Artists

Thomas Landschoot, cellist
Praised for his expressive and poetic music making, cellist Thomas Landschoot enjoys an international career as a concert and recording artist and pedagogue. He has toured North America, Europe and Asia and has appeared on National Radio and Television worldwide.

His solo career started after taking a top prize at the International Cello Competition ‘Jeunesse Musicales’ in 1995 in Bucharest, Romania. He recently performed with the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Frankfurt Chamber Orchestra, Prima la Musica (Belgium), Shieh Chien Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan), Tempe Symphony and the Orchestra of the United States Army Band and has appeared at the Park City, Santa Barbara, Mammoth Lakes, Utah, Red Rock, Waterloo, Killington, San Juan and Texas Music Festivals. His recordings are available on Summit, Organic, Kokopelli and Centaur Records.

As an avid chamber musician, he performed with the Takacs Quartet and members of the Cleveland, Vermeer and Auduban Quartets. He is a founding member of the Taman Trio in Europe, Chamber Ensemble Bloomington in Japan and the Trio Du Soleil in Arizona.
Thomas Landschoot has been involved in an interdisciplinary public service project resulting in the building of an orphanage and hospital in Tamil Nadu, India. A documentary film of the cellist traveling and performing in India has been combined with photography, culinary, journalism and new compositions.
Thomas Landschoot joined the faculty of Arizona State University in 2001 after having thaught at the University of Michigan. He has been awarded the Herberger College of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award (2005) and is on the faculty of Shieh Chien University in Taipei since 2008. He spends his summers performing and teaching at places like the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Quartet Program in New York, Killington Music Festival, Meadowmount School of Music and the Texas Music Festival. His students have gained success in the music world and occupy principal positions in major orchestras like the Montreal and Seattle Symphonies and teach at many Universities around the country. Landschoot has given master classes at conservatories and universities throughout Asia, the U.S. and Europe.

Thomas Landschoot is the Artistic Director of the Sonoran Chamber Music Festival and the President of the Arizona Cello Society. www.sonoranchambermusic.com

Katie Wolfe, violinist
Fanfare Magazine said of violinist Katie Wolfe, "Her playing is simply mesmeric." Ms. Wolfe leads an intriguing career mix as a soloist, recording artist, chamber musician, orchestral leader and adjudicator. Originally from Minnesota, she joined the string faculty of The University of Iowa in 2004 as Associate Professor of Violin. Ms. Wolfe has recorded for Centaur Records, Albany Records, Newport Classics, and Kleos Classics. She has recorded the Sonatas for Violin and Piano of Danish composer Niels Gade. She has been very involved in recording the works of living composers, including a piano quartet by David Gompper, a solo sonata, chamber music and other orchestral music of Madison composer Laura Schwendinger, and music for violin and piano by Boston composer Ketty Nez. She made the first recording of a “rediscovered” Sonata for Piano and Violin by Joseph Haydn with Byron Schenkman, released by Centaur Records in 2006. Ms. Wolfe is a founding member of the Matisse Piano Trio, formed in 2004. The trio is as committed to teaching as well as performing, and they have given masterclasses and performances at universities and other concert venues in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Hawaii. Ms. Wolfe received a BM in violin performance from Indiana University, where she was a student of Miriam Fried. She has a MM in violin performance from the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), studying violin with Sylvia Rosenberg and chamber music with Ani Kavafian and Peter Winograd of the American String Quartet. Katie Wolfe is privileged to perform on a rare Italian violin made by Gaetano Chiocchi in 1860.

Dr. William Kinderman, Beethoven Scholar musicologist & pianist
Since receiving an award for lifetime achievement from the Humboldt Foundation in 2010, William Kinderman has published two books while expanding his performance activities in new directions. His focus on artistic creativity is reflected in The Creative Process in Music from Mozart to Kurtág (University of Illinois Press, 2012), through its exploration of major composers from the 18th century to the present. In Wagner’s “Parsifal” (Oxford University Press, 2013) he probes issues of genesis and aesthetic meaning as well as ideological and political issues.

For Alfred Brendel, Kinderman is “a very rare bird” as result of his combined piano performance and scholarship. Edward Rothstein, in The New York Times, has praised Kinderman’s “intellectual energy and distinctive insight”; German critic Gerd Kowa has found him “a herald of Beethoven research and interpretation . . . a sovereign artist.” Kinderman’s interpretations of Beethoven’s works have widely influenced the work of others, including Moisés Kaufman’s award-winning play 33 Variations, which reached Broadway in 2009 and many other stages since.

During 2016-17, Kinderman is residing in Vienna, Austria, where he is Visiting Research Professor at the Musik und Kunst Universität and Director’s Fellow at the International Research Center for the Humanities (IFK). He is an advisor to the Wien-Museum for their expansion of the Beethoven-Haus at Heiligenstadt, and is organizing a major conference on Beethoven to take place in Vienna in March 2017. During the coming months he will be giving lecture recitals and other presentations in Vienna, Bonn, Paris, Oslo, Barcelona, Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities.
www.williamkinderman.com

Dr. Richard Hughey, conductor
Richard Hughey is Director of Orchestral Activities at Western Illinois University. Having started his musical education on the cello, he developed an early interest in orchestral conducting beginning with studying the scores of Beethoven and Brahms symphonies. As a member of the local youth symphony, he had his first experience on the podium with that orchestra at the age of 15. As a high school senior, he was awarded the first prize in the music category in the Utah statewide competition “Sterling Scholars”. He later completed a Bachelor of Music cum laude at Utah State University with a major in Cello Performance and a minor in German. At the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, he completed a Master of Music degree magna cum laude, with a double major in Cello Performance and Orchestral Conducting. He then went on to the University of Arizona where he completed the Doctor of Musical Arts in Cello Performance under Gordon Epperson and a minor in Orchestral Conducting studying with Leonard Pearlman.

Following a year teaching at Fort Hays State University in Kansas, Dr. Hughey was named Assistant Conductor and Assistant Principal Cellist with the Omaha Symphony. In Omaha, he was also Principal Cellist and orchestra manager for Opera Omaha. From Nebraska, he moved to North Carolina where he served eight years as Music Director and Conductor of the Western Piedmont Symphony. There he also performed in the Western Piedmont String Quartet and directed over 800 in-school concerts during his tenure.

A strong interest in German culture, language and music, motivated Hughey to move to Germany in the fall of 1990, where he became Music Director of the Lausitzer Konzertorchester. In 1992, he was invited to become the artistic director and conductor of the University Orchestra at the University in Dresden. During the first few years of this responsibility he organized a new chamber orchestra which quickly developed into the TU-Kammerphilharmonie Dresden and was recognized by the press in Dresden as one of the finest orchestral ensembles of the city. During these years, he also formed the chamber orchestra Tonus, with members of the Sächsische Staatskapelle and the Dresdner Philharmonie. Also having a keen interest in Baroque performance practice, he took the opportunity to perform as a cellist in ensembles with some of the leading Baroque musicians of Germany.

Opera being also of significant interest to Hughey, he instigated a summer opera festival in the city of Cottbus, Federal State of Brandenburg, situated between Berlin and Dresden. Here he performed lesser-known masterworks of the composers Francesco Cavalli, Joseph Haydn, André Gretry, Georg Friedrich Händel, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Giovanni Paisiello and Reinhard Keiser. These performances were a platform for young exceptional vocal talent and many of the former participants now perform in many well-respected opera houses in Germany. In the summer of 2008, he directed performances of Die Zauberflöte of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart. In 2009 he conducted performances of Die Zauberflöte anda new production of Don Giovanni. During the summer of 2014 Hughey was invited by Opera Classica Europa to conduct Die Zauberflöte in Germany. His direction was praised in the German press: The orchestra conducted by Richard Hughey stayed anchored in the classical tradition of Mozart with the ensemble displaying great fun in the enjoyment of performing.

His extensive background in historically informed performance practice led him to be invited to present at the Illinois All-State Conference in 2010 and the 2011 National Conference of the American String Teachers Association. To both of the presentations, he took the WIU Chamber Orchestra to perform and demonstrate the principles of Baroque performance practice as part of his presentation.

Dr. Tammie Walker, pianist
Dr. Tammie Walker, Director of the School of Music and Professor of Piano, is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she earned the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees as a student of Ian Hobson. Her early training was with Penelope Cecchini and Frances Karp in Wisconsin. An active solo and collaborative pianist, Dr. Walker has concertized throughout the continental U.S., Hawaii, western Europe, and South Korea, having given over 300 performances since her hire at WIU. Recent performance highlights include a residency in Yangon, Myanmar, a recital and teaching tour in Seoul, an appearance as the Conference Artist for the Wisconsin State Music Teachers Association convention, solo recitals and lecture-recitals in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Georgia and West Virginia, and concerto performances of the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1, the Grieg Concerto and the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Walker is an active clinician, having given close to 100 lecture-recitals and masterclasses since her hire at WIU, including presentations at regional and national conferences. She is also in demand as an adjudicator, having served on international juries in Atlanta and Las Vegas and at many competitions throughout the Midwest. She has maintained leadership roles with the MTNA competitions at the state and regional level for 15 years. An interview with Dr. Walker was published in the January, 2006 issue of The Piano journal in Korea, and she was featured in a 2007 article in International Piano magazine. Her article entitled "The Status of the BM-Piano Performance Degree" was published in the April/May 2008 issue of the American Music Teacher journal. In 2005 she collaborated on an arrangement of the Largo from Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, arranged for alto flute and piano (Progress Press, Chicago) which was premiered at the NFA Convention in the US and in London, England.

A committed teacher and the recipient of the 2012 College of Fine Arts and Communication Outstanding Teacher Award, Walker's students have been finalists in several competitions (including MTNA) and have been accepted to summer programs throughout the United States and Germany. Her students have been admitted to many of the top graduate programs around the country, with seven students currently pursuing DMA degrees in Piano Performance, all on full assistantships (Michigan State, Texas Tech, University of North Texas, University of Iowa, University of Missouri at Kansas City, University of Illinois, University of South Carolina). Former students have won competitions at the University of Illinois, Texas Tech University, UMKC, The American Prize competition, and the Artist Presentation Society competition in St. Louis.

Tammie resides in Macomb, IL with her husband Chad (a wind instrument repair technician), and their four children. She joined the piano faculty at WIU in 1998 and was named Director of the School of Music in 2016.

Dr. Moisés Molina, cellist
Cellist Moisés Molina is an active soloist, chamber musician and clinician. He participated in the 2016 International Chamber Music Festival in Lima and the 2015 Cusco Music Festival in Cusco, Peru. Dr. Molina was a guest artist/teacher at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the 2011 Tennessee Cello Workshop in Nashville, and the 2011 Biannual Violoncello Festival in Lima, Perú. He will be a part of the 2017 Biannual Violoncello Festival in Lima.

Dr. Molina is excited to be a part of the 2017 Summer Music Institute String Quartet Camp along with his string faculty colleagues at Western Illinois University.
Moisés Molina holds the Bachelor of Music degree (summa cum laude) from Columbus State University and graduate degrees, Master of Music and Doctor of Music, from the Florida State University, where he was a teaching assistant. He studied cello with Martha Gerschefski, Andrew Luchansky, Lubomir Georgiev, and Alan Harris. Dr. Molina has performed in the United States, Central and South America, and Europe. He has recorded for Centaur Records, Profil, and New World labels and has served on the faculty of the Schlern Music Festival in Italy (now Orfeo Music Festival) and has been a guest artist at the St. Augustine Music Festival in Florida. Dr. Molina is Professor of Cello and Assistant Director of the School of Music at Western Illinois University. In addition, he is the cellist for the Julstrom String Quartet, a faculty ensemble at WIU.

Dr. Molina directed the Quincy Summer Music Institute Orchestra and the IMEA District IV Junior High School Orchestra for several years. He has served as principal cellist for Abilene Philharmonic Orchestra, Abilene Opera Orchestra, Quincy Symphony, and Associate Principal for Tallahassee Symphony, Peoria Symphony, and Heartland Festival Orchestras. He has given lectures and clinics for the College Music Society and the Texas and Illinois Music Educators Associations. Moisés was successful in several concerto, solo and chamber music competitions, and he was awarded an orchestra fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival. He taught at Hardin-Simmons and Abilene Christian Universities, the Summer Fine Arts Camp at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and he conducted the Abilene Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and the Western Illinois University Preparatory Orchestra.

Dr. Julieta Mihai, violinist
Julieta Mihai, a versatile violinist and chamber musician, is associate professor of violin at Western Illinois University School of Music in Macomb. She is also a member of the Julstrom String Quartet.

Dr. Mihai has performed extensively in solo concerts and recitals in Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Japan, Romania and the United States. Her performances have been broadcast on radio stations such as WILL-FM, WUIS (Springfield, Illinois), Tri States Public Radio (Illinois, Iowa and Missouri) and the National Radio Station in Bucharest, Romania. From August 2001 until May 2013, she served as concertmaster of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra in Springfield.

Currently, her violin studio at Western Illinois University is comprised of undergraduate and graduate students from Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her students are winners of prestigious regional and national competitions in the USA including the 2014 national winner of the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Young Artist String Competition. They also won concerto competitions at Western Illinois University and Brevard Summer Festival. Her students have gone on to receive graduate assistantships for masters and doctorate programs at some of the best schools of music. Also, they were awarded stipends at prestigious summer festivals such as Brevard Summer Festival and Manchester Music Festival.

Highlights of her 2014 season include a Romanian concert tour of early XXth century works at the Romanian Atheneum, Bucharest, and at the Peleş Castle, Sinaia. In 2013, as part of the WIU Faculty Chamber Ensemble conducted by Dr. Mike Fansler, she performed and recorded for the first time Jim Stephenson’s Devil’s Tale. In 2012, she was invited to give master classes and play a recital at the Arizona State University at Tempe. Highlights of 2011 include her debut joint recital at Carnegie Hall (Weill Hall) and recitals at various Illinois venues. In previous seasons, she had the privilege to collaborate with the Illinois Chamber and Symphony Orchestras in the performance of solo works such as: Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Mozart No. 4, Sibelius, Bach Brandenburg No. 4 and 5, and Beethoven Romances No. 1 and 2. The concerts were broadcast on the WUIS radio station. Among other ensembles, she performed solo works with the Northwest Symphony Orchestra (Saint-Saëns No. 3), the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana (Vivaldi Seasons), Berkeley Summer Festival Orchestra (Beethoven), the Prairie Ensemble (Bartok Rhapsody No 1) and the Summer Festival Orchestra of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Glazunov).
She was invited to play recitals and give master classes at Florida State University, Towson University, Southern Illinois University, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Crane School of Music, Illinois Wesleyan University, St. Olaf College, and Arizona State University at Tempe.

A Romanian Violin Competition prizewinner, she is also the winner of other competitions, including the Concerto Competition of the Summer Festival Orchestra in Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Mihai is the recipient of the Paul Rolland Violin Award of the University of Illinois. Dr. Mihai plays on a 1926 Hannibal Fagnola violin.

Dr. Jeff Brown, pianist
Jeffrey Brown has concertized extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as a solo recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestras. Recent performance highlights include the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., a recital tour of the U.S. and Canada sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera Guild of New York, and a series of recitals in China.

He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where he earned the Performer’s Certificate, the Master of Music, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. He studied with Natalya Antonova and served as her teaching assistant, and he pursued chamber music studies with Jean Barr. His early training was with Jane Allen at the University of Missouri. As a winner of the Eastman Concerto Competition, he performed the Barber Piano Concerto with the Eastman Philharmonia. He has also been a prizewinner in the Kosciuszko Chopin Competition, the Corpus Christi International Young Artists’ Competition, and the Iowa International Piano Competition.

He has presented masterclasses and lectures at universities and conservatories throughout the United States, and he has served on the faculties of the Eastman International Young Artists Piano Competition and Festival and the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. He is Associate Professor of Piano at Western Illinois University where he teaches piano, piano literature, and piano pedagogy.

Dr. Liang-yu Wang, pianist & Beethoven Festival Artistic Coordinator
Taiwanese pianist Liang-yu Wang has made numerous concert appearances throughout the United States, Canada, Italy, France, Finland, South Africa, Ireland, China, and Taiwan. Actively engaged in concert appearances at national and international venues, Ms. Wang has performed in Morgan Library & Museum, Richard B. Fisher Center, Hudson Opera House, National Cultural Center in Taiwan, Shenzhen Concert Hall in China, Welgemeend Hall in Cape Town, South Africa, and also in several unconventional performance venues such as the Woodbourne Correctional Facility, NY.  In the Summer of 2016, Ms. Wang was featured as an artist in residence at Cité internationale des Arts in Paris, France.

Ms. Wang has been featured as guest artist at several reputable chamber music organizations, including Lev Aronson Legacy Festival, Sonoran Chamber Music Series, Red Rocks Music Festival, and Downtown Chamber Series. Other festival appearances include Music Academy of the West, Banff Arts Centre, Schlern International Music Festival, and Académie Musicale Internationale "Barbara Krakauer”.  Ms. Wang is the artistic coordinator of the upcoming WIU Beethoven Festival in Fall 2017, in which she will perform Beethoven's complete works for cello and piano, and Beethoven's complete sonatas for violin and piano. Along with her active performing career, Ms. Wang has also been giving chamber music master classes in US, Ireland, China, and Taiwan. In December 2011, Ms. Wang and Thomas Landschoot released their debut CD “Balabille: Cello Sonatas by Debussy, Poulenc & Chopin” on ArchiMusic, which was nominated by the Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan as “The Best Classical Music Album” of the year.

In addition to her expertise in classical chamber music repertoire, Ms. Wang is also an enthusiastic advocate of music by living composers. She has premiered several new music works, including piano solo and chamber music, and been frequently featured on Mew Music Festival (Macomb, IL). Recently, the celebrated Belgian contemporary music composer Frank Nuyts wrote his 19th piano sonata for her. The sonata was completed in December 2015. Ms. Wang gave its world premiere in Paris in summer 2016. 

Ms. Wang is currently on faculty at Western Illinois University School of Music after serving as Visiting Assistant Professor (Collaborative Piano/String) at the Indiana University-Bloomington. She was also a recipient of the Collaborative Piano Fellowship from the Bard Conservatory of Music, where she worked closely with renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw, the artistic director of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard. Ms. Wang holds a bachelor degree in Sociology from Fu-Jen Catholic University, a performer diploma in Piano Performance from Indiana University-Bloomington, and received her M.M. and D.M.A. in Collaborative Piano from the Arizona State University. She was on staff with the Eastern Music Festival and the Banff Arts Centre in the past summers.