Charles Wetherbee & David Korevaar
Biography Charles Wetherbee & David Korevaar
Charles Wetherbee
Violinist Charles Wetherbee has performed throughout the world, including Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. He has appeared at the Aspen Music Festival, the Garth Newell Center, the Hidden Valley Festival (CA), the Roycroft Chamber Festival (NY), the Nouvelle Academie International d’Été (Nice, France), the Olympic Music Festival (WA), the MidAmerica Music Festival (OH), and Strings in the Mountains (CO). A native of Buffalo, New York, Charles gave his first performances at age six. He made his debut with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra under Symon Bychkov, and since then has performed with the National Symphony under Mstislav Rostropovitch, as well as the Japan Philharmonic, the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Bogota (Columbia), the National Repertory Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico, the Symphony Orchestra of the Curtis Institute, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Virginia Symphony, among others. In 1988 he toured Asia, including performances in Seoul, Korea, as part of the Olympic Arts Festival. In the same year he also made his New York debut at Carnegie Hall to critical acclaim as a participant in the American Music Competition. In 1990, he traveled to the Persian Gulf to perform for the men and women of the armed services. The Washington Post called Wetherbee “a consummate artist... with flawless technique”. The Virginia Pilot said that he “... gave a performance of great conviction and emotion”. The Columbus Dispatch wrote “... a first rate showman... his double-stops, harmonics, and beautiful sound kept the audience spellbound”.
Charles is an artist dedicated to the music of today, as well as to the great literature of the past. In May of 2007, he was invited to St. Petersburg, Russia, to give the Russian premiere of Grammy Award winning composer John Corigliano’s Violin Concerto, and was subsequently invited back to perform the Beethoven concerto in the famous Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall. Charles has been heard nationwide on the NPR program “Performance Today”, featuring his performance of the Red Violin by Mr. Corigliano with Joanne Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2002, he gave the Latin American premier of the Red Violin, and was immediately re-engaged to return in 2003, for performances of the Szymanowski Violin Concerto. In November 2005, Charles gave the world premiere of the Violin Concerto by composer Jonathan Leshnoff with the Columbus Symphony, and then performed the concerto in Baltimore, MD with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. The Baltimore Sun wrote “This was very classy fiddle playing, with a golden, penetrating tone, sterling technique and strongly communicative phrasing.” Mr. Wetherbee has also performed the Leshnoff concerto in Mexico City, Mexico, with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico; in Kyoto, Japan, with the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra; and in Breckenridge, Colorado, with the National Repertory Orchestra. Other world premieres include the Leshnoff Double Concerto for Violin and Viola with Michael Stern and the IRIS Chamber Orchestra, followed by performances in Duluth (MN), St. Petersburg (Russia), Orquesta de Extremadura (Spain), Buffalo (NY), and Boca Raton (FL). Charles will perform the world premiere of the violin concerto by Korine Fujiwara in the National Gallery, Washington, DC, as part of the 100th Anniversary of the Cherry Blossom Festival.
A devoted chamber musician, Charles is the first violinist of the Carpe Diem String Quartet, with whom he tours and performs regularly. With Carpe Diem he is featured on many different CDs, and also has recorded with Carpe Diem and guitarist Willy Porter as a member of the mealies. He was a founding member of Opus 3 piano trio, and with Opus 3 performed in the French, German, Austrian, and Dutch embassies, as well as the Terrace Theater of the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery, Strathmore Hall, and throughout the eastern United States. He is also the Artistic Director of the Dercum Center for Arts and Humanities, Keystone, Colorado.
Charles is newly appointed to the violin faculty of the College of Music, University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Aaron Rosand. Other mentors include Sylvia Rosenberg, Karen Tuttle, and Felix Galimir. Early studies were with Katherine Hafner, Bernard Mandelkern and Tom Halpin. As a recording artist, he is represented on Naxos, Seize the Music Records, Weasel Records, Vienna Modern Classics, as well as the Cascade labels, and was also featured on a recording with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra playing Massenet’s Meditation from Thaïs. Mr. Wetherbee has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Ashworth Artist and the George Hardesty awards. Charles performs on a violin made by Kurt Widenhouse, and bows by Charles Espy and Benoit Rolland.
David Korevaar
combines an active performing schedule with teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder College of Music, where he is a Distinguished Professor (only the second to bear that title in the College of Music) and holds the Peter and Helen Weil fellowship in piano. He was also honored by the University in 2016 as a Distinguished Research Lecturer, a first in the College of Music.
Since his New York debut at Town Hall in 1985, Korevaar has performed in many roles, as solo recitalist, as soloist with orchestra, as a chamber musician and collaborator, as well as in theater, dance, and multimedia productions. Heard frequently in his home state of Colorado, he has performed throughout the United States. Internationally, he has performed and taught in Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and around Europe. He has also concertized and given lessons and master classes in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan as part of the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Envoy program. In May 2016, he spent two weeks teaching at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul.
A passionate and committed collaborator, Korevaar is a founding member of the Boulder Piano Quartet, currently resident at The Academy in Boulder. He is a regular guest with the Takács Quartet, and recently performed with them on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center in New York. He performs and records with distinguished colleagues including violinists Charles Wetherbee, Harumi Rhodes, Edward Dusinberre, Emi Ohi Resnick, violists Geraldine Walther and Matthew Dane, cellist David Requiro, flutist Christina Jennings, and many others.
Korevaar’s most recent addition to his extensive discography is a highly acclaimed disc of world premiere recordings of piano music by the largely forgotten Italian impressionist composer Luigi Perrachio. In November 2019, Naxos will release a disc of the three violin sonatas by the Russian/German Paul Juon with violinist Charles Wetherbee. Other recent releases include the third volume of Lowell Liebermann’s piano music, a compelling Chopin recital, and world premiere recordings of music for violin and piano by the Hungarian-born Parisian composer Tibor Harsányi with Charles Wetherbee. Korevaar is well-known for his Bach recordings, including the Six Partitas, Goldberg Variations, and the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier (I and II). Along with recordings of music by Beethoven, Brahms, Fauré, and Ravel, he has recorded solo and chamber music of Paul Hindemith (three discs), solo piano music by Ernst von Dohnányi, and rarely heard treasures by French composers including Louis Aubert and Jean Roger-Ducasse from the University of Colorado’s Ricardo Viñes Piano Music Collection. His long association with the American composer Lowell Liebermann has resulted in five CDs to date, including three collections of solo piano music, an album with flutist Alexa Still, and a chamber music compilation with clarinetist Jon Manasse, members of the Boulder Piano Quartet, and baritone Patrick Mason.
David Korevaar continues his interest in new music, performing works by University of Colorado colleagues including Michael Theodore, Mike Barnett, and Carter Pann, as well as works by student composers. His long-standing advocacy of the music of Lowell Liebermann led to a recent weeklong residency by the composer at the University of Colorado including two full programs of his works performed by students and faculty, and interactions between Liebermann and College of Music students. He has performed and recorded works by composers including Lera Auerbach, David Carlson, Robert Xavier Rodriguez, Paul Schonfield, Aaron Jay Kernis, George Rochberg, George Crumb, Stephen Jaffe, and many others.
In May 2000 he received the Richard French award from the Juilliard School, honoring his doctoral document on Ravel’s Miroirs. Other honors include top prizes from the University of Maryland William Kapell International Piano Competition (1988) and the Peabody-Mason Foundation (1985), as well as the prize for best performance of French music at the Robert Casadesus International Competition (1989). He was also a winner of Young Concert Artists as a member of the group Hexagon in 1988.
David Korevaar began piano studies at age six in San Diego, California, with Sherman Storr—an alumnus and former faculty member of the CU College of Music. At age 13 he became a student of the great American virtuoso Earl Wild. By age 20 he had earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, where he continued his studies with Earl Wild and studied composition with David Diamond. He completed his Doctor of Musical Arts at the Juilliard School as a student of Abbey Simon. A very important mentor and teacher was the French pianist Paul Doguereau, who had been a student of Egon Petri, and who had studied the music of Fauré and Debussy with Fauré’s student Roger-Ducasse, and the music of Ravel with the composer himself.
Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Colorado in 2000, Korevaar taught for many years at the Westport School of Music in Connecticut as Artist-Teacher. He is a Shigeru Kawai artist.
