BIOGRAPHIES

Peter Hall
Even though “semi-retired,” Peter Hall continues to wear many hats. He is the Sunday afternoon host on WBFO’s “sister station,” WNED CLassical where he has produced over 1,000 radio interviews with musical artists. If you see him at a theater with a pen in his hand, he’s probably getting ready to co-host “Theater Talk” with Anthony Chase (heard Friday mornings at 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. on WBFO) or to write a review for www.buffalorising.com. He is also a member of the “Artie Awards” committee (think “Tony Awards for Buffalo theaters”).

Peter feels fortunate to have worked for some of the most trusted brands in Western New York. In past lives he has been a Director of Membership for Buffalo Toronto Public Media, the Director of Marketing for Canisius College, and before that was a Director of Marketing for Fisher-Price. Growing up in the Amherst school system, music, the arts, theater, literature, outdoor activities, and teaching were important in his family. His grandfather, the painter W.J. Schwanekamp, has works on display at the Burchfield-Penney. His father was a high school English teacher and his mother was a librarian. In high school, in addition to running track and cross country and being in the ski club, Peter played various instruments in the orchestra, had leading roles in the plays, and was an editor of the high school newspaper.

Peter holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and an M.B.A. from SUNY at Buffalo. For over twenty-five years he has taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Canisius College’s Richard J. Wehle School of Business and continues to this day. Depending on the season, on weekends he might be seen on his bicycle with “The Sunday Morning Riders” or teaching downhill skiing at Kissing Bridge.

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Ann C. Colley is a SUNY Distinguished Professor, Emerita. She has published extensively on nineteen-century British literature and culture. Her most recent book, “Coleridge and the Geometric Idiom: Walking with Euclid,” came out with Cambridge University Press this year. Since childhood Ann has taken walking holidays throughout the British Isles.

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“Outstanding” percussionist Stephen Solook (Robert Bush, SoundDiego) is a new music specialist who regularly performs as an orchestral and world musician.

Looking to connect the past with the future, he highlights the possibilities of sound, beyond traditional notation. As a performer, he has collaborated with many of the country’s preeminent new music ensembles including Bang on a Can All-Stars, Eighth Black Bird, Ensemble Dal Niente, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and San Francisco Chamber Music Players. His duo Aurora Borealis, with soprano Tiffany Du Mouchelle, is noted for their dedication to expanding the repertoire for their instrumentation. Exploring the dynamic relationship of voice and percussion, their performance history, and the acoustic possibilities of each instrument, they have commissioned and premiered countless compositions by composers from around the world.

Solook’s interests in collaboration and heritage have led him to collaborate with artists of diverse backgrounds and mediums. Through the NGO Cultures in Harmony, he collaborated with cultural conservationists in Papua New Guinea, folk musicians and dancers in Cameroon, Egyptian musicians supporting youth advocacy in Alexandria, and as an educator for Programa de Orquestas y Coros Juveniles in Mexico City. As a dance accompanist he was an integral part in the revival of Jose Límon Dance Company’s Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, enjoyed a creative partnership with Preeti Vasudevan, classical Indian dancer, and currently serves as staff accompanist for the University at Buffalo Dance Department.

Throughout Buffalo, Steve can be found performing as an extra percussionist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Slee Sinfonietta at University at Buffalo, or Masti Ensemble, giving a solo performance, or collaborating in one of the city’s many chamber music series. He can be heard in recordings on Bridge, Vortex, and Mode Labels, and as the on screen talent for the popular “Standard of Excellence” snare drum series. His compositions, published by Bachovich Music Publications, offer a reverence to the past while amplifying new possibilities of timbre, expression, and extending technical possibilities of the instruments he writes for.

As an educator, he is committed to making sure every student finds their own voice. In addition, Steve dedicates his research to developing pedagogical practices that aid students with learning disabilities in reading music notation. Dr. Solook received his Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of California San Diego, after attending Mannes College, and Ithaca College.

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Soprano, Tiffany Du Mouchelle is praised for her musical versatility, an electric stage presence and exceptional dramatic sensibilities. Most recognized for her fearlessness in exploring new and challenging repertoire, she ushers the voice into new realms of expressivity, including a vast array of musical styles and languages, featuring over 100 different languages and exploring the genres of classical, world, contemporary, cabaret, and theatrical works.

An avid new music performer, her 2023-24 season includes: performances as Madame and the Voice of Goddess Khan Yin in Su Lian Tan’s opera, “Lotus Lives” with Meridian Ensemble and the role of Venus in Tiffany Skidmore’s “the golden ass” with Slee Sinfonietta; a return to the internationally acclaimed contemporary music festival, June in Buffalo, for her eighth year; the release of “Songs and Dances” by Yvar Mikhashoff on New Focus Recordings. Du Mouchelle has premiered close to 100 new works for the voice, including works by many of the most prestigious composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Anthony Davis, Roger Reynolds, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Christian Wolff. Her voice and percussion duo Aurora Borealis, with her husband Stephen Solook, has commissioned and premiered more new works for the combination than any duo of its kind. Their next album will be released on New Focus in early 2025.

Recipient of the prestigious Richard F. Gold Career Grant for American Opera Singers, Du Mouchelle has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ensemble Signal, Center for Contemporary Opera, Yellow Barn Music Festival, Skålholt Summer Music Series in Iceland, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and American Composers Alliance, and in such prestigious venues as Lincoln Center, Disney Hall, The Consulate of the Republic of Poland, The New York Historical Society, The Ukrainian Institute, the residence of the United States Ambassador in Cairo, and the Acropolium in Carthage.

Her current projects extend from her research and interests in extended voice performance, creative empowerment, and environmental preservation. Tending Ostreidae: Serenades for Settling is an ongoing, immersive, multimedia speculative  collaboration between Du Mouchelle, Suzanne Thorpe, Stephanie Rothenberg, and Anne Burnidge. Exploring the acoustical phenomenon of the oyster’s home and the impact of human noise upon that home, Du Mouchelle and Thorpe are creating a soundscape for the project, developing techniques for singing and vocalization while recording sonic elements. Un-silenced is an ongoing commissioning project exploring perceptions of sounding and silencing, relating to the physical manifestation of sound to creative assertion and communication.

Performances, beginning in 2024-25 include new works by Marcelo Lazcano, Tiffany Skidmore, and Yiheng Yvonne Wu, with new works that approach the topics of invisible women, silencing, and empowerment through trauma and abuse. The Emboldened Voice Project extends from her performance practice into exploring pedagogical methods of releasing vocal repression and holding patterns, while empowering creative expression within the voice curriculum.

Du Mouchelle is an Assistant Professor of Music at University at Buffalo, where she has led the vocal performance program since 2015. Her students have included: classical singers, contemporary art music singers, Peking opera singers, Classical Hindi Music specialists, jazz, blues, and Afro American genre musicians from Sierra Leone, China, Tunisia, France, India, and beyond. Within Buffalo you can find her as a regular performer with the Slee Sinfonietta, Buffalo Chamber Players, and A Musical Feast.

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CHARLES CASTELMAN
Medalist in the Tchaikovsky and Brussels Competitions, Charles Castleman has performed as soloist with the orchestras of Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Kiev, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, Philadelphia, Hong Kong, Seoul and Shanghai, and made appearances at the Australian, Budapest, Marlboro and Vienna Festivals.  A boxed CD set of the 17 best prize-winning violin performances of the Brussels competition’s 50-year history includes his Jongen Concerto. Charles Castleman’s solo CDs include Hubay Csardases,  Ysaye solo Sonatas, and Sarasate cameos on Music and Arts, Gershwin and Antheil on Musicmasters, and his Ford Foundation Concert Artists commission – the David Amram Concerto – on Newport Classic. In the Raphael Trio he recorded Dvorak, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Wolf-Ferrari on Sony Classical, Nonesuch, Unicorn, Discover and ASV; in the String Trio of N.Y., Reger and Martin for BASF. He is a Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. His seven-week summer workshop for solo and chamber music performance The Castleman Quartet Program, now at  SUNY Fredonia,  in its 54th  season, has been praised by Yo-Yo Ma as “the best program of its kind.. a training ground in lifemanship”. His international pedagogical reputation has led to master-classes in Australia, Austria, China, England, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and Ukraine.   His early years were specially eventful: At age 5 he conducted his own compositions with a community orchestra in Salem, Massachusetts

With Frank Sinatra a disapproving observer he received a nationally televised violin lesson from Jack Benny at age 10.He acted in a TV drama with Betty White and Eli Wallach as a prodigy who grows up to be a murderer at age 12 He substituted for Fritz Kreisler on a TV show  entitled Life Begins at 80; at age 14 While attending Harvard at age 16  he was acquainted with the future Unabomber Ted  Kaczynski, and shared a room with future Supreme Court Justice- Dave Souter  At the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium competition, at age 21, he misheard his instructions from the jury, and played a piece they didn‘t request; no one on the jury noticed.

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CLAUDIA HOCA
CLAUDIA HOCA is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where her teachers included Eleanor Sokoloff and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. She has a Master’s degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo,where she studied with Leo Smit. A Fulbright grant enabled her to return to her native Austria, where she pursued advanced studies under Bruno Seidlhofer. Ms. Hoca is the recipient of numerous awards, including top prizes in the Chopin Young Pianist Competition and the Washington International Bach Competition. While still a teenager, she appeared with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic in a Young People’s Concert, broadcast live on network television. She has played over 20 different concertos with the Buffalo Philharmonic under conductors Semyon Bychkov, Christopher Keene, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Hermann Michael, Carlos Kalmar, and Maximiano Valdez, among others. Her recordings include a premier recording of the piano music of Leo Smit on the Spectrum label and two collaborations with Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York under the direction of Richard Kapp: Swiss composer Frank Martin’s Petite Symphonie Concertante and Poulenc’s Aubade, issued as an unedited live performance, both available on the Essay label.

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Cellist Jonathan Golove has performed throughout North America and Europe at venues including Weill Recital Hall (Carnegie Hall), Zipper Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and London’s Southbank Centre. He has been featured as cello soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Slee Sinfonietta, and New York Virtuoso Singers, and he has recorded for the Albany, Parma, Centaur, FMR, pfMENTUM, and Nine Winds labels. His performances and interviews have been heard in broadcasts by numerous National Public Radio stations, as well as on Radio Nuevo León, West German Radio, CBC, and Radio France. His summer appearances include numerous festivals devoted to new works, including the Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Festival d’Automne (Paris), Lincoln Center Festival, June in Buffalo, and the Festival del Centro Histórico (Mexico City). He is the former Chair and a current Associate Professor in UB’s Department of Music, and in 2023, he assumed the post of Artistic Director of UB’s Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21 st Century Music and June in Buffalo festival.