L.V. Beethoven: Trio in D minor, Op.70, No. 1 “Ghost
Bedřich Smetana: Trio in G minor, Op. 15
Robert Howard
A native of Atlanta, GA, Robert Howard began studying cello at age 12. A graduate of Rice University and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has studied and performed at festivals such as Tanglewood, Spoleto, Verbier, the Accademia Chigiana, and the Sandor Vegh Academy in Prague. Robert won first prize in the Rome Festival Competition and has received grants from the Maggini and Virtu Foundations. Robert has performed in the Festival Internacional de Musica in Costa Rica, the Festival de Guadarrama in Spain, and on the Mostly Mozart series in Lincoln Center. He has performed with American Bach Soloists, New Century Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque, and the San Francisco Symphony. A regular guest on many Bay Area chamber music series, Robert has also made concerto appearances with BARS Orchestra and Stanford Symphony. He has worked directly with composers such as Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Frank, George Perle, George Benjamin, and Jonathan Berger. Robert runs his own house concert series, concertsbythesquare.org, which combine thematically linked chamber music programs with food and short lecture presentations. A passionate teacher, he has made two trips to Kenya, where he taught and performed. He has coached at San Francisco Conservatory, Stanford University, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University, and the Conservatorio Superior Coruña in Spain.
Jeremy Preston
Jeremy Preston was recently appointed Associate Concertmaster of the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Before moving to San Francisco last August, he was a violinist with the North Carolina Symphony for seven seasons. While in Raleigh, he was a member of the North Carolina Symphony String Quartet, Mallarme Chamber Players, and the Eastern Festival Chamber Players. Jeremy is a faculty member of the SF Community Music Center and the Eastern Music Festival. Trained at New England Conservatory, Rice University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Jeremy’s teachers included Marylou Speaker Churchill, Lynn Chang, Kathleen Winkler, Sally Thomas and William Preucil. His chamber music coaches included Norman Fisher, Pamela and Claude Frank and members of the Cleveland Quartet and Juilliard Quartets.
Miles Graber
Miles Graber received his musical training at the Julliard School, where he studied with Anne Hull, Phyllis Kreuter, Hugh Aiken, and Louise Behrend. He has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1971, where he has developed a wide reputation as an accompanist and collaborative pianist for instrumentalists and singers. He has performed with numerous solo artists, including Sarah Chang, Cho-Liang Lin, Camilla Wicks, Axel Strauss, Mimi Stillman, Judith LeClair, Martha Aarons, and Lev Polyakin. Mr. Graber performs frequently with violinists, Mariya Borozina and Christina Mok; flutists Gary Woodward, Amy Likar, and Ai Goldsmith; and clarinetist, Tom Rose. He is a member of the chamber groups, Trio Concertino, MusicAeterna, GGR Trio, and Sor Ensemble; as well as the new music group, Sounds New.
Mr. Graber has been associated with such ensembles as the New Century Chamber Orchestra, Midsummer Mozart, the Oakland-East Bay Symphony, the Berkeley Symphony, the California Symphony, the Santa Rosa Symphony, Oakland Lyric Opera, Berkeley Opera, and Opera San Jose. He has accompanied master classes by such artists as Midori, Joseph Silverstein, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Pamela Frank, Alexander Barantchik, James Galway, Lynn Harrell, Yo-Yo Ma, Robert Lipsett, Ronald Leonard, and Leon Fleisher. He has been a frequent performance accompanist and chamber player with members of San Francisco Symphony, San Jose Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, California Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Oakland-East Bay Orchestra Oakland-East Bay Youth Orchestra, UC Berkeley Symphony, and members of the San Francisco Conservatory faculty.
He is on the faculty of the Crowden School in Berkeley and he accompanies students of the Young Musicians Program at UC Berkeley. He is a staff accompanist at the San Domenico Conservatory in San Anselmo, California, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Northern California Flute Camp in Carmel Valley. He is pianist for the annual Young Artist Competition at the Mondavi Center for the Arts at UC Davis, as well as the annual Irving Klein Competition at UC San Francisco, and the Summer Brass Institute at the Menlo School in Atherton, California
