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CLP: Belle Voci and String Quartets in Concert
March 26 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Join the Department of Music Tuesday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. for the Belle Voci and String Quartets Concert in Daniel Memorial Chapel. This performance will feature the Hartness and Gladden String Quartets, as well as violinist/fiddler Dr. Andrew Carlson. Repertoire includes work by Tom Trenney, Florence Price, Stephen Sondheim and more. This concert is free of charge and open to the public.
Belle Voci: Belle Voci (Beautiful Voices) is a treble choir that seeks to share music that not only expresses the art of beautiful singing, but it hopes that the language of music can be a connection to help find our common humanity, and to create a supportive and nurturing community of artists and scholars.
Hartness and Gladden String Quartets: Participation in chamber music is an important aspect of string studies at Furman. Multiple ensembles are formed each year, rehearsing and performing under the guidance of string faculty.
The Hartness and Gladden String Quartets, the flagship ensembles, are supported by the Hartness and Gladden families. The members of these ensembles are selected in the Fall and perform together for a full year, receiving a scholarship for their work. These ensembles are coached and directed by Dr. Anna Joiner.
Dr. Vivian Hamilton: Vivian Hamilton is director of Belle Voci and a collaborative pianist in the music department. She also serves as Minister of Music and Worship at First Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Dr. Hamilton has been a singer in the Robert Shaw Institute Festival Singers where she had the opportunity to work with Robert Shaw and studied conducting with Dan Lewis and Edvard Tchivzhel. She has worked with choirs at Simmons College, Emerson College, the University of South Carolina, Northeastern University, and Clemson University. For twelve years, she conducted the Greater Anderson Musical Arts Consortium Chorale, and is a former president of the South Carolina American Choral Directors Association. Her choral conducting experience also includes work at Baptist and Methodist churches in Massachusetts and South Carolina, and in the public schools of Boston and upstate South Carolina. She is active in the community as the Minister of Music at First Baptist Church, Greenville, South Carolina.
She has worked as a collaborative pianist in Boston, Massachusetts, and throughout South Carolina. She was the Principal Keyboardist for the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, playing celeste, piano, and harpsichord.
She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in choral conducting from the University of South Carolina, her master’s degree in piano performance from New England Conservatory of Music, and her bachelor’s degree in music education from Furman University.
Dr. Stephen Taylor: A frequent collaborative performer, Stephen Taylor has toured with solo singers, choirs and instrumentalists across the United States and in such diverse places as Germany, Austria, Italy, Vatican City, Scotland, Greece, and Israel. Dr. Taylor served for ten years on the piano and pedagogy faculty at the University of South Carolina School of Music and fifteen years on the faculty of the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, South Carolina. Dr. Taylor holds performance and pedagogy degrees from The Juilliard School, the University of Louisville, and the University of South Carolina, where his major professors included Ania Dorfmann, Lee Luvisi, Max Camp, and Raymond Dudley.
Dr. Andrew Carlson: Andrew Carlson is a violinist with over twenty years of university teaching and administrative experience. He regularly appears as a classical violin recitalist, orchestral musician, and is equally comfortable performing music ranging from bluegrass, gypsy jazz, country, blues, rockabilly, and American roots music. Following his performance at Merkin Hall, the New York Times wrote “Mr. Carlson is a demon fiddler, and his performance here was serious and concentrated.”
As a violin soloist, he has appeared with orchestras including the Columbus Symphony (OH), Hendersonville Symphony (NC), Huntington Symphony (WV), Newark-Granville Symphony (OH), Bloomington Symphony (MN), and The University of Iowa Symphony. A published author and composer, he has presented six times at the American String Teacher’s Association national conference. His scholarly focus is the performance practice of North American fiddling, and he has developed a system to teach classically trained musicians how to authentically replicate the unique sound of traditional American music. Carlson is an active studio musician, arranger, conductor, and clinician. Additionally, he is the two-time Georgia state fiddle champion and the Ohio grand champion fiddler.
He has earned a DMA in violin performance and pedagogy from the University of Iowa as a recipient of the Pelzer Performance Fellowship. His MM and BMUS in performance are from the University of Georgia. He studied with Leopold LaFosse (Iowa) and Thomas Joiner (Georgia).
He has served as an assistant professor at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, and full professor and department chair at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He joined the Furman University Department of Music in 2019 as a Visiting Professor of Violin and Coordinator/Conductor of the Furman Symphony Orchestra.
Dr. Anna Joiner (director/coach of string quartets): Anna Barbrey Joiner is a highly respected artist and educator who has performed with orchestras in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina and participated in the Aspen, Brevard, and Sarasota summer music festivals. She has presented and co-authored research for international conferences in Chicago and Japan and written articles for numerous journals including The American String Teacher and American Suzuki Journal.
Before returning to her alma mater in 1994, Joiner was associate professor of viola, director of the Pre-College Division, and violist with the Franklin String Quartet at the University of Georgia School of Music. She often performs with her violinist husband, Thomas, as The Joiner Duo. In 1992 and 1994, the duo served as artists-in-residence at the Universidade de Rio Grande de Sul and performed with the Orquestra da Camera Theatre Sao Pedro in South America. The Joiner Duo presented a New York recital and released a CD entitled “Intermezzo” in 2000. For more than two decades, she was an artist-faculty member at the Brevard Music Center.