and on stages such as Madison Square Garden. Founder of A Musical Gift, Rebecca Jackson originated this concert series, which to date, has raised $100,000. She pioneered a violin curriculum for Music Camp International and taught music to nearly 250 Ukrainian and Romanian children. In addition to music, Ms. Jackson runs marathons, salsa dances and served as Miss Santa Cruz County 2005.
Ariose Singers
Ariose Singers performs a varied repertoire of vocal music. We are located in Santa Cruz, California, drawing skilled singers from the community and nearby universities. Our repertoire focuses on master works for small groups from ancient to modern. Ariose was started in 2001 by Leta Miller of the University of California at Santa Cruz, and our director starting in the 2006 season is Michael McGushin. One of the original singers in Ariose, McGushin is known throughout the Santa Cruz community for his tireless work as a pianist, director, vocal coach, and composer for a variety of groups.
