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12984: National Awareness Campaign for the Disabled (fwd)




From: Matt Ray <mraymus@yahoo.com>

Project:   	National Awareness Campaign for the Disabled

Dates:
	Launching of Campaign 		Month of September
	Sponsor’s Cocktail 			Wednesday September 18,2002
	Out-Reach Day Concert		Thursday September 19, 2002
	Classical Evening Concert		Thursday September 19, 2002
	Gala and Art Auction 		Saturday, September 21, 2002

Location:	National Launching of Haitian	Awareness Campaign

	Sponsor’s Cocktail			TBA/Fondation Espoir
	Out-Reach Day Concert		Sainte Rose de Lima (Lalue)
	Classical Evening Concert		Sainte Rose de Lima (Lalue)
	Gala and Art Auction		El Rancho Hotel

Organizers:
Healing Hands for Haiti 		General Concept/ Fundraising/PR
Fondation Espoir 			General Concept/ Fundraising/PR
Accords				Artistic Direction/Fundraising/PR

Partners:
	ArtMedia			Art Auction Artistic Direction
	Intermedia		Internet Communications/PR
	PDG Communications	Communications /PR

Painters:	TBA					ArtMedia/HHF/FE

Performers:
	Yuki Nagasawa			Pianist
	Jon Robertson			Artistic Advisor and Pianist
	Beethova Obas			Singer/HHHF Spokesperson
	Strings				Island Flamenco Guitars


About the performers:

Maestro Jon Robertson enjoys a distinguished career, both as a pianist and conductor.  His career as a concert pianist began at age nine with his debut in Town Hall, New York, with the New York Times calling him a pint-sized Paderewski. As a child prodigy and a student of renowned pianist and teacher Ethel Leginska, he continued to concertize throughout the United States, the Caribbean and  Europe. Already established as a brilliant concert pianist, he was awarded full scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music, where he earned B.M., M.S., and D.M.A degrees in piano performance as a student of Beveridge Webster. Although his degrees were in piano performance, he also studied choral conducting with Abraham Kaplan at Juilliard and orchestral conducting with Richard Pittman of the New England Conservatory of Music. He later traveled to Sweden and East Germany to become the first and only private student of Maestro Hebert Blomstedt, former Conductor and music Director of San Francisco Symphony and now Conductor and Music Director of the Gewanthaus Orchestra,Leipzig.

In 1972 Maestro Robertson accepted his first post as Conductor and Music Director of the Thayer Conservatory of Music Orchestra in Massachusetts. While Music Director, he also conducted the New England Sinfonia on their national tour in 1975. After a successful guest conducting appearance with the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra in Norway, he was immediately engaged as Conductor and Music Director in 1979 and served until 1987. Under his dynamic leadership the orchestra enjoyed critical acclaim along with consecutive sold-out seasons. While director of the symphony he was invited to conduct the national Norwegian Opera Company in six performances of La Boheme, as well as yearly productions with the Kristiansand Opera Company.

First appearing in Redlands, California, as guest conductor in the spring of 1982, Maestro Robertson became the Conductor and Music Director of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra in the fall of that year and is currently in his nineteenth successful season with that ensemble. As guest conductor, Maestro Robertson has conducted the San Francisco Symphony at Stern Grove to critical acclaim, and returned for their subscription series in Davis Hall. Among other guest conducting appearances, he has conducted the Beijing Central Philharmonic in China, The Gavele Symphony in Sweden, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Tronheim Symphony in Norway, the Long Beach Symphony, the Nebraska Chamber Orchestra, and the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra. He is a regular guest conductor of the Cairo Symphony Orchestra and is the principal guest conductor of the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra. Maestro Robertson is also conductor of the Bratislava Chamber Orchestra, who are in residence at Pianofest Austria and served three years as a panelist for the California Arts Council Organizational Grants and Touring panel and for the National Endowment for the Arts. Robertson is currently in his tenth year as professor of Music and Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he also serves as Chairman of the Department of Music.

Yuki Nagasawa
Pianist

Born in 1973 Yuki Nagasawa began studying piano at age three.  In 1989, while a student at the Osaka Prefectural High School for the Blind, she won first prize in the 38th All-Japan Music Competition for the Blind.  Following her graduation in 1995 from the Osaka College of Music as a pupil of Toshikazu Umemoto and Masako Matsunaga, she performed in the 24th Sakai City Concert for Young Performers.  From 1995-1996 she studied at the New York Lighthouse Music School with Joseph E. Fields and was one of five honor students to perform at the graduation recital.  Upon returning to Japan she was invited to present an inaugural recital in the new Nishi Cultural Center Music Hall in Sakai City.  In 1997 Ms. Nagasawa traveled to Austria to study with pianists Robert Ward and Martyn van den Hoek at the International Piano Festival Musik Zentral.  That same year she played in the master class of Udo Falkner and in the Izumi City Summer Charity Concert.  In 1998 she performed with pianist David Buechner in the Winter Charity Concert in Sakai City, a concert in Osaka, a special concert for the International Volunteer Organizations in Izumi City, and numerous solo programs on library and museum series.  Ms. Nagasawa returned to the U.S. in the fall of 1998 to pursue graduate studies in the class of Robert Ward at California State University Los Angeles.  In 1999 she returned to Austria to perform Mozart’s Concerto K459 with the Bratislava Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Dr. Jon Robertson.

Matt Ray
Healing Hands for Haiti Foundation, Inc.
http://www.healinghandsforhaiti.org
mraymus@yahoo.com
661.588.4400 - phone
413.740.0772 - efax