2023-24 Artists
Suzanne Rousso, viola
Mallarmé Artistic Director
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Violist Suzanne Rousso accepted an appointment as artistic director of the Mallarmé Chamber Players in 2008. In this capacity she is responsible for all aspects of Mallarme’s eclectic programming. The ensemble is known as one of the region’s most diverse collectives of musicians.
Her previous administrative and educational engagements included service as Director of Operations and Education of the Portland (Maine) Symphony and Director of Education for the North Carolina Symphony. She was on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival and served as that organization’s personnel manager.
Violist Rousso has performed with the North Carolina Symphony, as Principal violist of the Greensboro Symphony, the Vermont Symphony, the Portland Chamber Orchestra and orchestras of North Carolina Opera, Carolina Ballet, the Choral Society of Durham, PortOpera and Opera Boston.
Ms. Rousso was educated at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and at New England Conservatory, earning Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in viola performance. Her teachers included Eugene Becker, Max Aronoff, Heidi Castleman and Walter Trampler. As a high school student she was lucky to study at the prestigeous Juilliard Pre-College.
In 2009, she received a Regional Artist grant from the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County and later a Durham Arts Council’s Emerging Artist grant that enabled her to acquire a baroque viola and enter into the field of historically-informed performance. Pursuing this interest, she attended the Amherst Early Music Festival, Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute and Tafelmusik’s winter baroque intensive. She has participated in both Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, is a member of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra and a regular player with Duke Chapel’s Bach Cantata Series in which Mallarmé is a musical partner.
Her service to the arts extends beyond performance and administration. She has served on the boards of the American Federation of Musicians Local #500 and Arts North Carolina, an advocacy organization for arts and arts education in NC.
Samuel Gold, viola
(Violapalooza)
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began studying the viola at the age of four with Sherida Josephson of the Des Moines Symphony. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory, where he studied primarily with Martha Strongin Katz and Roger Tapping, and the University of Iowa, where he studied with Christine Rutledge and Elizabeth Oakes.
Gold has performed at the Aspen Music Festival and School, the Taos School of Music, and the Montreal International String Quartet Academy. In May of 2008 he performed as soloist with the University of Iowa Chamber Orchestra after winning the school’s concerto/aria competition.
Gold is currently the principal viola of the North Carolina Symphony.
Jonathan Bagg, viola
(Violapalooza)
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… is Professor of the Practice at Duke University and violist with the Ciompi String Quartet. His career with the Ciompi includes hundreds of concerts across the U.S. and around the world, as well as dozens of recordings. He is a founding Artistic Director of Electric Earth Concerts in New Hampshire, and he directed the Monadnock Music festival from 2007-2011. As an Artistic Director, his programming has included many creative collaborations with composers, authors, poets, and choreographers resulting in several unique multi-media works.
He has performed at the Portland and Sebago-Long Lake festivals in Maine, Detroit’s Great Lakes Festival, the Eastern Music Festival and the Highlands festival in North Carolina, and the Mohawk Trail and Castle Hill festivals in Massachusetts.
From 2015-2020, Bagg was principal violist and soloist with the CityMusic Cleveland chamber orchestra. As an orchestral player he appeared often with the Boston Symphony, Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, and the New Hampshire Symphony, where he was principal viola.
Bagg’s most recent CD on the Albany label, titled “Elation,” brings together several works he commissioned, including a sonata and trio by Duke colleague Stephen Jaffe and a trio by Scott Lindroth. His other solo CDs contain music for viola and piano by Robert and Clara Schumann, and by the Viennese composer Robert Fuchs. Contemporary solo works by Robert Ward, Arthur Levering, Malcolm Peyton, and Donald Wheelock are on Bridge, Albany, Centaur and Gasparo Records.
Currently Chair in the Department of Music, Bagg has directed the chamber music program at Duke, and he has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Performance.
Scott Rawls, viola
(Violapalooza)
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…. has appeared as soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Europe. Recent chamber music endeavors include performances with Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Bill Preucil, Kurt Nikkanen, Paul Rosenthal, Jinjoo Cho, Zuill Bailey, and Sergey Antonov. Last season, he was a featured artist at chamber festivals ranging from Sitka Summer Chamber Music Festival and El Paso Pro Musica to Northwest Bach Festival. His solo and chamber music recordings can be heard on the Centaur, CRI, Nonesuch, Capstone, and Philips labels.
A strong proponent of new music, Rawls has premiered dozens of new works by prominent composers. Most notable, he has toured extensively as a member of Steve Reich and Musicians. As the violist in this ensemble, he performed numerous premieres of Daniel Variations, The Cave and Three Tales by Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, videographer. And under the auspices of presenting organizations such as the Wiener Festwochen, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Holland Festival, Berlin Festival, Spoleto Festival USA and the Lincoln Center Festival, he has performed in major music centers around the world including London, Vienna, Rome, Milan, Tokyo, Prague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
Under the baton of maestro Dmitry Sitkovetsky, he plays principal viola in the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra. And during the summers, Rawls plays principal viola in the festival orchestra at Brevard Music Center where he also coordinates the viola program.
Dr. Rawls currently serves as Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He holds a BM degree from Indiana University and an MM and DMA from State University of New York at Stony Brook. His major mentors include Abraham Skernick, Georges Janzer, John Graham and Julius Levine.
Annie Jeng, piano
(Violapalooza)
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…
Hailed for her “brilliant pianism” (Gramophone) and “acrobatic” performances (Take Effect), Taiwanese-American pianist Annie Jeng has performed widely as a solo and chamber musician at the Brancaleoni International Music Festival in Italy, the Gijón International Piano Festival in Spain, the Kennedy Center, New York City, China, and at numerous academic institutions as a guest artist. As an advocate for pushing the boundaries of traditional performances, Annie has performed and curated concerts at breweries, parking deck rooftops, intimate living room settings, and other unconventional spaces, all with the aim of making the arts more accessible and interdisciplinary. Annie has presented at Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) conferences at collegiate, state, and national levels, The National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), and College Music Society (CMS) conferences. She is the current President of Greensboro Music Teachers Association (GMTA) and serves on the board for the North Carolina Music Teachers Association (NCMTA). Annie is also the Assistant Director of Piano for the Brancaleoni International Music Festival (brancaleonifestival.com) in Piobbico, Italy.
Annie has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works. She is the pianist of Khemia Ensemble (khemiaensemble.com), a contemporary chamber ensemble that is dedicated to promoting contemporary classical music by cultivating inclusive place-making, collaborative mentorships, and authentic storytelling through immersive, multimedia performances. She also released the album “World Map” with Parma Recordings as the former pianist of Four Corner’s Ensemble. Her latest commissioning project, Circles and Lines, consists of new pedagogical works by women composers that introduces contemporary piano techniques to intermediate pianists. As a strong believer in creating a better and more equitable “normal” in the piano community, she also founded A Seat at the Piano (ASAP) in the summer of 2020 (aseatatthepiano.com). ASAP is a 501(c)(3) that is dedicated to the promotion of inclusion in the performance and study of solo piano repertoire. In collaboration with the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy, she has co-created an online course on women composers, been invited to speak on panels, present workshops, and serves on the Career Develop and Innovation subcommittee chair for NCKP.
Annie received her DMA in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Michigan, where she also received her MM. She earned her BM in Piano Performance with a minor in Public Health from New York University. Her primary teachers have included Logan Skelton, José Ramón Mendez, Miyoko Lotto, Anne-Marie McDermott, and Faye Bonner. She is currently Assistant Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. (Let’s connect online: www.anniejeng.com)
Teddy Robie, piano
(Violapalooza)
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… A native of Raleigh, North Carolina, Robie began studying piano and violin at the age of 6. By age 13, he had already made solo appearances with the Winston-Salem and Raleigh Symphonies, garnering praise for precocious readings of Mozart and Tchaikovsky.
Described as “a poet at the piano” (New York Sun) and praised for his “striking pianism” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), pianist Teddy Robie has performed extensively both as soloist and chamber musician in Canada, Taiwan, Italy, and across the United States.
Robie has performed in many prestigious venues, including the Rising Stars series at Ravinia, the Performances series in San Francisco, the Peggy Rockefeller series in New York, Alice Tully Hall, and at Cleveland’s Mixon Hall master’s series. He has also appeared live numerous times on WQXR (New York) and WCLV (Cleveland), and has been a frequent guest performer on WFMT (Chicago). Robie has won prizes in numerous competitions, including Juilliard’s Gina Bachauer Scholarship competition, the Fischoff National Chamber Music competition, and the SUNY Stony Brook concerto competition.
An avid chamber musician as well as soloist, Robie has collaborated with many renowned artists, including Roger Tapping, Donald Weilerstein, Catherine Cho, Bonnie Hampton, Joan Kwuon, Joel Smirnoff, Violaine Melancon, and Jean-Michel Fonteneau. Festival appearances include Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival, Taos Chamber Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, and Pianofest in the Hamptons, and faculty at the Heifetz Institute and Luzerne Music Center. Robie is a regular guest at many chamber festivals across the country, including The Bronx Arts Ensemble, Chatter (New Mexico), and The Taos Music Ensemble.
Robie’s teachers have included Jerome Lowenthal, Robert McDonald, Veda Kaplinsky, Randall Hodgkinson, and John Ruggero. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, and is now a doctoral candidate at SUNY Stony Brook, where he studies with Christina Dahl. Robie recently returned to the Triangle, where he maintains a private teaching studio in Cary and continues to perform.