Artists and Bios
Steven
J.
Lubiarz, Violin/Artistic Director
A native of Troy,
Michigan,
Steven moved to Canada in 2003 to join the second violin section of
the Calgary
Philharmonic Orchestra
and Bell'arte Strings. Prior to moving to Canada he was a
member of
the New World Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Michael Tilson
Thomas in
Miami Beach, Florida. While completing his Master of Music in Violin
Performance and Orchestral Studies at Roosevelt University's Chicago
College of Performing Arts, Steven was a student of Cyrus Forough and
Joseph
Golan and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
Steven, who has been playing the violin since he was five
years old,
has
performed in the Czech Republic, Austria, and throughout Japan. He
received a Bachelor of Music from DePauw University where he was a
student of
Stephen Boe and Dan Rizner. In addition to performing, Steven is the
Artistic Director of the Port Elizabeth Chamber Music Festival
in Caseville,
Michigan.
He has also been an active teacher for the past decade in New York,
Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and continues his love of teaching
today at
the Mount Royal University Conservatory in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Steven performs on an
1897 Leandro Bisiach, which was a gift from his first teacher, the late
Anne Dodge.
R. Kent Cook,
Piano
Dr. R. Kent Cook is an Associate
Professor of Piano at Illinois
Wesleyan
University
in Bloomington,
Illinois. He keeps an active
schedule as soloist and
chamber musician, having performed in many venues throughout the United States
and
abroad. Regionally,
he has appeared in Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, Michigan,
Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, while in Europe, he
has performed in Austria,
Bulgaria,
the Czech Republic,
England,
France,
Germany
and Italy.
R. Kent Cook hails from Odessa,
Texas where he began to
play the piano at age six. He
attended Baylor
University
to pursue dentistry, but soon abandoned that goal to begin serious
study of the
piano. After
finishing a Piano
Performance Degree with honors under the guidance of Roger Keyes, he
continued his
studies at Indiana University
receiving both
a Masters and Doctorate in Piano Performance.
He has worked with distinguished pianists Leonard
Hokanson, Eteri
Andjaparidze, Michel Block, James Tocco, and Karen Shaw, and in
1992-93, he studied
with Herbert Seidel as a Fulbright Scholar at the Hochschule
für Musik in Frankfurt, Germany.
Before joining the piano faculty at
Illinois
Wesleyan University
in 1999, Dr. Cook served on music faculties at DePauw
University,
the Indiana
University Piano Academy,
and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.
He is currently
active as an adjudicator and master teacher throughout the Midwest,
and during the summer he teaches at the Illinois Chamber Music Festival. In 2009, he joined the
faculty of the
International Chamber Music Festival based in Kyustendil, Bulgaria. Cook released his first
recording in 2002 on
the Novitas label. Entitled
Nachtstück,
it is a recording of twelve Nocturnes by seven
different composers
including Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann.
Roger
Roe, Oboe
Roger
Roe, who assumed his duties as English Horn/Assistant Principal Oboe of
the
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1995, is a graduate of the Cleveland
Institute of Music, Southern Methodist University and ArtsMagnet High School in Dallas. Before coming to Indianapolis,
he held oboe and English horn positions with the orchestras of Honolulu
and Charleston,
South Carolina.
Mr.
Roe is Associate Professor of Oboe and English Horn at Indiana
University and served on the Faculty of DePauw University for six
years. In addition to solo appearances with the Indianapolis Symphony
Orchestra on oboe, oboe d'amore, and English horn, Roger acts as
narrator for children's programs. He is an active chamber musician and
recitalist and is a past winner of the Fort Worth Young Artist
Competition and of a Downbeat Magazine Award as Outstanding
Young
Classical Instrumentalist. Roger shares his life with his partner, Dr.
Kent Cook, a piano professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.
