Wild Things: Music of Springtime Performers

ANDREW COOPERSTOCK performs widely as soloist & chamber musician and has appeared throughout 6 continents & in most of the 50 states, including performances at New York's Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center & the United Nations. He has been featured in recitals & concerto appearances at the Chautauqua, Brevard & Round Top music festivals, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, & Hong Kong’s Hell Hot! New Music Festival, in such international locales as London, Paris, Geneva, Beijing, Seoul, Accra, Vladivostok, Canberra, Quito, and Lima, & on National Public Radio, Radio France & the British Broadcasting Corporation. In 2019-20 he performed and taught in China, Hong Kong, Germany, Czech Republic, New York, Minnesota, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, the Carolinas, Nebraska & Arizona, and he was a convention artist for MTA of California. Prize-winner in the National Federation of Music Clubs Artist Competition, the New Orleans Piano Competition & the US Information Agency’s Artistic Ambassador.

VIolinist PAUL PRIMUS grew up in the Chicago and Cleveland areas, before attending Indiana University & the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. (BM/MM degrees in music from UWM). As a keyboard player, Paul has attended the Oberlin Baroque Institute, working with Joe Gascho and Lisa Crawford. Paul won an audition with the Denver Symphony in 1984, and was promoted to Principal Second Violinist in 1985, the position he still holds. He coordinated the chamber music program at Denver School of the Arts from 2013-2018. Paul is a founding member of the Colorado Chamber Players. He performs 20- 30 concerts a year with the CCP, and can be heard on Colorado Public Radio. Mr. Primus has performed numerous unaccompanied violin recitals over the years, most memorably one of the complete Paganini Caprices in 1986. Paul has taught and performed at Eastern Music Festival, Rocky Ridge, and the Lamont Pre-College Academy at DU. He is a frequent coach for the DYAO.

Barbara Hamilton is Artistic Director and Violist/Violist d’Amore with the Colorado Chamber Players, a position she has held for 27 years. She performed the complete Brandenberg Concerti with BCOC on baroque viola. She served as principal violist with Eastern Music Festival 1990-2005. Barbara played as principal violist/soloist with Colorado Symphony, Orquesta Ciudad de Barcelona & Orquesta de Valencia (Spain). She was in the New York Philharmonic for one season. Dr. Hamilton received a DMA from Yale School of Music in 1992, where she studied with Jesse Levine and taught in 1998. She was a prize winner in the Fischoff, Aspen Festival and Woolsey Hall Competitions, as well as the Young Artists of YM-YWHA (New Jersey). In the 1990’s, she toured Europe with the Orquesta Ciudad de Barcelona, the NY Virtuosi and the American Sinfonietta, concerts in the Grosse Saal/Vienna, the Concertgebauw & Leipzig Gewandhaus.

DANIEL URBANOWICZ is currently a violist in the Sarasota Orchestra, and performs regularly with the Jacksonville Symphony, Southwest Florida Symphony. Dan has played with the New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, the Atlantic Symphony, Gulfshore Opera, Canton Symphony Orchestra, Firelands Orchestra, and Plymouth Philharmonic. Urbanowicz has served as principal violist of the Augusta Symphony, Charlottesville Opera, Gulfshore Opera, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, and the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra. Dan also enjoys playing the viola d’amore, and has been featured with the Colorado Chamber Players, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, Charleston’s Second Monday Series, and Augusta University as a guest lecturer and recitalist. His principal teachers include Martha Katz and Jeffrey Irvine. Mr Urbanowicz plays on a 2017 Robert Clemens Viola. Urbanowicz holds an MM degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Lily Primus is an 18-year-old harpist from Denver, Colorado. In 2019, she was one of four members of the Young Artists Harp Program at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She was a prizewinner of the American Harp Society National Competitions in 2015, 2017 & 2019. Lily was the inaugural recipient of the Siochi Scholarship at Young Artists Harp Seminar (YAHS) in 2018. She was the first prize winner of the Concerto Competition at YAHS in 2018. Lily was on the Young Musicians Foundation roster from 2016-18. She was the winner of the Concerto Competition of the Denver Young Artists Orchestra in 2020. She has been a frequent performer with the Colorado Chamber Players and at Colorado Public Radio. She is a freshman at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, pursuing her degree in Harp Performance with harpist Paula Page, and is the recipient of the Hudspeth Scholarship in Music. She was a student of Mary Kay Waddington, founder of the Suzuki Harp School, for thirteen years

Cellist Scott Kluksdahl has performed for nearly four decades as chamber musician, recitalist and soloist in the United States, Europe, Israel, and Central and South America. Following a daring New York debut program of cutting-edge modern works at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, Strings Magazine identified Scott Kluksdahl as “a simply superb cellist, playing with consummate technical ease, a beautiful sound, total conviction, authority and dedication to the music.” Scott Kluksdahl serves as Professor of Cello at the University of South Florida, where he is a designated Theodore and Venette Askounes-Ashford Distinguished Scholar, and he has presented master classes in such institutions as Eastman School of Music, Indiana University, Boston Conservatory, Northwestern University, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He teaches summers at the Brancaleoni International and the ARIA International Summer Festivals, as well as at the Cello Seminar at the Brown Farm in Salem, New York.

Yuan-Yuan Wang performs with The Florida Orchestra as a tenured first violinist. She frequently performs with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Yuan-Yuan Wang, holds a Doctor of Music degree in violin performance from Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University Bloomington, as well as Masters of Music in violin performance. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her major teachers included Alex Kerr, Mark Kaplan, Paul Biss, Martin Beaver, Misha Rosenker, Keng-Yuen Tseng and John Mrill. Before arriving in the United States from China for high school, she attended the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and Wuhan Conservatory. Active as a recitalist, chamber musician, and educator, Yuan-Yuan Wang has also appeared in concerts, while collaborating with principal musicians of The Florida Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony Orchestra & faculty artists