2021 Kulas Visiting Artist
In 2021, we're delighted to welcome four musicians as part of our Kulas Visiting Artists Series performing on two different concerts. Check out each of their bios below.
Recipient of the prestigious 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, violinist Paul Huang is considered to be one of the most distinctive artists of his generation. The Washington Post remarked that Mr. Huang "possesses a big, luscious tone, spot-on intonation and a technique that makes the most punishing string phrases feel as natural as breathing," and further proclaimed him as "an artist with the goods for a significant career" following his recital debut at the Kennedy Center.
Mr. Huang's recent highlights have included acclaim debut at Bravo!Vail Music Festival stepping in for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 with Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin, appearances with the Mariinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev, Detroit Symphony with Leonard Slatkin, Houston Symphony with Andres Orozco-Estrada, Baltimore Symphony with Markus Stenz, and recital debuts at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and Aspen Music Festival.
During Beethoven’s 250 anniversary celebrations in the 2020-21 season, Mr. Huang will perform the Beethoven Concerto with the Colorado Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Des Moines Symphony, as well as the Triple Concerto in his return to the Charlotte Symphony. Other highlights in 20/21 season include debuts with the San Diego Symphony, Reading Symphony, Pensacola Symphony, Mexico’s Mineria Orchestra, and return to Louisville Orchestra and National Symphony of Mexico. Internationally, Mr. Huang will make debuts with Rotterdam Philharmonic (Lahav Shani conducting), Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra in Germany, and return to the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan as its Artist-in-Residence.
2020-21 season recital and chamber music performances will include Mr. Huang’s returns to The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for a recital evening with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, a Southern California tour with pianist Barry Douglas presented by Camerata Pacifica, and his debut at the Schubert Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Mr. Huang's recent recital engagements included Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series and return engagement at the Kennedy Center where he premiered Conrad Tao's "Threads of Contact" for Violin and Piano during his recital evening with pianist Orion Weiss. He also stepped in for Midori with Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony to critical acclaim. Mr. Huang has also made debuts at the Wigmore Hall, Seoul Arts Center, and the Louvre in Paris.
A frequent guest artist at music festivals worldwide, he has performed at the Seattle, Music@Menlo, Caramoor, La Jolla, Santa Fe, Moritzburg, Kissinger Sommer, Sion, Orford Musique, and the PyeongChang Music Festival in South Korea. His chamber music collaborators have included Gil Shaham, Cho-Liang Lin, Nobuko Imai, Mischa Maisky, Jian Wang, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Kirill Gerstein and Marc-Andre Hamelin.
Winner of the 2011 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Huang made critically acclaimed recital debuts in New York at Lincoln Center and in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center. Other honors include First Prize at the 2009 Tibor Varga International Violin Competition Sion-Valais in Switzerland, the 2009 Chi-Mei Cultural Foundation Arts Award for Taiwan’s Most Promising Young Artists, the 2013 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and the 2014 Classical Recording Foundation Young Artist Award.
Born in Taiwan, Mr. Huang began violin lessons at the age of seven. He is a recipient of the inaugural Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees under Hyo Kang and I-Hao Lee. He plays on the legendary 1742 “ex-Wieniawski” Guarneri del Gesù on extended loan through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Taiwanese-American pianist Helen Huang was discovered by conductor Kurt Masur upon winning the Young People’s Competition, which resulted in engagements with the New York Philharmonic and a recording contract with the Teldec record label. Known for immaculate technique and her eloquent sensitivity, Huang has enjoyed a multi-faceted career as a soloist and chamber music player and has played with orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Abroad she has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the London Philharmonic, and the Israel Philharmonic, among others. An avid chamber musician, Huang has appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest, and at Ravinia’s Steans Institute For Young Artists.
Huang’s recordings on the Teldec label include Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Mozart’s Piano Concertos K. 488 and K.467, Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur. She also recorded an album titled For Children, which consists of works inspired by the theme of children. She collaborated with violinist Cho-Liang Lin on an album of music by Georg Tintner released on the Naxos label as well as a recording of music by Zhou Long with Cho-Liang Lin and Hai-Ye Ni, released on the Delos label.
Born in Japan of Taiwanese parents, she moved to the U.S. with her family in 1985 and began piano lessons two years later. Within a year, she had won her first competition and several other victories soon followed. In 1994, she received Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award for promising young artists and in 1995 became one of the youngest recipients of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Huang received the Arthur Rubinstein Prize upon graduating from Juilliard in 2004, where she was a student of Yoheved Kaplinsky. She went on to pursue her master’s degree from Yale, under the tutelage of Peter Frankl. Huang has been on the Juilliard Pre-College faculty since 2010, working as an assistant to Kaplinsky. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and two daughters.
Demarre McGill has gained international recognition as a soloist, recitalist, chamber and orchestral musician. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, he has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Seattle, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Grant Park, San Diego and Baltimore symphony orchestras and, at age 15, the Chicago Symphony.
Now principal flute of the Seattle Symphony, he previously served as principal flute of the Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Florida Orchestra, and Santa Fe Opera Orchestra and as acting principal flute of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
As an educator, Demarre has performed, coached and presented master classes in South Africa, Korea, Japan, Quebec and throughout the United States. With his brother Anthony, he was a speaker and performer at the 2018 League of American Orchestras Conference. He has also served on the faculties of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States, the National Orchestral Institute (NOI) at the University of Maryland, the Orford Music Festival, and participated in Summerfest at the Curtis Institute of Music, to name of few. In August of 2019, he was named Associate Professor of Flute at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and is an artist-faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School.
A founding member of The Myriad Trio, and former member of Chamber Music Society Two, Demarre has participated in the Santa Fe, Marlboro, Seattle and Stellenbosch chamber music festivals, to name a few. He is co-founder of The Art of Élan and, along with clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Michael McHale, founded the McGill/McHale Trio in 2014. Their first CD, "Portraits," released in August 2017, has received rave reviews, as has "Winged Creatures, "his recording with Anthony McGill and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. In December 2019 the McGill/McHale Trio performed at New York City's 92nd Street Y, and in March 2020 at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., in Danville KY, Ames IA and Tulsa OK.
Media credits include appearances on PBS's Live from Lincoln Center, A & E Network's The Gifted Ones, NBC's Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and, with his brother Anthony when they were teenagers, on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
A native of Chicago, Demarre McGill began studying flute at age 7 and later, until he left Chicago, was a student of Susan Levitin. He attended the Merit School, was a member of the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and went on to study at The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School where he studied with Jeffrey Khaner and Julius Baker.
Demarre McGill can be heard on Cedille Records, Seattle Symphony Media and Angel Records.
Mr. McGill is represented by ACM 360 Artists | www.acm360artists.com
The brilliant 29-year-old Italian-born pianist Rodolfo Leone, whose career is supported by the Amron-Sutherland Fund for Young Pianists at the Colburn School, was the first-prize winner of the 2017 International Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna. Described as “a true sound philosopher” (Oberösterreichische Nachrichten), Rodolfo released his debut album on the Austrian label Gramola in May 2018. The all-Beethoven disc features two pillars of the piano repertoire: the “Hammerklavier” Sonata and the “Waldstein” Sonata. His playing has been described as having “impeccable style” and “absolute technical control” (Il Nuovo Amico).
Rodolfo’s recent seasons include a collaboration with James Conlon and LA Opera and debuts with the San Diego Symphony (Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1) conducted by Michael Francis, Pasadena Symphony (Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21) with conductor David Lockington, and Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5, “Emperor”) with Sascha Goetzel; he also performed Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Walt Disney Hall under the baton of Xian Zhang. In May 2019, he gave a recital tour in Austria, culminating in a performance in Vienna at the Brahms-Saal of the Musikverein. He also performed recitals in Los Angeles and Naples, Florida, and appeared on the chamber music series Le Salon de Musiques in Los Angeles. As a 2018-19 Performance Today Young Artist in Residence, Rodolfo’s live recordings were broadcast nationally throughout the United States.
A native of Turin, Italy, Rodolfo made his orchestral debut in 2013 performing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento (Italy). He toured Italy with that orchestra the following year performing Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1. Rodolfo made his North American debut in 2014 performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Toronto Concert Orchestra. Since then, he has performed with, among others, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Colburn Orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall, conducted by Stéphane Denève; and recitals at Festival Napa Valley and the Soka Performing Arts Center. He has also performed chamber music with Lynn Harrell, Fabio Bidini, Andrew Schulmann, and the Viano String Quartet.
Rodolfo has performed extensively throughout Europe, North America, and China. These performances include debuts in venues such as the Musikverein in Vienna, Steinway Hall in London, the Music Hall of the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the Politeama Theatre in Palermo, the Mozart Concert Hall of Accademia Filarmonica and Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova in Italy, and the BASF Gesellschaftshaus in Germany. A top-prize winner of several major piano competitions, Rodolfo was awarded top prizes at the 2014 Toronto International Piano
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Competition and the 2013 Busoni International Piano Competition. Pianist magazine described his concerto performance during the 2017 International Beethoven Piano Competition as a “communion with the orchestra” that “was raptly convincing… robust and joyful.”
Rodolfo is currently based in Los Angeles where he previously studied at the Colburn Conservatory of Music. He holds both a Master of Music degree and an Artist Diploma from Colburn, where he studied with Fabio Bidini. He previously studied at the Hans Eisler School of Music in Berlin, Germany and at the G. Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro, Italy.
For more information visit www.rodolfoleone.com.