ABOUT THE ARTISTS
ARTISTS: Brian Reagin, violin; Rebekah Binford, violin; Elizabeth Beilman, cello; Jimmy Gilmore, clarinet; Kari Miller, piano
DATE: September 21 2008, 3 PM
SITE: NC Museum of Art
2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh
PROGRAM
INFORMATION & TICKET SALES
- NCMA Box Office (919) 715-5923
- Raleigh Chamber Music Guild (919) 821-2030
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Before joining the North Carolina Symphony, Brian Reagin was Assistant Concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony, under Music Directors Andre Previn and Lorin Maazel. A Chicago native, Reagin recently completed his seventeenth season as Concertmaster of the North Carolina Symphony.
Prior to joining the Pittsburgh Symphony, Reagin served as Concertmaster of the Cleveland Institute of Music Symphony Orchestra and served on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. While on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon, he also regularly performed with the Piedmont Chamber Orchestra, based at the North Carolina School of the Arts. He made his solo debut with the Cleveland Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto while a student at the Cleveland Institute. Other solo appearances include performances with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Syracuse Symphony, and the Wheeling Symphony.
Since 1990, Reagin has made annual solo appearances with the North Carolina Symphony performing concertos by Vieuxtemps, Paganini, Sibelius, Bruch (Scottish Fantasy and G minor Concerto), Korngold, Mendelssohn, Barber, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Bach and Vivaldi. In May, 1999, he was invited to perform the Prokofiev D Major Concerto with members of the Charlotte Symphony for the North Carolina Dance Theatre, under the direction of Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, a performance he repeated that summer with the Chautauqua Ballet Company.
Rebekah Binford first joined the North Carolina Symphony as a tutti violinist in the 1982-83 season. Binford studied with James Buswell at Indiana University, with David Cerone and Ivan Galamian at Meadowmount, and has taken Master Classes with Isaac Stern and Joseph Silverstein. She worked closely with Joseph Silverstein while at Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center in both orchestral and chamber music. She has performed with many chamber music groups including Aurora Musicalis, Mallarme Chamber Players and Amici della Musica, which she helped found with other Symphony members in 1986.
She recently performed the world premier of Harold Schiffman's Sonata for Solo Violin, one of several works composed for her and dedicated to her. A violin concerto is currently being written for her. Binford has been heard on national radio broadcasts from Tanglewood and the Eastern Music Festival.
Binford was surrounded by classical music when she was growing up and it influenced her greatly. She hopes to pass on her love of music to her two children, Alexander and Genevieve. She performs on a Sanctus Seraphin violin made in Venice, Italy in 1736.
Elizabeth Beilman, cellist, is a native of Wichita, Kansas. She joined the cello section of the North Carolina Symphony in 1988 and was appointed by Music Director Gerhardt Zimmerman as the Symphony's permanent Assistant Principal Cello in the spring of 2001. Since coming to Raleigh, she has participated in numerous recitals and performed extensively with ensembles in North Carolina. She has also appeared as a soloist with the North Carolina Symphony.
Before her arrival in North Carolina, Beilman was Artist-in-Residence for two years at the Banff Centre for the Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada. During that time, she toured throughout Canada, performed with Felix Galimir and with Menachem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio. She was featured at the Shawnigan Lake Festival in British Columbia. While in Banff, she performed as soloist and ensemble player under the guidance of composers Witold Lutoslawsky, Morton Feldman and Lannis Xenakis, and maintains a working relationship with composers Robert Ward and Mark Scearce.
Beilman holds both a Bachelor and a Master degree in Music Performance (summa cum laude) from the Indiana University School of Music, where she served as Associate Instructor and Assistant to Fritz Magg. Other teachers include Paul Tortelier, Aldo Parisot and Anner Bylsma, with whom she studied the music of J.S. Bach. Studies in chamber music, an area of particular interest to Ms. Beilman, were conducted with Rostislav Dubinsky of the Borodin String Quartet, with pianist Menachem Pressler of the Beaux Arts Trio and with violinist Josef Gingold.
A native of Dallas, Texas, Jimmy Gilmore is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where he was a student of Stanley Hasty. He received his Master of Science degree from The Juilliard School where he studied with Leon Russianoff.
Gilmore is the longest-standing member of the North Carolina Symphony, having been Principal Clarinet with the orchestra since 1969. Before joining the North Carolina Symphony, he performed with the Rochester Philharmonic, the U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point, the United Nations World Symphony and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. He currently serves on the music faculties of Duke University and Meredith College, where he conducts the Meredith Wind Ensemble.
Gilmore, along with his wife, Elizabeth Beilman, who is the Symphony's Assistant Principal Cello, founded Aurora Musicalis - a chamber music ensemble that frequently performs throughout North Carolina. He has contributed to the Symphony off the stage as well, by serving as chairman of the orchestra committee and in fundraising and development projects. Also a published writer, Gilmore's articles have appeared in The State Magazine, The Spectator, ClariNetwork and the Symphony's magazine, Opus. In 1989, his one-act play, "The Picture Album," won second prize in the Wachovia Playwrights Competition, a statewide contest. He is currently working on a book about musical life, based in part on his experiences with the North Carolina Symphony.
Kari Miller began playing the piano at age five. She began her formal musical training at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, and continued Graduate and Doctoral studies at the Indiana University School of Music. Ms. Miller has been a featured soloist with many orchestras in this country and Europe and has performed numerous concerts and solo recitals in the United States. Her extraordinary musical collaboration with other distinguished artists is well-known, and she has toured world-wide with many of these, including Fritz Magg and Eugene Rousseau.
In 1983, she was awarded Second Prize at the prestigious Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition in Washington, D.C. Ms. Miller has recorded for the Coronet label. During the 2000-2001 year, Ms. Miller performed a critically-acclaimed series of lecture recitals to commemmorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. She has performed with Aurora Musicalis since 1997.