GUEST ARTISTS

Dr. Courtney Miller is the oboe professor at University of Iowa where she teaches oboe, chamber music, and reed classes. Prior to her position at the University of Iowa, she served on faculty at Boston College in Massachusetts and Ashland University in Ohio. During the summers Dr. Miller performs and teaches at Lutheran Summer Music in Indiana. 

Dr. Miller is a versatile artist devoted to performing established repertoire as well as new compositions and lesser-known works. Her 2019 album Portuguese Perspectives introduces a collection of world-premiere recordings for the oboe by Portuguese composers and includes several new commissions by Miller. This album and her 2015 release Modern Fairy Tales are readily available on iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify. American Record Guide praises her “seamless consistency in the various registers of the oboe…and sensitive phrasing and articulation.” Fanfare Magazine hails Courtney Miller as “a performer of considerable skill, with an unfailingly lovely sound, abundant technical ability, and a special gift for turning notes into poetry.”  

In addition to collaborations within the field of music, Dr Miller has a flair for interdisciplinary work. She has collaborated with hip-hop dancer Ernest “EKnock” Phillips; belly-dancer Janelle Issis; and most recently choreographer and dancer Kristin Marrs at University of Iowa. Since 2016, Marrs and Miller have performed in many concerts featuring oboe and dancer and have toured together throughout the United States. Perhaps her most daring collaboration yet is Psionic, which explores interactive movement data between oboist and computer through a live stream of EEG data with composer Christopher Jette; printmaker Terry Conrad; and digital media designer Daniel Fine. 

Dr. Miller serves as 1st Vice President of the Midwest Double Reed Society and is a member of the International Double Reed Society, the College Music Society, and Sigma Alpha Iota. Courtney Miller is a Lorée Artist.

For more information, please visit https://www.courtneymilleroboe.com/  

Commended by The Strad for “brilliance of tone and charismatic delivery,” Scott Conklin regularly appears as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and teaching clinician throughout the United States and abroad. He is associate professor of violin at the University of Iowa School of Music and a violin teacher at the Preucil School of Music. Conklin has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Louisville, Nashville, and Berlin Symphony Orchestras. He is a recipient of the Iowa String Teachers Association Leopold LaFosse Studio Teacher of the Year Award and has been a featured artist/clinician at the conferences of the Music Teachers National Association and the Suzuki Association of the Americas. Conklin has also been a presenter at the American String Teachers Association Conference.

As an active recording artist, Conklin frequently collaborates on a variety of recording projects. In 2019, Conklin is featured on the album Ich Denke Dein: Songs & Chamber Works By Nikolai Medtner (Albany Records) with soprano Rachel Joselson and pianist Sasha Burdin as well as oboist Courtney Miller’s album Portuguese Perspectives: Music for Oboe, Piano, and Strings (MSR Classics), featuring a four-movement Quintet for Oboe and String Quartet by Sergio Azevedo. Conklin will soon release an album of Hans Gál’s music with violist Christine Rutledge, oboist Courtney Miller, and composer/pianist David Gompper.This ensemble recently performed two concerts of Hans Gál’s music at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on a tour of Scotland. Conklin performed Carlo Taube’s music in a 2016 album Songs of the Holocaust on Albany Records with soprano Rachel Joselson and pianist Réne Lecuona. American Record Guide said the album was “sure to please any fan of violin and piano who is looking for something new.” Conklin’s recording of A Tempered Wish for Solo Violin and Chamber Orchestra by Ching-chu Hu was released on the album Vive Concertante! He has also recorded works by Luke Dahn, Franco Donatoni, D. Martin Jenni, and Jeremy Dale Roberts. Conklin and Huckleberry performed on the Suzuki Association of the Americas album Celebrating Excellence 2009, which featured the Albers Trio, Cavani String Quartet, Rachel Barton Pine, and Orion Weiss among others. A devoted supporter of music education, Conklin was featured on the violin masterclass DVD, Sound Innovations for String Orchestra, directed by Bob Phillips, Peter Boonschaft and Robert Sheldon. As an orchestral musician, Conklin performed on the Chandos release Prokofiev: War and Peace with conductor Richard Hickox, the Spoleto Festival Orchestra (Italia), and the Russian State Symphonic Cappella—an album listed in The Penguin Guide 1000 Greatest Classical Recordings.

​Conklin holds the honorary distinction of being a “Kentucky Colonel,” a title given to him by Governor Wallace G. Wilkinson. He is a former faculty member of the University of Texas at Arlington, and he also taught on several occasions as a substitute violin professor at the University of Texas Butler School of Music. During his youth, Conklin was a student of Carol Dallinger, Violin Professor at the University of Evansville. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied chamber music with the Cavani String Quartet, Anne Epperson, and Peter Salaff, and was a violin student of David Updegraff. Conklin also earned Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Violin Performance from The University of Michigan School of Music where he was a teaching assistant under string music educator Robert Culver; there he studied chamber music primarily with Andrew Jennings, Paul Kantor, and Martin Katz, and was a violin student of Paul Kantor.

For more information, please visit https://www.scottconklinviolin.com/ 

Violist Christine Rutledge is a musician and educator of eclectic interests and talents.  She is equally at home with performances of the most cutting-edge new music, works from the standard repertoire, and performances on baroque viola.  She has commissioned, premiered, and recorded new music by such composers as Claude Baker, Zae Munn, Jeremy Dale Roberts, C. P. First, and David Gompper, with whom she frequently collaborates with the Center for New Music.  Her performances and recordings (The Blissful Violist, String Trios of Paul Hindemith, and David Diamond:  Chamber Works for Strings and Piano) have been praised in such publications as The Strad, Fanfare, the New York Times, and The New York Concert Review.

In an effort to provide violists with a larger and historically accurate body of baroque repertoire, Rutledge founded Linnet Press Editions.  Her transcriptions of works by Telemann, J. S. Bach, Biber, Roman, and Pisendel have been widely received for their historic accuracy and performer-friendly presentations.  Rutledge has expanded Linnet Press Editions to include new editions of many out-of-print music from the English Romantic period, especially works written for the virtuoso violist Lionel Tertis.  Her technique book, The Violist’s Handbook, has sold hundreds of copies throughout the world.

Recent performances and master classes and presentations on baroque performance practices include those in Germany, Sweden, South Africa, New York City, University of Michigan Oberlin Conservatory, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, University of Northern Arizona, University of Kansas, and Bowling Green State University. 

Currently Rutledge holds the position of Professor of Viola at the University of Iowa.  She has served on the executive board of the American Viola Society, and is president of the Iowa Viola Society.  For six years she was Assistant Principal Viola of the Louisville Orchestra and violist of the Ceruti Chamber Players and the Kentucky Center Chamber Players.  She has also been a member of the faculty at the University of Notre Dame.  Festival appearances include Interlochen Center for the Arts, Bay View Music Festival, Roycroft Music Festival, Sewanee Summer Music Center, "Brunch with Bach" series at the Detroit Institute of Art, Manitou Music Festival, Hot Springs Music Festival, and the Fontana Chamber Arts Festival. Rutledge currently serves as an artist/faculty member at the Bay View Music Festival.

Rutledge is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music as a student of Karen Tuttle and Michael Tree, and the University of Iowa with William Preucil, Sr.  She is also a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, where she was honored as Valedictorian and recipient of a Young Artist Award.  Among her many honors are Prizewinner in the Aspen Festival Viola Competition, an Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist’s Fellowship, recipient of an Eli Lilly Foundation grant for undergraduate teaching development, as well as several awards from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame and the Arts and Humanities Initiative at the University of Iowa.

Rutledge lives in Iowa City with her husband, Mark Russell, and their son Jake.  She plays a 17-inch viola made by David Burgess in 1978 and bows by David Samuels. 

David Gompper has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas and Iowa. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London with Jeremy Dale Roberts and Humphrey Searle. After teaching in Nigeria, he received his doctorate at the University of Michigan and taught at the University of Texas, Arlington. Since 1991, he has been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. In 2002-2003 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. In 2009 he received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, a Fromm Commission in 2013, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.

For more information, please visit https://www.davidgompper.com/_anew.html