FACULTY ARTIST SERIES RECITAL – Deco Piano Trio

The Deco Piano Trio takes its name after the Art Deco movement which combines modernism with elegance and a belief in social progress. Art Deco is perhaps the first style of art that was truly internationally unified; members of the trio are from Taiwan, Sweden, and the United States. This exciting new piano trio will debut in Vermont, Wyoming, Michigan, and Arizona.

The program includes Piazzolla’s tango-driven “Estaciones Porteñas,” Beethoven’s elegant first piano trio, and the stunningly beautiful Trio in B Major by Brahms.

Theodore Buchholz, cello

Cellist Theodore Buchholz has been lauded by newspaper critics as a “virtuosic cellist,” an “outstanding performer,” and a “wonderful musician.” Debuting in New York’s Merkin Hall, he has appeared as a recitalist and chamber musician at important venues including the Spoleto Festival USA, in New York, New Jersey, California, Idaho, Phoenix and Portland, and as a faculty collaborative artist. Dr. Buchholz served as a professional orchestral musician for ten years, and has collaborated in chamber performances with members of the Audubon, Escher, and New World Quartets, and with members of the Cleveland, Metropolitan Opera, Minnesota, New World, San Francisco, and Sydney Symphony Orchestras.

Dr. Buchholz studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Arizona. His principal teachers include Nathaniel Rosen, Bonnie Hampton, and Sadao Harada (Tokyo String Quartet). His research accomplishments include publications in “American String Teacher,” the Journal of Historical Research in Music Education, and annual presentations at the ASTA national conferences. His research is focused on historical cello treatises, and he edited the technique book “Exercises and Etudes for Elegance of Sound and Form in Cello Playing.”

As a leader in music education, Buchholz regularly appears as a guest artist, teacher, and clinician across the country. He currently serves as president of the American String Teachers Association of Arizona, is the director of the Tucson Cello Congress, and is assistant professor of cello at the University of Arizona. During the summers he performs and teaches at the prestigious Killington Music Festival in Vermont. More information is at killingtonmusicfestival.org.

Chi-Chen Wu, piano

Praised by World Journal, Chicago for her “amazing playing”, “symphonic, expansive texture of breathless virtuosity” (Historical Keyboard Society), and her Schumann performance, in which “the music comes to life in a new way” (Early Music America), pianist Chi-Chen Wu has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist in the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Taiwan, China, the Aspen Music Festival, Monadnock Music Festival, Boston Early Music Festival Fringe Concert Series among others. Her concerts have been broadcast on NPR’s Simply Grand Concert Series and NPR-From The Top in Boston. Musicians and conductors with whom she has concertized include Karl-Heinz Steffens, Jonathan McPhee, Zuill Bailey, members of the Julliard String Quartet, Takács String Quartet, musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as New York Philharmonic.

A native of Taiwan and prize winner of several Taiwanese national piano competitions, Wu came to the United States for graduate study and received two master’s degrees, piano performance and collaborative piano, and a doctorate from New England Conservatory (NEC), where her teachers included Jacob Maxin, Irma Vallecillo, John Moriarty, Kayo Iwama, and John Greer. She has also worked with Thomas Quasthoff, Martin Katz, Kim Kashkashian, Lawrence Lesser, and Gabriel Chodos. Upon her graduation from NEC with Distinction in Performance and Academic Honors, she was appointed Assistant Professor at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). In addition to her teaching duties at NTNU, she also served as coordinator of collaborative piano study and developed the graduate program’s curriculum.

In 2007, Dr. Wu accepted a position of visiting scholar at Cornell University, where she taught piano, studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, and conducted research on historical performance practice with Neal Zaslaw. Continuing with her research interests, in the summer of 2011 she presented a research paper on Schumann’s metronome markings at World Piano Conference in Serbia. This paper received “Diploma of Excellence” from the World Piano Teachers Association, the highest accolade of this organization.

An interpreter of contemporary music, Chi-Chen Wu was the official pianist of Aggregate, a Boston-based composers group and was pianist in the premier of the piano version of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby. She world premiered The Poet and The War by Norber Palej and recently performed as soloist Piano Concerto No. 2 by Malcolm Williamson.

As a recording artist, Chi-Chen’s album of the complete Schumann sonatas for piano and violin won two Gold Medals from the Global Music Awards and was named in the Top 10 “Best Classical Recordings of 2015” on The Big City, New York which included the New York Philharmonic. Her recording of Schumann’s Carnaval and Fantasie was released in July 2017. She has recorded Haydn Lieder on a replica of Walter fortepiano with soprano Andrea Folan for Musica Omnia. Her recital and discussion on piano collaboration are featured on the DVD “Performing the Score” released in 2011. Projects in the 2017-18 season include concert tours in Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, Massachusetts, Arizona, as well as Michigan, and concerto performances in Seattle and Laramie.

Dr. Wu is assistant professor of piano and coordinator of collaborative piano at the University of Wyoming. Her students have been prizewinners in numerous competitions, including the northwest division of the MTNA competition, and have been accepted for graduate study at the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, McGill University, Conservatoire de Paris and other such institutions. She was recently selected as one of the Top 10 Teachers of 2017 in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wyoming. During the summer, she teaches at the Killington Festival in Vermont. Dr. Wu is currently President of Wyoming Music Teachers Association and is represented by Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates.

Gregory Maytan, violin

Gregory Maytan has been praised by The Strad for his ‘infectious vitality,’ ‘lyrical freshness,’ and ‘sparkling energy’. Other reviewers of his records and concerts have noted his ‘brilliant playing’ (Jacobsson, HiFI magazine) and his ‘heart-racing excitement and verve’ (Scott, Strings Magazine); he has been praised as ‘a technically extraordinarily well-versed violinist’ (Loskant, Nordseezeitung), and also for ‘his lovely, deep and profound sound’ (Hultman, Vasterbottens Kuririen). His recent ‘confident’ performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto was described as ‘vigorous and intelligent’ and ‘beautifully expressed and nuanced’ (Sparks, Commercial Appeal), and the BBC praised his ‘seemingly effortless poise’ of his ‘sensitive, devoted performances’ (Haylock, BBC Music Magazine).

Maytan performs regularly as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician and has performed extensively in Europe and the US. He has performed chamber music with the likes of Dylana Jenson, Bernt Lysell, and Mathias Tacke (Vermeer Quartet). Recent engagements include multiple performances of the Beethoven, Prokofiev, Paganini, Sibelius, Bruch, Maier, Beethoven, Barber and Tchaikovsky Violin Concertos with orchestras in Nevada, Tennessee, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, South Dakota and Sweden. He has also performed as a soloist in the Paganini and Tchaikovsky concertos in tours throughout China, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia under conductors such as Dennis Russell-Davies, Raymond Harvey, and Evind Gullberg-Jensen. An avid chamber musician, he has participated in the prestigious chamber music festival ‘Musikveckan’ in Junsele, Sweden; the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival in Memphis, TN; the Grumo Festival in Italy, the Korsholm Festival in Finland, the CICA Festival in Eureka Springs, AR, Dallas, TX and Taipei, Taiwan; and the Sagatuck Chamber Music Festival in Sagatuck, MI. He has performed at venues such as Ravinia, Tanglewood, and the Chicago Cultural Center and has performed solo recitals twice on Chicago Public Radio as part of the Dame Myra Hess series.

Maytan’s first CD, consisting of music from his native Scandinavia, was selected by The Strad as the top recital CD of April 2009 and highly praised by Strings Magazine and the American Record Guide. He other recordings include the sonatas of Faure, Franck, and the Chausson Poeme, as well as other Scandinavian music. Most recently, he has recorded a CD featuring the violin concerto by Amanda Maier (1853-94) together with the Helsingborg Symphony (where he also performed the concert as a soloist in a subscription concert), as well as several other previously unrecorded chamber works. Maytan is likely the first violinist ever to record the complete works for violin by Amanda Maier.

He has participated in the International Chamber Music Festival in Vienna, Austria, where he was a featured prize winner, and he has been awarded significant cash awards in the Swedish Royal Academy’s competition for post-graduate violinists during the years 2006, 2007 and 2008. He has performed and toured with numerous orchestras, and his concerts have been broadcast on radio and television in the U.S. and Europe. A sought-after teacher, he has presented masterclasses and recitals at numerous universities across the US and abroad, among them the University of North Texas (Denton), Butler University (Indianapolis), Michigan State University (Lansing), the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa), the University of Auckland (New Zealand), the Sydney Conservatory (Australia) the University of Arizona (Tucson) the University of Nevada (Reno), the Yamaha Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, and the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo, Norway. He has also himself participated in masterclasses with Zakhar Bron, Leonidas Kavakos, and Michela Martin.

Maytan maintains a growing and thriving studio in Grand Rapids, MI, where he teaches a select number of high school students along with his University students. Students of Maytan have won and placed in numerous regional and local competitions, including the Lima, Ohio young artist competition; the Skip Gates competition; and the GVSU and Valparaiso concerto competitions. They have been awarded full scholarships to the Meadowmount School of Music, to Kneisel Hall and to the Aspen School of Music and have also been invited to perform on NPR’s series ‘From the Top’. One student was selected as one of 12 national finalists for the MTNA competition in Anaheim, CA where she represented Michigan as well as four surrounding states. Students have been selected to be concertmasters of the Michigan All-State Orchestra as well as the Grand Rapids Youth Symphony. Most recently a student won concerto appearances and performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Lansing Symphony and Western Illinois Symphony. They have also been admitted into the New York String Seminar and have performed in masterclasses for the likes of Pinchas Zuckerman and Arnold Steinhart and have played chamber music with Joseph Silverstein and Itzak Perlman. Students have been admitted as violin majors to some of the top violin programs in the nation, such as Indiana University, New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, University of Southern California and University of Michigan, and have gone on to study with teachers such as Jaime Laredo and Jan Sloman.

Maytan is a member of the contemporary musical ensemble Luna Nova. He also maintains a regular collaboration with his outstanding pianist Chi-Chen Wu as a member of the newly formed Rainier Duo. During the summer of 2014 Maytan presented a series of 16 concerts throughout Sweden through the agency Motile, performing in such venues as the main concert hall at Norrlandsoperan in Umea, Sweden. He has served as guest concertmaster of the Vasteras Sinfonietta, the Kalamazoo Symphony, the Northwest Indiana Symphony, the West Michigan Symphony and the Illinois Symphony Orchestra and is permanent concertmaster of the Battle Creek Symphony. Maytan has also performed as concertmaster and section leader for legendary conductors Kurt Masur and Christoph Von Dohnanyi at Tanglewood.

During the 2017 spring semester Maytan was awarded and completed a Fulbright Specialist Grant at the Norwegian State Academy of Music where he taught and performed. A pedagogical book collaboration with professor Terje Moe Hansen is planned for release in late 2017.

He earned his doctorate in violin performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, where he studied with the renowned violinists Miriam Fried and Paul Biss. He is currently performing on a violin from 1683 made by Giovanni Grancino, on loan from the Jarnaker Foundation administered by the Swedish Royal Academy of Music.

Maytan is represented by the Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates.