This is a live recording from the Chicago Cultural Center on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in which we present violist Amy Hess and pianist Paul Hauer with music of Vaughan Williams, Clarke, and Schubert. You can still view the concert live at 12:15 pm on WFMT’s Facebook page.
Amy Hess is a member of the viola sections of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and Grant Park Orchestra. She was formerly principal viola of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and a member of the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra, and she has performed with the Chicago Symphony, Chicago Philharmonic, and Music of the Baroque. Amy has recently performed the Stamitz viola concerto with Sinfonietta DuPage and collaborated in concert with bassist Edgar Meyer as part of the Aspen Salida concert series in Colorado. She also was part of the Chicago premiere of Joel Puckett’s string quartet concerto Short Stories with the Northwestern Symphonic Wind Ensemble and performed the solo viola role in Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote with cellist Joseph Johnson and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra.
Amy received her Master of Music in viola from Northwestern University and is a Phi Beta Kappa alumna of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where she earned degrees in French and violin. While at Oberlin, she spent a semester in Paris, studying violin with David Rivière of the CNSM and musicology at the Sorbonne. Her interest in French music continued with a collaboration with Ravel scholar Sigrun Heinzelmann on a presentation at the Music Theory Midwest Conference and several lectures at Oberlin. Amy’s principal teachers and mentors have included Karen Ritscher, Roland Vamos, David Bowlin, and Addison Teng, but it all began thanks to her mother, a Suzuki violin teacher in Lancaster, PA.
Paul Hauer enjoys a diverse career as a violinist in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and freelance accompanist. His piano studies began with Charlene Reitz, and later at the Lawrence Academy of Music with Catherine Walby, Carol Leybourn, and Kyung-Ran Kim. While pursuing his violin performance degrees at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Indiana University, he accompanied the studies of Mimi Zweig and Brenda Brenner and accompanied Alex Kerr in concert. He is currently the accompanist for Addison Teng at the Music Institute of Chicago, and international tours with the Teng Studio have taken him to Italy, San Marino, Greece, and the Philippines.
Biographies courtesy of IMF Chicago.
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