AumAree House Presents “Viola Music by Black Composers”

Program:

Joseph Bologne (1745-1799)

Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 1a/No. 3

Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)

Sonatine for Viola and Piano (1939)

Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)

Sonata for Viola and Piano (1942)

Florence Price (1887-1953)

Night (orig. voice/piano)

Florence Price (1887-1953)

Elfentanz (orig. violin/piano)

Musicians:

Juliet White-Smith Viola

Juliet White-Smith is an accomplished violist, an engaging and dynamic teacher, and an expert string pedagogue. With a career spanning over three-and-a-half decades, White-Smith is an in-demand teacher and clinician having presented master classes at premier music schools, festivals, and conferences worldwide. She has been an invited clinician at the 2022 and 2012 annual conferences of the American String Teachers association where she was the Collegiate and Pre-Collegiate Viola Master Class clinician, respectively, as well as at the 70thanniversary conference of the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago in 2016. She has presented master classes at prestigious music schools around the world including Mahidol College of Music in Thailand, Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, and the Eastman School of Music, among others. She is a frequent adjudicator for competitions including Primrose International Viola Competition, and her views on pedagogy, talent, and effective practice have been featured in publications such as The Strad, Strings, and American String Teacher.

In addition to teaching, she enjoys an active performance career across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa. She performed the Walton Viola Concerto with the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013 under the baton of Norwegian conductor Terje Mikkelsen and has appeared as a concerto soloist with the Denver (Centennial) Philharmonic and the Fort Collins Symphony. Her 2009 album Fashionably Late: Juliet White-Smith Debuts! on the Centaur Records label (http://www.centaurrecords.com/store/albums/viola/fashionably-late-juliet-white-smith-debuts-george-walker-viola-sonata.html) features the premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize winner George Walker’s Viola Sonata (1989). Performance and pedagogical videos can be found on her YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHW2N7Ze9u3kbdD8zCjLtlg/videos).

White-Smith has been an advocate for all things Viola including for the music of Black composers, having recently been interviewed on the topic by the Boston Globe (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/31/arts/tanglewood-an-80-year-old-gem-gets-its-premiere/) and WBUR Boston (https://www.wbur.org/artery/2020/07/31/bso-ulysses-kay-world-premiere). She has presented on the topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion as an invited clinician at the 2022 American String Teachers Association conference in Atlanta, as well and as a panelist at numerous universities and at conferences around the United States. White-Smith proudly serves on the Advisory Board of Music by Black Composers, a project of the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.

A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, White-Smith joined the faculty at The Ohio State University School of Music in 2012, having previously held positions at the University of Northern Colorado and Western Michigan University. She served as President of the American Viola Society from 2008-2011 and has been a member of the Artist-Faculty at the Brevard Music Festival since 2018.

Rick Ferguson piano

An active chamber musician and avid recital partner, Rick Ferguson was selected to be a senior fellow for the Chicago Chamber Musicians and has performed chamber music, solo, and concerto repertoire in the US and Europe. He maintains an active life as teacher, composer, and arts advocate as co-founder and artistic director of The Musical Offering in Evanston, Illinois.

Mr. Ferguson holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Birmingham-Southern College (magna cum laude) and earned a Master of Music degree from the University of Houston where he studied with world-renowned concert artist Abbey Simon. His studies have also taken him to the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA and Northwestern University, where he undertook post-graduate study. Teachers and mentors include Daniel Ericourt, Deborah Sobol, Ivan Davis, Joseph Block, Jörg Demus, Delores Hodgens-Howard and Roy McAllister.

In 2020, Mr Ferguson helped co-found the Evanston Performing Arts Collective (EPAC) and is also a recording artist on the Southport and Albany Records. Mr. Ferguson is a strong advocate of STEAM-based education in the public schools. In his spare time, Mr Ferguson enjoys creating lecture-performance videos on his YouTube channel (Rick Ferguson Music).