Madeline Island Chamber Music Faculty

With their gripping performance style and unquenchable appetite for musical adventure, Brooklyn Rider has carved a singular space in the world of string quartets over their fifteen-year history. Defining the string quartet as a medium with deep historic roots and endless possibility for invention, they find equal inspiration in musical languages ranging from late Beethoven to Persian classical music to American roots music to the endlessly varied voices of living composers. Claiming no allegiance to either end of the historical spectrum, Brooklyn Rider most comfortably operates within the long arc of the tradition, seeking to illuminate works of the past with fresh insight while coaxing the malleable genre into the future through an inclusive programming vision, deep-rooted collaborations with a wide range of global tradition bearers, and the creation of thoughtful and relevant frames for commissioning projects.

The upcoming concert season is strongly illustrative of the intrepid musical appetite of Brooklyn Rider. This coming fall, they will premiere a major new work by the great Argentinian composer and close friend, Osvaldo Golijov. The quartet also has two new collaborative projects for 2021-22. One is with Israeli mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital, and the other is a brand new phase of work with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, where they will explore themes of love and death through the music of Franz Schubert and Rufus Wainwright. Looking further into the future, they will expand work already underway with Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh and will launch a major new commissioning venture for the 2022-23 season called The Four Elements; an exploration of the four classical elements (earth, air, water, and fire) as metaphor for both the complex inner world of the string quartet and the current health of planet Earth.

Prior to the global pandemic, the 2019-20 season saw a veritable explosion of new projects and releases. Shared at the height of the US lockdown, the Grammy®-nominated recording Healing Modes (In A Circle Records) presented Beethoven’s towering Opus 132 — the composer’s late testament on healing and the restorative power of new creation — interwoven with five new commissions powerfully exploring topics as wide-ranging as the US-Mexico border conflict, the Syrian refugee crisis, the mental health epidemic, and physical well-being. Described by The New Yorker as a project which “…could not possibly be more relevant or necessary than it is currently,” the composers include Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Matana Roberts, Caroline Shaw, and Du Yun.Earlier in the same season saw the release of two projects from vastly different musical spheres. One with the master Irish fiddler Martin Hayes (In A Circle Records), an album which the Irish Times described as “a masterclass in risk-taking,” and the other, Sun On Sand (Nonesuch Records), featuring the music of Patrick Zimmerli with saxophone giant Joshua Redman and fellow collaborators Scott Colley on bass and Satoshi Takeishi, percussion.

In fall 2018, Brooklyn Rider released Dreamers on Sony Music Masterworks with Mexican jazz vocalist Magos Herrera. Celebrating the power of beauty as a political act, Dreamers amplifies the visionary artistry of Violeta Parra, Federico Garcia Lorca, Gilberto Gil, Joao Gilberto, Octavio Paz, and others, all who dared to dream under repressive regimes. Featuring gems from the Ibero-American songbook in evocative arrangements by Jaques Morelenbaum, Diego Schissi, Gonzalo Grau, Guillermo Klein, and Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen, Dreamers topped numerous charts and garnered a Grammy® nomination for best arrangement (Gonzalo Grau’s “Niña”). Touring widely to support the album, they appeared at venues ranging from New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center to Mexico City’s Deco masterpiece, the Palacio de Bellas Artes.Brooklyn Rider has remained steadfast in their commitment to generate new music for string quartet at nearly every phase of their history. To kick off the 2017-18 season, Brooklyn Rider released Spontaneous Symbols (In a Circle Records), featuring new commissions by Tyondai Braxton, Evan Ziporyn, Paula Matthusen, Kyle Sanna, and Colin Jacobsen. In the 2015-16 season, the group celebrated its tenth anniversary with the groundbreaking multi-disciplinary project The Brooklyn Rider Almanac, for which it recorded and toured 15 specially commissioned works by musicians from the worlds of folk, jazz, and indie rock, each inspired by a different artistic muse. The Fiction Issue, with singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane, featured his composition which was premiered in 2012 at Carnegie Hall by Kahane, Brooklyn Rider, and Shara Nova. Additionally, Brooklyn Rider has enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the music of the iconic American composer Philip Glass, which began with 2011’s much-praised recording Brooklyn Rider Plays Philip Glass and continued with two subsequent installments of Glass’s works for string quartet, all released on the composer’s label Orange Mountain Music.

Numerous other collaborations have helped give rise to NPR Music’s observation that Brooklyn Rider is “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” During the 2016-17 season, Brooklyn Rider released an album entitled So Many Things on Naïve Records with Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, comprising music by Colin Jacobsen, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Björk, Sting, Kate Bush and Elvis Costello, among others. Some Of A Thousand Words, an evening-length program with choreographer Brian Brooks and former New York City Ballet prima ballerina Wendy Whelan, was an intimate series of duets and solos in which the quartet’s live onstage music is a dynamic and central creative component. Some Of A Thousand Words was featured at the 2016 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, before two U.S. tours, including a week-long run at New York City’s Joyce Theater. A collaboration with Dance Heginbotham with music written by Colin Jacobsen resulted in Chalk And Soot, an evening-length work presented by Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival in 2014. Brooklyn Rider has also frequently teamed up with banjoist Béla Fleck, with whom they appeared on two different albums, 2017’s Juno Concerto and 2013’s The Impostor. And in one of their longest-standing musical friendships to date, Brooklyn Rider and Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor released the highly praised recording Silent City (World Village) in 2008, still touring the project to this day.

Violinist Carolyn Huebl enjoys a varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. She is currently Professor of Violin at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University and violinist of the Blakemore Trio. Prior to her appointment at Blair, she was Assistant Principal Second Violin with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Assistant Professor of Violin at Carnegie Mellon University. Critics have called her performances “unfailingly sensitive,” “utterly fearless,” and “pristine,” and STRAD magazine declared that she “possesses a beguilingly warm sound and highly responsive expressive personality.”

Since her appearance as soloist with the Detroit Symphony at the age of seventeen, Carolyn has soloed with orchestras throughout the United States, as well as in Argentina and Canada. She is an enthusiastic and convincing interpreter of contemporary music, and has commissioned several new works. Together with pianist Mark Wait, she recently released recordings of the works for violin and piano by Igor Stravinsky, and the complete sonatas by Alfred Schnittke. Both recordings were received with great critical acclaim. In February of 2015, the duo gave the world premiere of “Zwischen Leben und Tod”, written for them by American composer Michael Hersch. They have also performed this important work at the new music venues National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NYC, and The Icebox in Philadelphia.

In 2002, Carolyn founded the Blakemore Trio with cellist Felix Wang and pianist Amy Dorfman. Engagements have taken the trio to chamber series across the country including a New York debut concert at Merkin Hall in 2010. The trio recently released their first recording of trios by Beethoven and Ravel on the Blue Griffin label. American Record Guide gave special note to the Ravel recording as “Impressionism at its best.” In 2013, they released Gates of Silence, by Susan Botti, on the Albany label.

Carolyn often performs as concertmaster of the IRIS orchestra, under the direction of Michael Stern. During the summer, Carolyn has been featured on chamber series throughout the country, including the Walla Walla Chamber Festival, and is on the faculty of the Brevard Music Center and Madeline Island Chamber Music. She has also taught at the Rocky Mountain Summer Conservatory, National Music Camp at Interlochen, Intermountain Suzuki Institute, and the Killington Music Festival, and has presented master classes at leading schools of music across the country. Her students have been prize-winners and finalists in national competitions, and hold orchestral and teaching positions throughout the United States and South America.

She received her DMA from the University of Michigan and Bachelor and Master of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Her primary teachers include Andres Cardenes, Paul Kantor, and Donald Weilerstein.

Erika Eckert, current Associate Professor of Viola at CU Boulder, has also been a faculty member of the Brevard Music Center since 2011. Previously, Eckert served on the faculties of the Cleveland Institute of Music, Baldwin Wallace College and the Chautauqua Institution in New York where she served as the coordinator of the chamber music program for the Music School Festival Orchestra for three summers. 

As co-founder and former violist of the Cavani String Quartet, Eckert performed on major concert series worldwide, garnered an impressive list of awards and prizes, including first prizes at both the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Competition and the Cleveland Quartet Competition, and appeared on NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS and National Public Radio.

In recent seasons, Eckert has performed as guest violist with the Takács Quartet, appearing with them in Canada, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Vermont. She has also performed on numerous faculty recitals at the University of Colorado Boulder and soloed with the CU Boulder Symphony Orchestra, Music in the Mountains Purgatory Festival Orchestra, Four Seasons Chamber Orchestra, Boulder Bach Festival and the Boulder Chamber Orchestra. 

Performing engagements have included the 400^th Galileo Anniversary at the American Academy in Rome, El Paso Pro Musica International Chamber Music Festival, Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Garth Newell Music Festival, Bravo! Vail, Music in the Mountains Chamber Music Festival, Sitka Summer Music Festival Autumn Classics, Niagara International Chamber Music Festival and Fontana Chamber Arts. Eckert has also performed chamber music recitals at the International French Horn, Flute and Double-Reed Conventions, and soloed at SEAMUS and ICMC electronic music national and international conferences.

Eckert’s teaching engagements have included presenting viola and chamber music pedagogy sessions, and coordinating the chamber music program at the American String Teachers Association International Workshops in Brisbane, Australia and Stavanger, Norway; presenting viola master classes at The Juilliard School, Cleveland Institute of Music, Eastman School of Music, Arizona State University, Governors School of South Carolina, Interlochen Arts Academy, University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, University of Memphis, University of Tennessee, Bowling Green State University and University of South Carolina; serving on the faculties of the Perlman Music Program, Takács Quartet Seminar and the North American Viola Institute at the Orford Center for the Arts in Quebec, Canada; and coaching chamber music at the Suzuki Association of the Americas, Inc. Ninth Conference, the International School for Musical Arts, Chamber Music Connection, Interlochen Arts Academy, Chamber Music Wyoming Young Artist Program, Britt Institute Chamber Strings and the Madeline Island Music Camp Adult Chamber Music Program.

Eckert serves on the board of the Rocky Mountain Viola Society and for three years served as an adjudicator for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA) Arts Recognition and Talent Search, the exclusive nominating agency for the Presidential Scholars in the Arts, and appeared in their academy-nominated documentary, “Rehearsing a Dream.”

In addition to being the cellist of the Blair String Quartet, Felix Wang is a founding member of the Blakemore Trio and co-principal cellist of the IRIS Orchestra under the direction of Michael Stern. His diverse career has brought him throughout the world as a chamber musician, soloist, and in recital, receiving critical acclaim for, “beautifully wrought,” “dazzling,” and “soulful” performances.

Mr. Wang has been the winner of several esteemed competitions, including the National Society of Arts and Letters Cello Competition, where he appeared with the Phoenix Symphony. Judges included Mstislav Rostropovich, Raya Garbousova and Laszlo Varga. Frequently invited to perform at festivals, recent engagements include the Portillo International Music Festival, the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Strings in the Mountains Festival, the Highlands Chamber Music Festival and the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival. He has been heard live on NPR stations across the country and has recorded for the Albany, Blue Griffin, Centaur, Innova and Naxos labels.

Already established as a well known pedagogue, Mr. Wang is Professor of Cello at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. During the summer, he is on the faculties of the Chautauqua Music Festival and Madeline Island Chamber Music, and is co-artistic director of the Hilton Head Chamber Music Institute.  In previous summers he has served on the faculties of the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, Brevard Music Center, Banff Centre Youth Arts Festival, the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Rocky Mountain Summer Conservatory, the National Music Festival and the Killington Music Festival.

Mr. Wang received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, a Master of Music from the New England Conservatory, and a Bachelor of Music from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Wang was also a recipient of the prestigious Frank Huntington Beebe Grant for study abroad, using it to study in London with William Pleeth. His teachers have included Erling Blondal Bengtsson, Laurence Lesser, Stephen Kates, Jeffrey Solow and Louis Potter, Jr.