Calvin Lewis studied violin with Bernhard Goldschmidt, David Updegraff and David Cerone at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is Concertmaster of the Youngstown Symphony, Primarius of the Youngstown Symphony String Quartet and Associate Concertmaster of the Erie Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also served as Principal Second with the Wheeling and Canton Symphonies, and has played in the First violin section of the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra. He has performed at a host of festivals including the Lancaster Festival, Kent/Blossom Festival, Spoleto, and Breckenridge.
Category: The Wandering Bird
Joseph Edwards holds degrees from Youngstown State University and Michigan State University where he studied clarinet performance with Robert Marcellus, Principal Clarinet of the Cleveland Orchestra; renowned teacher, Keith Stein and Elsa Ludwig Verdehr of the Verdehr Trio.Edwards joined the
faculty in 1969 after his tenure at Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa. He has participated in several professional recordings, and appears frequently as guest soloist and clinician with high school and college ensembles. He has also served as Principal Clarinet of the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra and has performed with the American Wind Symphony. Sioux City Symphony, Detroit Concert Band, Blossom Festival at Band and the Cleveland Symphonic Winds. Currently, he is a member of the Warren Chamber Orchestra and the Dana Woodwind Quintet.
Timothy Ehlen received his training with John Perry at the University of Southern California and with Paul Schenly at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He served as Schenly’s teaching assistant while earning his Doctor of Musical Arts degree. He is currently on the piano faculty of the University of Oklahoma at Norman.
Ehlen has concertized widely in the USA and abroad as a piano soloist, in chamber music. and as part of the Ehlen-Oltmann’s Piano Duo. His 1987 Alice Tully Hall debut in New York City received critical acclaim.
A participant in many international competitions, Ehlen recently served on the international jury of the World Piano Competition in Cincinnati. He has performed frequently on major radio stations in Los Angeles, New York and Ohio and has premiered several new works for piano or piano duo, including Robert Rollin’s Two Contrasts for Two Pianos. His recordings include a CD of chamber works on the Crystal label.
[Note: this CD-jacket bio was written in 2000 before Walter Mony’s passing. Visit www.waltermony.com for more information on this deeply-missed musician and educator.]
WALTER MONY was born in Winnipeg, Canada, where at an early age he studied violin with George Bornoff and John Waterhouse and was a frequent winner of festival competitions. Subsequently, he was awarded the overseas scholarship based on the examinations of the Board of the Royal School of Music, where he went to study under the renowned Albert Sammons, Henry Holst, and later with Max Rostal. He was also a master class student of Henryk Szeryng. Mony was soon involved in the music industry, where he became the Assistant Principal of the London Symphony Orchestra and a member of the world-renowned touring Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham.
He was the founder member of a number of professional chamber groups. It was a recital tour that took him to South Africa. Apart from the extensive involvement there with chamber groups such as the Nederburg Trio, with which he recorded extensively on major labels, he toured the whole of southern Africa giving concerto performances He performed the South African premieres of the concertos of Stravinsky, Walton, Suk, Shostakovich and Bartok, as well as the standard repertoire. Foremost South African composers such as Graham Newcater and Carl van Wyk, have composed concertos for him. He is equally versatile on the violin and viola.
Mony is active as a string clinician, adjudicator of international competitions, and lecturer throughout Africa, North America, South America and Europe. He also pursues a busy career as a conductor of professional and youth orchestras. Since 1982 he has served as Professor in the Chair of Music and Head of the Department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. The University has conferred on him the status of Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow. Many of his Students hold prominent teaching and playing positions in Europe, the UK, USA and southern Africa. He was also Director of the Total Oil Recording Project, which produced a number of CD’s of orchestral works by living South African composers. In recent years he has been involved in outreach programs for the disadvantaged children of South African townships.
RobertRollin.com 