FACULTY (2020)
ANDREW COOPERSTOCK
Pianist Andrew Cooperstock performs widely as soloist and chamber musician and has appeared throughout six continents and in most of the fifty states, including performances at New York's Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the United Nations. He has been featured in recitals and concerto appearances at the Chautauqua, Brevard, and Round Top music festivals, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, and Hong Kong’s Hell Hot! New Music Festival, and on National Public Radio, Radio France, and the BBC. Winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Artist Competition, he has since served as juror for numerous international competitions in the U.S. and China. Cooperstock and violinist William Terwilliger, as the award-winning Opus Two, have recorded a series of critically acclaimed single-composer discs of American music dedicated to the works of Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Robert Starer, Paul Schoenfield, and Lowell Liebermann. Cooperstock’s recording Leonard Bernstein: Complete Solo Works for Piano (Bridge Records) was lauded by Gramophone as “winning” and “brilliant.” Dr. Cooperstock holds degrees from the Juilliard School and the Cincinnati and Peabody Conservatories. A Steinway artist, he is Professor of Piano at the University of Colorado Boulder and Artistic Director of the University’s Bernstein at 100 celebration. Click here to learn more.
WILLIAM TERWILLIGER
Violinist William Terwilliger has enjoyed an exceptionally active and diverse career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral musician and teacher. As soloist with orchestra, Mr. Terwilliger has performed with orchestras on five continents, including the National Orchestra of Bolivia (La Paz), the Orchèstre des Alpes Maritimes (Nice, France), the Nanning Festival Orchestra (China), the National Orchestra of Ghana (Accra), the Toledo Symphony, the Boulder Chamber Orchestra (Colorado), the South Carolina Philharmonic and the Long Bay Symphony. Currently concertmaster of the Long Bay Symphony in South Carolina, he has also performed with the Rochester Philharmonic and the Brevard Music Center Festival Orchestra, and served as concertmaster of the Boulder (Colorado) Bach Festival Orchestra. Click here to learn more.
STAFF CONDUCTORS
Maestro Bahman Saless
Bahman Saless started his dual career as composer and physicist during his teen years in England. After obtaining his A-level and O-level certificates in music, mathematics and physics, Dr. Saless immigrated to the United States in 1977. He received his BS in Physics from Michigan State University, in 1981 while studying violin at the same time. He then pursued a career as a physicist, obtaining his Doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Colorado in 1987. During his graduate study, Dr. Saless was a member of Boulder Philharmonic orchestra and founder of The Principia Quartet in Boulder. In 1989, after having served as physics lecturer at the Colorado school of mines and a research scientist for NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Dr. Saless moved to Los Angeles to continue his dual ambitions by working as a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and enrolling in film scoring studies at UCLA. In 1990, Dr. Saless’ guitar trio, Mexican Moonlight, won the Pacific Composer’s Forum composition Competition. After completing his studies at UCLA in 1991, Dr. Saless worked as a composer of film trailers and teasers with Universal Studios as well as other Hollywood production houses. His works include trailer music for films such as Carlito’s Way, Romeo is Bleeding, and Beethoven 2nd. Having spent years away from his beloved Colorado, Dr. Saless and his wife moved back to Boulder in 1994.
In 2004, Dr. Saless founded the Boulder Chamber Orchestra where he is music director, and in 2010 he co-founded the International Conducting Institute in order to help further the art of conducting.
Maestro Silas Nathaniel Huff
Silas Nathaniel Huff is Director of Orchestras at Washburn University (Topeka, KS), Music Director of the Colorado Pops Orchestra, Commander & Conductor of the 44th Army Band (Albuquerque, NM), and Co-Director of the International Conducting Institute. Maestro Huff has conducted across the US and Europe, and his past positions include Music Director of the Astoria Symphony Orchestra (NYC) and Round Rock Symphony Orchestra (TX), Director of the U.S. Army Orchestra (DC), Associate Director of the Boulder Chamber Orchestra (CO), Assistant Conductor of the Williamsburg Symphony Orchestra (VA), Conductor of Moscow Ballet’s U.S.A. east coast tours, and Associate Producer of Opera at the Manhattan School of Music. As a U.S. Army Music Officer, he conducted concerts at the White House, U.S. Capitol, Arlington National Cemetery, Pentagon, and other important monuments and landmarks in Washington, D.C., on tour for audiences numbering in the thousands, and in recordings and broadcasts that were seen by millions of viewers.
Maestro Huff holds degrees from Texas State University and UCLA, and also studied at the Trossingen Hochschule für Musik (Germany), L’Institut Musical Provence-Aubagne (France), California State University-Long Beach, and University of Colorado Boulder.