The MMDG Music Ensemble
formed in 1996, performs with the Dance Group at home and on tour and has become integral to the company’s creative life. The core group, supplemented by musicians from a large roster of regular guests, has helped the Dance Group achieve an unprecedented streak of close to eight hundred performances with live music. The Ensemble’s repertory ranges from 17th-century works by John Wilson and Henry Purcell to more recent scores by Lou Harrison and Henry Cowell. The Ensemble also presents concerts at the Mark Morris Dance Center and other venues, and participates in the Mark Morris Dance, Music and Literacy Project in the New York City public school system.
Steven Beck
(piano) was born in 1978 and is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where his teachers were Seymour Lipkin and Peter Serkin. He made his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra and toured Japan as a soloist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble. Other orchestras with which he has appeared include the New Juilliard Ensemble (under David Robertson), Sequitur, and the Virginia Symphony. He is an Artist Presenter and frequent performer of Bargemusic. Beck has worked with Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, and George Perle, and has appeared with ensembles such as Speculum Musicae, Sospeso, Friends and Enemies of New Music, and Counterinduction, and is also a member of the notorious Knights of the Many-Sided Table. His recordings are on the Albany, Monument, and Annemarie Classics labels. He has played with the MMDG Music Ensemble since 2004.
Thomas Cooley
(tenor) is a singer of great versatility, expressiveness, power and virtuosity. His repertoire ranges across more than four centuries, encompassing the early masters such as Monteverdi, Handel, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as well as works by Romantic and 20th-century and contemporary composers including Belioz, Mendelssohn, Britten, Elgar and Henze. Recent appearances include the Mϋncher Motettenchor in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mendelssohn’s Erste Walpurgisnacht, and in Bremen, performing Britten’s War Requiem. Debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony and Kansas City Symphony, with Nicholas McGegan, and the Carmel Bach Festival.
Jennifer Curtis
(violin), a graduate of the Juilliard School, has performed at Carnegie Hall's Weil Recital Hall, and has performed Dutilleux’s violin concert l’Arbre des Songes, in Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard orchestra. The New York Times recognized Curtis’s “fine solos” from her performance as concert master of the Juilliard Orchestra for Mahler’s 9th Symphony in Avery Fisher Hall. She is also a composer and her music has been performed throughout the US, Central America and Europe. Her recent endeavor, Tres Americas Project, began with a tour in Panama, where Curtis performed several of her own works for violin, mandolin, guitar and vocals. In 2000-2001 Curtis was the percussionist for Strong Current Dance Company in San Francisco, California. She first appeared with the MMDG Music Ensemble in 2006.
Colin Fowler
(piano) is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School. He has performed and recorded throughout the world with numerous soloists and ensembles including Deborah Voigt, the American Brass Quintet, James Galway, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In addition to performing and conducting numerous Broadway shows, Mr. Fowler has been a professor at NYU and Nyack College. He began collaborating with MMDG in 2006.
Katherine Growdon
(mezzo-soprano) began singing with the Mark Morris Dance Group as a Tanglewood fellow in 2008. The NY Times praised her recent performance as Dido and Sorceress with the company as “incisively authoritative.” She has been described as a “fiery singing actress,” possessing a “rich, caramel tone” (San Francisco Classical Voice). A skilled performer in opera, song, and oratorio, Katherine has appeared with companies on both coasts including Emmanuel Music, the American Bach Soloists, the Boston Pops, the San Francisco Bach Choir, San Francisco Lyric Opera, Portland Opera, and Berkeley Opera. She has been granted fellowships to Tanglewood, the Carmel Bach Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival. Katherine received her MM from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Oberlin College.
Omar Chen Guey
(violin) has performed as soloist with most major orchestras in Brazil, including the Sao Paulo and Brazilian Symphony, as well as Manhattan School, Stony Brook and Maidstone Symphony Orchestras. He is a prize winner at both Tibor Varga and Lipizer International Violin Competitions and has collaborated with Lynn Harrell, Ani Kavafian, David Finckel, Lawrence Dutton, and Colin Carr. He holds a Doctorate degree from the Stony Brook University and a Master from Juilliard. He was assistant concertmaster of the Orquestra de la Comunidad Valenciana, Spain, directed by Lorin Maazel. He’s recorded for Decca, Nagan, Paulinas labels.
Andrew Janss
(cello) has been hailed by the New York Times for his "glowing tone", "insightful musicianship", and "sumptuous elegance”. He has been featured at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Louvre Museum. Mr. Janss has collaborated in concert with Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Lynn Harrell, Leon Fleisher, Gary Hoffman, David Shifrin, and members of the Emerson, Guarneri, Juilliard, and Takacs Quartets. From 2007-10, Mr. Janss was a resident artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has performed at Ravinia, Music@Menlo, La Jolla Summerfest, and the Marlboro Music Festival. During 2007-08, Mr. Janss was Visiting-Artist-in-Residence at SUNY StonyBrook. He is the youngest faculty member in the history of the School of Music.
Christopher Johnstone
(baritone) is a second-year Artist Diploma student at Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music (CCM). He has performed the roles of Belcore in L’Elisir d’amore, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus, and Captain Walker in The Who’s Tommy!, among others. Christopher earned his B.M. from Arizona State University and his M.M. from California State University, Long Beach. He has sung with Lyric Opera San Diego, Opera Pacific, Glimmerglass Opera, Tanglewood Music Center, the Modesto Symphony and the Long Beach Symphony. Last summer he performed the role of the Royal Herald in Don Carlo with James Levine and began his collaboration with MMDG singing Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas at Tanglewood.
Michael Kelly
(vocalist) has been captivating audiences with exquisite musicality and a voice of arresting beauty, establishing himself as one of his generation's finest artists. This year’s winner of the Joy In Singing Competition and recipient of the "Debut Artist" recital at Merkin Hall in Fall 2011, Kelly was recently heard in Acis and Galatea with Boston Early Music Festival, as Aeneas in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and in recitals at New York's Trinity Church and with his group SongFusion. Previous engagements have included Purcell's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day with Sacred Music in a Sacred Space in New York, Messiah with Monmouth Civic Chorus, and The Secret Agent by Michael Dellaira with the Center for Contemporary Music. Kelly has performed with Opernhaus Zurich, Chicago Opera Theatre, Gotham Chamber Opera, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Tanglewood, and has been presented in recitals in New York, Houston, Chicago, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Corsica. He holds a Master's degree from The Juilliard School.
Wolfram Koessel
(cello) Since moving to New York in 1991 cellist Wolfram Koessel has established himself as a much sought after chamber musician, soloist, recording artist and contractor in the New York music scene. He has performed with MMDG since 1999 and was music director from 2004-2008. In 2006 Mr. Koessel joined the world renowned American String Quartet, with whom he performs in the foremost concert halls throughout the world, collaborating frequently with today's leading artists. Mr. Koessel appears with a wide range of ensembles and groups, most notably and frequently with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He has supervised and performed music for Warner Brothers, American Express, and many independent film companies besides organizing hundreds of classical orchestra and chamber music concerts during the last decade in NYC. He is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and the Aspen Music Festival. Mr. Koessel resides with his wife, pianist and writer J. Mae Barizo, in Manhattan.
Philip Kramp
(viola), originally from Bloomington, IL, graduated in 2009 from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Joseph DePasquale and Michael Tree. Philip studied chamber music with Steve Tenenbom, and Pam Frank and members of the Guarneri String Quartet. While at Curtis, Phil joined the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia under the direction of Ignat Solzenitsyn, and he continues to perform with this group. Phil is also a substitute violist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. Phil has been a guest violist with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO). He has performed chamber music with Philip Setzer, Gil Kalish, Peter Wiley, Ida Kavafian, Soovin Kim, Michael Tree, Miriam Fried and many more. Philip has participated in many chamber music festivals, including Marlboro, Caramoor, Yellow Barn, Kneisel Hall, Music From Angel Fire, and Sarasota. Phil will appear on Musicians From Marlboro tours in 2011 and 2012. Philip recently received Fourth Prize at the 2010 Irving Klein International String Competition. Philip enjoys reading and exercising in his free time.
Jesse Mills
(violin) graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School in 2001. He has performed as soloist with the Juilliard Pre-College Chamber Orchestra, the Teatro Argentino Orchestra in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the New Jersey Symphony, the Sarah Lawrence College Symphony, the Plainfield Symphony, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and Aspen Music Festival’s Sinfonia Orchestra as winner of the Festival’s E. Nakamichi Violin Concerto Competition. Mills received an Aspen Music Festival String Fellowship in 1997. As a chamber musician Mills has performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall and Bargemusic, the Rising Stars series at Caramoor, the Ravinia Festival’s Bennett-Gordon Hall, and at the Marlboro Music Festival. He has performed chamber music with such artists as Richard Goode, David Soyer, Donald Weilerstein, Anton Kuerti, Peter Wiley, Miriam Fried, Claude Frank, and Fred Sherry. He was a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003. Currently, Mills is a member of Nurse Kaya, an ensemble comprised of string quartet plus bass and drums which exclusively plays compositions written by its members. Mills is also a member of the Denali Trio, with cellist Sarah Carter and pianist Ashley Wass. He first performed with the MMDG Music Ensemble in 2006.
Ben Russell
(violin) is a founding member of the NYC-based ensemble, the Bryant Park Quartet. This energetic and virtuosic string quartet tours throughout the country performing recitals, giving presentations, and coaching young artists in public schools and universities. The quartet received a Chamber Music America Residency Partnership Program grant in 2008 and is currently Artists in Residence at the Stony Brook Pre-College Division. Since 2008, Ben has been a member of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. This ensemble performs a wide variety of contemporary music – from cutting edge works by living composers to avant-garde indie rock music. This broad spectrum allows the ensemble to perform in various venues such as Carnegie Hall and Le Poisson Rouge. In New York City, Ben collaborates with top-notch ensembles such as the Wordless Music Orchestra and the String Orchestra of New York City. For the past 5 years, Ben has held the position of Principal 2nd Violin in the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Maine.
Stefan Schatz
(percussion) is a 1995 graduate of New York's prestigious New School Jazz and Contemporary Music Program, with degrees in Performance and Creative Writing. He has performed with some of the finest names in jazz, including Dakota Staton, Jon Hendricks, Milt Hinton, Mark Turner, Ray Bryant, and Buster Brown. As a member of The Glenn Miller Orchestra and an accompanist for the dance troupe Manhattan Tap, Stefan toured extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Central and South America, and Europe. In 1998, he was featured in a jazz trio and traveled to over thirty different countries on the Crystal Symphony World Cruise. Stefan has studied with Vernel Fournier, Marvin "Bugaloo" Smith, Kenny Washington, Lewis Nash, and Bernard Purdie.
Yegor Shevtsov
(piano) is based in New York and has performed at such venues as Weill Recital Hall, where he presented a debut solo recital, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, Miller Theatre, the Whitney Museum and Seiji Osawa Hall at Tanglewood. Yegor has participated in several festivals, notably in 2006 at Kilkenny Arts Festival in Ireland as a guest artist, at Jacob's Pillow with MMDG in 2007 and at Tanglewood in 2007 and 2008. Originally born in Lviv, Ukraine, he is now a Doctoral candidate in the studio of Nina Svetlanova at the Manhattan School of Music, where he is also the recipient of the Pablo Casals Award for musical and human endeavor.
Jessica Troy
(viola), a native New Yorker, has performed with the Mark Morris Dance Group Music Ensemble since 1998, touring extensively, from Moscow, Idaho to Moscow, Russia. On the baroque viola she performs with the Dodd String Quartet, Four Nations Ensemble, and Trinity Baroque Orchestra, is the principal violist of the Grand Tour Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, and the Washington National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, and appeared with Renee Fleming on the David Letterman Show. She is a member of both the Brooklyn and Westchester Philharmonics, and performs frequently with many other area ensembles, including the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the New York City Opera. She has recorded quartet parts for Ani DiFranco and Lou Reed, and with her cohorts from those projects performed on screen, with David Byrne, in a movie starring Sean Penn scheduled for release in summer 2011. A participant at many illustrious music festivals, including Prussia Cove and Marlboro, she can be heard on the latter's 50th anniversary CD in Gyorgy Kurtag's Microludes for string quartet, which she prepared with the composer.
Georgy Valtchev
(violin) was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, began his violin studies at the age of six and gave his first performance with orchestra six years later at the Music Academy of his native city. He received his basic music education first at the Plovdiv Music School, and then at the State Music School "Lubomir Pipkov", Sofia as a student of Boyanka Shopova, Vlado Vladigerov, Mitcho Dimitrov and Prof. Dora Ivanova. At age sixteen, he won the Grand Prize and the Special Prize at the "Kocian" International Competition in the then Czechoslovakia. Georgy Valtchev came to the United States as a scholarship student of Dorothy Delay and Masao Kawasaki at The Juilliard School in New York, where he earned his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees. Mr. Valtchev has recorded a CD for the Gega label featuring solo and chamber music works by composer Victoria Bond. He has made numerous recordings for the Bulgarian National Radio and has appeared in live broadcasts of the Bulgarian National Radio and Television and WFMT Chicago.
Yulia Van Doren
(soprano) was born in Moscow and raised in an eclectic, music-filled household where she and her seven younger siblings were taught voice and piano by her Russian mother and American jazz pianist father. While still an undergraduate at the New England Conservatory she was awarded the grand prize in the International JS Bach Vocal Competition, third prize in the American Bach Soloists' Competition and recorded the role of Ceres in the Boston Early Music Festival’s world-premiere recording of the Lully opera, Thésée. In 2007, Yulia made several important debuts, including her professional operatic debut as Poppea in L’Icoronazione di Poppea. Other debuts included Carnegie Hall, the Bach Festival of Philadelphia, the Boston Early Music Festival, and a summer of performances at Tanglewood, where as a vocal fellow she sang Belinda Morris' Dido and Aeneas and performed in a concert of opera scenes coached by Maestro James Levine. During the 2007-08 season Ms. Van Doren appears in concert with ensemble Teatro Lirico, the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Portland Baroque Orchestra (Messiah), American Bach Soloists’ (Weilnacht’s Oratorium), Grace Church Choral Society, NYC (Mass in c minor), and Berkshire Bach Society (Chandos Anthems). Yulia is a second-year MM candidate at Bard College in a new graduate vocal program directed by soprano Dawn Upshaw. She is a 2007 recipient of the prestigious Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
Jamie Van Eyck
(mezzo-soprano) originally from Wisconsin, earned a B.M. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a M.M. from the New England Conservatory of Music. Van Eyck has performed principal roles with Utah Opera, Opera Boston, Tanglewood Music Center, Brecard Music Center, and the New England Conservatory Opera Theater. She spent two seasons as a Young Artist with the Utah Symphony and Opera, and two summers as a Vocal Fellow with the Tanglewood Music Center. At Tanglewood, she sang the role of Mama in the U.S. stage premiere of Elliott Carter's opera, What Next, under the baton of James Levine. Van Eyck performed with the Utah Opera to sing Flora in La Traviata and Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor, and she spent the summer of 2007 as a member of the Apprentice Singer Program with the Santa Fe Opera. In addition, she will perform and record songs of composer George Crumb with Bridge Records (New York) and Orchestra 2001 of Philadelphia.
Michi Wiancko
Described in Gramophone Magazine as an "alluring soloist [with] heightened expressive and violinistic gifts," violinist Michi Wiancko has performed with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philarmonic, and in recital and chamber appearances across the nation. Michi made her New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall after winning the 2002 Concert Artists Guild International Competition. She was featured as an "Artist to Watch" on the cover of the January 2007 issue of SYMPHONY Magazine. She has toured extensively throughout the country as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician, and has appeared in venues such as the Kennedy Center, Sydney Opera House, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery, Library of Congress, New YorkTown Hall, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and numerous others. Michi has toured with Musicians from Marlboro as well as the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. In March 2007 she gave the world premiere of a concerto written for her by Margaret Brouwer, which she performed with Cleveland’s CityMusic Orchestra. Michi is also the singer and songwriter for her project called Kono Michi, comprised of string quartet, upright bass and drums. Kono Michi has performed in Merkin Hall, Symphony Space’s Thalia Theater, Brooklyn’s BAM Café and Barbes, and the World Café Live in Philadelphia. Her self-produced debut album of original music called “9 Death Haiku” has recently been released. A native of Southern California, Michi began her violin studies at the age of 3. She studied with Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and completed her Master's degree at The Juilliard School, working with Robert Mann.