Music for Midsummer Performers

Violinist PAUL PRIMUS grew up in the Chicago and Cleveland areas, before attending Indiana University & the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. (BM/MM degrees in music from UWM). As a keyboard player, Paul has attended the Tafelmusik Baroque Institute, working with Charlotte Nediger. Paul won an audition with the Denver Symphony in 1984, and was promoted to Principal Second Violinist in 1985, the position he still holds. He coordinated the chamber music program at Denver School of the Arts from 2013-2018. Paul is a founding member of the Colorado Chamber Players. He performs 20- 30 concerts a year with the CCP, and can be heard on Colorado Public Radio. Mr. Primus has performed numerous unaccompanied violin recitals over the years, most memorably one of the complete Paganini Caprices in 1986. Paul has taught and performed at Eastern Music Festival, Rocky Ridge, and the Lamont Pre-College Academy at DU. He is a frequent coach for the DYAO.

DANIEL URBANOWICZ is currently a violist in the Sarasota Orchestra, and performs regularly with the Jacksonville Symphony, Southwest Florida Symphony. Dan has played with the New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, the Atlantic Symphony, Gulfshore Opera, Canton Symphony Orchestra, Firelands Orchestra, and Plymouth Philharmonic. Urbanowicz has served as principal violist of the Augusta Symphony, Charlottesville Opera, Gulfshore Opera, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, and the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra. Dan also enjoys playing the viola d’amore, and has been featured with the Colorado Chamber Players, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, Charleston’s Second Monday Series, and Augusta University as a guest lecturer and recitalist. His principal teachers include Martha Katz and Jeffrey Irvine. Mr Urbanowicz plays on a 2017 Robert Clemens Viola. Urbanowicz holds an MM degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Barbara Hamilton is Artistic Director and Violist/Violist d’Amore with the Colorado Chamber Players, a position she has held for 27 years. She performed the complete Brandenberg Concerti with BCOC on baroque viola. She served as principal violist with Eastern Music Festival 1990-2005. Barbara played as principal violist/soloist with Colorado Symphony, Orquesta Ciudad de Barcelona & Orquesta de Valencia (Spain). She was in the New York Philharmonic for one season. Dr. Hamilton received a DMA from Yale School of Music in 1992, where she studied with Jesse Levine and taught in 1998. She was a prize winner in the Fischoff, Aspen Festival and Woolsey Hall Competitions, as well as the Young Artists of YM-YWHA (New Jersey). In the 1990’s, she toured Europe with the Orquesta Ciudad de Barcelona, the NY Virtuosi and the American Sinfonietta, concerts in the Grosse Saal/Vienna, the Concertgebauw & Leipzig Gewandhaus.

Sarah Biber (Bass Viola da Gamba) Sarah Biber has played viola da gamba and cello across the United States, Australia and China. In recent collaborations with dance, she has been featured with the Paul Taylor Dance Company performing solo Bach for the company’s first performance with period instruments. Ms. Biber earned her doctorate from Stony Brook University after double-degree studies at Oberlin Conservatory and College and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She recently relocated to Golden, Colorado where she teaches and plays with the Baroque Orchestra of Colorado and Byrd on a Wire, her viol consort. Sarah plays an 1815 Lockey Hill cello and and 2015 gamba by François Danger. She enjoys playing both Baroque and Modern styles. A Colorado native, she has been delighted to be a part of the growth of Early Music in this beautiful state.

Dr. Peter Schimpf is Professor and Chair of the Department of Music at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He teaches courses in music history, world music, music appreciation, and the history of Rock and Roll. He is the founder and director of the Metro State Early Music Ensemble. He earned a Ph.D. and MA from Indiana University in musicology, and has a BM in performance from California State University Sacramento where he studied both classical guitar and lute. He currently performs on the lute, theorbo, and Baroque guitar, regularly appearing with the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado and the California-based ensemble Sinfonia Spirituosa. He has also performed on period instruments with the Colorado Music Festival, Seicento Baroque Ensemble, and the Denver Early Music Consort. As a musicologist, he has published articles on the music and career of composer Henry Cowell, and he has presented papers on a variety of topics at international, national, and regional conferences of the College Music Society, the Society for American Music, and the American Musicological Society.

Lily Primus is an 19-year-old harpist from Denver, Colorado. In 2019, she was one of four members of the Young Artists Harp Program at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She was a prizewinner of the American Harp Society National Competitions in 2015, 2017 & 2019. Lily was the inaugural recipient of the Siochi Scholarship at Young Artists Harp Seminar (YAHS) in 2018. She was the first prize winner of the Concerto Competition at YAHS in 2018. Lily was on the Young Musicians Foundation roster from 2016-18. She was the winner of the Concerto Competition of the Denver Young Artists Orchestra in 2020. She has been a frequent performer with the Colorado Chamber Players and at Colorado Public Radio. She is a sophomore at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, pursuing her degree in Harp Performance with harpist Paula Page, and is the recipient of the Hudspeth Scholarship in Music. She was a student of Mary Kay Waddington, founder of the Suzuki Harp School, for thirteen years.