Ensemble Chamarré is dedicated to performing the powerful and moving "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" by Olivier Messiaen.
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Player Bios
Clarinetist Catherine Hudgins began her career in Caracas, Venezuela with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Caracas, later holding positions in the Sinfonica Municipal de Caracas, the Charleston Symphony, and the Boise Philharmonic. Ms. Hudgins performs frequently as an extra player with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in Boston and at Tanglewood, as well as on international tours and at Carnegie Hall, and can be heard on recordings with the BSO, including the Grammy-award-winning performance of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe. She is the Eb clarinetist with the Portland (ME) Symphony, and principal clarinetist of the Plymouth Philharmonic. She has performed in the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra in Matsumoto, Japan, and the Mito (Japan) Chamber Orchestra, all under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. While performing in Matsumoto, she participated in the Grammy winner for best opera recording of 2016. Other festival appearances as an orchestral player include the Spoleto Festival and Arizona Musicfest.
She has performed with many of the world's leading conductors, including Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnányi, Kurt Masur, James Levine, Alan Gilbert, Bernard Haitink, Andris Nelsons, and Seiji Ozawa. Performing in opera and ballet orchestras, she served as principal clarinetist for the National Lyric Opera for several seasons and as principal clarinetist for the 75th Anniversary Tour of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Additional opera and ballet performances include those with Seiji Ozawa's Tokyo Opera Nomori, Martha Graham Dance Company, Joffrey Ballet, and the London Festival Ballet.
An active chamber musician, Ms. Hudgins serves as the Artistic Director and clarinetist of the West Stockbridge Chamber Players, a group that she founded in 2010. Additional chamber music concerts include performances at Assisi Performing Arts in Assisi, Italy, and the Spoleto, Piccolo Spoleto, Rockport, Saito Kinen and Scotia Festivals. Her chamber music performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio, German Radio, RAI (Italian Radio), SCETV, and CBC, among others. She studied clarinet with Robert Marcellus, and lives in Boston with her husband, BSO principal clarinetist, William Hudgins.
Fanfare magazine said of violinist Katie Wolfe, "Her playing is simply mesmeric." Ms. Wolfe has an intriguing career mix as a soloist, recording artist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, and adjudicator. She has performed around the world, including the United States, Costa Rica, France, the Soviet Union, and many others. She also shares her passion for music as a teacher. She joined the string faculty of the University of Iowa in 2004 as Associate Professor of Violin. Ms. Wolfe has recorded for Centaur Records, Albany Records, Newport Classics, and Kleos Classics. She is a founding member of the Matisse Piano Trio, formed in 2004 with fellow University of Iowa faculty pianist Ksenia Nosikova and cellist Anthony Arnone. With pianist and composer Ketty Nez of Boston University, Ms. Wolfe has been involved in the creation and performance of many newer works for violin and piano. The Wolfe/Nez Duo performs works written especially for them, as well as works written in the past twenty years and masterpieces of the 20th Century. Ms. Wolfe received a B.M. in violin performance from Indiana University, where she was a student of Miriam Fried. She coached chamber music with Rostislav Dubinsky and Janos Starker, among others. She earned an M.M. in violin performance from the Manhattan School of Music (MSM), studying violin with Sylvia Rosenberg and chamber music with Ani Kavafian and Peter Winograd of the American String Quartet. She received further training at a wide variety of summer festivals, including the Tanglewood Music Center, Kneisel Hall, Musicorda, the Quartet Program, and a Solo Bach Seminar with Baroque violinist Stanley Ritchie. After graduating from MSM, Ms. Wolfe received the prestigious Fulbright Lecture Award to teach and perform in Bolivia. She formed a string quartet that performed educational and public concerts throughout the country, taught at the National Conservatory, and served as Associate Concertmaster of the National Symphony of Bolivia for one season.
Originally from Rapid City South Dakota, cellist William Rounds began musical studies first privately on piano and then on other instruments through public school programs. By the time he was in high school he was performing professionally on the cello, euphonium and bass guitar. Mr. Rounds received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees studying at Boston University with world renowned cellist-pedagogue George Neikrug, during which time he also played lead baritone with the DCI world champion Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps. He received fellowships for study at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic and the Tanglewood Music Center with the Boston Symphony as well as being one of two American string players selected for the exclusive Villa Musica in Germany. Mr. Rounds was Assistant Principal Cello with the National Repertory Orchestra during their tour of Asia. He was a member of the Artaria String Quartet for three years, performing and teaching throughout the United States and Germany as well as touring with pop superstar John Denver. After joining the Portland Symphony Orchestra Mr. Rounds subsequently auditioned for and became an extra player with the Boston Symphony and auditioned for John Williams, joining the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra in 1992. As a cellist with the Pops he has performed many hundreds of concerts, made recordings and TV tapings, been on 40 tours throughout the United States, Canada and Asia and played annually on live national television for their Fourth of July broadcast. As an extra with the Boston Symphony he has toured throughout the world including Asia with Maestro Seiji Ozawa and, most recently, Europe with Maestro Andris Nelsons. Mr. Rounds has appeared throughout the United States as a soloist, both in recital and with orchestras and is in demand for giving clinics and master classes. He is on the faculty at the University of Southern Maine and has maintained a long affiliation with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras. In addition to his classical career Mr. Rounds performed on the Oscar winning soundtrack to "Schindler's List" as well as for numerous other movies, has recorded for Aerosmith and appeared as back up to a wide range of popular artists from David Byrne to Jerry Vale. In demand as a chamber musician, he has appeared throughout the United States, in Europe and Japan. He currently performs with the Orlando Chamber Soloists and the West Stockbridge Chamber Players.
Pianist Vytas J. Baksys received his DMA and MM degrees in performance at S.U.N.Y. @ Stony Brook. He earned his Bachelor’s degree with Distinction from the New England Conservatory of Music where he was also elected Phi Kappa Lambda. Other awards include Outstanding College Student of America, Extraordinary Performing Arts Student of America, and a nomination for inclusion in a recent edition of the International Who’s Who In Music. His principal teachers were Angel Ramon Rivera, Victor Rosenbaum, and Gilbert Kalish. He is also an alumnus of the Kinhaven Music School (Weston, VT) and Eastern Music Festival (Greensboro, NC).
Among his many accomplishments, Vytas lists extensive performances of various styles and genres throughout North America, Europe and Asia, having worked with many well known artists, conductors and composers, among them: Arthur Fiedler, Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Sir Roger Norrington, Leonard Bernstein, Sir Simon Rattle, Leonard Rose, Gary Karr, Yo-Yo Ma, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gil Shaham, Joseph Silverstein, Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux, Olivier Messiaen, film composer John Williams, Stanislaw Skrowicesky, Oliver Knussen, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, Dawn Upshaw, Chris Brubeck, John Harbison, James Levine, and, more recently, Peter Schickele and Andris Nelsons.
Since 1989, Vytas has served as faculty pianist working with the Fellowship Conducting Program at Tanglewood. He has similarly collaborated for five years with the Conducting Program at Yale School of Music. An active freelance collaborator, Vytas performs a variety of recitals, competitions, and other functions. He has worked with a number of area choirs including the Boston Secession, Arlington Street Church Choir, Somerville Community Chorus, and New England Classical Singers; made occasional appearances with the contemporary ensemble Boston Musica Viva; performed with various groups such as the Concord Chamber Music Society, Boston Artists Ensemble, South Coast Chamber Music Society, Pentamerus, West Stockbridge Chamber Players, and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players among others; is on the faculty at The Rivers School Conservatory; and is a frequent keyboardist with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Orchestras. In recent years, this kind of scheduling has resulted in an annual output averaging more than 150 performances of 100 different programs.
He has participated in recordings for RCA, CRI, Golden Crest, Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, Warner Brothers, Nonsuch, Reference Recordings, Terezin Music Foundation, and BSO Classics labels. Being of Lithuanian descent, he has made frequent appearances at ethnic cultural centers including the Baltic American Society.
As a composer, Vytas’s works include several short piano pieces, a piano concerto, a piano quintet, two microtonal works, and several transcriptions of works by Beethoven, Braggiotti, Foote, Glinka, Pärt, Schönberg, Scheidt, Sibelius, and others, most recently Heitor Villa-Lobos and Stravinsky.
On the lighter side, Vytas considers himself a connoisseur of music humor. While in the Long Island area, he served eight seasons as co-founder/director of the Stony Brook Anti-Musica, an ensemble dedicated to promoting concert spoofs. His diverse compositional output includes such works as Oratorio: Ground Hog, Variations On A Surprise, The “Big Oh!” Medley, Chaconne Grandissimo, and the Underture to The Dentist of Milan, all inspired by such practitioners as Gerard Hoffnung, Victor Borge, and Peter Schickele.
The ensemble performed in Summit, NJ, using an upright piano, as was the case for the first performance of the Quartet for the End of Time at Stalag VIII-A in 1941.