About Featured Artists at ORCMA Concerts

Joshua Davis: Future Piano Concert Artist?

Born and raised in Sparta, Tennessee, Joshua Davis began receiving piano lessons when he was nine years old after demonstrating considerable musical talent on a small keyboard at home.

As a teenager, he won the Herman Godes Award at the Tennessee Technological University Young Artist Piano Competition in 2008, beginning his studies with Tennessee Tech music professor Catherine Godes the same year.

He has since performed four solo recitals and is currently preparing for the Music Teachers National Association’s Young Artist Steinway Piano Competition. Joshua is a sophomore at Tennessee Tech and was last year’s winner of the Joan Derryberry Concerto Competition, one of the university’s most important music prizes.

The Blair String Quartet, based at Vanderbilt University, will present the first concert of the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association’s Chamber Music Series season for 2012-2013.

The concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, at Pollard Auditorium on the Oak Ridge Associated Universities campus. Please note that the regular evening concert starting time – 7:30 instead of 8 p.m. -- is NEW this season to the Chamber Series.

In addition to several previous appearances here, the Nashville quartet has performed widely on National Public Radio. The Washington Post calls the Blair String Quartet simply "a marvelous ensemble." The Denver Post praised one of the Blair SQ's concerts as "a sample of how elegant playing ought to go." 

Naxos Records recently released the Blair Quartet's recording of the "String Quartets of Charles Ives." The recording, which has been widely praised in reviews, was selected as the CD of the Month. Ives (1874-1954) was an American modernist composer.

The members of the Blair SQ are Christian Teal and Cornelia Heard, violins; John Kochanowski, viola; and Felix Wang, cello. Heard is the wife of Oak Ridge’s famous bassist Edgar Meyer, who has composed several pieces for the Blair Quartet.

The quartet’s program for the ORCMA concert includes Haydn's Quartet No. 32 in C Major ("The Bird"), Opus 33, No. 3;  selections from Images from a Close Ward, a piece written for the Blair SQ by composer Michael Hersch, and Beethoven's  Quartet, Opus 59, No. 1.  

 
Christian Teal studied with the renowned Josef Gingold at Indiana University, and with Dorothy DeLay in his graduate studies. His chamber music studies were with members of the Juilliard and Hungarian Quartets, as well as with William Primrose and Janos Starker. He has had solo engagements with the International Madeira Bach Festival Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, the Colorado Philharmonic and his hometown Nashville Symphony.

Violinist Cornelia Heard earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the Juilliard School, where she studied with Dorothy DeLay and Robert Mann of the Juilliard String Quartet.  Her chamber studies were with members of the Cleveland Quartet. She has served as artist-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival. She is the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Violin and Chair of the Blair String Department. 

John Kochanowski, violist, studied at the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Juilliard School where his principal teachers were Robert Mann and Walter Trampler. He also studied at the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy.  He was the violist and a founding member of the Concord String Quartet.

Cellist Felix Wang earned a Doctorate of Music from the University of Michigan, a Master's degree from the New England Conservatory, and a Bachelor's degree from the Peabody Conservatory. A winner of several important competitions, including the National Society of Arts and Letters Cello Competition, he has taught at summer festivals including the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Reserved seat tickets are $25 ($12 for students). For ticket information, please call the ORCMA office at 483-5569.