Event Series:
Guest Artist Recital
Shannon Thomas, violin and Stijn DeCock, piano
November 5 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
A Tennessee native, violinist Shannon Thomas has garnered a reputation for exciting, thoughtful performances as a chamber musician, soloist, and in recital throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent performing engagements have taken her to the Kennedy Center, Spoleto Festival USA, Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium, Bolivia’s Centro Sinfonico in La Paz, and the Banff Centre where she has collaborated with distinguished artists such as the St. Lawrence String Quartet, David Halen, Richard King, Wendy Chen, Anita Pontremoli, and Midori.
As a chamber musician, Shannon has performed at the Innsbrook Summer Music Festival, Garth Newel Music Center, Sarasota Music Festival, Kneisel Hall, ENCORE School for Strings, Aspen Music Festival, the International Clarinet Association National Conference (Belgium), Northwestern University, and Brancaleoni International Music Festival (Italy). She is violinist of the Benzaiten Trio and performs regularly with the Bryant Park Chamber Players in New York City, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and IRIS Collective under the direction of Michael Stern. Shannon has recorded for Blue Griffin Records, most recently releasing a CD celebrating the music of Lera Auerbach, Ellen Zwilich, and Jennifer Higdon.
Interested in sharing her enthusiasm for the arts through teaching, Shannon is in demand as a pedagogue. She currently serves as Associate Professor of Violin at Florida State University and directs the Gabriel Del Orbe Violin Program in the Dominican Republic. In the summers, she teaches at Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival and Hilton Head Chamber Music Institute. Previously on the faculties of University of Southern Mississippi, the Cleveland Institute of Music Preparatory Division, and Interlochen Arts Camp, her students have been prizewinners and finalists at national competitions, including MTNA and the Sphinx Competition. She has also taught at the Kinhaven Music School, Stony Brook University Chamber Music Camp, and Innsbrook Institute Summer Music Academy and Festival, where she served as Education Director. Shannon has presented educational sessions and masterclasses at the National ASTA conference, Florida Music Educators Association annual conference, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Luby Violin Symposium. In addition, she has served as an adjudicator and clinician for the Seattle Young Artists Music Festival Association and to MTNA and regional All-State orchestral auditions. She is co-artistic director of MusicBridges Tallahassee, a non-profit that provides opportunities for youth to succeed through the power of music and diversity.
Shannon earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was Paul Kantor’s teaching assistant. She received a Master of Music at Yale University and a Bachelor of Music at Vanderbilt University, and also pursued graduate work at Arizona State University, where she was the first student to be accepted into the Artist Diploma program. She studied chamber music with Peter Salaff, Merry Peckham, George Sopkin, Christopher von Baeyer, Laurie Smukler and members of the Juilliard, Blair, Tokyo, and Cavani String Quartets. Her principal teachers have included Paul Kantor, Cornelia Heard, Jonathan Swartz, Robert Lipsett, and Ani Kavafian. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with her husband, violinist Frank Trem, and their morkie named Puccini.
Hailed for his passionate and virtuosic piano playing by the East Hampton Star, internationally acclaimed pianist Stijn De Cock maintains an active musical career as a soloist, chamber musician, and teaching artist in the US and abroad. His playing has been described as “alternating between the stormy and sublime, while getting to the heart of the music” and was praised for its ability to create “a most compelling musical narrative (Amalfi Festival concert review).”
Dr. De Cock’s concert seasons have included concerts on four continents, from the US to Europe, Asia, and Africa. In recent concert seasons, Dr. De Cock has appeared in Kenya, Macau, Taiwan, Russia, China, Canada, Italy, France, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, Greece, and Spain, in solo, chamber, and collaborative capacities. He has performed in prestigious music festivals around the world, a selection of which include the Amalfi Coast International Music and Arts Festival, PianoTexas, Pianofest in the Hamptons, the XIV NewSound Festival, the Interventions New Music Festival at the Great Gallery of the Toledo Museum of Art, the Prague International Piano Masterclasses, and the Gijón International Piano Festival. Dr. De Cock has also been a major prize winner in multiple competitions, including the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition, the Ann Arbor Society for Musical Arts Young Artist Competition, the Poland International Music Festival Piano Competition and the Prix des Jeunes and Lions Club music competitions in Belgium. As the founding director or the Brancaleoni International Music Festival, Dr. De Cock has created a large-scale summer festival that offers a unique, intensive, and immersive artistic learning environment to the aspiring young pianists, singers, and string players from around the world in the beautiful Marche region of Italy. Also a sought after teaching artist, Dr. De Cock has presented masterclasses and lecture-recitals in Naples, Amalfi, and Maiori, at the Amalfi Coast International Music and Arts Festival in Italy, the Charles University in Prague, the Pardubice Conservatory in the Czech Republic, Tangaza College and the Conservatoire de Kenya in Nairobi, Kenya, Wah Yan College and Lasalle College in Hong-Kong, China, Tunghai University in Taiwan, and many more. Dr. De Cock has taught and held faculty positions at the State University of New York Fredonia, the University of Michigan, Schoolcraft College, Albion College, and the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. He currently serves on the piano faculty of Florida State University as Associate Professor of Piano.
Dr. De Cock hold a Premier Prix from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, where he was trained in the tradition of Russian pianism by Evgeny Moguilevky, a former student of Moscow Conservatory’s legendary teacher, Heinrich Neuhaus, whose formidable students included Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, and Radu Lupu. He also holds a Master’s Degree and Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, which he pursued under tutelage of Logan Skelton. Dr. De Cock has also received guidance from artists such as Claude Frank, Robert McDonald, Yehoved Kaplinsky, Julian Martin, Matti Raekallio, Boris Slutsky, Malcolm Bilson, Martin Katz, Margot Garrett, and Marilyn Horne.
Dr. De Cock is an active member of the American Liszt Society, the College Music Society, and MTNA. His students have won prizes at state and international piano competitions, gained admission to competitive undergraduate and graduate college programs and participated in international music festivals.
Free
