Beloved Quartets: A Benefit Concert featuring Theodore Buchholz, Molly Gebrian, Timothy Kantor, Kelsey Nussbaum, and more!
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Holsclaw Hall, 7:00 p.m.
Suggested Donation $25 to benefit the University of Arizona String Project
The outstanding roster of performers includes faculty artists; Timothy Kantor, violin; Molly Gebrian, viola; Theodore Buchholz, cello; and Kelsey Nussbaum, bass (this is the first time these faculty members have shared the stage), and a few exceptionally talented university student performers. The program includes beloved works including Dvorak’s American Quartet, Cole Porter’s Night and Day for String Quartet, George Walker’s Lyric Piece, and much more! Don’t miss this special event.
Suggested Donation $25
to benefit the University of Arizona String Project
- Click the “GIVE NOW” button which will take you to an online donation form.
- Designate that your gift goes to the “STRING PROJECT” in the field that asks you to “designate your gift to a specific area or another fund, tell us more.”
- Bring a check and hand it to the usher at the concert door.
- Payee: “THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA”
- Memo: “STRING PROJECT”
About the Cause, the UA String Project:
UASP is a special place, designed to inspire and build creativity among young musicians and to cultivate a learning environment that enables the development of future string teachers. 75 community K-12 students receive accessible private lessons and ensemble training, future teachers gain valuable teaching experience. The UASP offers scholarships to community children who would otherwise not have access to private music lessons.
About the Faculty Artists
Critically acclaimed for his “eloquent and expressive artistry,” Theodore Buchholz has been lauded as a “virtuosic cellist” with a “warm beautiful sound.” He has performed in prominent venues from New York’s Lincoln Center to international halls in Tokyo, and in countless venues across the United States. His performances and recordings have aired on classical radio stations around the world. He performs on an exceptional cello made in 1877 by Charles Mennégand.
Buchholz’s album Afterglow: The Forgotten Works for Cello and Piano by Henry Hadley was released by Centaur Records in 2020. Earning the coveted five-star rating, Fanfare Magazine stated “Afterglow displays the composer’s rich harmonic language, and allows Buchholz to show off his impeccable phrasing during which he caresses each note. Its turns of phrase could simply not be more beautifully conceived and executed. Five stars: An exceptional recital of unjustly neglected music.” His recording of Hans Winterberg’s Cello Sonata was released under the Toccata label in 2018. Music for a Prince was released by Toccata Records in 2022, featuring the world premiere of works for cello by Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Bliss, and William Walton.
Dr. Buchholz’s current and former students perform in orchestras and chamber ensembles around the country and they teach in schools and private studios around the world. His students have received scholarships from competitive conservatories and have won awards in national chamber music and solo competitions. They have appeared on NPR’s From the Top, as soloists with orchestras, and at leading music festivals. Theodore Buchholz is the recipient of the Taubeneck Superior Teaching Award. In 2022, he received the Charles and Irene Putnam Award, the College’s most prestigious recognition of excellence in teaching.
A fervent believer in the power of music education to transform lives and communities, Dr. Buchholz launched the University of Arizona String Project in 2015. This program employs twelve university music majors and offers private lessons and ensemble rehearsals to 100 K-12 students. Through the endowment of a generous donor, this program enables free private lessons to community students who might otherwise have no exposure to music education. The String Project website is stringproject.music.arizona.edu.
As a nationally recognized researcher, Dr. Buchholz served as the Cello Forum Editor for the award-winning journal American String Teacher. He has been published in the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education and American String Teacher, and annually presents at national conferences. His current research is focused on pedagogy, leadership, and historical cello treatises.
A leader in music education, Buchholz served as President of the American String Teachers Association of Arizona. He is a member of The Recording Academy (the Grammy Awards). Buchholz is the Director of the Tucson Cello Congress which annually brings 100 cellists to the UA for a weekend of concerts and master classes. In 2018, he received the College of Fine Art’s Excellence in Fundraising Award.
During the summers Dr. Buchholz performs and teaches at the Killington Music Festival in Vermont (killingtonmusicfestival.org), and at the Zephyr Music Festival in Courmayeur, Italy (zephyrmusicfest.org).
He studied with Bonnie Hampton, Sadao Harada of the Tokyo String Quartet, Robert Jesselson, and Nathaniel Rosen.
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Violist Molly Gebrian has distinguished herself as an outstanding performer, teacher, and scholar throughout the US and Europe. Her love of contemporary music has led her to collaborate with many composers, often in premieres of works written for her. She has worked closely with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Pierre Boulez for performances at the Lucerne Festival and she spent the 2011/2012 academic year in Paris to undertake an intensive study of contemporary music with violist/composer Garth Knox. Her other principal teachers include Peter Slowik, Carol Rodland, and James Dunham. Molly completed her Doctor of Musical Arts in viola performance from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and also holds graduate degrees in viola performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, and Bachelors degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, in both viola performance and neuroscience. She served as the Assistant Director for two interdisciplinary conferences on music and the brain while at Rice, has published papers dealing with music and neuroscience in the Journal of the American Viola Society, Frontiers in Psychology, Flute Talk Magazine, and The Strad. Her background in neuroscience gives her unique insight into how the brain learns and how musicians can best use this information to their advantage in the practice room. Given this expertise, she is a frequent presenter on topics having to do with music and neuroscience at conferences and universities in the US and abroad. During the summer, she is on faculty at the National Music Festival and Montecito International Music Festival, and has also taught at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival. After teaching for five years at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, she joined the faculty at the Fred Fox School of Music at the University of Arizona in the fall of 2019. For more, please visit www.mollygebrian.com.
mgebrian@email.arizona.edu
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Violinist Timothy Kantor enjoys performing around the globe at some of the world’s greatest concert halls and chamber music series. As a member of the Afiara Quartet in Toronto, Mr. Kantor has performed hundreds of concerts and helped to develop several innovative projects. One of the quartet’s most recent projects, Spin Cycle with DJ Skratch Bastid, culminated with a Juno Award-nominated album and a solo performance with the Toronto Symphony. Collaborations include those with such varied artists as scratch DJ Kid Koala, Academy Award-nominated producer KK Barrett, and jazz virtuoso Uri Caine.
Before joining the Afiara Quartet, Mr. Kantor was concertmaster of the Evansville (Indiana) Philharmonic and a founding member of the Larchmere String Quartet, in residence at the University of Evansville. He has performed as a member of the Kuttner String Quartet in residence at Indiana University, the chamber music and Quartet in the Community residencies at the Banff Centre, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar. He has also performed chamber works with many of today’s leading musicians, including Joshua Bell, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Atar Arad, William Preucil, Alexander Kerr, and the Pacifica Quartet. Mr. Kantor has been featured as an artist on American Public Media’s “Performance Today”, CBC Radio, and local classical radio stations in both Cleveland and Toronto. He is devoted to the performance of new music and has participated as soloist, concertmaster and chamber musician with the new music ensembles at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Indiana University.
A dedicated teacher and coach, Mr. Kantor is the Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Arizona’s Fred Fox School of Music. Mr. Kantor also teaches at the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont and the Programa Gabriel del Orbe in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). Mr. Kantor graduated with honors from Bowdoin College, earned a Master of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and pursued doctoral studies at Indiana University. His former teachers include Jaime Laredo, Paul Kantor, Stephen Kecskemethy, Andrew Jennings, and Mark Kaplan. Off the clock, Mr. Kantor enjoys auto racing and basketball.
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Dr. Kelsey Nussbaum joined the faculty of University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music as an Assistant Professor of Music Education in Fall 2022. At UA, she teaches undergraduate and graduate coursework in music education, mentors graduate students, and aids in the UA String Project. She is a string bassist and Texas-native. Prior to joining the UA faculty, she taught at the University of Washington and spent five years teaching secondary string orchestra in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Nussbaum pursues an active research agenda that explores institutional, structural, and societal barriers which may be impacting access, equity, and inclusion within all levels of music education. One ongoing line of inquiry examines how high-stakes competition creates barriers for music teachers and students. Her research has been presented at national and international conferences and published in prominent music education journals. Nussbaum remains an active clinician, annually presenting regularly at the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) national convention and state conferences. Dr. Nussbaum is dedicated to professional service, serving on the Nation String Project Consortium Board and as a member of the ASTA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.