Extended Biography (750 words)
Cellist Caroline Stinson was born in Edmonton, Canada, and makes her home in
New York City. She appears in Canada, the United States and Europe each season as a
soloist and chamber artist and will perform this year in recital in France, New York,
Oregon, Seattle and Vancouver, and as soloist with the Syracuse Symphony.
Caroline dedicates equal time to contemporary and traditional repertoire and through
her commitment to new music has become known for her expressive and personal interpretation
of new works. Ms. Stinson has performed in New York at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall,
Merkin Hall and Miller Theatre, on the MoMA Summergarden Series, at the Gardner Museum in
Boston, the Smithsonian in Washington DC and in Europe at the Koelner Philharmonie,
the BeethovenHalle Bonn, and the Cité de la Musique in Strasbourg, France. She has been
invited to perform at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, the Manchester Cello Festival
in England and to Canada as a returning featured artist for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's
International New Music Festival, where she appeared in multiple performances broadcast
nationally on CBC Radio. Last year she premiered the 4-cello concerto Stretched on
the Beauty by Andrew Waggoner, commissioned by her cello quartet, CELLO, with
Daniel Hege and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. This year Ms. Stinson will begin
recording her premiere solo CD, tracing the influence of European composers of the
last century on two subsequent generations of North American voices through the roles
of mentor and teacher.
Winner of the 2007 J.B.C. Watkins Prize from the Canada Council
for the Arts,
Caroline also won first prize in the Hohnen Foundation Cello Competition of Germany,
received the American Music Award from the Seventeen/GM National Concerto Competition
in the U.S., and has performed concerti as winner of competitions at the Cleveland
Institute of Music and Interlochen Arts Camp, and at the invitation of Aldo Parisot,
the Banff Center Orchestra. She is the recipient of prizes, grants and scholarships
from the Alberta Heritage Scholarship Fund, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the
Winspear Fund of Edmonton, the Anne Burrows Foundation of Edmonton and the Canada
Council for the Arts, as well as fellowships from festivals and seminars including
Aspen, Lucerne, Verbier, Sarasota, and the Piatigorsky Seminar for Cellists in Los Angeles.
In collaborative settings, Caroline has had the pleasure of working with Pierre Boulez,
Pinchas Zukermann, and pianist
Gloria Cheng,
and has been invited to play in New York and on tour with Accroche Note of France,
Bang On A Can All-Stars, Continuum, the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, Sequitur,
Ensemble Pi and NewBand (the Harry Partch Ensemble). Advocating for new music through
premieres, commissions and recordings, she has worked with composers Ross Bauer,
T. Patrick Carrabré, George Crumb,
Peter Eötvös,
John Harbison,
George Rochberg, Anna Weesner and with Joan Tower,
performing with the composer at the piano. Collaborating with dance, she has performed with
Donlin Foreman, founder of Buglisi-Foreman Dance, live in improvisation at the Joyce Theatre
in New York, Daniel Gwirtzman at St. Mark's and with Morphoses, the Wheeldon Company,
live at City Center.
In chamber music, Caroline is active with Open End,
a new music and free improvisation ensemble founded in 2004 with her husband, composer
Andrew Waggoner, and with whom she has appeared
in the US, France and Italy. With her longtime colleague from Western Canada, Tawnya Popoff,
she founded the Athabasca String Trio, this season in residence at Bowdoin College in
Portland, Maine. In 2006, Caroline began a recording project of works by
Aaron Jay Kernis
with the ensemble Contrasts, which includes his
Ballade for cello and piano, to be released this year. As a member of the
Cassatt String Quartet until 2003, Ms. Stinson
concertised throughout the U.S. and Canada, active as Artist-in-Residence at the
University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the State University of New York at Buffalo,
and the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University. She performed the historic Slee
Beethoven Quartet Cycle in Buffalo, and took part in the premiering of some two dozen
new works, producing a number of recordings to high acclaim. Her recordings include
Steven Stucky's String Quartet on the Albany Label,
the Popper Requiem for three celli and orchestra with Maria Kliegel on the Naxos label,
among other recordings on Bridge, Koch and Phoenix Records.
A committed teacher, Caroline teaches at Syracuse University,
where she founded and runs the chamber music program. Caroline earned degrees with honours at the
Interlochen Arts Academy, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Hochschule für Musik in Köln
(with First Prize), and completed her Master's Degree as an Irene Diamond and Genevieve
Kniese Chaudhuri Fellow at the Juilliard School. Her cellistic influences are very gratefully
Alan Harris, Maria Kliegel, Joel Krosnick, Frans Helmerson and Tanya Prochazka.