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James Lyon, violin
Max Zorin, violin
Timothy Deighton, viola
Kim Cook, cello
Robert Nairn, double bass
Ruth Hunter, harp
James Lyon came to Penn State in 1991 from a career as a professional orchestral performer and chamber musician. Since his appointment, the violin studio has grown to become one of the strongest in the state, attracting a stimulating mixture of music education and performance majors from the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, China, and South Korea. His students have won numerous prizes in solo competitions at the local, regional, and state level and play professionally in such orchestras as the Atlanta Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic.
Educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Eastman School of Music, West Texas State University, and the Yale Summer School of Music, Prof. Lyon has studied with many of the top musicians of our time, including Charles Castleman and Elaine Richey, as well as members of the Cleveland, Tokyo, and Fine Arts Quartets. He has performed as a member of the Louisville Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and has served as concertmaster of the symphony orchestras of Amarillo (TX) and Altoona (PA). He is currently concertmaster of the Pennsylvania Centre Chamber Orchestra.
An active chamber musician, Professor Lyon maintains an international performing career as violinist with the Castalia Trio and Duo Concertant. Tours with these ensembles have taken him to much of Asia and western Europe in recent years. He also performs regularly with the Lyon Family Chamber Ensemble, with a performance at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York and an extensive performance tour of Australia in 2002. Prior to his appointment at Penn State, Professor Lyon performed with the Harrington String Quartet, 1996 Grand Prize Winners of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. As a member of this ensemble he collaborated in performance with members of the Tokyo Quartet, the Lincoln Center Chamber Players, and violist Walter Trampler. As a chamber musician, Professor Lyon has been heard on live national radio broadcasts from Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City.
Professor Lyon is in demand as a violin soloist and has performed concerti in numerous locations ranging from Amman, Jordan, where his appearance with the National Conservatory Orchestra was attended by Queen Noor, to Venice, Italy where he was a featured soloist on a concert that included Montserrat Caballe. As a recitalist he has performed in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall to the recording studios of Radio 4 in Hong Kong.
In 1999 Professor Lyon was recognized by the Pennsylvania/Delaware String Teacher's Association as Collegiate Teacher of the Year for his consistent dedication to teaching at the highest level. He has served as President of PADESTA and has also served twice as Chairman of its state solo competition. In addition to his position of Professor of Music at Penn State, Mr. Lyon has taught violin and chamber music for over a decade at The Quartet Program, a summer program hailed by violinist Itzhak Perlman as "the best of its kind." He has also taught in Siena, Italy at the Sessione Senese per La Musica e L'Arte.
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A native of Israel, Max Zorin began studying the violin at the age of five with his father and gave his first performances when he was eight years old. He later came to the United States to complete his bachelor's degree at the Juilliard School as a student of Dorothy De Lay and Naoko Tanaka. He holds a masters degree from Yale University where he studied with Peter Oundjian and expects to complete his doctoral degree from Stony Brook University in 2007.
A First Prize winner at the Corpus Christy International Competition, Max Zorin’s performances have received glowing reviews throughout three continents. Recent highlights include performances with Maxim Vengerov in France and previous solo and chamber music engagements featured Max Zorin at Alice Tully Hall in New York, Aspen Music Festival, Luzerne Chamber Music Festival, Summit Music Festival, Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia, Staller Center of the Arts at Stony Brook, Noble Recital Hall of Luther College and on various classical radio stations. Notable performances abroad featured Max Zorin at the Tel Aviv University (Israel), the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory (Russia) and highly acclaimed live performances on French television networks and national radio stations. As the co-artistic director of the French summer music academy and festival Rencontres Musicales Internationales des Graves, Max Zorin is a dynamic presence in France, he regularly performs at some of the most prestigious Chateaux in the Bordeaux region. An avid chamber musician, Zorin was featured as a guest artist with the Philadelphia Piano Quartet, Parker String Quartet, Omega String Quartet, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and has collaborated with artists such as violinists Sergiu Schwartz, Susanne Hou, bassist Thomas Martin (London Symphony) and Martha Katz (Cleveland String Quartet) among others. Max Zorin harbors a strong commitment to contemporary music, he recently premiered works dedicated to his father and himself by the late Joseph Dorfman in Israel and in the summer of 2007, he will premiere new works with renowned jazz violinist Didier Lockwood.
Max Zorin will release his first commercial recording in the summer of 2007. The album will feature French works with pianist Vincent Sangare-Balse.
Eager to share his musical expertise, he assisted Dorothy De Lay at the Juilliard School and held a teaching assistantship at Yale University. He regularly gives master classes in the US and abroad. He has been on the teaching faculties at the Luzerne Chamber Music Festival, Lutheran Summer Music Academy, Rencontres Musicales Internationales des Graves (France) and at the Summer Music Academy of Thessaloniki (Greece). Max Zorin has been on the violin faculty at Penn State University since 2005.
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Timothy DeightonAssociate Professor of viola at Penn State University where he teaches viola, chamber music, viola literature, pedagogy, and orchestral excerpts classes, and directs the Penn State Viola Ensemble. A native of New Zealand, he received a bachelor of music and first class honours degree from Victoria University of Wellington, an artist diploma from the Hartt School of Music, and a doctor of musical arts degree in viola and violin from the University of Kansas.
In 2002 Deighton was recognized by the Pennsylvania-Delaware String Teachers Association as String Teacher of the Year. Several of his former students hold positions in professional orchestras and on the faculties of music schools in the United States and overseas. A regular contributor to musical periodicals, his articles have appeared in such publications as Strings, the American String Teacher, Journal of the American Viola Society, the New York Violist, and the Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Viola Society. In 1999 he organized and directed “ViolaFest,” at Penn State, involving more than 200 violists from across North America and abroad. The Penn State Viola Ensemble, which he directs, has given numerous performances since its formation in 1999, including a recent appearance on a New York Viola Society Collegial Concert where they presented two world premieres.
Having long held a fascination for new music, he has performed premieres of more than fifty new works for viola, many of which were commissioned by or written for him. His first solo CD, Viola Aotearoa, featuring music for viola by New Zealand composers, was released in 2002 on the Atoll label. His playing on this disc was described in The Strad as “brilliant and differentiated,” and the CD was one of the New Zealand Listener’s Top 10 classical recordings of 2002. As a member of the contemporary chamber music duo The Irrelevants, he and saxophonist Carrie Koffman have commissioned and premiered many new works. Their “excellent playing” of several new works was noted by The Strad in a recent recital for the New York Viola Society. Deighton has appeared at three International Viola Congresses as recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestra, and as master class presenter and panelist.
Recent collaborations include those with the American String Quartet, the New Zealand String Quartet, and Quartet Accorda, as well as with musicians outside the traditional classical field such as the traditional Mäori musical instrumentalist (Taongo Puoro) Richard Nunns. Many of Deighton’s solo and chamber music performances have been broadcast on U.S., European, and Australasian radio. He is a National Recording Artist for Radio New Zealand, and was a member of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. He often appears in recital with his wife, pianist Ann Deighton. During the summers he serves on the faculty of the International Musical Arts Institute (IMAI) in Fryeburg, Maine. Other festivals at which he has recently appeared include Music at Penn’s Woods (PA), The Pierre Monteux Festival (ME), the Gold Coast Music Festival (CA), the Dublin International Symphonic Festival, Ireland, the Adam New Zealand Festival of Chamber Music, and Rencontres Musicales Internationales des Graves, France.
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Hailed as "the superb American cellist" (Die Rheinpfalz, Frankfurt), Kim Cook has been acclaimed for her "truly glorious tone" (Musical Opinion, London), "ravishing colors and textures" (New York Concert Review, Carnegie Hall), and "keen awareness of line and style" (The Strad). Ms. Cook has performed as a soloist in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, China, Israel, Jordan, Latin America, and throughout the United States. She has toured extensively as an International Artistic Ambassador for the U.S. State Department, presenting concerts and master classes throughout the world. Television and radio broadcasts of Ms. Cook's performances have been heard in Brazil, China, and the United States. She has recorded concertos by Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and Haydn as well as the solo sonatas of Kodaly, Crumb, and Hindemith. A graduate of Yale and the University of Illinois, Ms. Cook studied with Gabriel Magyar, Aldo Parisot, Alan Harris, and Janos Starker. Prior to Penn State, she was principal cellist of the Sao Paulo Symphony under the direction of Eleazar de Carvalho, and professor of cello at New Mexico State.
At Penn State, Ms. Cook has developed one of the important cello studios in the Northeast, attracting talented cellists from Europe and throughout the United States. The 26 member Penn State Cello Choir has been recognized for its performances and for the Penn State Cello Festivals. Cook's students have won many prestigious awards and have received assistantships and scholarships to attend excellent graduate programs. Former students currently occupy positions in orchestras and music schools in the United States, Germany, Brazil, and Taiwan.
Ms. Cook is a roster artist for the Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour. Funding is available to support performance engagements with presenters in DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, WV and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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Robert Nairn teaches studio double bass and directs the University's Baroque Ensemble. A native of Australia, he received his Bachelor of music with distinction from the Canberra School of Music and a post-graduate diploma from the Berlin Musikhochschule by courtesy of a two-year DAAD German Government Scholarship.
His teachers have included Klaus Stoll, Tom Martin, and Max McBride. He has performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. He has acted as guest Principle Bassist with the Halle Orchestra, the London Mozart players, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and held the position of Principle bass with the Australian Chamber orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. In the Early Music world he has been principal bassist with Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society since 2003, and has performed with Concerto Caledonia, the Aulos Ensemble, the Washington Bach Consort, the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and for eight years regularly in London as a member of 'Florilegium'.
International festivals include Salzburg, Baden-Baden, Aldeburgh, Glyndebourne, Schleswig-Holstein and the London ‘Proms’ under such conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Mazur, Sir John Elliot Gardiner, Maris Jansons, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Charles Mackeras, Christoph Eschenbach, Lorin Maazel, Kent Negano and Franz Brüggen. He has performed at such international venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw, La Scala, Le Châtelet, Leningrad Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonie, Teatro Colôn, Konzerthaus and Musikverein (Vienna) and the Sydney Opera House.
He has premiered of over thirty newly commissioned works for solo double bass and chamber groups, working both alone and with such groups as the London Sinfonietta, Gruppe Neue Musik Berlin, Australysis, the Music Theatre of Wales, and the Sydney Alpha Ensemble. Current commissions include a concerto by Michael Berkeley and works by Elean-Kats Chernin, Peter Askim, John Carbon, Peter Hamlin, Ben Wolfe, Teppo Hauto-aho and Roger Dean.
As a soloist he has performed several concerti with the Australian Chamber and Adelaide symphony orchestras (including Bottesini's Passiona Amoroso with Gary Karr) and has given many recitals in Europe, the U.S. and Australia. His first solo CD is due for release shortly.
Rob is president-elect of the International Society of Bassists and will be hosting in June 2009 the ISB Convention at Penn State.
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Ruth Hunter
is a graduate of the University of Rochester and Eastman School of Music, where she studied with renowned teacher Eileen Malone. She received the Joseph OâConnor Award for excellence in Latin. Ruth was a first place winner in the Hartford Symphony and Manchester (CT) Young Artistsâ Competitions. Her pre-college teachers were Rebecca Flannery, Jude Mollenhauer, and Marie Naugle.
Ms. Hunter has played for programs on CBS television and National Public Radio, and appears regularly with the Nittany Valley Symphony, Williamsport Symphony, Susquehanna Valley Chorale Orchestra, Mercersburg Community Chorus Orchestra, and area college orchestras.
She is currently the adjunct harp instructor at Susquehanna University, and teaches privately at Penn State and in her home. She lives in McAlisterville with her husband and two children.
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