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Festival concerts at a glance

Sunday, July 25th, 2:00pm

Artists and Bios



R. Kent CookR. 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 RoeRoger 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.

Steven J. LubiarzSteven 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 St. Roch 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.