Donald Ryan

A stunning and dynamic pianist, Donald Ryan has thrilled audiences across the U. S. A. -- Carnegie Hall included --• and in major performance halls throughout Europe since he received the Madeyska award at the Ninth international Frederic Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland in 1975. He has also appeared on television and recorded both in the USA and in Europe. In addition to his solo concert work Donald Ryan enjoys an active career as a recording artist, composer/arranger and collaborator. His recording (on the Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin label) and subsequent performances with world-renowned bass-baritone, Simon Estes, have been triumphantly successful with critics and audiences alike. He is also widely regarded as a premier special event pianist and has performed for heads of state and other dignitaries.

Jura Margulis

Pianist Jura Margulis has been recognized for his compellingly communicative performances, as well as for the range of his tonal palette and his consummate virtuosity. Reviewers have praised the “absolute authority” of his interpretations and the sense of “controlled obsession” he transmits at the keyboard (Fono Forum). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that his aesthetic is both “impulsive and contemplative.” The Los Angeles Times praised his “excellent pianism” and called him “highly musical”. The Washington Post applauded his “titanic reserves of sheer power” and his “effortless spontaneity.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called his performance “ … the perfect Beethoven for the audience of our time … sweeping lyricism … imagination, originality, and good taste pervaded every phrase.”

His orchestral appearances include performances with the Russian National Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, the Südwestrundfunk Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Venezuela, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra. He has played in numerous festivals, including the Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival, the Berliner Festwochen at Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Internationale Sommerakademie Mozarteum in Austria, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, and the Argerich-Beppu Music Festival in Japan. He has won prizes in more than a dozen international competitions, including Busoni in Italy and Guardian in Ireland. He is also a recipient of the esteemed Pro Europa prize awarded by the European Foundation for Culture.

The past two seasons have brought him to New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Little Rock, Tulsa, and New Orleans in the US, as well as abroad to Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Berlin, Tübingen, Freiburg, Bologna, Salzburg, Barcelona, Ljubljana and Bangkok. Active as a chamber musician, Margulis has performed recitals with, among others, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, the soloists of the Moscow Virtuosi, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Moscow String Quartet. He has also concertised with Martha Argerich on two pianos in Germany, Japan, and the USA.

Margulis has recorded seven CDs for Sony, Ars Musici, and Oehms Classics, covering a wide spectrum of repertoire. These recordings have attracted substantial attention, including selection as a “reference recording” by Fono Forum, and inclusion on the “Bestenliste” of the Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (the German Recording Review). His most recent CD, featuring piano transcriptions of music from Bach to Caplet, received a 10 out of 10 for “artistic quality” from KlassikHeute. The accompanying review applauded his “ability to structure the Bach Chaconne, to build momentum and at the right moment to gently abate … not since Horowitz’s old RCA recording have I encountered a performance of Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre that so grippingly leaps from the stage, as here in Jura Margulis’ own transcription.” The review also noted that Margulis’ own transcription of a little-known piece by André Caplet “should, like Ravel’s own transcription of his La Valse, claim a place in the repertoire of young pianists.” Klassik.com, also giving the CD its highest rating, raved that Margulis “cannot be praised enough.”

Margulis is a third generation pianist and teacher and piano pedagogy is an integral part of his artistic vision. His yearly master classes in the US and abroad, including courses in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Austria, Russia, and Japan, center around his pedagogical concept: The Unified Piano School, A synthesis of piano pedagogy and performance traditions, which bridges the Russian School's concentration on sound, imagination, and physical technique, and the German School's focus on structure, rhythmic coherence, and style. He has lectured on this concept at numerous forums including the World Piano Pedagogy Conference and the International Summer Academy at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Margulis is the executive director of the “International Piano Academy”, a summer master class in Freiburg, Germany, and artistic director of the Fulbright Concert Competition, an international piano contest in Fayetteville, AR.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Jura Margulis was raised in Germany, where he studied with his father, Dr. Vitaly Margulis, at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg. He was also a student at the prestigious Fondazione per il Pianoforte in Cadenabbia at Lake Como in Italy. He moved to the United States to study with Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and made the US his home. Margulis is now Associate Professor of Music and Artist in Residence at the Fulbright College of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he lives with his wife Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, who does research in the cognitive science of music, and their sons Alexander and Nikolai.

Edmund Battersby
Professor of Music, Jacobs School of Music
Indiana University
M.M. The Juilliard School, 1977
B.M., The Juilliard School, 1977

Born in America, Edmund Battersby made his concert debuts in Wigmore Hall in London and Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. Professor Battersby has performed as a soloist with the Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Hartford, and American Classical orchestras, among others. His festival appearances include Santa Fe, Mostly Mozart, Library of Congress, and Great Performers at Lincoln Center. Professor Battersby has recorded for MHS, Koch International Classics, Marco Polo, and Naxos. He has performed as part of an ensemble with the Tokyo and Orion quartets, Elmer Oliveira, Carter Brey, Colin Carr, and has taught master classes at Royal Irish Academy of Music (Dublin) and the University of California at Irvine. He is also the artistic director of The Artur Balsam Ensemble Classes for Piano and Strings held in Wabash, Indiana in the late spring. He plays teaching concerts for the Smithsonian Institution.

Samuel Adler

Born March 4, 1928 in Mannheim, Germany; came to the United States in 1939. Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May 2001, Samuel Adler is the composer of over 400 published works, including 5 operas, 6 symphonies, 12 concerti, 8 string quartets, 4 oratorios, many other orchestral, band, chamber, choral works, and songs, which have been performed all over the world. He is also the author of three books: Choral Conducting, an anthology (Holt, Reinhart, and Winston 1971, second edition Schirmer Books 1985) Sight Singing, (W.W. Norton 1979, 1997) and The Study of Orchestration, (W.W. Norton 1982, 1989, 2001). He has also contributed numerous articles to major magazines and books published in the U.S. and abroad.

Adler was educated at Boston University and Harvard University, and holds four honorary doctorates (Southern Methodist University, Wake Forest University, St. Mary.s Notre-Dame, and the St. Louis Conservatory). His major teachers in composition were: Herbert Fromm, Walter Piston, Randall Thompson, Paul Hindemith, and Aaron Copland; in conducting Serge Koussevitzky.

He is Professor-emeritus at the Eastman School of Music where he taught from 1966 to 1995 and served as chair of the composition department from 1974 until his retirement. Before going to Eastman, Adler served as professor of composition at the University of North Texas (1957-1977), Music Director at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, TX (1953-1966), and Instructor of Fine Arts at the Hockaday School in Dallas TX (1955-1966). From 1954-1958, he was music director of the Dallas Lyric Theater and the Dallas Chorale. Since 1997, he has been a member of the composition faculty at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Adler has given master classes and workshops at over 300 Universities worldwide, and in the summers has taught at major music festivals such as Tanglewood, Aspen, Brevard, Bowdoin, as well as others in France, Germany, Israel, Spain, Austria, Poland, South America, Korea, and China.

Some recent commissions have been from the Cleveland Orchestra (Cello Concerto), the National Symphony (Piano Concerto #1), the Dallas Symphony (Lux Perpetua), the Pittsburgh Symphony (Viola Concerto), the Houston Symphony (Horn Concerto), the Barlow Foundation-Atlanta Symphony (Choose Life), the American Brass Quintet, the Wolf Trap Foundation, the Berlin-Bochum Bass ensemble, the Ying Quartet, the American String Quartet to name only a few. His works have been performed lately by the St. Louis Symphony, the Los Angels Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Mannheim National Theater Orchestra. Besides these commissions and performances, previous commissions have been received from the National Endowment for the Arts (1975, 1978, 1980, and 1982), the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the City of Jerusalem, the Welsh Arts Council and many others.

Adler has been awarded many prizes including a 1990 award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Charles Ives Award, the Lillian Fairchild Award, the MTNA award for Composer of the Year (1988-1989), Special Citation by the American Federation of Music Clubs (2001. In 1983, he won the Deems Taylor Award for his book The Study of Orchestration. In 1988-89, he was designated Phi Beta Kappa Scholar, in 1989 he received the Eastman School's Eisenhard Award for distinguished teaching, in 1991 he was honored being named the Composer of the Year by the American Guild of Organists. Adler was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1975-1976), he has been a MacDowell Fellow for five years, and during his second visit to Chile, he was elected to the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts (1993) -- for his outstanding contribution to the world of music as a composer.. In 1999, he was elected to the Akademie der Keunste in Germany for distinguished service to music. While serving in the United States Army (1950-1952), Adler founded and conducted the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra, and because of the orchestra's great psychological and musical impact on European culture, he was awarded the Army's Medal of Honor. In May 2003, Adler was awarded the Aaron Copland Award by ASCAP on the occasion of Adler's 75th birthday for life-time achievement in Composition and Teaching.

Adler has appeared as conductor with many major symphony orchestras both in the U.S. and abroad. His compositions are published by Theodore Presser, Oxford University Press, G. Schirmer, Carl Fischer, E.C. Schirmer, Peters Edition, Ludwig Music, Southern Music Publishers, Transcontinental Music Publishers: and recorded on Naxos, RCA, Gaspara, Albany, CRI, Crystal, New World, and Vanguard.

Maureen O'Boyle

Maureen O'Boyle began her musical studies with her mother and is a member of a large family of professional musicians. A native of the Midwest, Ms. O’Boyle holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of New Mexico, where she studied with Leonard Felberg, and a Master of Music degree from Yale University. Ms. O’Boyle is currently instructor of violin at the University of Tulsa and violinist with Trio Tulsa, the TU School of Music Ensemble in Residence. She also studied the Suzuki Method in Japan with Shinichi Suzuki. In addition to her duties at TU, O’Boyle performs as Concertmaster of the Tulsa Opera Orchestra, and of the Signature Symphony at TCC.

From 1993 to 2001 Ms. O’Boyle performed as Associate Concertmaster of the Tulsa Philharmonic. She has performed as a recitalist and with orchestras throughout the United States as well as in Europe, Japan, and South America. She has also held positions with the Omaha Symphony, New Mexico Symphony, New Haven Symphony, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. Before coming to Tulsa, Ms. O’Boyle was the Instructor of Violin at Missouri Southern State College in Joplin.

Winona Fifield

Winona Fifield is currently the Concertmaster of the Tulsa Opera Orchestra, and a frequent guest Concertmaster for the Tulsa Symphony. She was recently invited to be a guest Associate concertmaster with the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Valery Gergiev. She has held principal positions in the Albany Symphony, the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra and the Houston Ballet Orchestra. She has also played regularly with the New Jersey Symphony and Utah Symphony. A native of New York City, she received her education from the Juilliard School of Music as a student of Margaret Pardee. She went on to study with renowned teacher Josef Gingold at Indiana University. Additionally she has studied with Franco Gulli and Igor Grupmann. She has given solo recitals at Weill Hall in Carnegie Hall and at the Bruno Walter Auditorium in Lincoln Center. Winona was a founding member of the Gruyere String Quartet which won awards at the Coleman and Carmel Chamber Music Competitions. She is currently a member of the Brady Arts String Quartet based in Tulsa, OK.

Rev. Joseph Bias

Rev. Joseph A. Bias, Singer, Concert /Recording Artist, Conductor, Inspirational Writer. He has been Minister of Worship, Music, and Fine Arts at the First United Methodist Church of Tulsa, Oklahoma for the past 14 years.

As Minister of Worship, Music and Fine Arts he conducts the Cathedral Choir and orchestra and leads worship in weekly Sunday and Wednesday services and administrates the entire Worship/Music Ministry with a professional staff of 8 and a volunteer staff of 20 and 350 lay ministers. He received the Master’s Degree in Music Performance and Literature and the coveted Performer’s Certificate in Opera from the Eastman School of Music. He studied choral conducting with Robert Shaw at the Meadow brook School of Music and was a charter member of the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus under Mr. Shaw. He received the Bachelors of Arts degree in Music at Morehouse College and was a soloist at the Funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King. He was a first place winner in the Metropolitan Opera Regional Auditions. He has been a soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic, Eastman Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Charlotte, Savannah, and Madison Symphony Orchestras and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, performing Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Verdi, Martin, Schubert, Mozart, Fauré, Prokovief, Bernstein, and others. He has appeared in leading roles in five world-premier Operas. Including creating the role of Wellington in Seymour Barab’s Opera, Phillip Marshall, for the Chautauqua Institute Centennial, July 12,1974, He also sang the Barber in the United States premiere of Die Schweigsame Frau by Richard Strauss.

Ordained in 1982, Rev. Bias has served in full-time church music ministry for 30 years. For 3 years he hosted his own weekly Christian Music program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Prior to coming to Tulsa he was pastoral counsel to the Entertainment Industry Fellowship and served in both the Renaissance and New Song Choirs of Church on The Way in Van Nuys, California.

Rev. Bias has seven solo recordings of Christian music and has appeared on several classical and popular music recordings with other artists. He is a member of SAG-AFTRA, The Hymn Society, the American Choral Directors Association, the Rotary Club of Tulsa and the Glastonbury Fellowship. He is the Founder of the Rotary Club of Tulsa’s Crescendo Music Awards Competition.

In 2006 he was inducted in to the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, Gospel Music Division. He performs in concert regularly. He mentors a group of college students in a weekly Bible Study in his home. http://www.josephbiasministries.org.

Dr. Elizabeth Buccheri

Elizabeth Buccheri, a native of South Carolina, received her Bachelor of Science degree in Music from Winthrop University, and her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees, and Performers’ Certificate in Piano, all from the Eastman School of Music. While attending Eastman, she served as pianist for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and also performed and toured with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ms. Buccheri’s varied career as coach and accompanist has included twenty-eight seasons as accompanist for the Chicago Symphony Chorus under the direction of the legendary Margaret Hillis; pianist/coach for the opera companies of the Brevard (N.C.) Music Festival and Rochester’s Opera Under the Stars; accompanist/coach for conductors Sir Georg Solti, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Sir Andrew Davis, and Christoph Eschenbach; and, since 1987, assistant conductor at Lyric Opera of Chicago. An experienced recitalist, she has appeared in concert with singers Nicole Cabell, Elizabeth Futral, Susan Graham, Susanne Mentzer, Sherrill Milnes, Samuel Ramey, and William Warfield and has made live television appearances with baritones Thomas Hampson and Mark Delavan. Her instrumental partnerships have included the Shanghai and Vermeer String Quartets and violinists Midori and Gil Shaham. These concerts have taken her to all parts of the United States and many countries in Europe. Buccheri has recorded extensively on the Sony, CRI, Boston, Albany, and Cedille labels and was responsible for musical preparation on London Records’ issues of Schönberg’s Moses und Aron, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürenberg, and Verdi’s Otello, all with Sir Georg Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists. For this work, Elizabeth Buccheri became the first American musician to receive the Solti Foundation Award. During the 2004 and 2005 concert seasons, she assisted Maestro Pierre Boulez, the Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists with preparations for performances at Severance Hall, Cleveland and Carnegie Hall, New York.

Ms. Buccheri is the founder and former music director of Chamber Music at North Park, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree by North Park University in May 2004. She joined the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival in June 2005 where she has prepared operas for Music Director David Zinman and coached young singers in the Aspen Opera Theatre. A dedicated teacher, Buccheri has given master classes at the Juilliard School, the Eastman School of Music, the Aspen Music Festival, Lawrence Conservatory, the Vann Vocal Institute, and the music academies of Lithuania and Latvia. In fall 2000, Buccheri joined the faculty of Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music where she supervises the collaborative piano program.

Kostis Protopapas

Kostis Protopapas was named Artistic Director of Tulsa Opera in May of 2008. He previously served as the company’s Associate Conductor and Chorusmaster since 2001. As Artistic Director he is responsible for all of the company’s artistic planning, including repertoire selection and casting; he prepares the chorus for all productions; he oversees the Tulsa Opera Orchestra and conducts most Tulsa Opera productions.

Protopapas has also served as Assistant Conductor at some of the country’s most prestigious Opera Companies, including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Los Angeles Opera and Santa Fe Opera. During the 2002 and 2003 seasons he was the assistant chorusmaster at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, under Donald Palumbo.

Protopapas started his professional career on the music staffs of Opera Memphis and Virginia Opera; he conducted at Opera in the Ozarks every summer from 2000 to 2004, nurturing the talent of young American singers. He also appeared as a guest conductor for three seasons at Union Avenue Opera in St. Louis.

Born in Athens, Protopapas studied Archaeology and History of Art at the University of Athens. He came to the United States in 1993, on an Onassis Foundation scholarship, to study piano at The Boston Conservatory and conducting at Boston University. He lives in Tulsa and Chicago, with his wife, soprano and stage director Cathleen Dunn, and their two cats, Gus and July.