Amabile Piano Quartet
Biography
The Amabile Piano Quartet was formed in 1985 when the String Trio Cassatt returned from Europe and received funds from the National Endowment to add another player for one tour only – pianist Marian Hahn, a graduate of Juilliard School and member of the piano faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
With limited repertoire for a string trio, the group added Ms. Hahn as a permanent member and changed its name to the Amabile Piano Quartet. Other musicians are Ms. Winkler and cellist Lisa Lancaster, another Juilliard graduate and a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which performs at Carnegie Hall.
Marian Hahn holds the Singapore Conservatory of Music Chair in Piano at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore where she has been on the piano faculty since 1987. As a liaison with the new Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, she has performed and given master classes in Singapore,Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand and is in frequent demand as a competition juror and for master classes on campuses throughout the U.S.
Hahn’s solo career was launched in 1976 when she became a winner in the International Leventritt Competition. She made her Carnegie Recital Hall debut as a Concert Artists Guild winner and subsequently appeared in New York recitals at the Metropolitan Museum and Merkin Hall. A top prizewinner in the University of Maryland, and Kosciuzko competitions, Hahn has toured nationwide, performing recitals on prestigious series in Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis, and as a soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Pops, and five appearances with the Jacksonville Symphony. Critically acclaimed European tours have taken her to England, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Germany.
An avid chamber musician, Hahn has been a participant in the Marlboro, Sedona, Grand Canyon, and Aria festivals, and is on the faculty of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Maine. She toured extensively as the pianist of the Amadeus Trio and was also a founding member of the Amabile Piano Quartet. Her recordings with the Amabile Quartet and Amadeus Trio appear on the Summit and Kleos labels respectively.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Oberlin College with a major in Comparative Religion, she received her M.M. degree from the Juilliard School; her teachers have included John Perry, Leon Fleisher and Benjamin Kaplan.
Cellist Lisa Lancaster has appeared in many of the country’s major concert halls as both soloist and chamber musician. A participant at the Marlboro Music Festival, she has toured and recorded with “Music from Marlboro.” Ms. Lancaster has performed frequently with the internationally acclaimed Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, including its annual series of concerts at Carnegie Hall. For over ten season, as soloist and member of the late Alexander Schneider’s “Brandenburg Ensemble,” Ms. Lancaster has appeared on the Great Performers Series presenting concerts at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, Orchestra Hall in Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. She has appeared as concerto soloist at Lincoln Center under the batons of both Mr. Schneider and Jens Nygaard. Ms. Lancaster is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a scholarship student of Harvey Shapiro and winner of the Crane Award for outstanding cellist.
Kathleen Mattis began her career with the St. Louis Symphony at the age of 21. Her performances with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, Raymond Leppard, and David Robertson have been heard over the NPR and BBC radio networks. An avid chamber musician, Mattis was a founding member of both the Amabile Piano Quartet and the Trio Cassatt, and has recorded chamber music works for the Vox and Laurel labels. She is currently recording a CD of music for viola and percussion written by fellow STL Symphony violist, Christian Woehr. Mattis spent 15 years on the artist faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and appeared in music festivals at Steamboat Springs and Ouray, Colorado, Adamant, Vermont, and at the Cactus Pear Festival in San Antonio, Texas. She has been Principal Viola for the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis since 1977. Mattis has also been a Principal Viola for the New York String Seminar.
A sought-after clinician and educator, Mattis was a faculty member of the former St. Louis Conservatory and was on the artist-faculty roster of Washington University. Several of her former students are members of orchestras across the United States and abroad, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. Kathleen Mattis graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California where she studied with Eudice Shapiro, Milton Thomas, and Charles and Heidi Castleman. She currently performs on a viola made for her in 1985 by Max Frirsz.
The artistry of Kathleen Winkler has earned her the plaudits of critics and audiences alike worldwide since her solo debut at the age of seventeen with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has been heard with such orchestras as the Detroit Symphony (with which she has toured on many occasions), the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Danish Radio Orchestra, the Odense Byorkester, the Polish Slaska Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Savannah Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony, to name a few. She has toured throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as having performed in Sweden, Poland, Germany, Spain, and the Canary Islands.
The recipient of numerous awards, Ms. Winkler took first prize in the First International Carl Nielsen Violin Competition which led to her sponsored debuts in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, the Kennedy Center and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as well as numerous radio broadcast performances on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the International Voice of America.
Through a national search, Kathleen Winkler was selected by the United States Information Agency to represent the U.S. as an Artistic Ambassador on concert tours throughout the world. Her initial tour took her to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, and New Zealand. Another extended tour saw Ms. Winkler’s performances representing our country in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Nigeria, and Kenya. A third tour took Ms. Winkler throughout Australia and South America.
An active chamber musician, Ms. Winkler has appeared at major music festivals throughout the country such as The Kent-Blossom Music Festival with Leonard Slatkin conducting, The Skaneateles Festival with David Zinman conducting, and The Bear Valley Festival with Carter Nice conducting. Other festival appearances have included the Music in the Mountains Festival at Steamboat Springs, The Hamden-Sydney Chamber Music Festival, The Bay Chamber Concerts, The Festival de Musique de Chambre du Montréal, and Da Camera in Houston. In addition, for six years, Ms. Winkler was a member of the Amabile Piano Quartet which regularly toured the country under such auspices as the Southern Arts Touring Federation, The Mid-America Arts Alliance, Arts Midwest, and various other state arts agencies. Concert appearances included the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., The Columbus Chamber Music Society, The Chamber Music Society of Chicago, and The Friends of Music in Houston.
A devoted mentor to young musicians, Ms. Winkler is the recipient of Rice University’s prestigious Julia Mile Chance Award for excellence in teaching. Her students can be found among the ranks of national and international competition winners as well as in the world’s leading orchestras and chamber ensembles. Additionally, Ms. Winkler’s students have been the recipients of such prestigious awards as the Watson Fellowship, the Fulbright Award, and the Pulitzer Prize in Music. As an adjudicator, Ms. Winkler has served on the panel of organizations such as The Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, The American String Teachers Association’s National Competition (ASTA), The Concert Artist Guild of New York, The Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition, The Midland-Odessa National Young Artists Competition, The Lennox-Richardson National Young Artist Competition, The Corpus Christi International Young Artist Competition, and the General Motors Seventeen National Competition.
The Philadelphia-born artist attended Indiana University where she received her Bachelor of Music degree, magna cum laude, as well as the coveted Performer’s Certificate. She also attended the University of Michigan where she received her Master of Music degree, summa cum laude. Formerly on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory and The Cleveland Institute of Music, as well as serving as a visiting professor at Indiana’s Jacobs School of Music and the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, Ms. Winkler has been a Professor of Violin at the Shepherd School of Music for the past 21 years. Additionally, she continues her relationship as a visiting professor at the middle school attached to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. During the summer she is on the artist faculty of the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, where she holds the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin.
