May Concert Notes and Performers

PROGRAM - String Sextets

Brahms - String Sextet in G Major Op. 36

Intermission

Antonin Dvorak - String Sextet in A Major Op. 48

Guillermo Figueroa - violin; Valerie Turner - violin

Willy Sucre - viola; Elena Sopoci - viola

James Holland - cello; Joan Zucker - cello

Willy's Friends Play String Sextets

Violinist Guillermo Figueroa has been Music Director of the New Mexico Symphony and serves as Music director of the Music in the Mountains Festival in Colorado as well as Principal Guest Conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony.

Figueroa was a founding member and concertmaster of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and concertmaster of the New York City Ballet.

As part of Puerto Rico's most distinguished musical family, he has appeared with the Figueroa Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Kennedy Center. He studied at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico with his father and uncle. At the Julliard School his teachers were Oscar Shumsky and Felix Galimir. His conducting studies were with Harold Farberman in New York.

Figueroa and his wife, violinist Valerie Turner, are the Founders and Artistic Directors of the Festival de Musica Rondeña chamber series in Albuquerque.

Cellist James Holland began cello studies at the age of nine in his hometown of Pensacola, Florida. He earned a Bachelor of Music Degree in cello performance from the University of Alabama and a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music.

Upon completion of his master's degree, Holland was invited to become a member of the Miami-based New World Symphony, where for two years he performed, toured and recorded under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. In 1996 he successfully auditioned to become principal cellist for the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and cellist for the Charleston Symphony String quartet, a position he held until 2007.

For many years he has been an active enthusiastic cello teacher and chamber music coach. He lives in Albuquerque with his wife, violinist Megan Holland.

Violinist Valerie Turner, a native New Yorker, received her musical education at the State University of New York at Purchase.

Prior to coming to New Mexico, she taught both privately and in schools for over twenty years as well as performing with many orchestras in the New York area as well as the Santa Fe Opera, Charleston Symphony, Stamford Symphony, Albany Symphony, Connecticut Grand Opera, Stamford Chamber Orchestra, Virginia Opera Association, the Center for Contemporary Opera, and the Craftsbury Chamber Players.

In New Mexico performed regularly with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra; performs with the Santa Fe Symphony and the Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra in Durango, Colorado.

Turner and her husband, Guillermo Figueroa, are the Founders and Artistic Directors of the Festival de Musica Rondeña chamber series.

Cellist Joan Zucker, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra's Principal Cellist, is a native New Yorker who holds music degrees from Bennington and Ithaca Colleges.

She was first heard by New Mexicans in the mid-seventies, as jazz cellist with the Johnny Gilbert Quartet and Principal Cellist of the Orchestra of Santa Fe. Since then she has performed in many of New Mexico's ensembles from the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and Opera, to Willy Sucre and Friends and the Santa Fe Chorale.

She has performed with numerous chamber groups, orchestras, and festivals in the United States and in Venezuela, her home for four years.

A versatile musician, she has taught extensively (cello, recorder, voice, orchestra, chamber music, theory, composition and improvisation), both privately and at various institutions including UC Santa Cruz, Ithaca College, and UNM.

Zucker plays a Benjamin Banks cello made in Salisbury, England in 1788.

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