Elemental Music’s Chamber Music Institute is excited to announce our two master class guests for the 2022/23 season.
Dr. Wendy Richman, viola, and Dr. Seth Parker Woods, cello, will each visit our program this season and present a master class for our Chamber Music Institute students. Both Richman and Woods are incredible musicians with multifaceted careers, and we are thrilled for our students to have the opportunity to learn from these distinguished artists.
Learn more about our guests below.
Saturday, February 11 - Master class with Dr. Wendy Richman
Violist Wendy Richman has been celebrated internationally for her compelling sound and “absorbing,” “fresh and idiomatic” interpretations with “a brawny vitality.” (The New York Times, The Washington Post). As soloist and chamber musician, she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center Festival, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Miller Theater, Mostly Mozart Festival, Park Avenue Armory, Phillips Collection, and international festivals in Berlin, Darmstadt, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Karlsruhe, Morelia, and Vienna. She is a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble.
Upon hearing her interpretation of Berio’s Sequenza VI, The Baltimore Sun commented that she made “something at once dramatic and poetic out of the aggressive tremolo-like motif of the piece.” She collaborates with a wide range of composers, commissioning pieces in which she sings and plays simultaneously. Wendy’s debut solo album, vox/viola, was released on New Focus Recordings (2020). In addition to her work on contemporary repertoire, Wendy has collaborated with fortepianist Malcolm Bilson, the Claremont and Prometheus Trios, and members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, and Takács Quartets. She frequently performs with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and has been a regular guest with the orchestral viola sections of Atlanta, Minnesota, and St. Louis.
Wendy is a distinguished educator and sought-after clinician at universities and conservatories across the country, offering classes on viola repertoire and technique, lectures on string instrument notation, and workshops on contemporary and “extended” string techniques. She holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), New England Conservatory (MM), and Eastman School of Music (DMA with Diploma in Ethnomusicology). Wendy’s academic interests address musicians’ communities, stemming from her own experiences with composer-performer relationships, gender-based discrimination, and disability. Her own compositions link her love of unconventional string sounds with reflections on nature, physical trauma, and invisible disability.
In 2022-23, in addition to her duties as an academic lecturer at UCLA and viola instructor at California State University at Northridge (CSUN), Wendy will be Artist-in-Residence at UC-Davis, presenting two recital programs and playing a concerto with the university orchestra.
Saturday, May 6 - Master class with Dr. Seth Parker Woods
Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” Grammy Award-nominated cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator. The New York Times describes him as “an artist rooted in classical music, but whose cello is a vehicle that takes him, and his concertgoers, on wide-ranging journeys.” He is a recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.
In the 2022-2023 season, Woods premieres a new version of his Difficult Grace at 92NY, UCLA, and Chicago’s Harris Theater; curates and performs a program honoring George Walker at the Phillips Collection; premieres Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performs a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall, part of Claire Chase’s Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis will present Woods in his performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods plays an obsidian ice cello. He tours with pianist Andrew Rosenblum to Dumbarton Oaks, the Isabella Gardner Museum, and The Wallis Annenberg Center; and to Washington Performing Arts, Krannert Center, Stanford Live, California Center for the Arts, Count Basie Center for the Arts, Auburn University, and Emory University with the Chad Lawson Trio; as well as a solo recital at Belgium’s Das Haus. He holds residencies at Montclair State University and Oberlin Conservatory. He releases a new solo album on Cedille Records and contributes to the soundtrack of the 2022 Ken Burns PBS documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust.
He has appeared with the Ictus Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in recitals with Hilary Hahn and Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from Louis Andriessen to Sting and premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey. Woods has served as Artist in Residence with the Kaufman Music Center (2020-21) and Seattle Symphony (2018-2020). His debut solo album, asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), was released in November 2016.
Woods recently joined the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at USC. He holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield.
Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist. Learn more at www.sethparkerwoods.com.