Discussion Panel

Aaron P. Dworkin is the Founder and President of the Sphinx Organization, a national arts organization that focuses on youth and minority involvement in classical music. An accomplished electric and acoustic violinist, he received his Bachelors of Music and Masters of Music in Violin Performance from the University of Michigan School of Music, graduating with high honors. A member of the Golden Key, Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Kappa Lamda National Honor Societies, Mr. Dworkin is a recipient of the MLK Spirit Award. He previously attended the Peabody Institute, the Philadelphia New School and the Interlochen Arts Academy, and has studied with Vladimir Graffman, Berl Senofsky, Jascha Brodsky, John Eaken, Renata Knific, Donald Hopkins and Stephen Shipps. Additionally, Mr. Dworkin studied piano with Robert Alexander Böhnke in Tübingen, Germany.

In addition to his academic credits, Mr. Dworkin has produced and recorded two CDs entitled Ebony Rhythm and Bar-Talk. He has also transcribed works for electric strings and developed Electric String 201, a college-level preparatory course in electric string performance. In addition, he has authored a collection of poetry entitled They Said I Wasn't Really Black and produced and directed a movie entitled Deliberation.

Given his extensive artistic background, Mr. Dworkin has been an invited lecturer on the topic of career development in classical music at the University of Michigan's School of Music. He is also an active keynote speaker for arts and community organizations, and has been invited to speak on the topic of diversity in the arts at numerous events, including national conferences for the American Symphony Orchestra League, National Suzuki Association, National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, and National Association for Negro Musicians. His writings have been featured in various publications, including Andante, an on-line music industry magazine. In addition, Mr. Dworkin has served as a panelist on various arts committees, including the Arts Organization Development Committee of the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the MetLife Awards for Excellence in Community Engagement, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and Arts Presenters. Mr. Dworkin's expertise in the arts field has resulted in board membership with various organizations, including the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, MI, the Board of Visitors of Walnut Hill School, the Advisory Board of the ASTA 2003 Alternative Strings Awards, the Advisory Board of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, and the Board of Directors of ArtServe Michigan. Finally, Mr. Dworkin was recognized by SBC Ameritech as a recipient of their Excellence Awards for his accomplishments in the field of education, by the University of Michigan's African-American Alumni Council as a recipient of the 2002 5 Under 10 Award, and by the Detroit News as one of the 2003 Michiganians of the Year.

Jim Copenhaver is the Senior Partner of the consulting firm of J C Enterprises – Focused Learning. The firm provides focused process management tools to assist non-profit organizations to fully achieve their purpose by utilizing the creative and innovative capabilities of leadership, employees and volunteers. The firm specializes in the areas of organizational development, governance models, self-directed teams, strategic business and marketing planning, and change management. Copenhaver’s experience with organizations in transition began with 31 years of management positions with Honeywell, including Divisional Controller, Vice President of Marketing and as Vice President of Data Storage Product Operations. With Honeywell, he was involved in pioneering efforts to shift from traditional hierarchical structures to team-based and self-directed work teams.

Following his business career, he accepted the challenge to serve as the first Executive Director/CEO for the Colorado Symphony, the nation’s first orchestra to create a working partnership of musicians, trustees and community. This new “partnership model” received national recognition as a viable alternative for non-profit organizations facing financial and operational issues. Subsequently, he has served as Interim Executive Director for the Western States Arts Federation in 1995, for Childsplay, a professional Theatre for Youth in Tempe, Arizona in 2001, for the Colorado Symphony again in 2002, and most recently in 2003, as Interim Executive Director for the Phoenix Boys Choir. In each of these positions, while assisting in the selection of the new Executive Director, he provided management and assistance to the boards in the areas of strategic planning, governance, and facilitated changes required to deal with the impact on their missions caused by the changing environment for the arts.

Copenhaver provides his business acumen and experience to assist a wide range of non-profit arts organizations. Clients have included the New Mexico Symphony, Opera Colorado, Central City Opera (CO), the Arvada Center for the Arts, the Van Cliburn Foundation, the Indianapolis Symphony, Symphonies of the Southwest Consortium, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Lubbock Symphony, the Billings Symphony and Chamber Music Sedona. Current clients include the Montana Arts Council, the Mobile Symphony, and the Anchorage Concert Association. Copenhaver is also serving as the facilitator for the Contract Review Committee of the Phoenix Symphony.
In addition, he currently serves on the following boards of trustees: Arts for Colorado (Chair); Foundation for the Denver Performing Arts Complex (Chair); Englewood (CO) Cultural Arts Center Association (Chair); Arizona Action for the Arts (Chair); Arizona Citizens for the Arts; and Childsplay Theatre for Youth Company.

Geneviève Cimon is Acting Director of Music Education at Canada’s National Arts Centre. At the NAC, she has been responsible for producing family and school programs as well as national education resources for teachers. For 2006-07, she will replace Claire Speed, and will assume overall responsibility for NAC education programs that comprise young artist training, teacher training, youth and family programming, community engagement, and music education advocacy on a national and international scale.

Geneviève holds degrees and certificates in Piano Performance and Musicology. She has taught music privately and in elementary schools, and has mentored music education students from McGill University teaching in inner city schools in Montreal.

Charles Burke is the Director of Education for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as well as the Artistic Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Civic Youth Ensembles. Under his direction, the DSO’s commitment to community engagement, high-caliber music training, and meaningful partnerships have grown and become one of the preeminent orchestral educational programs in the nation.

As an executive administrator, Burke leads a diverse array of innovative and cutting-edge programs - concert presentations, training programs and institutional partnerships. His efforts in music exposure have led to the popular DSO’s Young People’s Concerts, Tiny Tots, the DSO’s Educational Concert Series and Super Saturday’s at the Max. These programs regularly reach more than 50,000 students and families a year.

Burke also serves as the Artistic and Executive leadership for the DSO’s Civic Youth Ensembles, as it continues to serve as a leading supplemental music training program in the United States. Located in the Max M. Fisher’s Pincus Music Education, the Civic Youth Ensembles hosts more than 600 students per week in 10 ensembles and teaches young people in jazz, classical, chamber and wind ensemble with world-class artists. Past and future artists include Yo Yo Ma, Midori, Chick Corea, Branford Marsalis, Herbie Hancock and Peter Oundjian. Burke founded and administers ACES (the Association of Civic Ensembles), a separate non-profit parent organization that financially partners with the DSO to insure the growth of the programs.

As a conductor, Burke was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestras in 1999, a post he relinquished in 2006 to become Artistic Director. In 2000, Burke was the Music Director of the Lake St. Clair Symphony Orchestra in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Burke has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the 2001-2002 Educational Concert Series – attended by more than 16,000 children. Burke has served as a guest conductor, clinician and television educator - guest conducting the San Francisco Youth Symphony, the Interlochen High School Orchestra, the Detroit Chamber Strings, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the United States Army Band, the United States Herald Trumpets, Wayne State Symphony Orchestra and appearing as musical host on the WTVS production of “Mozart, Math and Music” and Backstage Pass with the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestras.

Prior to his appointments with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Burke studied orchestral conducting at the University of Michigan. At the University of Michigan, Burke was appointed as Music Director of the Campus Symphony Orchestras as well as the Assistant Conductor of the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestras. Before his tenure at the University of Michigan, Burke was an active and sought-after guest conductor, adjudicator and clinician throughout his native Washington DC metropolitan area. Burke was the Music Director and founder of the Fairfax Chamber Orchestra, as well as a conducting and composition fellow at several international music festivals. In 1999, Burke served as a conducting fellow at the Oregon Bach Festival under Maestro Helmut Rilling.

The son of two professional musicians, Burke began playing piano at the age of five. At age nine, he made his professional debut with the title role of Amahl in Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera Amahl and the Night Visitors. Burke began his conducting training at the age of seventeen and has continued his studies with Neeme Järvi, Kenneth Kiesler, Martin Katz, Anthony Maiello, Mallory Thompson, Harold Faberman and Daniel Lewis.

Mr. Burke’s work in music education earned a nomination for the National Sallie Mae Outstanding Teaching Award. Under Burke’s leadership, his collegiate instrumental and elementary choral performance groups have been received critical acclaim for their outstanding achievements. Mr. Burke holds degrees from West Virginia University and George Mason University.

Eric Bertoluzzi is a native of western Pennsylvania, where he received the Bachelor of Music degree from Duquesne University in 1968. After performing in orchestras in Youngstown OH, Wheeling WV, Johnstown PA, and Huntsville AL, he completed a three-year tour of duty in the US Army. In 1971 he joined the Denver Symphony. In 1990, Eric was appointed to the position of Education Director for the Colorado Symphony, in which he served until 1998. He received the prestigious “Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Arts Education” in 1994.

Eric is the co-founder of Up Close and Musical (UCAM), an ensemble of symphony musicians that has given over 800 performances for more than 300,000 young people and adults throughout the state of Colorado during the past 18 years. The program has expanded its spectrum of activities to include endeavors such as beginning strings instruction, classroom preparation for UCAM performances, chamber music coaching, arts and academics integration projects, and a number of other educational programs.

In his 35th year as a cellist with the Colorado Symphony, Eric is also active in his community on behalf of the arts. He has served as chair of the Englewood Cultural Arts Commission since 1998 and is currently vice-chair of the Englewood Cultural Arts Center Association. He has conducted several concerts with the Up Close and Musical ensemble and the Fort Collins Symphony, and has served as conductor of many collaborative performances involving the David Taylor Dance Theatre and the Museum of Outdoor Arts. This past July, he designed and conducted the Colorado Symphony’s youth concerts during a statewide tour.

Englewood Arts and the Englewood Schools are in the 4th and final year of a federally-funded program (Progressive Education in Arts and Academics for Kids) designed to integrate arts and academics. The same partners have just been awarded $1,000,000 by the US Department of Education for the “New Frontiers of Arts in Education” program, which is to be implemented in the Englewood Schools, as well as in two rural districts. Eric oversees the participation of musicians in these innovative projects.

Ann Drinan, Senior Editor, has been a member of the Hartford Symphony viola section for over 30 years. She is a former Chair of the Orchestra Committee, former member of the HSO Board, and has served on many HSO committees. She is also the Executive Director of CONCORA (CT Choral Artists), a professional chorus based in Hartford and New Britain, founded by Artistic Director Richard Coffey. Ann was a member of the Advisory Board of the Symphony Orchestra Institute (SOI), and was the HSO ROPA delegate for 14 years, serving as both Vice President and President of ROPA. In addition to playing the viola and running CONCORA, Ann is a professional writer and editor, and has worked as a consultant and technical writer for software companies in a wide variety of industries for over 3 decades. (She worked for the Yale Computer Science Department in the late 70s, and thus has been on the Internet, then called the DARPAnet, since 1977!) She is married to Algis Kaupas, a sound recordist, and lives a block from Long Island Sound in Branford CT. Together they create websites for musicians: shortbeachwebdesign.com.

Ann holds a BA in Music from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an MA in International Relations from Yale University.

Read Ann Drinan's blog here. web.esm.rochester.edu/poly/author/ann-drinan

Christian Woehr was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1951 into a large and unwieldy family of musicians. Five days into life, he split for Pittsburgh, where his dad had a new gig playing horn with the Pittsburgh Symphony. At the age of 7 his cellist mother asked him if he wanted to play the viola. Eager to please, he said “Sure! What is it?”, thus setting the pattern for a lifetime of clueless commitments. Within a year or two, already struck with the pathetic nature of the viola repertoire, he was attempting to write his own music. Possibly his first completed work, a Gavotte for solo viola, received actual monetary payments of 25 cents per copy from his teacher Albert Hirtz, a Pittsburgh Symphony musician who understood the motivational force of cash. The $1.50 earned from this project remained Christian’s largest compositional fee for the next 20 years.

Surviving the excruciating self-taught compositional efforts of Christian’s childhood, his family string ensemble (a full string sextet with additional horns) was quite happy to see him off to college. After the Eastman School of Music, where his principal teachers were Francis Tursi in viola and Warren Benson in composition, Christian came face to face with career/cash realities, and put away the pencil and paper for a while to learn the viola parts to Don Juan and the Mendellsohn Scherzo (for orchestra auditions). After a miserable year in the Columbus Symphony, he returned to Rochester, his marriage over and his bow arm still stinking.

Attacking the latter through the teaching skills of Heidi Castleman, he eventually landed the Principal Viola job in the Rochester Philharmonic. Forced to play slightly above his physical talent level, Woehr again learned that his true love lay in composing. He began writing works for viola and multiple violas, and more importantly, organizing concerts with the combined viola resources of the Eastman School and the Rochester Philharmonic. In 1984, ERVE (the Eastman Rochester Viola Ensemble) made its triumphant way to the World Viola Congress in Boston, playing all-Woehr. The crowd adulation (unrealistic though it may have been from an audience of several hundred violists) sealed Christian’s compositional fate.

In 1986, during a downsizing period of the Rochester Philharmonic (no more chips and beer on runout buses, plus the abandonment of Carnegie Hall concerts) Woehr got a call from St. Louis. He went, and won the audition for Assistant Principal Viola of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, a job which has left him with somewhat more time and energy for composing (all part of his long-range plan). No doubt due to life-lessons learned, Woehr continues to hesitate to give up his orchestral day job for composing. But his opus grows in quantity, scope, and quality, with performances by orchestras, chamber music festivals, and colleagues who commission him for his uniquely fun style of writing. He isn’t getting rich off composing, but the few bucks he gets from ASCAP every 3 months does keep up the faith.

Christopher Theofanidis (b. 12/18/67 in Dallas, Texas) has had performances by many leading orchestras from around the world, including the National Symphony, the London Symphony, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Moscow Soloists, the Atlanta and Houston Symphonies, the California Symphony (for which he was composer-in-residence from 1994 to 1996), the Oregon Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, among others. He will serve as Composer of the Year for the Pittsburgh Symphony for their 2006-2007 Season. Mr. Theofanidis holds degrees from Yale, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Houston, and has been the recipient of the Masterprize, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barlow Prize, six ASCAP Gould Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a Tanglewood Fellowhship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Charles Ives Fellowship. Mr. Theofanidis' recent projects include an opera for the Houston Grand Opera, a ballet for the American Ballet Theatre, and a work for the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus based on the poetry of Rumi. He has served as a delegate to the US-Japan Foundation's Leadership Program and currently teaches at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Juilliard School in New York City.

For more than a decade the works of Roberto Sierra have been part of the repertoire of many of the leading orchestras, ensembles and festivals in the USA and Europe. At the inaugural concert of the 2002 world renowned Proms in London, his Fandangos was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert that was broadcast by both the BBC Radio and Television throughout the UK and Europe. Sierra's numerous commissions include works for many of the major American orchestras as well as ensembles in Europe. International ensembles that have performed his works include the orchestras of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, Minnesota, Dallas, Detroit, San Antonio and Phoenix, as well as by the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, Continuum, England's BBC Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the Spanish orchestras of Galicia and Barcelona, and at Wolf Trap, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Festival Casals, France's Festival de Lille, among others.

Recent commissions include: Concerto for Orchestra for the centennial celebrations of the Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and the Philadelphia Orchestra; Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for James Carter; Con madera, metal y cuero for Evelyn Glennie commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Casals Festival (the premiere was part of the BBC 20th Century Retrospective “Sounding the Century”); Fandangos for the National Symphony Orchestra In Washington DC; Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; Sinfonía No. 1, commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Double Concerto for violin and viola co-commissioned by the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Orchestras; Sinfonía No. 2 commissined by the Abraham Frost commissioning Fund from the University of Miami; and Sinfonía No. 3 commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

In 2003 he was awarded the Academy Award in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award states: "Roberto Sierra writes brilliant music, mixing fresh and personal melodic lines with sparkling harmonies and striking rhythms. . ." His Sinfonía No. 1, a work commissioned by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, won the 2004 Kenneth Davenport Competition for Orchestral Works. In 1989 Roberto Sierra became the Composer-in-Residence of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In addition to advising the MSO on American repertoire, Mr. Sierra contributed to the musical life of Milwaukee with a number of new works, including pieces for local chamber and choral ensembles, and for individual musicians. The Milwaukee-based Koss Classics released a CD of his orchestral music featuring the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Sierra has also been the Music Alive Composer-In-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra and New Mexico Symphony.

Roberto Sierra's Music may be heard on recently released CD's by New World Records, Albany Records, Gasparo, Newport Classic, New Albion, Koch, ADDA, VRAS Productions, Musical Heritage Society, Koss Classics, CRI, BMG, Fleur de Son and Dorian Records. In the spring of 2004 EMI Classics released his two guitar concertos Folias and Concierto Barroco with Manuel Barrueco as soloist.

Roberto Sierra was born in Puerto Rico where he pursued early studies at the Conservatory of Music and the University of Puerto Rico. After graduation, Sierra went to Europe to further his musical knowledge, studying first at the Royal College of Music and the University of London, and later at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht. Between 1979 and 1982 he did advanced work in composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg under the renowned György Ligeti. In 1982 Sierra returned to Puerto Rico to occupy administrative posts in arts administration and higher education, first as Director of the Cultural Activities Department at the University of Puerto Rico, and later as Chancellor of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Throughout this period, he was vigorously engaged as a composer on the international scene. Roberto Sierra is currently Professor of Composition at Cornell University.