Jerry Hui
Jerry (Chiwei) Hui has written a wide variety of music that ranges from serious concert art music to light-hearted choral arrangements. His music has been performed in the United States, Indonesia and Hong Kong by community choirs, campus ensembles, and professional groups. His composition has won prizes including the Robert Helps Prize 2008, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Concerto Competition.
As a conductor, Mr. Hui has founded and directed various community choirs, church choirs, chamber ensembles and orchestras, many of which specializes in contemporary music. He is active in conducting for fellow composers, and has premiered over 30 new works in the past years. He has also performed often as a singer of early and contemporary music. Lately he is performing frequently with Eliza’s Toyes, a semi-professional early music ensemble based in Madison, WI.
A native of Hong Kong, Jerry Hui is pursuing a DMA degree in music composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mr. Hui’s principal composition teachers include David Crumb, Stephen Dembski, Robert Kyr, Joel Naumann and Laura Schwendinger. His conducting teachers are Paul Flight, Bruce Gladstone, Sharon Paul, Hirvo Surva, and Beverly Taylor.
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Jonathan Kuuskoski
Canadian-native Jonathan Kuuskoski is building a diverse career as a pianist, pedagogue, scholar, and arts entrepreneur. Since his 2000 debut with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra, he has performed as soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and Canada, and abroad in New Zealand, the Czech Republic, and Cyprus. Recent highlights include appearances at the Beaux Concerts de la Relève (Orford, Quebec) and at the Royal Ontario Museum as part of the “Emerging Artists” series of the 2009 Toronto Summer Music Festival.
As a devoted advocate of contemporary music, Jonathan has collaborated with numerous ensembles, including the UW-Madison Western Percussion and Contemporary Music Ensembles. His performs regularly with the newly-formed Anhinga PianoSAX Duo (featuring saxophonist Chris Dickhaus), which has drawn acclaim for performances that are “…experimental but also highly engaging….technically impressive and emotionally resonant” (The Wilmington Star-News).
After co-founding the UW-Madison Chapter of Arts Enterprise, he has gone on the serve on the executive board of Arts Enterprise Central, where he is helping to develop student-led arts ventures nationwide, and has presented research on related topics at the national meetings of USASBE, NCKP, MTNA, and CMS. A Scandinavian background and an abiding interest in artist-citizenship has spurred ongoing research at the Gunnar Johansen Archives (Blue Mounds, WI), where Jonathan recently prepared two of Johansen’s early piano works for publication. His writings are included in Disciplining the Arts: Teaching Entrepreneurship in Context (Gary Beckman, Ed. – Rowman and Littlefield Education Press, 2010), the Grove Dictionary of American Music (Second Edition), and a forthcoming textbook utilizing case studies in arts entrepreneurship.
Jonathan currently serves as Coordinator of Outreach and Community Programs at the University of Missouri, where he coordinates various programs while helping to develop entrepreneurship offerings for Mizzou students. He earned a Master in Music (Piano Performance and Pedagogy) from UW-Madison in 2009, and holds both a BA with Honors and an MBA from UNC-Greensboro. He has served as coordinator for the UW-Madison Piano Outreach Concert Series, and on the faculties of Edgewood College, Madison Area Technical College, and within the UW-Continuing Studies Division.
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Paola Savvidou
Paola Savvidou is a DMA candidate in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studies with Jessica Johnson. She holds a Master of Music in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from UW-Madison (2008), and a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance, summa cum laude, from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2006) where she studied with John Salmon. Before traveling to the U.S. for her degrees, Paola studied at the Pancyprian Conservatory with Chloe Mavronicola, where she received a Diploma from the Conservatory with highest honors, and a Diploma from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Her chamber music coaches have included Parry Karp, Andrew Willis, Andrew Harley, and Martha Fischer. As an undergraduate she was awarded the “Michael Weaver Travel Grant” to participate in a student exchange program at the New Zealand School of Music, where she studied with Richard Mapp and Emma Sayers.
She has performed solo and chamber music recitals in New Zealand, Cyprus and the U.S.A. and has won several notable competitions. Most recently she won the Beethoven Piano Competition and the Concerto Competition at UW-Madison playing Poulenc’s Concerto for two pianos in D minor with Julie Page. She has appeared in master-classes with some of the world’s foremost pianists and pedagogues, including Olga Kern, Robert MacDonald, Christopher O’Riley and Roy Howat.
Her dance experience includes training in ballet, modern, Bartenieff Fundamentals and Laban Movement Analysis. In March 2010 she presented a session entitled “Total Body Integration for Pianists” at the national conference of the Music Teachers National Association in Albuquerque, NM. Highlights of the awards she has received are the David and Edith Sinaiko Frank Graduate Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts from theUW-Madison Arts Institute (2010) and the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment for the “Piano Pioneers Program,” a piano scholarship program aimed at providing financial assistance with piano lessons for low-income families (2008-2011).
Paola serves as the Program Coordinator for the Piano Pioneers Program. She is also serving as the Vice-President for the UW-Madison Collegiate Chapter of MTNA and was the recipient of the MTNA Student Achievement Recognition Award in 2008.
