Annie Chalex Boyle
Violinist Annie Chalex Boyle is internationally recognized as a chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Violin at Texas Tech University. She has won prizes at the Seventeen Magazine/General Motors National Competition and the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, and was a finalist in the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition and the Stulberg International String Competition. She was also the Grand Prize Winner of the Junior Division of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
As a soloist, Ms. Chalex Boyle has performed with the Quartz Mountain Music Festival Orchestra, New England Conservatory Orchestra, Harper College Symphony, Amarillo Symphony, Northwest Chicago Symphony, Randel Chamber Orchestra, Mondovi Chamber Orchestra, Amarillo Virtuosi, and numerous others. She has been a frequent guest of Camerata San Antonio, as well as Chamber Music North and Chamber Music Amarillo. She has been Concertmaster of the Hot Springs Music Festival Orchestra, Amarillo Virtuosi, Interlochen Faculty Orchestra, Amarillo Symphony, Big Spring Symphony, Randel Chamber Orchestra, Lubbock Symphony, and Quartz Mountain Music Festival. She has been heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” with various chamber music ensembles and chamber orchestras.
Line Upon Line Percussion
line upon line employs percussion for fervent, communal experiences that we believe are essential for human beings to thrive. To date, the Austin-based trio has premiered twenty-eight new works by composers such as Andrew Greenwald, Jessie Marino, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper and Steve Snowden, in addition to performing the greatest existing music for percussion instruments by influential composers such as John Cage, Steve Reich and Iannis Xenakis.
The trio has twice been named "Best Ensemble" by the Austin Critics' Table and is currently a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Roster. The group’s self-presented concert series, now in its fifth year, was listed as one of the Austin Chronicle’s Top 10 Dance/Classical Music Treasures. The Austinist called line upon line “the premier new music percussion ensemble in Texas and the South” and the Austin American-Statesman considers the group “a riveting, always-surprising and delightful trio.”
line upon line will teach at UT Austin for four weeks in 2018, has been in residence at Stanford University (May 2017) and has performed and taught at universities in twenty-one different states. Internationally, the group has twice toured England and also performed in Basel (Hochschule für Musik), Berlin (Unerhörte Musik) and Cologne (Loft Köln). line upon line has performed at the 2013 and 2017 Fusebox Festivals, 2012 and 2015 Percussive Arts Society International Conventions, as well as SXSW, the Victoria Bach Festival and the International Festival-Institute at Round Top.
Formed in 2009, line upon line percussion consists of its three original members, Adam Bedell, Cullen Faulk and Matthew Teodori.
Douglas Harvey
Douglas Harvey joined the cello section of the Austin Symphony at age 17, and in 2002 became the youngest principal cellist in the history of the Orchestra. In 2005, he became the principal cellist of the Austin Opera Orchestra. Douglas performed his first concerto as solo cellist with the Youth Orchestra of San Antonio at the age of 13, and made his debut as soloist with the San Antonio Symphony at the age of 15. At age 16 he was the youngest cellist in history to be invited by the University of Texas at Austin to perform a full recital on its campus. He won first place awards in the 2000 William C. Byrd International Competition, the Idyllwild International Young Artists Competition, and the Corpus Christi International Competition, as well as two first place solo Bach prizes awarded at the Corpus Christi and Kingsville International Competitions. Since then, Mr. Harvey has performed almost 20 different works for cello and orchestra. Douglas plays on the Grand Prize winning “Emperor” cello made c. 1860 in Paris by Gand Freres, commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon III.
Marianne Gedigian
Marianne Gedigian, holder of the Butler Professorship in Music at The University of Texas at Austin Butler School of Music, performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for over a decade. As Principal Flute with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra and Acting Principal Flute with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops. Ms. Gedigian has been heard on dozens of recordings and Evening at Pops television broadcasts as well as the nationally broadcast Fourth of July specials. She has also been heard on several John Williams' movie scores, including Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List. Her solo performances have taken her around the world performing recitals in Japan, Australia, England, and Armenia, and she has appeared as concerto soloist numerous times with the Boston Pops Orchestra and with the Armenian Philharmonic. She keeps an active schedule as a chamber musician as a founding member of the Boston-based Walden Chamber Players.
Rick Rowley
Pianist Rick Rowley leads a diverse artistic life. Mr. Rowley has been on the Faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in the Butler School of Music for the past eleven years. In his position he coaches singers, works with collaborative pianists and has taught classes in art song literature, the history of Broadway and acting and singing for the musical theater. He also serves as Artistic Director of the Butler Opera Center Young Artists Program. His performanceof Schumann’s C major Fantasy, Op. 17, not only won the Austin Critics’ Table awardfor Instrumentalist of the Year, but was also named one of the 10 Best Performances of Music and Dance by the Austin Chronicle.In addition to a musical career, Mr. Rowley has been involved in over fifty theatrical productions as actor, musical director and director. He appeared as Cosme McMoon, pianist to famed “non-soprano” Florence Foster Jenkins, in the play “Souvenir”. He performed speaking roles for two Austin Symphony “Beyond the Score” performances, including Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony and as Stravinsky for the presentation of “The Rite of Spring”. He also performed the solo actor version of Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du soldat” with Dan Welcher and the UT New Music Ensemble. He appeared in the role of Frosch for the Butler Opera Center’s production of “Die Fledermaus” to great acclaim and created Herr Budweiser, a character who sang Gershwin’s “By Strauss” for the gala scene of the opera.
Kathryn Mishell
Kathryn Mishell was born in Los Angeles, where she received her early musical training. Her college and graduate work were done at Pomona College, The University of Kansas, and the University of Southern California. During these years she was a piano student of John Perry and a composition student of John Pozdro and then Ingolf Dahl.
Ms. Mishell’s works include over a hundred piano pieces, ensemble and orchestral works, and music for chorus, dance and theatre. Her published collections of pieces for piano students have sold thousands of copies nationwide. She is the recipient of the 2011 Sylvia Glickman Prize from the International Alliance of Women in Music for her Piano Quartet. She is one of two women composers honored by the National League of American Pen Women in 1996. She was the 1997 commissioned composer of the Texas Music Teachers Association, and has received ASCAP awards for the past several years. Her commissions include chamber works for Trio Contraste, Chamber Soloists of Austin, the Arundel Trio, Pacific Serenades of Los Angeles, Musiques en Euroreígion, and Austin Lyric Opera’s Armstrong Community Music School, for which she is composer-in-residence. Mishell has participated in the Women’s Philharmonic New Music Reading Sessions, the Society of Composers National Conference, and has been guest composer at the UT at Austin.
Ms. Mishell produced and hosted Into the Light, a weekly radio program devoted to the music of women composers, for ten and a half years. Produced at KMFA, the fine arts station in Austin, it won three Gracie awards for outstanding work in biography for public radio, as well as two international Communicator Awards of Distinction for excellence in broadcasting. This project extended into the concert world as Ms. Mishell produced, lectured, and performed Into the Light, live for audiences. The hundreds of hours of broadcasts of the work of women composers with Ms. Mishell’s commentary are available for broadcast throughout the world.
As pianist, Ms. Mishell has performed extensively in the U.S. and Mexico as a soloist and in chamber music. She has been touring pianist for the Sharir Dance Company, and for the music dramas Paganini! and Heroes and Lovers, for which she wrote the incidental music.
A teacher of many award-winning young pianists, Ms. Mishell has taught at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and has acted as clinician, adjudicator, and as consultant in the use of computers in music instruction. She maintains a class of private piano students in Austin, where she has twice been awarded the Outstanding Pre-collegiate Teaching Award.