Guest Artists

Steven Smith

conductor

Steven Smith served as Music Director of Virginia’s Richmond Symphony from 2010, launching his tenure with a gala concert featuring violinist Gil Shaham, to 2019, with a finale of Carmen in concert starring Denyce Graves. During that time, the Richmond Symphony performed a significantly wider repertoire representative of our global community, embracing music by living composers, with particular focus on cultural and gender diversity and commissioning new works. During his tenure, the RSO weathered and recovered from the recession, had its budget climb more than 30 percent, posted steadily increasing ticket sales (with the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons setting records of more than $1 million in sales), and accomplished the first expansion of the core orchestra in more than 20 years. In addition, Smith has conceived and presented new concert series such as “Casual Fridays,” hourlong explorations (combining discussion with complete performances) of core repertoire with the full orchestra, and “Rush Hour,” a chamber orchestra series held in the barrel room at the popular Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. An active speaker, he delivered the keynote address for the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association and has appeared twice on the acclaimed speaker series “Eyes on Richmond.”

August 2019 brought the release of the Richmond Symphony’s first commercial recording, on the highly respected Reference Recordings label. The recording

pairs the world premiere of Mason Bates’s Children of Adam (commissioned by the Richmond Symphony for its 60th anniversary) and Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem. Both works utilize poetry of Walt Whitman (among others) and also feature the Richmond Symphony Chorus. In 2013, Steven Smith completed a 14-year tenure as Music Director of The Santa Fe Symphony & Chorus, a period during which the orchestra achieved numerous goals: recognized artistic growth, financial stability, and enthusiastic community support. He also serves as Music Director of the GRAMMY Awardwinning Cleveland Chamber Symphony, an ensemble devoted to the performance of contemporary music. Each spring, CCS presents the annual NEOSonicFest, a festival of new music and dance performances of which he serves as Artistic Director. From 2016–19, he also served as an Affiliate Faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth University.

From 1997 to 2003, Steven Smith served as the Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, conducting subscription concerts, summer concerts at the Blossom Music Festival, and holiday programs. Particularly interested in the role of orchestras in arts education, he assisted in the planning and conducting of the Cleveland Orchestra’s educational and family concerts and hosted the orchestra’s annual broadcast videoconference, which won an Emmy Award in 2001. For five seasons, he also served as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. During his tenure, they were invited by Carnegie Hall to perform in that institution’s famed Isaac Stern Auditorium, an appearance that took place in March 2000. During 2002 to 2005, he also served on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory, leading both orchestral and operatic performances.

Steven Smith is also an active ASCAP award-winning composer. He was named 2008 Ohio Composer of the Year and with that honor received a commission for a new string quartet that premiered in November 2008. His newest orchestral works are Chromo-Synchrony, premiered by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in

March 2015, and Kataklysmos, premiered by The Santa Fe Symphony in May 2010. The Cleveland Orchestra has performed his La Chasse at the Blossom Festival under the direction of Jahja Ling, and his One to One A Round for educational concerts at Severance Hall. His work Tane Mahuta was commissioned to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and was premiered in April 2006. He has received commissions from the Cleveland Orchestra, Grand Rapids Symphony, Eugene Youth Symphony, as well as solo artists, and has had performances of his works by the Chautauqua Symphony, Colorado Springs Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, Eugene Youth Symphony, and Colorado Springs Youth Symphony.

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Steven Smith earned Master’s degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Mr. Smith is the recipient of the CIM Alumni Association 1999 Alumni Achievement Award. ●

Matthew Tutsky

harp

Matthew is currently Principal Harpist with the New Mexico Philharmonic, Portland Opera, Oregon Ballet Theatre, and the Boise Philharmonic, while also serving as first-call Second Harpist with the Oregon Symphony. His performances have been acclaimed at premier concert venues such as Carnegie Hall in NYC

and Harpa in Iceland. He has served as Acting Principal Harpist with the Utah Symphony/Utah Opera, and permanent guest artist and substitute harpist with the Iceland Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Utah Symphony/Utah Opera, Oregon Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Anchorage Symphony. He regularly performs at prestigious summer music festivals including Grand Teton Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Lakes Area Music Festival, Deer Valley Music Festival, and McCall Summer Musicfest. He has performed with James Taylor, Kristin Chenoweth, Ben Folds, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Johnny Mathis, Emmanuel Pahud, and other leading musical icons. Matthew participated in a premiere of John Luther Adams’s Become Desert with the Seattle Symphony and joined them on tour with this work. He has recorded with the Seattle Symphony and Utah Symphony. Matthew holds teaching posts as Adjunct Professor of Harp at the University of Portland and Reed College. As a member of the American Harp Society and Vice-President of the Boise Chapter, he gave honorarium recitals with the Connecticut Chapter of the American Harp Society and Lyon & Healy West. Matthew has performed concertos with the Utah Symphony, Boise Philharmonic, Boise Baroque Orchestra, Chamber Music of the Springs, Washington Idaho Symphony, and Nova Chamber Music Series. He received a perfect score for a grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts in 2012. Matthew is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard’s Pre-College and is tremendously grateful for his mentors, especially Deborah Hoffman, former Principal Harpist of the Metropolitan Opera, and Emily Oppenheimer, former Juilliard Pre-College Harp Professor. Matthew is based in Portland, Oregon. ●

Bradley Ellingboe

conductor

Bradley Ellingboe has led a wide-ranging career in the world of singing, including accomplishments as a choral conductor, soloist, composer, scholar, and teacher. As a choral conductor, he has led festival choruses in 35 states and 14 countries. As a bass-baritone soloist, he has sung under such conductors as Robert Shaw, Helmuth Rilling, and Sir David Willcocks. Ellingboe has more than 160 pieces of music in print, including the Requiem for chorus and orchestra, which has been performed more than 300 times in this country and Europe. For his scholarly work in making the songs of Edvard Grieg more accessible to the English-speaking public, he was knighted by the King of Norway in 1994. As a teacher, the University of New Mexico Alumni Association named him Faculty of the Year in 2008.

Bradley Ellingboe retired in 2015 after serving on the faculty of the University of New Mexico for 30 years, where he was Director of Choral Activities, Professor of Music, and Regents Lecturer. He is a graduate of Saint Olaf College and the Eastman School of Music and has done further study at the Aspen Music Festival, the Bach Aria Festival, the University of Oslo, and the Vatican.

Ellingboe has won annual awards for his choral compositions from ASCAP— the American Society of Composers, Arrangers, and Publishers—since 2000. His choral music is widely sung and has been performed and recorded by such groups as the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, VocalEssence, the Saint Olaf Choir, the Harvard Glee Club, Conspirare, and the choirs of the University of Michigan and Luther College, among many others. Beginning in the summer of 2020, he will be Composer-in-Residence for Albany Pro Musica.

He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Karen. They are the parents of three children and have five grandchildren. Ellingboe is Director of Choirs at the United Church of Santa Fe and founder and artistic director of Albuquerque’s Coro Lux (“Chorus of Light”). ●

Rebecca Brunette

mezzo-soprano

Rebecca Brunette, mezzo-soprano, is a graduate of the University of New Mexico music program and is delighted to be singing with Coro Lux again. In 2015, she made her solo debut with the Red Rock String Ensemble, singing the solos in Vivaldi’s Gloria. She has been soloist several times with Coro Lux, including the soprano solos in Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem and Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man, as well as collaborations with the New Mexico Philharmonic in Handel’s Messiah. Rebecca also serves as a Choral Scholar for the United Church of Santa Fe. ●

David Felberg

conductor

Praised by The Santa Fe New Mexican for his “fluid phrases, rich focused tone, rhythmic precision, and spot-on intonation,” violinist David Felberg, an Albuquerque native, is the Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Chatter, a groundbreaking series exploring both new and old music, and producing more than 60 performances per year. Chatter was recently mentioned in The New York Times in an article about curated silence, one of the main features of their performances. David plays in and conducts many of the shows—often presenting 20th- and 21st-century pieces of music that have never before been heard in New Mexico. He is also Concertmaster of The Santa Fe Symphony, Associate Concertmaster of the New Mexico Philharmonic, and performs with the Santa Fe Pro Musica baroque and chamber orchestra series, and was recently featured as a soloist on the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium.

David has been featured as soloist with The Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, New Mexico Philharmonic, New Mexico Symphony, Albuquerque Philharmonic, Los Alamos Symphony, Palo Alto Philharmonic, Balcones Orchestra (TX), and the Chatter Orchestra. He has performed recitals and chamber music all over New Mexico and the Southwest and most recently has performed at the Oregon Bach Festival. David has been specializing in contemporary solo violin music, having performed solo works

of Berio, Boulez, Sciarrino, John Zorn, and Luigi Nono. He has also conducted numerous performances of traditional and contemporary music and has recently conducted premiere performances of composers as diverse as Juantio Becenti, Eve Beglarian, and Paula Matthesun.

David recently made his conducting debut with Santa Fe Pro Musica. He regularly conducts the New Mexico Philharmonic, The Santa Fe Symphony, and Chatter, and has collaborated with such soloists as Rachel Barton Pine, Anne-Marie McDermott, Conor Hanick, and Benjamin Hochman. David made his New York violin recital debut in Merkin Concert Hall in the spring of 2005. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Arizona and a Master of Music degree in conducting from the University of New Mexico, and has taken advanced string quartet studies at the University of Colorado with the Takacs Quartet. David has also attended the prestigious American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival.

David plays an 1829 J.B. Vuillaume violin and a c. 1830 Claude Joseph Fonclause violin bow. ●

Coro Lux Oratorio Society Coro Lux (“Chorus of Light”) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preparation and performance of great choral music for the enrichment and delight of our audiences and ourselves, and to propagating love of the choral art in the next generation of singers. ●