ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Acclaimed for her “admirable virtuoso skills,” Amy Catron appears regularly as a soloist, chamber, orchestral musician, and clinician in settings throughout the United States, Europe, and China. She is the principal cellist of the Starkville Symphony Orchestra and associate principal cellist with the Illinois Symphony and Chamber Orchestra. Until 2023, she was the principal cellist with Sinfonia da Camera and Millikin-Decatur Symphony. She has appeared as a soloist with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra (Florida), the Illinois Symphony Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia da Camera, the Millikin-Decatur Symphony Orchestra, the Illini Symphony at the University of Illinois, Olivet Nazarene Symphony Orchestra, Millikin Wind Ensemble, and with the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana (BACH). Before moving to the Midwest, she was a member of the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra in Florida. She collaborated with the Akron and Canton Symphonies in Ohio and the Richmond Symphony Orchestra in Virginia.

As a soloist and chamber musician, Dr. Catron is also an avid promoter of new music, having performed and premièred many works by composers, including Robert Chumbley, Michael Schelle, Peter Michalove, and Carlos Carillo. Her CD, Particles and Prayer, won a Global Music Award silver medal in March 2019. Amy Catron has given several world première performances, including Carlos Carillo’s O Casi el Alma for Cello and Orchestra, dedicated to her and commissioned in collaboration with Sinfonia da Camera. She also gave world premieres of and has recorded Robert Chumbley’s ParticIe I for solo Cello, Particle II for cello and wind Ensemble, and Songs of the Siren for cello and piano live on YouTube. She also appears internationally as a chamber musician.

As a researcher, Catron has presented her scholarship and performances at the 2023 International Society for Sociology in Music Education Conference in Xalapa, Mexico, the 2023 National Music Teacher’s National Association Conference (Nevada), the 2023 Desert Skies Music Education Conference (Arizona), 2022 National College Music Society Conference (California), the 2022 National Sigma Alpha Iota Conference (North Carolina), the 2022 Great Lakes College Music Society Conference (Illinois), and the 2021 International Society for Sociology in Music Education Conference (Norway). Dr. Catron frequently publishes new music reviews in the National American String Teachers Association Magazine and is published in Transform, a peer-reviewed journal of the International Centre for Community Music.

In addition to her performing career, Ms. Catron is a sought-after pedagogue, adjudicator, and clinician. She has taught and performed widely at music festivals, including InterHarmony International Music Festival (Italy), Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, Illinois Wesleyan Chamber and Cello Camps, Bands of America, Illinois Summer Youth Music Programs, and the International Chamber Music Festival in Bulgaria, where she was named Artistic Director for 2015. She has also been a collaborative faculty member at Illinois Wesleyan and Illinois State Universities. Catron previously was the String Area Coordinator at Millikin University School of Music, where she taught applied cello, music theory, ear training, pedagogy, string methods, and university studies. She also taught Suzuki Strings at Johns Hill Magnet School in the Decatur Public Schools. Currently, Dr. Catron is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Cello at Mississippi State University, where she also collaborates with the Starkville-Oktibbeha Public Schools in string education.

Dr. Catron studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester (New York) and the University of Akron (Ohio) and is a recent DMA graduate in Music Education from Boston University (Massachusetts). She has also advanced her studies at music festivals and in masterclass sessions with Paul Katz, Yehuda Hanani, Carter Brey, and the Cleveland and Kronos Quartets. Her principal teachers were Michael Haber and Pamela Frame.

In addition to teaching and researching, Amy is passionate about performing as a chamber musician, soloist, and orchestral player to share her love of music in any context where there is room for more cello.

Henrik Denerin [b. 1978] is a Swedish composer and improvising performer whose works often prioritizes exploration over predictability, aiming to expand musical expression and meaning, challenging the relationship between score and sound while engaging performers as collaborators.

Over the years his music has been performed in Europe, Asia, Australia and America by ensembles and orchestras such as Ensemble Recherche, Kwartludium Ensemble, Ensemble Aleph, Axelsson & Nilsson Duo, Kammerorkester Basel, Gageego!, Norrbotten NEO, Bit20 Ensemble, Athelas Ensemble, L’instant Donné, Curious Chamber Players, Vertixe Sonora Ensemble and others, as well as a wide variety of international soloists.

His works has been programmed at international festivals for contemporary music including ISCM, Warsaw Autumn, Nordic Music days, Donauechingen, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Mixtur Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Vertixe Vigo Festival, Festival d’Aujourd’hui à Demain, Muestra Internacional de Música Electroacústica Mexico City and others.

His education includes a bachelor and a master degree in Composition with prof. Luca Francesconi, prof. Rolf Martinsson, Staffan Storm and Kent Olofsson at Malmö Academy of Music as well as studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen and workshops with Per Nørgård, Bent Sørensen and musicologist Richard Toop among others. Aside of composition he has also studied Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in München. Selected scores are published by babelscores.

Henrik is a board member of FST (Swedish Society of Composers), artistic director of “Kontinent Dalsland” festival, board member of Levande Musik and voting member of STIM (Swedish Performing Rights Society).

As an instrumental artist, Karen has worked with The Libra Ensemble, Aphids, Orchestra Victoria, The Grand Silent System, The Phonos Project, Arcko Symphonic Project, Gemma Turvey and The New Palm Court Orchestra, and Jolt Arts and Stelarc.

Karen has performed Australia-wide and internationally, and has performed and recorded for artists such as Lior, David Ross MacDonald (The Waifs), and has recorded and performed for numerous filmscore and other freelance projects.

In 2008, Karen performed a piece with Arcko Symphonic Project entitled Learning to Howl, which was nominated for an APRA award for Best Performance of an Australian Classical Composition in 2009.

In 2011, Karen performed Elliot Gyger’s 1996 concerto for E-flat clarinet A Wilderness of Mirrors as a soloist with Arcko Symphonic Project, which was recorded and broadcast by the ABC.

In 2014, Karen participated in a tour with The New Palm Court Orchestra, which included venues such as The Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Recital Centre. Guest artist was Berklee Professor and 4-time Grammy Award winning musician, cellist Eugene Friesen (USA).

In 2005, Karen performed In Freundschaft at the annual Stockhausen Course in Kuerten, Germany, working with Stockhausen in rehearsal and in performance, and won 2nd prize for her performance that year. Returning in 2007, Karen performed again at the Stockhausen Course, playing the choreographed clarinet piece Der Kleine Harlekin, for which she received third prize.

As a composer, Karen won Best Music Award in 2006 at the Melbourne Fringe Festival for her work Ananke. Also in 2006, she toured regional Auralia with The Phonos Project, performing her work, Io, along with artist-in-residence Swedish composer Henrik Denerin, whose composition, Stadium, appeared on the same program.

Karen has had her compositions performed in Montreal and Edinburgh (commission from by Piazza Contemporary Collective 2007), Tokyo (2009 and 2012), Reykavic (commission from Duo Harpwerk 2009), and Italy (for the 2017 work Silent Spring).

Karen is presently studying for her Doctorate in Music Education through Boston University. The focus of her dissertation is cognition and memory in instrumental music learning.

Biography pending

Gareth Dylan Smith is active nationally and internationally as a teacher, speaker, researcher and drummer. His main research interest areas are drum kit studies and popular music education, and his principal disciplinary approaches are sociological, philosophical, and autoethnographic. Themes in his scholarship include eudaimonia, improvisation, creativities, punk pedagogies, and meaningfulness. Gareth’s work has been published in journals including Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education; Music Educators Journal; International Journal of Education and the Arts; Research Studies in Music Education; Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education; Music + Practice; Punk & Post-Punk; Journal of Music, Technology and Education; British Journal of Music Education; and Artivate.

He has written dozens of articles for encyclopedias including several pieces about drummers in the Grove dictionary of American music. Gareth’s books include I drum, Therefore I Am: Being and Becoming a Drummer; Sociology for Music teachers: Practical Applications (with Hildegard Froehlich); Punk Pedagogies: Music, Culture and Learning (with Mike Dines and Tom Parkinson); The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music Education (with Zack Moir, Matt Brennan, Shara Rambarran and Phil Kirkman); Sound Advice for Drummers; Eudaimonia: Perspectives for Music Learning (with Marissa Silverman), and Magical Nexus: A Philosophy of Playing Drum Kit. Gareth’s first love is to play drums.

Career highlights as a drummer include a partnership of more than 20 years with award-wining Welsh composer, producer ,and guitarist, Stephen Wheel; 100+ punk shows across the UK, Ireland, Europe, and USA with London-Irish psycho-cèilidh band, Neck; touring and recording with singer-songwriters Gillian Glover and Daniel Spiller; four albums with garage rock band, the Eruptörs; making and releasing an album with Iron Maiden alumni, V1; a stint as the house drummer for the global Guitar Idol finals; and playing in dozens of regional and off West End musical theatre productions around London and England. Gareth is currently working on an album of duets and a concept album with Stephen Wheel based on the John Le Carré novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He plays drums for new wave band, Black Light Bastards with Dan Sheehan, Andy and the Rattlesnakes, and with Zack Moir in rock-jazz-electronica duo, Build A Fort.

Gareth has served as a board member of the International Society for Music Education and as President and Vice President of the Association for Popular Music Education. He is Chair of the National Association for Music Education’s Special Research Interest Group on Popular Music Education and a member of the steering committee for the International Society for the Sociology of Music Education. Gareth is founding editor, with Bryan Powell, of the Journal of Popular Music Education.