Cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN and Tenor VINSON COLE to Join CIM Faculty

Cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN and Tenor VINSON COLE to Join CIM Faculty

President Joel Smirnoff announces the appointment of two new members of the Cleveland Institute of Music faculty beginning in the fall of 2009. Cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN will become an Artist-in-Residence; Tenor VINSON COLE joins CIM as a Visiting Artist.

President Smirnoff commented, "Alisa Weilerstein and Vinson Cole are two American artists of great achievement. Ms. Weilerstein is a musician combining both virtuosity and a powerful musical voice whose young, world-class career blossoms forth. As so many people in the Cleveland community know, Ms. Weilerstein was a young student at CIM. It is with great pride and pleasure that we welcome her back into the community, where we know she will inspire our students."

"Mr. Cole is one of the great American tenors and I have had the great pleasure of hearing him perform many times. He is a singer's singer, a musician of intelligence and passion. We are so excited to have him here to exert what we know will be a strong, yet lyrical influence over our vocal students."

"I am so proud to welcome these two world-class artist-teachers to our faculty."

American cellist ALISA WEILERSTEIN has attracted widespread attention for playing that combines a natural virtuosic command and technical precision with impassioned musicianship. She is a graduate of the Young Artist Program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Richard Weiss. At only 26 years old, she is already a veteran on the classical music scene having performed with the nation's top orchestras, given recitals in music capitals and at festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe. A dedicated performer of chamber music, she often plays with her parents, Donald and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, as the Weilerstein Trio, which is the Trio-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Her Cleveland Orchestra debut was in October 1995, at age 13, playing the Tchaikovsky "Rococo" Variations. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with the New York Youth Symphony in March 1997. In May 2004, she graduated from Columbia University in New York with a degree in Russian History.

During the 2008-09 season, Ms. Weilerstein made her debuts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Hans Graf and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by Mark Elder. She also performed with the National Symphony Orchestra under Itzhak Perlman, the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel, the Houston Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan and the Pittsburgh Symphony under Manfred Honeck at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., among other orchestral engagements.

Following her New York premiere performance of Osvaldo Golijov's Azul at the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2006, The New York Times called her playing "staggering." She performs the work this week with The Cleveland Orchestra under Ludovic Morlot. Ms. Weilerstein will also give several recitals throughout the U.S. this year including Carnegie's Zankel Hall in New York and in San Francisco. Also in New York this season, she will perform chamber music with Gil Shaham and Friends at Carnegie's Zankel Hall. Abroad she will perform with the Hamburg Philharmonic, the Hallé Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, Slovenia Philharmonic, in Switzerland with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra led by Paul Goodwin and will give several recital tours in Italy.

In 2008, Alisa Weilerstein was awarded Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal prize for exceptional achievement. She was named the winner of the 2006 Leonard Bernstein Award, which she received at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany, was the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2000 and was selected for two prestigious young artists programs in 2000-01, the ECHO (European Concert Hall Organization) "Rising Stars" recital series and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society Two.Ms. Weilerstein released an acclaimed recording on EMI Classics' "Debut" series in 2000 including works by Paganini, Dvo rák, Ginastera, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Janá cek, Saint-Saëns, Fauré and De Falla.

On Thursday, April 16, she will present a master class featuring student performers from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in Reinberger Hall. The class is free, but tickets are required. Call 216.231.1111.

American tenor VINSON COLE is internationally recognized as one of the leading artists of his generation. His career has taken him to all of the major opera houses across the globe , from the Metropolitan Opera and Opera National de Paris Bastille to Teatro alla Scala Milan and the Berlin State Opera. Equally celebrated for his concert appearances, Mr. Cole has been a frequent guest of the most prestigious orchestras throughout the world and has collaborated with the greatest conductors of this era including Christoph Eschenbach, Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Giulini, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, James Conlon, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Gerard Scwarz as well as Sir Georg Solti and Giuseppe Sinopoli. Mr. Cole had an especially close working relationship with the late Herbert von Karajan, who brought the artist to the Salzburg Festival to sing the Italian Tenor in Der Rosenkavalier, the first of many performances there together. Their collaboration went on to include works such as Verdi's Requiem, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Mozart's Requiem and Bruckner's Te Deum. Many of these were issued as recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. He was recently given the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by The Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation.

Vinson Cole's recent engagements include starring in a new production of Berlioz's Damnation de Faust at the Semper Opera in Dresden, a well as apparerances with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Mahler's Symphony No. 8 under Christoph Eschenbach, the same work under James Conlon with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival and Verdi's Requiem at the Concertgebeouw in Amsterdam.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Vinson Cole completed his vocal studies at the Curtis Institute of Music under the tutelage of legendary singer and teacher Margaret Harshaw. He made his professional operatic debut at the San Francisco Spring Opera in the title role of Mascagni's L'Amico Fritz. Important international operatic debuts all followed in rapid succession, including in Santa Fe as Fenton in Falstaff, at the New York Opera as Rodolfo in La Boheme, at the Paris Opera as Belmonte in Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail, at the Nice Opera in Maria Stuarda and at the Vienna State Opera in La Traviata. He made his La Scala debut in Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride under Ricardo Muti and returned to Milan for Don Giovanni and Gluck's Armide, both under Maestro Muti. In 1988, Mr. Cole made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Alfredo in Die Fleidermaus and returned to the house for Manon, Traviata, Boheme, L'Elsir D'Amore Gianni Schicchi and Carmen. He has also appeared with the company on tour in Japan in Berlioz's Damnation de Faust under James Levine. He debuted with the Seattle Opera in Gluck's Orphee et Eurydice and this production marked the beginning of a long relationship with the company in productions yearly of Cosi Fan Tutte, Romeo et Juliette, Werther, Carmen, Faust, Les Pecheurs de Perles, Lakme, Les Contes Hoffman, Don Carlos in its original Five Act 1867 version, composed for the Paris Opera, Anna Bolena, La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, L'Elisir D'Amore as well as Uno Ballo in Maschera and his debut in Puccini's Tosca. In the summer of 2006 he returned to the company as the Italian Tenor in Der Rosenkavalier.