musician

 

Violinist Maria Arrua leads an active career performing and teaching in the Greater Chicago area. She currently serves as Concertmaster of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra as well as section violin of the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra and Elgin and Northwest Symphony Orchestras. She is an Adjunct Instructor at Illinois Wesleyan University, where she teaches violin.

Dr. Arrua has appeared as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of Paraguay, Orchestra of the Congress of Paraguay, Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of the City of Asuncion, Chamber Orchestra of the Municipality of Asuncion, University of Chicago Chamber Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra, State College Summer Orchestra, and Penn State Philharmonic Orchestra. She has also performed with the symphony orchestras of Paraguay, Illinois, Grant Park, Mississippi, Baton Rouge, Champaign, and Acadiana, as well as Sinfonia da Camera, Louisiana Sinfonietta, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

Born in Paraguay, Dr. Arrua began her musical training at the age 10 at the National Conservatory of Music of Paraguay. During her studies at the Conservatory, Dr. Arrua served as Assistant Concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra. In 2011, she graduated summa cum laude from Louisiana State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance degree, studying under Dr. Lin He. Following that, she continued her graduate studies in performance at Pennsylvania State University, working with Prof. James Lyon. She completed her Doctorate in Musical Arts in 2021 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying under Nelson Lee and the Jupiter String Quartet.

She has performed in several music festivals, including the David Kim Orchestral Institute, Pine Mountain Music Festival, Grant Park Music Festival, Brevard Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, Castleman Quartet Program, and Festival Nas Montanhas.

 

Jennifer Brown is Assistant Professor of Trumpet at Eastern Illinois University. She enjoys an active career balancing her love of performing and teaching. Currently, Jennifer is the principal trumpet of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, second trumpet of the Heartland Festival Orchestra, and performs regularly with the Illinois Consortium Quintet. She has performed with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia da Camera, Danville Symphony Orchestra, Lexington Philharmonic, Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, and The Prairie Ensemble. Before moving to central Illinois, she played soprano cornet with The Lexington Brass Band and was a member of the Victory Brass Quintet in Lexington, Kentucky.

Prior to her appointment at Eastern Illinois University, beginning in the fall 2018 semester, Jennifer was on the faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, and Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, where she taught applied trumpet, brass chamber music, and music history.

Originally from St. Charles, Illinois, Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master of Music degree from the University of Kentucky, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her former teachers include Michael Sachs, Ronald Romm, Robert Sullivan, James Darling, Charles Daval, Mark Clodfelter, and Vincent DiMartino.

 

As artist, performer, and educator, percussionist Ricardo Flores has been captivating audiences for years, playing classical percussion, drum set, and world percussion in orchestral, chamber, jazz, pop, Latin, and many other musical settings. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2000, where he holds the title of Associate Professor on the Percussion Faculty, specializing in drum set and Latin percussion and directs the Steel Band/World Percussion Ensemble.

Ricardo has appeared with numerous groups and artists, including the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, Jack Shantz Jazz Unit, Akron Symphony Orchestra, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, Cleveland Ballet and Opera Orchestras, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, Symphony of Southwest Florida, Florida Orchestra, Luciano Pavarotti, Aretha Franklin, Diane Schuur, Tony Bennett, Alex Acuña, Hal Linden, Mitzi Gaynor, Louie Bellson, Terry Gibbs, The Four Freshmen, Jiggs Whigham, Victor Mendoza, John Riley, Howard Johnson, Vernon Reid, Jon Faddis, and Peter Erskine.

Currently Principal Percussionist of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra and Sinfonia da Camera, Ricardo also plays drums and Latin percussion with various jazz groups throughout the Midwest. He has presented concerts, clinics, and master classes throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, China, and South America at such venues as the Eastman School of Music; Northwestern University; Florida State University; The Hartt School of Music; the Percussive Arts Society International Convention; the 2005 Tri-C Jazz Festival in Cleveland, Ohio; the 2008 International Association of Jazz Educators Conference in Toronto; the Sichuan and the Wuhan Conservatories and the Second Dalian International Broadcasting Music Festival (China); the Sixth International Percussion Forum in Żagań, Poland; the 2nd International Congress of Percussion and the Crossdrumming Festival in Jelenia Góra and Warsaw, Poland; and the Fourth Patagonian Percussion Festival in Argentina. Ricardo has also performed on the Carnegie Hall stage as a soloist with the University of Illinois Wind Symphony.

Ricardo can be heard on recordings with performers such as Arturo Sandoval, Dan Wall, Kenny Anderson, Chip Stevens, the Jack Schantz Jazz Unit, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and Sinfonia da Camera. He is former President of the Illinois Chapter of The Percussive Arts Society, served on the PAS Drum Set Committee for 15 years, and now is a member of the PAS World Percussion Committee.

 

William Moersch is Professor and Chair of Percussion Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Internationally renowned as a marimba virtuoso, chamber and symphonic percussionist, recording artist, and educator, he has appeared as soloist with orchestras and in recital throughout North and South America, Europe, the Far East, and Australia. A regularly featured artist at international percussion festivals, Mr. Moersch has performed on more than seventy recordings and is perhaps best known for commissioning much of the prominent modern repertoire for marimba. In addition, he was the first marimbist ever to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Fellowship and has also been honored by NEA Recording and Consortium Commissioning grants.

Currently, he is Principal Timpanist of Sinfonia da Camera and the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, and Artistic Director of New Music Marimba.

 

Mark Moore is Professor of Tuba and Euphonium at the University of Illinois. Previously, he taught at the University of Southern Mississippi and at Shenandoah College and Conservatory of Music. His teachers include Arnold Jacobs (former principal tuba with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), Robert LeBlanc, and Dan Perantoni. Many of his students have won honors at the International Tuba Euphonium Association conferences and hold orchestra, band, and teaching positions at universities throughout the country.

Mr. Moore has served as an adjudicator for the International Tuba and Euphonium Association solo competitions and has been a featured artist at international conferences of ITEA, the International Trumpet Guild, the International Horn Society, and the International Brassfestival. In demand as an artist teacher/performer, he has appeared as a soloist, chamber music performer and clinician in Taiwan, Venezuela, Columbia, Poland, Spain, Belgium, and at many schools and universities throughout the United States. He was soloist in 1997 with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, in 1999 with the United States Army Orchestra in Washington D.C., performing Concerto for Tuba by John Williams, and in 2007, performing the Concerto for Tuba by Neely Bruce with the Bogotá Philharmonic in Columbia. He has soloed with University of Illinois ensembles on 10 occasions, most recently performing the Donald Grantham Tuba Concerto with the UI Wind Symphony in 2013. Moore has performed with many orchestras, including the St. Louis Symphony, and is currently Principal Tuba with both the Illinois and Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestras. He is also a member of the Illinois Brass Quintet, which has performed throughout the United States and Europe, and Medicare 7, 8 or 9, a Dixieland band at the University of Illinois. Moore is a founding member of Sonus Brass, formed in 1987.

Mr. Moore’s degrees are from the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University.

John Dee is the Bill A. Nugent Endowed Professor of Music Performance and Professor of Oboe at the University of Illinois. He was principal oboe of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and Florida Grand Opera for over twenty years and also Oboe Professor at the University of Miami and the Harid Conservatory of Music. Prior to this, he was principal oboe of the Florida Orchestra in Tampa, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. His teachers include June Wollwage and Gladys Elliot of the Lyric Opera Orchestra; Daniel Stolper at Interlochen; Robert Mayer, Michael Henoch, and Ray Still of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Northwestern University; and John Mack of the Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Institute of Music.

He has been invited to perform with such orchestras as the Chicago, Saint Louis, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras and has worked with such conductors as Carlo Maria Giulini, Claudio Abbado, Sir Georg Solti, and James Levine. He has performed and taught at major music festivals throughout the world and has worked with such ensembles as the Alexander, Miami, Lark, Ying, Vega, and Pacifica String Quartets. John has collaborated with nearly every major performing artist in the world, including Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Kiri Te Kanawa, Cecilia Bartoli, Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, Placido Domingo, Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein, Uto Ughi, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell, János Starker, Mstistlav Rostropovich, Martha Argerich, André Watts, Emanual Ax, Yefim Bronfman, and pop artists Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan, Linda Ronstadt, Frank Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Nelson Riddle, Henry Mancini, Peter Nero, Ella Fitzgerald, Doc Severinsen, and Wynton Marsalis.

John was featured in weekly broadcasted programs with the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra on over 140 radio stations and his solo performances of the Strauss and Mozart Oboe Concertos with the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra were met with critical acclaim. The Miami Herald wrote, “his shading and inflection were worthy of major recording artists who trot the globe as oboe soloists.” John’s solo CD recording, “Under a Near Sky” (Klavier Records), was reviewed by The Journal of the IDRS: “I was delighted to encounter Robert Bloom’s (NBC Toscanini Orchestra) recording, Robert Sprenkle’s (Rochester-Eastman), and later John Mack’s (Cleveland Orchestra) version but even happier to recommend John Dee’s interpretation. John Dee has that not-too-bright, not-too-dark, just right, liquid, melting tone that becomes a malleable vehicle for discourse, while retaining its own timbral beauty.”

He has performed for Pope John Paul II and can be seen on the internationally syndicated television series, “The Joy of Music,” with organist and host Diane Bish, having recorded as soloist throughout Alaska and in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral and Saint Mary’s Cathedral. He has also been the featured soloist with I Solisti Aquilani, in Italy, assisted the Yamaha Corporation in the development of their professional-model oboe in Japan, performed in Beijing and Shanghai, China, and has returned again to teach and perform in Spain and Korea. John’s performances have been heard on NPR’s Performance Today, he is a regular guest artist at the International Double Reed Society annual conferences, and he is invited to conduct oboe clinics and adjudicate national and international music competitions. Having received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the National Endowment for the Arts several times, he appears in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers and his oboe students have won and occupy prestigious professional positions throughout the world, including the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.