Charles Sherba, Teaching Associate

Charles Sherba, violinist, holds the Heidi and Chester Kirk concertmaster chair of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, where he has served as concertmaster since 1987, under music directors Andrew Massey, Zuohuang Chen, and since 1996, Larry Rachleff. With that orchestra, he has performed some of the most demanding concertmaster solos in the repertoire to critical acclaim, including Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss, Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, Suite from L’Histoire du Soldat by Stravinsky, Appalachian Spring by Copland, Variaciones Concertantes by Ginastera, Symphony No. 4 by Mahler, Mozartiana by Tchaikovsky, and many others.

He also serves as concertmaster of the Simon Sinfonietta on Cape Cod, Stephen Simon, music director; and, in the fall of 2008, was appointed concertmaster of the Boston Festival Orchestra, which performs with the Chorus of Westerly, George Kent, music director.

He is a founding member of Aurea, a performance ensemble started in 2002, dedicated to exploring the interface between music and the spoken word. With Aurea he has performed War Music by Christopher Logue with music by Paul Phillips, Dangerous Dan McGrew on a poem of Robert Service by Gerald Shapiro, Verklarte Nacht by Arnold Schoenberg, String Quartet No. 4 (“Amazing Grace”) by Ben Johnston, Iglesia abandonada for violin and voice on a poem of Lorca by Stephen Hartke, Oracion del Torero by Turina, Ferdinand the Bull by Alan Ridout, Seven Songs for Voice and Violin by Rebecca Clarke, the Sonata for violin and piano by Ravel, the Sonata for violin and cello by Ravel, the Sonata for violin and piano by Debussy, A/B by Paul Phillips, Quartet for oboe and strings by Benjamin Britten, Sonata St. John’s by Anthony Burgess, the radio play Hommage to A.B. by William Boyd featuring music by Anthony Burgess, Cavatina for solo violin by Barbara Kolb, Serenade for string trio by Dohnanyi, String Trio by Webern, Piano Quartet Op. 47 by Schumann, Piano Quartet No. 2 by Fauré, Providence String Quartet by Arnaud Petit, and other works. During the 2008-2009 season, Aurea established a subscription concert series at the First Unitarian Church near the Brown Campus on the corner of Benefit and Benevolent. Collaborating performers with Aurea have included violist Consuelo Sherba; actors Nigel Gore, Gabrielle Sherba, Elena Araoz, Kim Dilts, Charles Weinstein, Rudy Sanda, and Bob Colonna; harmonica virtuoso Chris Turner; violinist Katherine Winterstein; cellists Emmanuel Feldman, Jing Li, Mathias Naegele, Miguel Rocha, and Catherine Strynckx; pianists George Lopez, Judith Lynn Stillman, and Virginia Eskin; flutist Susan Thomas; oboist Cheryl Bishkoff; singers Diana McVey, and Gigi Mitchell-Velasco; harpsichordist Fred Jodry, and many other guests.

Aurea has performed at the First Works Providence Festival, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the New York University Humanities Festival, and around New England. During the summer of 2009, they will be performing at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. Aurea’s performances have been supported by the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, the Rhode Island Council on the Humanities, the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University, the Brown University Creative Arts Council, the City of Pawtucket, the City of Providence, the City of Chicago, the Poetry Foundation, the Rhode Island Foundation, Ocean State Charities, New York University, the Friends of Aurea, and others. Aurea’s recording of String Quartet No. 4 (“Amazing Grace”) by Ben Johnston can be found in the Orwig Music Library. For more information on Aurea’s activities, visit www.AureaEnsemble.org.

Some of the other major repertoire Sherba has performed includes the Brahms Violin Concerto, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, the Mozart A Major Violin Concerto, the Kurt Weil Violin Concerto, Concerto for Violin and Chamber Ensemble by Lou Spratlin, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, the Bruch concerto for violin and viola, the Brahms Double Concerto, the Bach Double Concerto, the Ten Sonatas for Piano and Violin of Beethoven, the Three Sonatas for Violin and Piano of Brahms, Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, the Mendelssohn Octet, the Schubert Octet, Souvenir of Florence by Tchaikovsky, the Quartet for the End of Time by Messiaen, Contrasts by Bartok, the Soldier’s Tale Trio by Stravinsky, Black Angels and Eleven Echoes of Autumn by George Crumb, the complete String Quartets of Beethoven, the String Quartets of Bartok, the String Quartets of Zemlinsky, and many others works.

In addition to his appointment to the applied music faculty at Brown (where he has taught since 1986), he also teaches at the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School. For the fall semester of 2008, he served as a Performance Instructor in Violin at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, substituting for Smith Associate Professor of Violin, Joel Pitchon, who was on sabbatical leave. Past teaching appointments include: Connecticut College, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Greenwood Music Camp, Haverford College, Emory University, Eastern Music Festival, Southeastern Music Center, Shorter College, Columbus College, University of Charleston, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Agnes Scott College, and master classes at L'École Nationale de Musique in Chambery, France.

He was chosen as one of 16 participants at the first Starling-Delay Symposium on Violin Studies at the Juilliard School in 2001, where the topic explored was "How to teach the exceptionally gifted young violin student." Dorothy Delay, Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Robert McDuffie, Cho-Liang Lin, and others led discussions at the Symposium

He has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The New Hampshire Symphony, the Vermont Symphony, the Boston Classical Orchestra, the Hanover Chamber Orchestra, and was concertmaster of the West Virginia Symphony, the Atlanta Ballet, and the Atlanta Chamber Orchestra. He began his professional career as the youngest member of the first violin section of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, where he served as a tenured first violinist for 9 years. Over the years, he has worked with some of the world's pre-eminent musicians, including James Levine, Kurt Mazur, Bernard Haitink, James Conlon, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein, Henryk Szeryng, Igor Oistrakh, Ruggiero Ricci, Yo Yo Ma, and others. He was first violinist of the Charleston String Quartet from 1983-2000, and has performed at the Monadnock, Carvalho, Grand Teton, Aspen, and Colorado Music Festivals. About a dozen of his students have won the concerto competition at Brown. Some have gone on to study music at Yale, Harvard, New England Conservatory, and other institutions. Some have professional careers with orchestras and chamber music groups.

His violin studies were with Zinaida Gilels, Burton Kaplan, Samuel Magad, Sidney Harth, Leonard Sorkin, Abram Loft, Julian Olevsky, Phillip Naegele, Edward Mumm, Francois d’Albert, A.G. Sheasby, and Raymond Albright.

He has had chamber music coaching with the Juilliard Quartet, the Fine Arts Quartet, the Cleveland Quartet, the Chicago Symphony String Quartet, Eugene Lehner, and Earl Carlyss.

He attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he served as assistant to his principal professor, violinist Leonard Sorkin; the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he was a teaching associate and first violinist in the university’s first graduate string quartet; the Chicago Conservatory College, where he was a special student and, at the age of 15, performed the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with members of the Chicago Symphony in Orchestra Hall, Chicago, as winner of the annual commencement competition. He also studied at the Aspen Music School, as a Fellowship student and a first violinist in the Aspen Festival Orchestra; and at the Aspen Institute for Advanced Quartet Studies, which he attended as first violinist of the Charleston String Quartet.

His wife is violist Consuelo Sherba, who serves as Artistic Director of Aurea, and also teaches in the Applied Music Program at Brown. She was a Pawtucket Foundation 2007 Person of the Year, and was a 2008 winner of the prestigious Rhode Island Pell Award for achievement in the arts. His younger brother is violinist John Sherba, the long-time second violinist of the internationally acclaimed Kronos Quartet, which will be serving as ensemble-in-residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2009-2010 season, under their incoming music director, Gustavo Dudamel.