Michael Jinsoo Lim and
Andrew Waggoner, violins
Melia Watras, viola
Caroline Stinson, cello
Molly Morkoski, piano
Andrew Waggoner, composer and violin
Andrew Waggoner was born in 1960 in New Orleans. He grew up there and in Minneapolis and Atlanta, and studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University. Called “the gifted practitioner of a complex but dramatic and vividly colored style” by the New Yorker, his music has been commissioned and performed by the the Academy of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Saint Louis, Denver, Syracuse, and Winnipeg Symphonies, the Cassatt, Corigliano, Miro, and Degas Quartets, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the California EAR Unit, pianist Gloria Cheng, violist Melia Watras, 'cellist Robert Burkhart, the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic of Zlin, Czech Republic, Sequitur, the Empyrean Ensemble, Buglisi-Foreman Dance, the Athabasca Trio, CELLO, Flexible Music, Ensemble Nordlys, of Denmark, and Ensemble Accroche Note, of France. He has received grants and prizes from ASCAP, Yaddo, The New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, New Music Delaware, the Eastman School of Music and Syracuse University. He has also been awarded the Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award from Composers Inc., in San Francisco, has been nominated for four prizes from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2005. Recently he was awarded the Roger Sessions Prize for an American composer by the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy, and was in residence at Bogliasco in the spring of 2008. He has two CD’s on CRI, both now available on the New World label, and can also be heard on the Vienna Modern Masters Music From Six Continents series, as well as on solo CD’s by violist Melia Watras and ‘cellist Robert Burkhart. In addition to his concert works, Waggoner has also composed extensively for theatre and for film, and is an active violinist. He was a founding Director of the Seal Bay Festival of American Chamber Music in Vinalhaven, Maine, and is currently Composer-in-Residence at the Setnor School of Music of Syracuse University, teaching regularly also at NOCCA Riverfront in New Orleans. Please visit www.andrewwaggoner.com.
Michael Jinsoo Lim, violin
Korean-American violinist Michael Jinsoo Lim has made appearances in the United States, Central America, Europe, and Asia as a soloist, chamber musician, and concertmaster. Mr. Lim’s solo engagements have included appearances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the International Chamber Orchestra of Girona, Spain, the Indiana University Philharmonic, the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra. Lim has recorded for DreamWorks, Albany Records, CRI, Bayer Records, and Aguava New Music. As co-founder of the Corigliano Quartet (www.coriglianoquartet.com), Lim has won such awards as the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and the ASCAP/CMA Award for Adventurous Programming, and has appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and Performance Today. The Corigliano Quartet maintains an active performing schedule, having appeared at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Kennedy Center. Lim studied at Indiana University with the legendary Josef Gingold, and at the Juilliard School, where he served as an assistant to the Juilliard String Quartet. Mr. Lim has also taught as an assistant at Indiana University and as a Musical Artist in residence at Dickinson College. He currently holds a first violin position in the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, of which he has performed as Assistant Concertmaster. More on Michael Lim can be found at michaeljinsoolim.com.
Melia Watras, viola
Described as “staggeringly virtuosic” by The Strad, violist Melia Watras has long been at the forefront of the American new music scene, performing numerous commissions and world premieres as a soloist and co-founder of the award-winning Corigliano Quartet (www.coriglianoquartet.com). Ms. Watras has performed in Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Kennedy Center and at festivals such as Aspen and Ravinia. As the violist of the Corigliano Quartet, she has received awards such as the Grand Prize at the Fischoff Competition and the ASCAP/CMA Award for Adventurous Programming. Ms. Watras’s debut solo CD, Viola Solo, was released by Fleur De Son (www.fleurdeson.com) to much critical acclaim. Strings remarked, “Watras is a young player in possession of stunning virtuosic talent and deserving of the growing acclaim,” while the American Record Guide proclaimed, "Watras is a terrific violist." With the Corigliano Quartet, she has recorded for Naxos, Albany, Bayer, CRI, Riax, and Aguava and has appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and Performance Today and WFMT-Chicago’s Live from Studio One. Watras attended Indiana University, where she served as Atar Arad’s assistant. She went on to study chamber music at the Juilliard School, and taught as an assistant to the Juilliard String Quartet. Watras is currently Assistant Professor of Viola at the University of Washington School of Music, where she teaches viola and chamber music. For more information on Melia Watras, please visit www.meliawatras.com.
Caroline Stinson, cello
Winner of the 2007 J.B. Watkins Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, cellist Caroline Stinson was born in Edmonton, Canada and lives in New York City. As a performer, she appears throughout Canada, the United States and Europe as a soloist and chamber music artist. Known for her expressive and personal interpretation of new works, Ms. Stinson is sought after by orchestras and fellow musicians for performances of both traditional and contemporary repertoire. Her performance credits include Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, New York's Museum of Modern Art's Summergarden Series, Boston's Gardner Museum, Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian in the United States; Germany's Koelner Philharmonie, Switzerland's Lucerne Festival and France's Cité de la Musique and Theatre at Rennes, in Europe, and the Centennial Centre and Winspear Halls in Canada. As an advocate of new music she has worked with composers John Harbison, George Rochberg and Steven Stucky, and has recorded for Albany, Koch, Phoenix and Naxos. Caroline is a member of CELLO, the Contrasts Quartet, the Athabasca String Trio and formerly was a member of the Cassatt Quartet. Her teachers include Alan Harris (CIM), Maria Kliegel (Germany), Joel Krosnick (Juilliard) and Tanya Prochazka. Caroline is on faculty and coordinates the chamber music program at the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University. Please visit www.carolinestinson.com.
Molly Morkoski, piano
Pianist Molly Morkoski has performed as a soloist and collaborative artist throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Molly Morkoski’s playing has been recognized by the New York Times as “strong, profiled, nuanced……beautifully etched.” The Boston Globe called her “outstanding.” She has been a featured soloist on the Making Music series at Carnegie Hall and the Tanglewood, Bang-on-a-Can, and Pacific Rim festivals, and has appeared as soloist with the Raleigh, Asheville, and Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestras. An avid chamber musician, she has performed at the Aspen, Norfolk, and Tanglewood festivals; is a member of the Zankel Band and Open End Ensemble; and has collaborated with the NY Philharmonic Chamber Players, St. Louis Symphony Chamber Players, New World Symphony, Speculum Musicae, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She has collaborated with some of today’s leading musicians including Dawn Upshaw. In June of 2006, she made her solo debut on Carnegie’s Stern Auditorium stage in a prelude concert for the Emerson String Quartet’s ‘Perspectives’ series offering Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126. Recently, she was invited by David Robertson to perform Messiaen’s Vingt Regards Sur L’enfant Jesus as part of the St. Louis Symphony’s Pulitzer Series and the celebration of his centenary year. Ms. Morkoski was a Fulbright scholar to Paris, France where she was apprentice with the Ensemble Intercontemporain and she is also a recipient of the Teresa Sterne Career Grant and the Thayer-Ross Award. Ms. Morkoski currently lives in New York City and is Associate Professor at Lehman College in the Bronx.
Open End is:
Andrew Waggoner
Michael Jinsoo Lim
Melia Watras
Caroline Stinson
Molly Morkoski
Open End was formed in 2005, the brainchild of several interconnected musical friendships. Equally committed to new chamber music, particularly by composers with no easily-pegged stylistic affiliations, and to free improvisation, the ensemble is made up of players well-known in ever-expanding contexts whose collective experience spans the whole of Western instrumental literature, from the oldest to the newest.
Open End has performed in the US, France and Italy, and was invited in 2007 for a week-long residency at the Conservatoire National de Région in Strasbourg, France, where they gave masterclasses in chamber music and improvisation and performed two concerts in collaboration with the ensemble Accroche Note. Open End actively commissions works and in 2008-09 premiered “Lift High, Reckon - Fly Low, Come Close” for piano trio by Anna Weesner and “Inventory of Terrors” by Andrew Waggoner, a new piano quintet funded through a commission from the Redhouse Arts Center in Syracuse.
