Chintimi Chamber Music Festival: Voices of Desire

• Linda Larson, mezzo-soprano
• Catherine Peterson, flute
• Rachelle McCabe, piano
• Jessica Lambert, violin
• Sarah Knutson, violin
• Annissa Bolder, viola
• Victoria Wolff-Zevalos, cello
• Jean-David Coen, piano

About Chintimi Chamber Music Festival

The Chintimi Chamber Music Festival, founded in 2001, is built around performers who grew up in Willamette Valley and are now pursuing concert careers in classical music. There are at least 26 such artists living in the US and Europe, playing in symphonies, operas, chamber orchestras, and touring ensembles, and auditioning for new opportunities.

About Linda Larson, mezzo-soprano

Corvallis native Linda Larson is delighted to be returning for this year's Chintimini Chamber Music Festival. Linda has sung leading operatic roles throughout the United States with companies including New York City Opera National Company, Opera Illinois, Syracuse Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, Indianapolis Opera, and Opera Memphis.

Recognized for her commitment to new American music, Linda performed many pieces of microtonalist composer John Eaton, including the world premieres of his operas Pumped Fiction, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Rerouted. Linda premiered chamber music of Cynthia Lee Wong at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. She has sung with Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, Ensemble X, Brooklyn New Music Collective, Encompass New Opera Theatre, Voices of Change, and Bowdoin International Chamber Music Festival.

Linda has been featured in concert and recital at the Chautauqua Institute, with the Syracuse Symphony, New Texas Festival, Umpqua Symphony, Erie Philharmonic, Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble, and Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, and as part of Symphony Space's Wall-to-Wall Stravinsky Festival. She has taught at Cornell University, New York University, Ithaca College, and Appalachian State University.

While growing up in Corvallis, Linda studied voice with Gwen Leonard and Karen Knutson, and piano with Becky Jeffers and Bea Miller. She also played harpsichord with Figs and Thistles, a local chamber music group, while attending Corvallis High School. Linda now splits her time between Boone, North Carolina and Missoula, Montana. She and her husband Bill Pelto (who also has Corvallis roots) are avid travelers, hikers, and skiers, and play piano duets almost every day. Linda has recently taken up the ukulele.

About Catherine Peterson, flute

Catherine Peterson is Assistant Principal/Second Flutist of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. A regular substitute flutist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2010-2019, she has also performed with the Detroit Symphony and the Cincinnati Symphony. Memorable projects have included performing the Claude Bolling Jazz Suite with Jeffrey Biegel and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, performing as Principal Flute with the Baltimore Symphony under Marin Alsop, and recording Ameriques by Varese with the Cincinnati Symphony.

An active chamber musician and educator, she performs with the nationally recognized Ivy Street Ensemble, and can often be heard on Colorado Public Radio. Cathy is the Flute Coach for Denver School of the Arts and teaches at the University of Denver’s Lamont Summer Academy. Her previous musical engagements include Principal Flutist with the Central City Opera, Principal Flutist with Emerald City Opera, and co-Principal flutist of the Strings Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Cathy is Director of the Mile High Flute Academy, co-Director of Mile High Flute Benders, and is a regular performer at Front Range Chamber Players in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Her teachers include Jeff Zook, Leone Buyse, Tim Day, and Walfrid Kujala.

About Rachelle McCabe, piano

Rachelle McCabe is Professor Emeritus of Music at Oregon State University and an internationally acclaimed concert pianist and artist teacher. She has concertized as soloist and chamber musician throughout North America and the United Kingdom, as well as in Europe, China, and Southeast Asia.

As concerto soloist Rachelle McCabe has appeared with many orchestras including the Seattle Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Victoria Symphony, and the Corvallis-OSU Symphony. Her solo recital performances include concerts at The National Gallery in Washington DC, the Goethe Institute in Singapore, and the Findhorn Institute in Scotland. Her many chamber music partnerships include tours with the Philadelphia String Quartet, clarinetist David Shifrin of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, Boston violinists Yuri and Dana Mazurkevich, and flutist Torkyl Bye of the Oslo Philharmonic. She performs in chamber music festivals such as the Chintimini Festival in Oregon, the Highlands Festival in North Carolina, Chamber Music Northwest in Oregon, and the Victoria International Music Festival in British Columbia. With her sister Robin McCabe, she performs duo piano concerts nationally and internationally.

Believing in the power of music to affect change, Rachelle McCabe has created innovative programs with acclaimed writer/philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore to address the crisis of global extinction and climate change. They have taken their programs across the USA and Canada. Their powerful program, Variations on a Theme of Extinction, weaves Rachelle’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli with Kathleen’s spoken narrative. An acclaimed film version entitled The Extinction Variations was created by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Nara Garber in 2019.

Rachelle McCabe is Artistic Director of Corvallis-OSU Piano International with its prestigious Steinway Piano Series, community concerts and festivals, and educational outreach programs. She also co-directs the annual OSU Chamber Music Workshop, a summer camp for young musicians.

A highly respected teacher, Professor McCabe taught hundreds of college piano students at Oregon State University until her retirement as a full professor from the university in 2020. She was named a Master Teacher at Oregon State. She now teaches an independent piano studio and appears frequently as an artist teacher and adjudicator, nationally and internationally. In the 2022-23 season she judged competitions and festivals in Seattle (Seattle Young Artists Music Festival), Hong Kong (The Hong Kong Schools Music Festival), Portland (Oregon Music Teachers Association), and Alaska (Alaska Piano Competition in Anchorage), and taught master classes in Atlanta (Emory University), Seattle (Seattle Pacific University) and at the University of Oregon in Eugene. In 2018, she taught master classes in Beijing at Renmin University, China Conservatory and Capital Normal University. Earlier in her career, Rachelle McCabe served as an Artist in Residence and was appointed as affiliate faculty member at La Salle College of the Arts in Singapore.

Rachelle McCabe holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from The University of Michigan where she studied with Gyorgy Sandor and Theodore Lettvin. She earned her Master’s degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Ania Dorfmann, and her Bachelor’s from The University of Washington with Béla Siki. Additional teachers were Willard Schultz, Gary Graffman, and Leon Fleisher.

About Jessica Lambert, violin

Jessica Lambert of Corvallis is a graduate of The Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Zvi Zeitlin and members of the Cleveland Quartet. Other major teachers include Alice Schoenfeld and Alexander Treger. Concertmaster of the Corvallis Symphony Orchestra since 2007, she is also the Artistic Director of the OSU Chamber Music Workshop, an intensive quartet program held in Corvallis in July. Jessica is widely recognized as a teacher and maintains a private studio in Corvallis. Her students have won regional and national competitions and have matriculated to the nation’s most prestigious conservatories and summer programs. She has played viola with the Oregon Symphony and violin with the El Paso Symphony. She was concertmaster of the El Paso Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra, for which she was a featured soloist in the New Music series. A frequent guest of the Chintimini Music Festival since 2004, she performs as a soloist and chamber player throughout the Northwest.

About Sarah Knutson, violin

Based in San Francisco as a freelance artist, Sarah Knutson plays with several orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony as first violinist. She also also records in the Bay Area and in Los Angeles, and performs throughout Japan and Europe.

Sarah has been a member of the small, conductorless New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco and of Santa Fe Pro Musica, and has performed with a San Diego chamber ensemble.

She was formerly principal second violin of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and of The American Sinfonietta.

Sarah helped to develop the concept of the Chintimini Festival and has been an essential part since it began in 2001.

About Annissa Bolder, viola

Annissa Bolder is a violist, violinist, and music educator, currently residing in Corvallis, OR. Whether it be through advocacy, teaching, or performing, Annissa is passionate about bringing music education to students of all ages. She has held arts leadership positions in multiple organizations, currently serving as the Executive Director of the Corvallis Youth Symphony Association (CYSA). Previously, she served as Lead Elementary Strings Teacher and Orchestra Manager for CYSA, Music Director of the Douglas County Youth Orchestras in Roseburg, and taught on the faculty of the UO Community Music Institute in Eugene.

Annissa attended Arizona State University and the University of Oregon, studying Viola Performance, Violin/Viola Pedagogy, Music Education, and French. In her capacity as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at UO, she received the Award of Excellence for Studio, Performance, and Ensemble Teaching in 2015.

Annissa performs regularly with various Oregon ensembles, including the Eugene Symphony, Eugene Ballet, and the Oregon Mozart Players. In her free time, she loves spending time with her family hiking and biking in the beautiful Oregon outdoors.

About Victoria Wolff-Zevalos, cello

Victoria Wolff began her cello studies at age eight in Los Angeles, California. She competed rigorously and won prizes from The Young Musicians Foundation, VOCE, and was featured on Los Angeles Public Television for her performance of Haydn Concerto in C major at the age of 13. In high school she attended Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to get her Bachelor of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School and later her Doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. Victoria taught privately in Austin for almost 20 years, with University of Texas String Project, International String Workshops in Biarritz, France, and as a chamber music coach and Director of her own cello ensemble, The Wolff Tones. She performed regularly with the Austin Symphony as well as many groups both classical and non-classical.

Victoria held a position as adjunct professor at Baylor University in Waco Texas from 2007 until the birth of her son in 2014. Since moving back home to Oregon in 2018 she has continued to perform with The Chintimini Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Amici, and with Trio Despina. She has been a guest teacher for the University of Oregon orchestral workshops and collaborated with local musicians to perform for OSU and for Corvallis-OSU Piano International. Victoria is married with two children and is fully appreciating the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

About Jean-David Coen, piano

Jean-David Coen is Artist in Residence at Willamette University, and director of the Grace Goudy Distinguished Artists Series. He holds degrees from the Paris Conservatory, Juilliard, and Yale, and a Doctorate from the University of Southern California. He has worked with significant masters representing each of the 3 great and most essential pianistic traditions: the German, Russian, and French "schools" of interpretation and technique. These great artists included Adele Marcus, Jeanne-Marie Darre, Claude Frank, Sacha Gorodnitzki, and John Perry.

Jean-David began concertizing with orchestras when he was 9, and by 17 had performed both Tchaikovsky and Brahms' first piano concertos. He has played around the world with orchestras like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, at Tanglewood, and in the Oregon Bach Festival. Completing a circle started with his performance of the Chopin G minor Ballade at age 12 in the famous tent at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Coen became a member of the Piano and Chamber Music faculty there. Over 24 years he performed several times every year with numerous distinguished faculty colleagues, performed several piano concertos, participated in the world premiere of new compositions, and judged over 30 concerto competitions. His 2008 performance of the Diabelli Variations concluded the Festival's presentation of the entire cycle of Beethoven's piano works. While on the Aspen faculty he worked with numerous extraordinary young talents such as Greg Anderson and Yuja Wang for the preparation of their concerto competition victories.

Jean-David's solo and ensemble performances have been heard on NPR's Performance Today, KUSC, and WQXR in New York. He has been a Visiting Professor of Piano at the Sheppard School Of Music at USC in addition to serving on the faculty of the Colburn Summer Academy, and the Duxbury Summer Festival of Music. During the summers he performs frequently at the Chintimini Festival, and is part of the of the faculty of the Peng Piano Academy in Palo Alto, California, the Beverly Hills International Festival of music, and the John Perry Academy of Music.