J. Lawrie Bloom is a versatile player who has been heard in chamber,
orchestral, and concerto appearances on soprano clarinet, basset clarinet,
basset horn, and bass clarinet. In September of 1980, Sir Georg Solti invited
Lawrie to join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the position of clarinet and
solo bass clarinet. Mr. Bloom has been a featured performer at numerous
International Clarinet Association conferences and at the Ambler, Grand Teton,
Ravinia, Skaneateles, and Spoleto festivals and the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York. Mr. Bloom is a
senior lecture in clarinet at Northwestern
University and is an
artist performer of the Buffet Crampon Company and RICO International
John Bruce Yeh joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1977,
having been appointed solo bass clarinet of the Orchestra at the age of
nineteen by Sir Georg Solti. Two years later, he was named assistant principal
and solo E-flat clarinetist, a position in which he continues to serve. Born in
Washington, D.C.,
and raised in Los Angeles,
Yeh pursued premedical studies at UCLA, where he also won the Frank Sinatra
Musical Performance Award. He entered the Juilliard School of Music in 1975 and
attended music schools in Aspen,
Marlboro, and Tanglewood. He cites Harold Wright, Ray Still, Marcel Moyse,
Allan Dennis, and Mehli Mehta as influential mentors. Yeh is director of Chicago Pro Musica, which
received the Grammy Award in 1986 for Best New Classical Artist. He frequently
plays at festivals and on chamber music series worldwide and has performed
several times with Music from Marlboro, the Guarneri, Ying,
Colorado, Pacifica, and Avalon string quartets, and the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. As half of the duo Double Dialogue, he
performs innovative programs with composer-computer sound artist Howard
Sandroff. Their recording, Dialogues with
My Shadow, of works by Boulez, Carl, Martino, Levin, and Sandroff
is available on the Koch International Classics label.
Yeh has performed concertos with the CSO on several
occasions, including the 1998 American Premiere of Elliott Carter's Clarinet
Concerto with Pierre Boulez conducting, as well as the 1993 performance of Carl
Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto with Neeme Järvi. A concert recording of the
Nielsen has been released on the CSO-CD set "Soloists of the Orchestra II:
From the Archives, Volume 15." In 2004 Yeh was featured in Leonard
Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue and Riffs in
collaboration with the Hubbard Street Dance Company and the CSO conducted by
David Robertson. A prizewinner at both the 1982 Munich International Music
Competition and the 1985 Naumburg Clarinet Competition in New York, Yeh continues to solo with
orchestras around the globe. His more than a dozen solo and chamber music
recordings, including the recent release of clarinet chamber music by Hindemith
on Cedille Records (see www.cedillerecords.org), have earned worldwide critical
acclaim.
Together with his wife clarinetist Teresa Reilly, erhu
virtuoso Wang Guowei and pipa virtuoso Yang Wei, John recently formed Birds and
Phoenix, an
innovative quartet dedicated to musical exploration by bridging eastern and
western musical cultures. In their highly acclaimed debut performance in
September of 2006, the group presented works by Victoria Bond, Pamela Chen, Lu Pei, and Bright Sheng,
all commissioned for them by Fontana Chamber Arts in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
They are scheduled to repeat this program on June 28 and 30 as part of the
Fontana Summer Festival (www.fontanachamberarts.org).
Charlene Zimmerman is Principal Clarinet with both the Lyric Opera of
Chicago and the Grant Park Symphony Orchestras. She has been heard many
times over WFMT Fine Arts Radio for opening night broadcasts and other concerts
receiving critical acclaim from the New York Times for her 1996 performance of
the Wagner Ring Cycles in Chicago,
conducted by Zubin Mehta. Over the years she has performed here in Chicago with the Chicago
Symphony, American Ballet Theater, American Chamber Symphony, The Chicago
Ensemble, Music of the Baroque, Chicago Opera Theater, the Ravinia Festival
Orchestra, and the Contemporary Chamber Players. During the 1989-90
orchestral season, she played 2nd and Eb clarinet with the Milwaukee Symphony
under Zdenek Macal. She also appeared in Florida
for the Sanibel Festival and in Wyoming
for the Grand Teton Music Festival. She has recorded hundreds of TV and radio
commercials and can also be heard on a New Age/Environmental album released in
1989 called “Embrace the Wind,” and more recently with the Lyric Opera
Orchestra in the 1991 production of Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, the 1996 CD
release of the Ardis Krainik Gala Concert, and the 2000 CD release of William
Bolcom’s “A View from the Bridge,” as well as on the three recently released
Grant Park Symphony CDs.
Charlene was a member of the clarinet faculty at Northwestern University
from 1993-99 where she also received her music education under the tutelage of CSO
clarinetist Jerome Stowell. She maintains a private studio and enjoys coaching
young professionals from around the U.S. for recital performances and
for auditions. She has also coached orchestral repertoire and chamber music for
the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. In 2002 she was honored as Musician
of the Year by Chicago’s
Dal Segno Club.
