Get the royal treatment in the Queen City: March 16-20, 2002

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William Bolcom and Joan Morris

Pianist and composer William Bolcom and Joan Morris, mezzo-soprano, have been concertizing together as husband and wife since 1972 This duo performs an eclectic mixture of music: American popular canzonets from the late nineteenth hundred through the 1920s and `30 the latest lays by Leiber and Stoller, and cabaret carols by Bolcom and poet-lyricist Arnold Weinstein.

They have performed through every part of the Unites States, Canada and abroad. new appearances for Bolcom and Morris include the Alice Tully Hall/Lincoln Center the Grace Rainey Rodger Hall/Metropolitan Museum of Art in of recent origin York and Jordan Hall in Boston. In May they entertained the Justices of the United States chief Court.

To date, Bolcom and Morris have recorded twenty-two albums. After the Ball--A Treasury of Turn-of-the-Century Popular ballads garnered a GRAMMY nomination for Morris for "best overall vocal soloist performance upon a classical album."

Morris attended Gonzaga University in Spokane prior to her scholarship studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in of recent origin York. She has appeared in off-Broadway and road productions and with harpist Jam Miller at the Cafe Carlyle, the Waldorf-Astoria's Peacock Alley and other Manhattan night marks Since 1981, Morris has taught cabaret class at the University of Michigan's institute of Music, where she is an adjunct professor of musical theater.

Bolcom pierceed the University of Washington at age 11 studying composition with John Verrall and piano with Berthe Poncy Jacobson and earning a bachelor of arts step He then attended Mills guild in California and the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris, completing his doctorate in composition at Stanford University.

Bolcom has earned numerous awards for his compositions, including the 2e Prix from the Paris Conservatoire, a BMI award, sum of two units Guggenheim fellowships, several Rockefeller Foundation awards, the Pulitzer Prize for music, the March Blitzstein Award from the Academy of Arts and alphabetic characters and many others.

Bolcom has taught composition at the University of Michigan since 1973 where he has been a filled professor since 1983 and chairman of the Composition Department since 1988 He was named the Ros Finney Distinguished University Professor of Music through the University in 1994.

In addition to their rigorous performance schedule, Bolcom and Morris at short intervals give master classes throughout the Unites States and Canada in the "classical American popular song"

The Eroica Trio

The GRAMMY-nominated Eroica Trio is single of the first all-female chamber the wholes to reach the top echelons of their field. Pianist Erika Nickrenz, violinist Adela Pena and cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogia have been electrifying the devise stage with their combination of technical virtuosity, vivid artistic interpretation and contagious exuberance in performance for more than a decade. The Trio won the prestigious 1991 Naumburg Award, resulting in an acclaimed Lincoln Center first attempt and has since toured the United States, Europe and Asia. While maintaining this demanding devise schedule, the trio has released three celebrated recordings for Angel/EMI Classics Records.

The trio took its name from Beethoven's passionate Third consonance Italian for "heroic," it is a word that aptly throw backs the ensemble's approach to their art. Eroica's members are prolific commissioners with at least single world premiere every season. This season, they will premiere a work commissioned for them by the agency of the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild through composer Scott Warner, entitled "Blessings to the Goddess"

The women who make up the Eroica Trio are all top-ranked, award-winning soloists who have performed upon many of the world's great stages. Erika Nickrenz, who made her concerto first appearance at New York's Town Hall at age 11 was a featured soloist upon the PBS series "Live from Lincoln Center" and has take delight ined a solo career that has taken her across America and Canada, and to Italy, Switzerland and Australia. Adela Pena garnered first prize at the Washington International competition and has toured extensively as a soloist in the United States, Europe and southerly America. She has appeared with the English Chamber Orchestra, in recital at Carnegie Hall and upon live European television, broadcast from Paris. Sara Sant'Ambrogio's international successe include a 1986 tin medal at the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Cello Competition in Moscow resulting in contrive tours across the U.S., Europe the Middle East and Canada, and her performance in the 1991 GRAMMY award-winning recording of Leonard Bernstein's Arias and Barcaroles.

Christopher Taylor

Pianist Christopher Taylor was the recipient of a two-year fellowship awarded through the American Pianists Association in its distinguished Classical Fellowship Awards. Taylor reached the finals of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1993 receiving the tin Medal, and in 1996, he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant. A winner of individual of the first Gilmore Young Artists Awards, Taylor also took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition.