The College-Conservatory of Music at UC has been busy adding faculty members recently. Dean Stanley Romanstein announced these prominent new profs this week:
Kristin Lee has been appointed Assistant Professor of Violin beginning Aug. 15, 2021. She is a recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions.
Lee has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, and many others. She’s appeared at Carnegie Hall, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection and around the world.
An accomplished chamber musician, Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season.
The former prodigy was born in Seoul and began violin at age 5. She was a student of Catherine Cho and Dorothy DeLay in the Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In January 2000, she was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from the Juilliard School. She is the co-founder and artistic director of Emerald City Music in Seattle.
Stuart Skelton, an internationally acclaimed tenor and CCM graduate, has been named professor of voice effective Aug. 15. One of the finest heldentenors on the stage today, Skelton maintains a vibrant international performance career. His repertoire encompasses many of opera’s most challenging roles, from Wagner’s Parsifal, Tristan, Lohengrin, Erik and Siegmund to Beethoven’s Florestan and Saint-Saëns’ Samson to Britten’s Peter Grimes.
The role of Siegmund in Die Walküre has been a showcase for Skelton in the world’s greatest music capitals and premiere stages including the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and others. He has an expansive discography. Read more about his achievements here.
A 1995 graduate of CCM’s Master of Music in Voice program, Skelton has previously returned to his alma mater to conduct master classes. He received CCM’s Distinguished Alumni Award earlier this spring in recognition of his outstanding achievements and ongoing engagement with the college.
The accomplished oboist Titus Underwood is the new associate professor of oboe at CCM. Currently the Principal Oboe of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, he is an Emmy Award-winner and a 2021 recipient of the Sphinx Medal of Excellence Award. His new appointment begins on Aug. 15, 2021.
Underwood has been teaching music lessons and classes, as well as coaching chamber music, since he was a student at Cleveland Institute of Music in 2006. He has maintained a private studio and taught in pre-college programs at Cleveland Institute of Music, Juilliard and the National Youth Orchestras program at Carnegie Hall. He has taught in the Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando program since 2017, and he teaches and mentors for the National Alliance for Audition Support program maintained by the League of American Orchestras, The Sphinx Organization and New World Symphony. With Weston Sprott, Underwood also co-initiated and co-designed the Sphinx Orchestral Partners Auditions (SOPA) Excerpt Competition.
Underwood received his Master of Music from the Juilliard School. He earned his Bachelor of Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 2013, he received his Artist Diploma from the Colburn School.
“Titus Underwood is an outstanding addition to our faculty and a superb successor to our distinguished colleague Professor Mark Ostoich, who retires this spring after a 25-year tenure at CCM,” said Romanstein.
Grammy winning baritone Elliot Madore has been appointed associate professor of voice, also starting Aug. 15. Covid canceled a large number of his prestigious appearances last season, including at the Metropolitan Opera’s Romeo et Juliette. Over the past decade, Madore has performed in such illustrious European Opera Houses and Concert Halls as the Berlin Philharmonic, Zurich Opera House, Dutch National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, and, among others, the Bayerische Staatsoper. He’s had the immense pleasure of working with such conducting luminaries such as Seiji Ozawa, Kirill Petrenko, Franz Welser-Möst, Marco Armiliato, Fabio Luisi, Gustavo Dudamel and many others.
The Canadian singer was the grand prize winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the recipient of the 2010 George London Award for a Canadian Singer from the George London Foundation, a finalist in the 2010 Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers in Houston and the recipient of the ARIAS Emerging Young Artist Award from Opera Canada. He was also the winner of the 2009 Palm Beach Vocal Competition. Madore is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music.
Bravi tutti!
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