Month: September 2023

Ed Gazouleas (Viola ’84) Appointed Director of the Tanglewood Music Center

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The Boston Symphony Orchestra has named Ed Gazouleas (Viola ’84) director of the Tanglewood Music Center (TMC), effective May 31, 2024, following his success as TMC’s interim director in the summer of 2023.

Mr. Gazouleas currently serves as Curtis’s first provost and the Gie and Lisa Liem Artistic Director. He will continue in these two roles through the 2023–24 school year when Dean Nick DiBerardino (Composition ’18), will become the school’s provost. Throughout this academic year, Mr. Gazouleas and Mr. DiBerardino will work closely together to ensure continuity for our students and a seamless transition for the Curtis community. At the end of this school year, Mr. Gazouleas will stay on at Curtis in his artistic planning role and as a member of Curtis’s viola faculty.

“So many of Curtis’s talented students, alumni, and faculty have had strong relationships with the Tanglewood Music Center and the Boston Symphony Orchestra over the years. Ed is a valued member of each organization, helping to shape the present and future of our art form.” –President and CEO Roberto Díaz, Curtis Institute of Music

Since Curtis created its provost’s office, the school has seen a successful launch of its master’s program; an increase in applications to the school; deepened relationships with The Philadelphia Orchestra; the expansion of our student life team and support programs; progress towards goals in the areas of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging; and continued artistic growth in the orchestra, opera, and performance studios; among other achievements. With Mr. Gazouleas’s ongoing work in artistic planning role and Mr. DiBerardino’s elevation to provost at the end of the academic year, Curtis is well positioned to continue its strategic plan trajectory through the centennial and beyond.  

As director of the TMC, Mr. Gazouleas will oversee classes at the center, coaching, rehearsals, and Tanglewood’s performances, working closely with Tony Fogg, vice president of artistic planning at the BSO; Lynn Larsen, vice president of orchestras and production at the BSO; and Bobby Lahart, director of Tanglewood Facilities. For 18 summers he served as a Tanglewood Music Center faculty member, and during his 24-year tenure as a member of the orchestra’s viola section, he was active in orchestra governance, chairing the orchestra’s artistic advisory committee and serving on the search committee that selected Andris Nelsons to be the Boston Symphony’s music director.

“To me, Tanglewood is a dream of art and nature. Every summer fine young musicians arrive seeking instruction and inspiration and I am looking forward to welcoming them once again.”  –Ed Gazouleas

An internationally celebrated violist, educator, and administrator, he joined the Curtis faculty in 2017 and is widely regarded as one of the finest teachers of his generation.

Learn more about Tanglewood HERE, and read more about Ed Gazouleas and Nick DiBerardino.

Banner photo by Nichole MCH Photography. Additional photos of Mr. Gazouleas by Elizabeth Asher. Images of TMC courtesy of the Tanglewood Music Center.

Alumna Spotlight: Emily Dawn Amos (Organ ’23)

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Prize-winning organist and recent Curtis alumna Emily Dawn Amos (’23) began studying organ at age eight and became the youngest musician ever admitted into a Pipe Organ Encounter (POE) at age nine. The Alexandria, Louisiana native entered Curtis in 2019 and studied organ with Alan Morrison as the Stephanie Yen-Mun Liem Azar Fellow. Her interest in the instrument began with a Cameron Carpenter concert, and following the recital, he gave her his autograph and a 45-minute lesson, setting her on a path that would ultimately lead her to Curtis and a career as a professional organist.

Ms. Amos has attended numerous summer intensives, including the Curtis/Wanamaker Organ Institute, the Oberlin Organ Academy, the Eastman Summer Organ Academy, the Baylor Organ Summer Institute, and the Jacobs School of Music Organ Academy. A passionate advocate for other young artists in the field, she serves as the Councilor for Young Organists for the American Guild of Organists (AGO). When Ms. Amos is not performing, she enjoys drawing and writing.

Photos of Emily Dawn Amos courtesy of the artist.

Rene Orth’s (Composition ’16) World Premiere Opera a Hit

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Curtis congratulates alumna Rene Orth (Composition ’16), whose latest opera, 10 Days in a Madhouse, recently opened Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O23 to rave reviews. Co-commissioned by Tapestry Opera with a libretto by Hannah Moscovitch, this searing psychological drama, based on historical events, follows trailblazing reporter Nellie Bly through her internment at Blackwell’s Asylum, exposing, as Bly did, notions of madness and societal biases against women. Among the opera’s accolades, Canadian-American soprano and Curtis alumna Lauren Pearl (Voice ’16) received praise as the “strong, charismatic” head Nurse/Matron at the asylum (Washington Post). 10 Days in a Madhouse had its world premiere on September 21 and runs through September 30 at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. 

What the critics are saying:

Learn more about 10 Days in a Madhouse with Opera Philadelphia HERE.

Visit Rene Orth’s official website HERE. Visit Lauren Pearl’s website HERE.

Watch Rene Orth’s acclaimed 2016 opera, Empty the House, a world premiere Curtis Opera Theatre production in partnership with Opera Philadelphia and the Kimmel Cultural Campus.

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage: Angélica Morales von Sauer (Piano ’28)

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Acclaimed concert pianist, educator, and Curtis alumna Angélica Euterpe Morales von Sauer (Piano ’28) was born in Gurabo, Puerto Rico, on January 22, 1911, to a Puerto Rican father, violinist Angel Celestino Morales Marcano, and Mexican mother, pianist María Dolores Martinez Velazquez. When Angélica was an eight-month-old infant, the family traveled to Cuba, where Angel was to give a concert tour; however, he tragically died in the city of Cienfuegos, leaving his pregnant wife with her baby and unborn daughter, Estela. During this time, they lived in both Aguascalientes and Mexico City, and María taught private lessons and played the piano at cinemas for silent films. By age six, the young Angélica showed great promise as a pianist and studied the instrument with her mother and Mexican aristocrat, Miguel Cortazar.

On January 26, 1921, she gave her first recital at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria to rave reviews, and plans were set in motion for her to study abroad. Throughout the summer of that year, Mrs. Morales and her daughters traveled to various cities across Mexico where Angélica performed concerts to garner acclaim beyond the country’s capital city. In 1922, sixty-six students were granted pensions by the Universidad Nacional to study in Europe. Mrs. Morales, Estela, and Angélica briefly moved to Paris before being advised by a Mexican student she met to find a piano teacher in Berlin instead. Here, she auditioned for Italian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher Ferruccio Busoni, who was not taking additional students and suggested she apply to the Hochschule für Musik and study with his protege Egon Petri.

After four years of studying with Petri, Angélica made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at age 13 and met German composer and pianist Emil von Sauer, a student of Franz Liszt, whom she began briefly studying with. In 1925, she moved back to Paris to further her musical studies. In the middle of 1926, she spent four months in Mexico, where she took lessons with Josef Hoffmann, who, in 1924, had been appointed the first head of the piano department at Curtis by Mary Louise Curtis Bok. Angélica joined his studio here in Philadelphia and graduated in 1928. Shortly after that, she began working with Russian pianist Josef Lhévinne in New York, and in 1929, she made her professional debut at Carnegie Hall and gave recitals throughout the U.S., Europe, and Mexico.

Josef Hofmann’s studio at the Curtis Institute of Music. Angélica Morales von Sauer can be seen on the bottom row, second from the right. Photo courtesy of the Curtis Library and Archives; Kubrey-Rembrandt Studios, Inc.

In 1930, she went to the Austrian spa town of Bad Gastein in Salzburg to study with Emil von Sauer again. There, she performed with the Dresden Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Philharmonic, Lamoureaux Orchestra of Paris, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Southern Philharmonic, and many others. By 1939, they were married until he passed away in 1942 at age 79. During their short union, Mrs. von Sauer had two sons with her husband—Julio and Franz. Following his death, she succeeded to her late husband’s chair at the Vienna Academy of Music before returning to Mexico in 1946 to teach at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, drawing widespread acclaim for her annual three-week-long masterclasses throughout the country to support the next generation of talented young Mexican pianists.

In the mid-fifties, she was invited to join the faculty of the University of Kansas, where she taught until she retired in 1973, and at age 62, moved to Oklahoma and recorded the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 846-893 (Johann Sebastian Bach). She continued to actively serve as a piano competition judge in the United States, Europe, and Mexico, and a concert hall in Mexico City was named in her honor.

Mrs. von Sauer passed away on April 16, 1996, at age 85, in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Explore more Curtis history at the Curtis Institute of Music Open Archives and Recitals (CIMOAR) digital collections. Learn more about Curtis’s library and archives HERE.

Biographical information of Mrs. von Sauer’s life provided in part by María Eugenia Tapia’s doctoral dissertation, Angélica Morales von Sauer: An Account of Her Performing and Teaching Career; The University of Texas at Austin, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, May 1995.

Photo Credits: 1.) Angélica Morales von Sauer, La Crónica de Hoy. 2.) Courtesy of Reforma.com. 3.) The book cover of Angélica Morales: Historia de una pianista mexicana by María Teresa Castrillon, published by the National Council for Culture and Arts (Conaculta), 2007. 4.) Courtesy of the Curtis Archives and Special Collections. 5.) Todd Mueller Autographs. 6.) Photo of Mrs. von Sauer and the Jury of the 1983 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels; courtesy of the competition’s website. 

Abi Fayette (Violin ’17, CAF ’20) Appointed Artistic Director of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

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Violinist and Curtis alumna Abi Fayette (Violin ’17, Community Artist Fellow ’20) was appointed artist director of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, succeeding Jim Wilson. A member of the New York City-based GRAMMY Award-winning classical ensemble and the Catalyst Quartet, Ms. Fayette received her bachelor’s degree at Curtis under the tutelage of Ida Kavafian. She was awarded a master’s degree from New England Conservatory, studying with Soovin Kim, and served as a Community Artist Fellow at Curtis in the 2019–20 school year, working alongside teachers in the Philadelphia School District to create and expand music education programs.

Ms. Fayette’s appointment follows the recent announcement of her older sister, Madeline Fayette, joining the Orpheus cello section.

Read the announcement at the Violin Channel HERE, and visit Abi Fayette’s artist page with the Catalyst Quartet HERE.

Photos of Abi Fayette and the Catalyst Quartet, courtesy of ensemble’s official website.