Internationally active horn soloist, Grammy Award winning chamber musician, and
masterclass clinician, Andrew Pelletier enjoys an extremely busy life of solo playing,
orchestral performance, and mentoring developing musicians. On his solo performing, John
Henken of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “gleaming, handsome playing. Pelletier is a soloist
who seems capable of anything on his instrument.” Fanfare Magazine called him
“Phenomenal…undeniably in tune with what he plays” and the American Record Guide has
praised his “full sound and playing with authority and imagination.” The First Prize winner
of the 1997 and 2001 American Horn Competition (America’s only internationally
recognized competition for the horn), he has appeared as a Featured Artist at the
International Horn Society Annual Symposia of 2009 and 2014, and has appeared as a solo
artist at the Symposia of 1997, 2003, 2005, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. He is
in regular demand for artistic residencies and clinics at universities and music schools, and
these solo tours have taken him to 30 US states, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China,
England, and Mexico.

Dedicated to new music and the collaboration between performer and composer, he has
commissioned and premiered over 50 new works for the horn as a solo voice, by such noted
composers as Samuel Adler, Meredith Brammeier, Carson Cooman, David Crumb, Fernando
Deddos, Christopher Dietz, Randall Faust, David Gillingham, Joseph Landers, Katherine
Likhuta, Anne McGinty, Roger Reynolds, Corey Ryan, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Kerry Turner.

As a chamber musician, he performs with Southwest Chamber Music in California (with
whom he won the 2005 Grammy award for Best Classical Recording, Small Ensemble), the
Motor City Brass Quintet in Detroit, and has performed with the Empire Brass Quintet,
Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, and with Chamber Music at the Scarab Club, Detroit. As
an orchestral performer, he is the principal horn of the Michigan Opera Theatre at the
historic Detroit Opera House, and has performed as guest principal horn for the Los Angeles
Philharmonic (under Music Director Gustavo Dudamel), the Detroit Symphony, the
Toledo Symphony and Toledo Opera, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, and the
Windsor (Canada) Symphony. He is the former principal horn for the Ann Arbor Symphony,
Santa Barbara Symphony, Ann Arbor Ballet Theatre, Columbus Bach Ensemble, Long Beach
Camerata, Maine Chamber Ensemble, and Portland (Maine) Ballet. He has also performed
for over five seasons with the Portland (Maine) Symphony Orchestra, and is a founding
member of the Portland Opera Repertory Theatre (now Opera Maine), with whom he
performed for three seasons. He spent almost a decade as an active free-lance performer in
Los Angeles and can be heard on film soundtracks as Battle: Los Angeles, Your Highness,
Lethal Weapon 4, The X-Men, Frequency and TV movies for Lifetime TV and the SyFy Channel.

A Lifetime member of the International Horn Society and the British Horn Society, he is
dedicated to service to the horn community, and has served the International Horn Society
in a variety of ways over the years: as President (2018-2021), host/coordinator of the 53rd
Annual International Horn Society Symposium (2021), Advisory Council member,
Coordinator of Scholarships and Competitions, member of the Digital E-Newsletter
committee, and Ohio Regional Coordinator. His pedagogical articles have been published by
the International Horn Society, the Norwegian Horn Society, the New England Horn Society,
the Texas Bandmaster’s Association, and the New York Brass Conference. He holds a B.M.
degree, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Southern Maine, and an M.M. and
the D.M.A (voted Outstanding Graduate of the Class for both degrees) from the University of
Southern California. His primary mentor was James Decker, with additional studies with
John Boden, David Jolley, trumpeter Roy Poper, Michael Thompson and Gail Williams. He
has recorded for MSR Classics, Cambria Master Classics, Centaur Records, ToneQuest
Recordings, Koch International, and Delos labels.

Since 2004, Pelletier is very proud to serve as the Professor of Horn of the College of
Musical Arts at Bowling Green State University, in Bowling Green, Ohio, where he also
serves as the Chair of Music Performance Studies. He was named a Professor of Creative Arts
Excellence at BGSU in 2020. He has previously taught at the Portland (Maine) Conservatory
of Music, Moorpark College, Ventura Community College, and the University of Southern
California. Andrew Pelletier plays exclusively on horns by Paxman of London, England, and
mouthpieces by PHC London.

Susan Nelson is the Associate Professor of Bassoon and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Ohio, and enjoys an active career as a performer, teacher, and clinician. Dr. Nelson is an advocate for new music as well as chamber music for the bassoon, and is the Director of the non-profit organization Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition (BCMCC). She has also taught bassoon and theory at Stephen F. Austin State University and played with the Stone Fort Wind Quintet in Nacogdoches, Texas. In the summer Dr. Nelson teaches at various camps, including BGSU’s Double Reed Camp and The Renova Festival. She has performed with the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, Michigan Opera Theatre, Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Adrian Symphony Orchestra, and Helena Symphony, among others. She has also given solo performances at the International Double Reed Society Conferences in Redlands (CA), Oxford (OH), New York, Appleton (WI), and Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Nelson taught at both Adrian (MI) and Heidelberg (OH) Colleges and was a member of the Heidelberg faculty wind quintet. She also held the position of principal bassoon in the Great Falls Symphony and was a member of the Chinook Winds quintet in Great Falls, Montana. She can be heard on Elements, a CD release from the BCMCC through the MSR Classics label, which features the winning works from the 2012 and 2014 BCMCC competitions. Dr. Nelson is a graduate of the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Michigan. Her primary teachers include Jeffrey Lyman, Carl Rath, and Alan Hawkins, and she is a Fox artist.

Solungga Liu has been acclaimed as a pianist of great breadth. She is a champion of early twentieth-century American music and underrepresented works of the standard repertoire.  She is also known as an uncanny interpreter of new music. Her discography is both wide-ranging and extensive.

Liu’s 2017 debut at the Library of Congress was praised for its “rhythmic precision, expression and a finely calibrated sense of balance between all of the moving parts.” There she performed a solo recital of works by Charles Griffes, Amy Beach and César Franck, a concert tailored to her strengths and uniquely composed of music from the Library’s manuscript collection. 

The American Record Guide described her recording “The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan: Piano Works of Charles Tomlinson Griffes” for Centaur Records, as having, “excellent sound, sensitivity and beguiling color”. This recording led to the special request by the Library of Congress that she premiere Griffes’s 1915 piano transcription of Debussy’s Les parfums de la nuit from his orchestral work Iberia, once thought lost by Griffes’s biographers. About this world premiere, the Washington Classical Review wrote, “The piece retained an orchestral spectrum of colors in Liu’s hands. She served as the knowing conductor—the glue that held it all together while still allowing the transcription to shine through on its own merits”.

Liu’s newest Album, “The Passionate Amy Beach: Piano Quintet and Selected Works for Solo Piano” (Centaur, 2023), was praised by the Piano Magazine as “with a deep sense of poetry and lyricism and is full of depth, color and nuance”.

A dedicated performer of new music, Liu has had numerous premieres and recordings of contemporary works to her credit and has collaborated with many composers of our time. Her recent projects have included seven video releases of works by Stephen Hartke, Eric Nathan and Aaron Jay Kernis. Other major performances included Lutoslawski’s Piano Concerto with OSSIA, Steve Reich’s The Desert Music and Tehillim with Alarm Will Sound, Aaron Travers’s Concierto de Milonga, written for her and the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, and Gregory Mertl’s Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for her, conductor Craig Kirchhoff and the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble. The 2017 Bridge Records release of the Mertl concerto has received great praise from the American Record Guide, Toronto’s WholeNote and Fanfare.

Liu enjoys an active career across five continents, with concerts in the USA, Canada, Austria, Australia, Romania, Brazil, Greece, Italy, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong. Recent and upcoming performances of standard concerti include Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the National Theater Symphony Orchestra of Brazil in 2019 and with the National Institute of Health’s Philharmonia in Washington D.C. in April 2024, Ravel’s Concerto in G Major with the Taipei Metropolitan Orchestra, and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with members of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra/Choral Society. She has performed solo and chamber concerts at venues such as Carnegie Hall, The National Concert Hall in Taiwan, the Goethe Center in Bangkok, the Brazilian National Museum of Sculpture (MUBE) in São Paulo, and the Cultural Center of Braśilia, where she presented a series of solo recitals for the public as well as for members of the Cabinet and the Supreme Labor Court of Brazil.

In addition to her dedication to students at BGSU, Liu is a sought-after artist teacher at major international festivals and competitions, among them the 2023 Lied Center for Performing Arts Summer Piano Academy, the Eastman School of Music Summer Piano Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, the Sicily International Piano Festival and Competition, the Thailand International Mozart Competition, and the Piano Plus International Piano Festival in Greece.

Liu holds a doctoral degree in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Alan Feinberg, Douglas Humpherys and Elizabeth DiFelice.

http://www.solungga.com