Dr. Tess Remy-Schumacher was born in Cologne, Germany and has studied with Boris Pergamenschikow, Maria Kliegel, Siegfried Palm, Jacqueline de Pre and William Pleeth. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied with Lynn Harrell in his Piatigorsky class at the University of Southern California and was awarded her MM. As "most outstanding graduate of the year for performance, academic excellence and leadership," she received her PhD under the supervision of Eleonore Schoenfeld. Dr. Remy-Schumacher has won first prizes in Germany's Jugend musiziert, New York's International Artist Competition (string division) and Rome's Carlo-Zecchi Competition with pianist Dr. Michael Staudt. She has been a concert soloist for many years performing in Asia, Australia, Europe and the U.S., including the Wigmore Hall in London, Jubilee Hall in Singapore and the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York and Bradley Hall in Chicago. In The New York Concert Review, Edith Eisler wrote about her most recent Carnegie Recital Hall performance, “Ms. Remy-Schumacher’s technique is disciplined… Her bow control and mastery of the fingerboard are complete; her intonation is excellent. Dr. Remy also performed at the Brisbane Biennial Festival, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music and the Contempofest (Australia), the Weatherfield Music Festival (U.S.) and the Internationaler Klaviersommer (Germany). She has recored for WDR, NDR and MDR (Germany), WNYC New York, K-USC Los Angeles, ABC National, Australia, MBS-FM Melbourne, Australia and Swiss and Italian television. Her CDs include her own transcriptions of Robert Schumann's "Dichterliebe" with Marcus Reissenweber and Christoph von Sicherer, works by "In Sun Cho" for the Contemporary Music Society in Seoul, Korea, Villa Lobos with guitarist Stefan Gasse, the "Ibert Cello Concerto" recorded in 1999 at Radio Hilversum combined with solo cello works by Henze, Lutoslawki, Stahlke, Magrill, and the Rachmaninov Sonata in g-minor with pianist Michael Staudt. She just released a CD of Cello Compositions by Sam Magrill and recently recorded "Trios" by Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven as well as the first volume of the "Suites for Cello Solo" by Johann Sebastian Bach. Following her appointment at James Cool University from 1992-1998, she is now a professor for cello and chamber music at UCO. She is a co-founder of the UCO Outreach Music program together with Dr. Chindarat Charoenwongse. For the academic year 2010/2011 she was appointed Visiting Fellow Performance at Harvard University. For more information, visit: www.tessremyschumacher.com Stefan Grasse was born in Munich, Germany in 1962 and studied jazz and classical guitar with Peter O'Mara (Munich Jazz School), Kurt Hiesl (Nuremberg Conservatory), Phillip Thorne (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow) and Pepe Romero (International Summer Academy,Salzburg). He has been awarded Bavarian Radio scholarships, the Royal Scottish Academy's „Guitar Challenge Prize 1991", the „Scottish Society ofComposers' Award 1991" and the Nuernberg Scholarship 1996. Concert tours have taken him to Scotland, Austria, Italy, Hungary,Slovenia, Macedonia, Australia and the USA (including the „Concierto de Aranjuez"). Festival appearances and concerts: Goethe-Institut, Glasgow; East-West Folkfesztivál (Hungary); Skopje Summer Festival (Macedonia); Contempofest James Cook University (Australia); Middle Franconian Guitar Festival; Schwabach New Music Festival; Musica Franconia; Coburg Samba Festival; Tutzing Blue Note Festival; Erlangen Silent Film Music Festival; House of German History, Bonn; Munich Gasteig,Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and Festival of Central Europe. Amongst many others, mostly commissioned by himself, Stefan Grasse has given first performances of works by Thomas Wilson, John Maxwell Geddes,Edward McGuire, Vivienne Olive, Adriana Hölszky and Steve Reich. Stefan Grasse lives as a freelance concert guitarist and producer in Nuernberg, Germany, where he is artistic director of the "Nuernberg Guitar Nights". www.stefan-grasse.de Samuel Magrill is a Professor of Music and Composer-in-Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma. He obtained his Bachelor of Music in Composition from Oberlin Conservatory and his Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Composition from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. His composition teachers have included Ramiro Cortes, Joseph Wood, Randolph Coleman, Ben Johnston, Edwin London, Herbert Brün and Kenneth Gaburo. Magrill has written more than eighty compositions for a variety of instruments, from solo piano and chamber music to choir, wind ensemble and symphony orchestra. His music has been heard at meetings of the National Flute Association, the College Music Society, the Society of Composers, Inc. and SEAMUS (the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States). He has received numerous awards and commissions, including ones from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Music Center, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Illinois Arts Council, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), the Oklahoma Music Teachers' Association, the American Composers' Forum's Continental Harmony Program and faculty research grants and merit credit awards from the University of Central Oklahoma. In May of 1995, he performed original compositions at the Alternativa and Art Reality Festivals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, and lectured at the Theremin Center, a computer music studio at the Moscow Conservatory. In the fall of 1997, Magrill released two CDs of electro-acoustic music entitled "The Electric Collection" and was chosen as the 1997 Hauptman Fellow for the UCO College of Liberal Arts. His four one-act operas - "The Gorgon's Head", "Paradise of Children and the Gremlins Who Stole It", "Showdown on Two Street" and "Circe's Palace" - written from 1997 to 2000, were produced at UCO and are available on CD. In the spring of 2000, he was inducted into SAI as an Arts Associate and won the AAUP-UCO Distinguished Creativity Award. In the summer of 2001, he traveled to Australia, where his "Cello Rag Rag" for soprano and cello quartet and his "Double Concerto" for two cellos and chamber orchestra were premiered. Other recent premieres include "Fanfare for Peace" for trumpet ensemble, "Tango Cellito" for cello ensemble, "For a New Day" for wind ensemble, and "Three Americans" for symphony orchestra. Dr. Magrill is also an active accompanist, and has studied piano with John Perry, Ian Hobson and Dean Sanders and chamber music with Alice and Eleonore Schoenfeld. His work with M.V. Narasimhachari has produced two volumes of "The Music of India: An Introduction". Pamela Richman, soprano, received her Master of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (1981), where she studied with Grace Wilson and Barbara Dalheim. Although she sings opera, oratorio and chamber music, her specialty has been new music including performances of works by Previn, Ravel, Schoenberg, Dallapiccola and Magrill. Since moving to Oklahoma, she has participated in musical theatre productions at the University of Central Oklahoma and in the community. Currently she teaches aural skills as well as class and private voice at the University of Central Oklahoma.