Hour 7 – 4:00pm to 5:00pm
See featured performers below!
DUANE PADILLA
After earning degrees from Northwestern University and Yale University, concert artist and educator Duane Padilla began his performance career as an orchestral musician, performing with the National Repertoire Orchestra, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, and the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra. Also an active classical chamber music performer, his ensemble The Gemini Duo was a semi-finalist in the prestigious International Concert Artists Guild Competition in NYC, and earned outreach grants from Chamber Music America and the American Federation of Musicians and was a featured ensemble on the Connecticut Commission on the Arts Performing Artist Roster and the CMA Rural Residency Artist Roster. Duane’s more recent artistic endeavors have turned towards jazz. As a founding member of The Hot Club of Hulaville, he won the Hawaii Academy of Recording Arts’s award for jazz album of the year for their gypsy jazz release “Django Would Go!”. His subsequent solo jazz violin album “Sentimental Swing” was named one of the top 40 jazz releases of 2011 by the South African Jazz Educators Association. Recent concert collaborations include duo performances with Pianist Tommy James (Music Director of the Duke Ellington Orchestra NYC), fingerstlye guitar legend Jeff Linsky, Guitarist Paul Mehling (Hot Club of San Francisco), Grammy winning Hawaiian Slack Key Guitarist Jeff Peterson, and Jazz Ukulele Grand Master Ben Chong. He has opened concerts for jazz giants Martin Taylor, John Jorgensen, and John Pizzarelli.
An equally accomplished educator, Duane studied Suzuki violin pedagogy with Betty Haig, Lisa Hershumgel, Stevie Svenden, Teri Einfeld, Alan Lieb as well as Rolland/Zweig Pedagogy with Stacia Spencer. He has studied conducting with Marvin Rabin, William Jones & Shinick Hahm. He has studied jazz violin with Tim Kliphuis, Ben Powell, and Aaron Weinstein, Jason Anick and Christian Howes. Duane began his teaching career in CT where he was head of the Suzuki Program at the Tabor Community Arts Center and the Bethwood Suzuki School. While in Connecticut, he also designed and implemented a unique public school string program for grades 1-3 based on the Suzuki violin method for Wintergreen Magnet School. He has served as President of the Hawaii Chapter of the American String Teachers Association and has also served on the Board of Directors of the Suzuki Association of Hawaii and the Suzuki Talent Education of Hawaii. He currently is on faculty at the Punahou Music School and Chaminade University and is serving as Chairman of the American String Teachers Association Eclectic Styles Committee.
HAN DEWAN
Violist Han Dewan has performed chamber and orchestral music throughout the United States, in addition to concerts in France, Canada, and the Czech Republic. Recent series appearances include Union Square Chamber Music Society, Garth Newel Music Center, Blair School Chamber Showcase, National Orchestral Institute, and the Festival d’Aix (FR). She is the first female student to complete the Blair-to-Owen dual B.Mus. and MBA at Vanderbilt University.
Committed to expanding the audience for art music through multimedia collaborations, recent recitals have included poetry, film, and illuminated scores. She can be heard on albums released by Naxos, Klavier, and Navona, including the world premiere recording of Jack Stamp’s “String Quartet No.1.”
She is immensely grateful to her mentors: CJ Chang at the Peabody Institute, Kathryn Plummer and John Kochanowski at the Blair School, and Sherri Fleshner. She is honored to begin performing as principal violist in the Midland-Odessa Symphony & Chorale and violist with the Permian Basin String Quartet in Fall 2019.
ALYSSA RODRIGUEZ
Alyssa Rodriguez teaches and performs in Rochester, New York and composes neo-trad music. She maintains a private violin and fiddle studio and teaches at the Kanack School of Musical Artistry. She plays fiddle with various bands including the Irish punk-rock band Sisters of Murphy and swing jazz band The Gregory Street Vagabonds and performs solo fiddle at such venues as the Genesee Village Country Museum in Mumford, NY. She is one of the few players of the Swedish nyckelharpa i.e. keyed fiddle in the U.S., and also plays the mountain dulcimer, viola and Norwegian hardingfele.
Alyssa Rodriguez received a 2020-2021 U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to study and research Nordic Folk Music at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. She has studied Scandinavian folk music since 2015 with Laurie Hart of Ithaca, NY, has taken nyckelharpa lessons with several “riksspelman,” a title granted to the finest nyckelharpa players in the world, and was admitted to the Eric Sahlström Institute to study nyckelharpa in Fall 2020.
Alyssa Rodriguez holds a Bachelor’s of Music in Music Composition from Ithaca College ’14, and writes neo-trad music, new music in the old fiddle traditions. You can hear her debut EP Chicory and other music at: https://alyssarodriguezfiddle.