The UW Wind Ensemble, Symphonic, and Alumni Bands present their spring quarter concert, performing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and the world premiere of a new trumpet concerto by faculty composer Huck Hodge. With Robin McCabe, piano, and David Gordon, trumpet.
Artist Bios
Robin McCabe, piano
Celebrated American pianist Robin McCabe has established herself as one of America’s most communicative and persuasive artists. McCabe’s involvement and musical sensibilities have delighted audiences across the United States, Europe, Canada and in seven concert tours of the Far East. The United States Department of State sponsored her two South American tours, which were triumphs both artistically and diplomatically.
As noted by the New York Times, “What Ms. McCabe has that raises her playing to such a special level is a strong lyric instinct and confidence in its ability to reach and touch the listener.” The Tokyo Press declared her a “pianistic powerhouse,” and a reviewer in Prague declared, “Her musicianship is a magnet for the listener.” Richard Dyer, the eminent critic of the Boston Globe: ‘Her brilliant, natural piano playing shows as much independence of mind as of fingers.”
Her recordings have received universal acclaim. Her debut album for Vanguard Records featured the premiere recording of Guido Agosti transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. Critics praised it as “mightily impressive.” Stereo Review described her disc of Bartok as “all that we have come to expect from this artist, a first-rate performance!” She was commissioned to record four albums for the award-winning company Grammofon AB BIS in Stockholm, which remain distributed internationally, including the CD “Robin McCabe Plays Liszt,” (AB BIS No. 185).
McCabe, earned her bachelor of music degree summa cum laude at the University of Washington School of Music, where she studied with Béla 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, a position she held until 2009. She has held a Ruth Sutton Waters Professorship and a Donald Petersen Professorship in the School of Music. In addition, McCabe is a dedicated arts ambassador and advocate for arts audience development, frequently addressing arts organizations across the country. With colleague Craig Sheppard, she has launched the highly successful Seattle Piano Institute, an intense summer “immersion experience” for gifted and aspiring classical pianists that enjoyed its sixth session in 2015. Also In 2015, McCabe performed and recorded the complete cycle of Beethoven’s ten sonatas for violin and piano, with colleague Maria Larionoff.
The winner of numerous prizes and awards, including the International Concert Artists Guild Competition and a Rockefeller Foundation grant, McCabe was the subject of a lengthy New Yorker magazine profile, “Pianist’s Progress,” later expanded into a book of the same title.
In 1995 McCabe presented the annual faculty lecture — a concert with commentary — at the University of Washington. She is the first professor of music in the history of the University to be awarded this lectureship. Seattle magazine selected McCabe as one of 17 current and past University of Washington professors who have had an impact on life in the Pacific Northwest. In 2005, to celebrate its 100th year as an institution, The Juilliard School selected McCabe as one of 100 alumni from 20,000 currently living to be profiled in its centenary publication recognizing distinction and accomplishments in the international world of music, dance, and theater. Today she is a highly- sought teacher at the University of Washington, with students from around the world seeking admission to her studio.
McCabe performs regularly throughout the United States, and in September of 2011 she made her first visit to South Korea. In October of 2015 McCabe gave solo recitals in Beijing, and master classes at the International Beijing Piano Festival. She appears often as an invited jurist for international piano competitions, most recently in New Orleans, San Antonio, and Vancouver, Canada. In June of 2016 she is invited to serve on the jury of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition.
David Gordon, trumpet
David Gordon, whose playing has been described as “spectacular” by The Chicago Tribune, is Principal Trumpet of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Opera and the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, Chicago. Prior to his appointment in Seattle, he was Principal Trumpet of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.
As a guest artist, he has performed, recorded and toured as Principal Trumpet of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France, and has performed as Principal Trumpet of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. As soloist, David has appeared with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra (with whom he performed as soloist every season of his tenure), the National Repertory Orchestra, and the Lake George Chamber Orchestra. In an orchestral context, he has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the Savannah Symphony Orchestra, and has held the position of Principal Trumpet with the Jupiter Symphony and the Prometheus Chamber Orchestra.
Mr. Gordon has toured extensively in Europe, North America and South America, and has performed in such prestigious festivals as Tanglewood, Lucerne and Schleswig-Holstein. As a chamber musician, he has performed with Music of Remembrance, Seattle Chamber Players and as a member of the Seattle Symphony Chamber Series, among others. In addition to his performance activities, he records frequently for radio, television, and film. A committed educator, David is a faculty member at the University of Washington, and regularly presents master classes and coachings nationwide.
A native of Narragansett, RI, David Gordon was educated at Columbia University, from which he holds a degree in philosophy, and The Juilliard School. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Seattle Symphony Principal Harp Valerie Muzzolini Gordon, daughter Anaïs, and English bulldog Massimo.
Huck Hodge, composer
Huck Hodge writes music that explores the embodied poetics of organized sound, perceptual illusion and the threshold between design and intuition. His output is diverse and comprises a wide range of symphonic, chamber, dance and multimedia works. A composer of “harmonically fresh work", "full of both sparkle and thunder” (New York Times), his music has been praised for its “immediate impact” (Chicago Tribune), its "clever, attractive, streamlined" qualities (NRC Handelsblad, Amsterdam) and its ability to "conjure up worlds of musical magic” with “power and charisma" (Gramophone Magazine, London).
Hodge has won an extensive array of national and international awards including the Rome Prize, the Gaudeamus Prize, the ISCM League of Composers Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Aaron Copland Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation as well as awards from ASCAP, New Music USA and the Concorso Franco Donatoni in Italy. Among his many commissions are those from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Barlow Endowment, Music at the Anthology, the American Composers Forum, the American Academy in Rome, Musik der Jahrhunderte (Germany), the National Concert Hall of Taiwan, the government of the Netherlands and the Rondò Festival / Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung (Italy/Germany).
His musical collaborations include those with members of Ensemble Modern and the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestra of the League of Composers and the ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble with performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and at numerous major festivals throughout the world — the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Amsterdam), MaerzMusik (Berlin), Shanghai New Music Week, ISCM World Music Days, Laboratoire Instrumentelle Européen (Paris/Amsterdam), Nuova Consonanza (Rome), Contempuls (Prague), Time of Music (Musiikin Aika, Finland), Daegu International (대구국제현대음악제, South Korea), Contempo (Chicago), MATA Festival (New York). His chamber music has been premiered, performed and recorded by a long list of notable soloists and ensembles such as the Afiara, Daedalus, JACK and Pacifica string quartets, the Aleph, Argento, Dal Niente, Divertimento, SurPlus and Talea ensembles, the Taipei Chamber Singers, Volti, Tony Arnold and Majella Stockhausen. Hodge has been featured in numerous international radio and television broadcasts (among them, Radio Netherlands, WNYC, WQXR, Taiwan Broadcasting System, Australian Broadcasting Corporation). His published music is licensed and distributed by Alexander Street Press. Recordings of his music appear on the New World and Albany record labels.
In addition to serving as Associate Professor and Chair of Composition in the School of Music, Hodge is Director of the Seattle Symphony's Merriman Family Young Composers Workshop. Before joining the University of Washington, he taught Compositon at Columbia University in New York City, where he earned his MA and DMA studying with Tristan Murail and Fred Lerdahl. Prior to this, he studied Music Theory and Computer Music at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, where his teachers included Georg Wötzer and Marco Stroppa. During this time, his studies were supported with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).
Director Bios
Timothy Salzman, Wind Ensemble
Timothy Salzman is in his twenty-ninth year at the University of Washington where he serves as Professor of Music/Director of Concert Bands, is conductor of the University Wind Ensemble and teaches students enrolled in the graduate instrumental conducting program. Former students from the University of Washington occupy positions at numerous institutions of higher education and public schools throughout the United States. Prior to his appointment at the UW he served for four years as Director of Bands at Montana State University where he founded the MSU Wind Ensemble. From 1978 to 1983 he was band director in the Herscher, Illinois, public school system where the band program received several regional and national awards in solo/ensemble, concert and marching band competition. Professor Salzman holds degrees from Wheaton (IL) College (Bachelor of Music Education), and Northern Illinois University (Master of Music in low brass performance), and studied privately with Arnold Jacobs, former tubist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has numerous publications for bands with the C. L. Barnhouse, Arranger's Publications, Columbia Pictures, Hal Leonard Publishing and Nihon Pals publishing companies, and has served on the staff of new music reviews for The Instrumentalist magazine. Professor Salzman has been a conductor, adjudicator or arranger for bands throughout the United States and in Canada, England, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Russia, Singapore, the Philippines, China, and Japan, a country he has visited twenty-one times. Recently he has frequently travelled to Beijing where he served as visiting professor at the China Conservatory, conducted the People's Liberation Army Band in two concerts (2009/10), and has given master classes for numerous wind bands including a concert appearance at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Tianenmen Square with the Beijing Wind Orchestra, the first professional wind ensemble in Beijing. He also adjudicated the Singapore Youth Festival National Concert Band Championships twice in the past four years. Professor Salzman is compiling editor and co-author (with several current and former UW graduate students) of A Composer's Insight: Thoughts, Analysis and Commentary on Contemporary Masterpieces for Wind Band, a five-volume series of books on contemporary wind band composers published by Meredith Music Publications, a subsidiary of the Hal Leonard Corporation. He is an elected member of the American Bandmasters Association and is a past president of the Northwest Division of the College Band Directors National Association.
Steven Morrison, Symphonic Band
Steven Morrison is Professor and Chair of Music Education at the University of Washington. An instrumental music specialist, Professor Morrison teaches courses in music education, music psychology, and research methodology and conducts the UW Symphonic Band. He has taught at the elementary, junior high and senior high levels in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Louisiana and has conducted and arranged for bands, orchestras, and chamber groups throughout the United States.
Dr. Morrison is director of the Laboratory for Music Cognition, Culture and Learning investigating neurological responses to music listening, perceptual and performance aspects of pitch-matching and intonation, and use of expressive gesture and modeling in ensemble teaching. His research also includes music preference and the variability of musical responses across diverse cultural contexts.
Prior to joining the UW faculty, Morrison served as Lecturer of Fine Arts at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He has spoken and presented research throughout the United States, as well as in Australia, China, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Italy, the Netherlands, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. During 2009 he served as a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and as a Visiting Scholar in the Center for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge.
Morrison’s articles have appeared in Music Educators Journal, Journal of Research in Music Education, Bulletin for the Council of Research in Music Education, Music Perception, Frontiers in Psychology, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, Missouri Journal of Research in Music Education, Southwestern Musician, and Southern Folklore. Along with collaborator Steven M. Demorest, his research into music and brain function has appeared in Neuroimage, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Progress in Brain Research and The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
He is also a contributing author to The Science and Psychology of Music Performance, published by Oxford University Press, the new Oxford Handbook of Music Education, the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Cultural Neuroscience and the text Musician and Teacher: An Orientation to Music Education, authored by UW colleague Patricia Shehan Campbell and published by W.W. Norton.
Morrison is Editor of the Journal of Research in Music Education for which he also served on the editorial board. He is also on the editorial boards of Reviews of Research in Human Learning and Music and the Asia-Pacific Journal for Arts Education. Morrison has served on the executive board of the Society for Research in Music Education and is currently a member of the advisory board for the Asia-Pacific Symposium on Music Education Research. He is past University Curriculum Chair for the Washington Music Educators Association and an honorary member of the Gamma chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi.
He holds a B.M. from Northwestern University, an M.M. from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University.