John Dee, Bernhard David Scully, Casey Robards, The Jupiter String Quartet
Biography John Dee, Bernhard David Scully, Casey Robards, The Jupiter String Quartet
John Dee
is the Bill A. Nugent Endowed Professor of Music Performance and Professor of Oboe Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For over twenty years, Professor Dee was Principal Oboe of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and Florida Grand Opera Orchestra. Over this time, he was also Oboe Professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables and Artist in Residence at the Conservatory of Music at Lynn University. Prior to this, he was Principal Oboe of the Florida Orchestra in Tampa, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. He has performed and recorded with the Saint Louis, Atlanta and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and has worked with conductors such as Carlo Maria Giulini, James Levine, Claudio Abbado and Sir Georg Solti.
Professor Dee has performed and taught throughout the world and worked with nearly every major performing artist including Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, James Galway, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra. He has also performed for the Pope.
John is featured on Grammy Award-winning recordings, hundreds of commercial recordings, and five solo CDs. Critically acclaimed for numerous performances and recordings, one of his latest CD Music from America and Abroad was reviewed by the International Double Reed Society Journal: “Hearing John Dee’s mastery of the single musical line is an education in how to phrase using every element of sound to its fullest tasteful measure”…
“Dee phrases exactly as one would speak about congenial matters to a good friend.”
John Dee has been awarded the Outstanding Teacher Award by the National Endowment for the Arts multiple times and his students have earned prestigious performance and teaching positions throughout the world.
Bernhard David Scully
is currently the Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is Artistic Director of the non-profit 501(c)(3) Cormont Music. He spends most of his summer in the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire as both the Artistic Director of the Kendall Betts Horn Camp and as the horn player of the North Country Chamber Players. He is the former horn player of the Canadian Brass and former principal horn of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Among his many awards are top honors at numerous competitions, most notably being the first classical brass player to win a McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians. He has collaborated with many great North American Orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra as guest principal horn, Pittsburgh Symphony as guest principal horn, and as principal horn of the Violon du Roy in Quebec City.
As a soloist Bernhard is featured on numerous recordings. His solo album, Dialogue en Francais: French Masterpieces for Horn and Piano, was featured on Minnesota Public Radio. His recording The G. Schirmer Horn Collection Volumes One, Two, and Three (Hal Leonard Publishing) includes much of the standard repertoire for horn and piano. His CD, Windows in Time, features the premiere recording of Gunther Schuller’s “Quintet for Horn and Strings (2009)” in collaboration with the acclaimed Jupiter String Quartet. Gunther Schuller produced this recording himself, and this was one of the last projects he took part in before his unfortunate passing in 2015.
As a pedagogue Bernhard has given lectures and master classes around the world and is a regular featured artist at international music conventions and festivals. He has been on the faculties at the Chautauqua Festival, Rafael Mendez Brass Institute as a member of the Summit Brass, Music Academy of the West, Brevard Music Festival, Eastman School of Music, and in residence at the University of Toronto and the Banff Center for the Arts with the Canadian Brass. His students now occupy positions all over the globe as performers, educators, and scholars.
His degrees are from Northwestern University (with honors), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he attended on a Paul Collins Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. In 2010 the University of Wisconsin awarded him a Distinguished Alumni Award for excellence in artistry.
The Jupiter String Quartet
is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Now enjoying their 20th year together, this tight-knit ensemble is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music.
The quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, Music at Menlo, the Seoul Spring Festival, and many others. In addition to their performing career, they have been artists-in-residence at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program.
Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition; the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City; the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America; an Avery Fisher Career Grant; and a grant from the Fromm Foundation. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two.
The quartet’s latest album is a collaboration with the Jasper String Quartet (Marquis Classics, 2021), produced by Grammy-winner Judith Sherman. This collaborative album features the world premiere recording of Dan Visconti’s Eternal Breath, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat, Op. 20, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round. The quartet’s discography also includes numerous recordings on labels including Azica Records and Deutsche Grammophon.
The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.
