DAVID KATZ, Founding Music Director and Principal Conductor
of The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra
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| David Katz |
David Katz is one of the most versatile performing artists currently working in the Chicago area. Now celebrating his 32nd season as the founding music director of The Chicago Bar Association Symphony
Orchestra, Katz has led Chicagoland’s unique all-lawyer ensemble nearly
two hundred times during his long tenure, in repertoire ranging from
Trial By Jury,
(the first performances of Gilbert & Sullivan’s courtroom operetta
ever to be presented in a working courtroom with a cast and orchestra
made up entirely of legal professionals) to Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 9,
as well as major orchestral and choral-orchestral works by Brahms,
Britten, Bruckner, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Poulenc, Respighi, Shostakovich,
Tchaikovsky and others.
In 2011, Katz and the CBASO, joined by the CBA Chorus and guest choirs, nearly three hundred musicians in all, presented Orff's
Carmina Burana to
a capacity crowd at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, in celebration of the
CBASO's 25th season. The ensemble returned to Symphony Center in spring
2015 for
Something Wonderful!, an all-Rodgers & Hammerstein concert.
David Katz has led more than sixty orchestras and opera companies throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico as guest conductor, including concerts with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Mississippi
Symphony and the Corpus Christi Symphony. Former associate conductor of
the Elgin Symphony Orchestra under Margaret Hillis, and for twelve
years music director of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra and co-founder of
OPERA!Lenawee in Michigan, Katz is currently artistic director of Hat
City Music Theater, Inc., in Connecticut, where he is founder and chief
judge of
The American Prize
national nonprofit competitions in the performing arts. In 2016, Katz
was honored by Musical America as one of only thirty “Top Professionals
of the Year” nationally for his work creating and sustaining The
American Prize. TAP has awarded more than $40,000 in prize money to
performing artists nationwide since its creation.
A professional playwright, actor and arts advocate, Katz tours internationally in his acclaimed one-man play,
MUSE of FIRE,
about the secrets of conducting. He has presented the play scores of
times throughout the Midwest, Northeast, and in Canada, including an
extended engagement in Chicago. Two books by David Katz,
Muse of Fire: A Symposium on the Art of Conducting, and
Bruck Stories, a companion volume, will be published by Del Gatto Press next year. Katz is also at work on
Wonderful Counsellor, a memoir about three decades of music-making with Chicago lawyers.
David
Katz holds baccalaureate and master’s degrees in composition and
conducting from the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford.
He was a student of the great Lithuanian maestro, Vytautas Marijosius,
and was the first in the school’s history to be awarded an Artist’s
Diploma in Conducting. Katz also studied for five years under Charles
Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors, in Maine, and later
founded Opera Maine, the Monteux Opera Festival, and the Chamber
Orchestra of Maine. He has partnered such artists as Itzhak Perlman and
Misha Dichter in concert and has worked with some of the greatest
twentieth century composers, including William Schuman, Hans Werner
Henze, Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter. Katz’s own compositions are
published by Carl Fischer and G. Schirmer, among others.
STEPHEN BLACKWELDER, Director of The The Chicago Bar Association Chorus
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| Stephen Blackwelder |
Particularly noted for his fluent work with singers
and choral groups, Stephen Blackwelder is currently celebrating his
twelfth season as director of the DePaul Community Chorus. Under his
direction, the DCC has grown to 150 members and recently collaborated
with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago in successful performances of
Mendelssohn’s
Elijah, Bruckner’s
Mass in D Minor, Haydn’s
Mass in Time of War and Brahms’
Requiem.
Now in his seventeenth season as Music Director of the Waukegan
Symphony Orchestra, his 2017-18 schedule includes four subscription
concerts with that ensemble, three concerts with the DCC and three
concerts as newly appointed Director of the Chicago Bar Association
Chorus. Stephen very much looks forward to collaborating with Maestro
Katz and the spirited members of the CBA Chorus and Symphony Orchestra.
Choral
music has always been an active component of Blackwelder’s musical life
and he has led performances of the Downer’s Grove Oratorio Society,
Camerata Singers of Lake Forest, Waukegan Festival Chorus and numerous
university, church and temple ensembles. Formerly the conductor of the
early music ensemble Ars Musica Chicago, he led that group in numerous
concerts and recordings over 8 concert seasons. As an accomplished
professional singer, he performed frequently under such conductors as
Robert Shaw, James Levine, Sir Georg Solti, Claudio Abbado and Margaret
Hillis while a member of the Aspen Chamber Choir and Chicago Symphony
Chorus.
A former Music Director of the Hinsdale Chamber
Orchestra, he continues to attract and delight audiences with fresh,
innovative programming and an informal and appealing concert style.
Highlights of past seasons include performances with celebrated flautist
Carol Wincenc, Metropolitan Opera soprano Nancy Gustafson, Ruben
Gonzalez and John Sharp of the Chicago Symphony, and the NIU
Philharmonic with soloists from the famed Vermeer Quartet. Guest
conducting engagements include the Richmond, Bremerton and Sacramento
Symphonies, as well as the Chicago String Ensemble, where he was praised
for his “warmly expressive” conducting by Robert Marsh of the Chicago
Sun-Times.
A native of North Carolina, Blackwelder was
the first undergraduate to receive a Bachelor of Music in conducting and
voice from UNC-Chapel Hill. During his studies for the Master of Music
degree at Northwestern University, he assisted Grigg Fountain with the
Alice Millar Chapel Choir in addition to his duties with orchestral and
opera groups. Professional study includes four seasons with the renowned
Aspen Music Festival and master classes with Sir Georg Solti, Max
Rudolf and Erich Leinsdorf.
MAREK RACHELSKI, Resident Conductor of The Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra
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| Marek Rachelski |
Newly appointed Resident Conductor of the Chicago Bar
Association Symphony Orchestra, Marek Rachelski enjoys a rich variety
in his musical life as conductor, pianist/harpsichordist and as
collaborative artist in recital. Marek holds degrees from Northwestern
University, Wayne State University and the Academy of Music in Prague
HAMU. He has appeared with orchestras in the Czech Republic, Poland,
Germany, Canada and the USA, and has served on the faculties of Loyola
University and De Paul University. He is the Artistic Director of Musica
Lumina Ensemble and Conductor/Founder of the Niles Metropolitan Chorus.
In four seasons the NMC/ML has performed major works of the repertoire:
Requiems of Mozart, Faure, Rutter; the Magnificats of Pärt, Bach and
Pergolesi; Haydn’s Creation, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Mendelssohn’s
Elijah, a yearly Handel’s Messiah, and the St. John Passion of J. S.
Bach.
Past Music Director of Opera Las Vegas, he
accompanied aria recitals and conducted complete staged performances of
Puccini’s La Boheme, Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore, Mollicone’s The Face
on the Barroom Floor and a Puccini 150th celebrating operas of Puccini
including excerpts from La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Manon
Lescaut, Turandot, La Fanciulla del West, La Rondine, and Gianni
Schicchi. He founded the Las Vegas Diocesan Cathedral Choir and the Las
Vegas Peoples Valley Chorus which performed Requiems by Faure, Rutter
and Brahms, Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s
Coronation Mass and Vespers, Rossini’s Stabat Mater, Vivaldi Juditha
Triumphans and a yearly Handel’s Messiah.
As Assistant
Conductor of the Elgin Symphony he conducted Young People’s Concerts and
performed with Victor Borge; he was also Music Director of the Valley
Civic Orchestra and conducted the Elgin Area Youth Orchestras. A
composer of over 100 works, he was commissioned in 1989 for a setting of
Psalm 145 for the Papal Mass in Detroit and for a Magnificat by the
Lira Singers for their 25th Anniversary. In addition to awards from the
Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society, he was presented with the
Pulaski Award for his contributions to Polish American Culture.
Rachelski enjoys collaboration as recital accompanist for a rich variety
of musical artists, both instrumental and vocal.
