Nine students from the Conservatory will present a program of classical and jazz music at the Danenberg Student Honors Recital on Wednesday, Nov. 1, at 8 p.m. in Finney Chapel. The concert is free and open to the public.

Featured in this year’s recital are organist Daniel Tappe ’07; percussionist Jonathan Hepfer ’07; soprano Stephanie Washington ’07; a jazz ensemble featuring trumpeter Theo Croker ’07, bassist Chris Mees ’09, drummer Charles Foldesh ’07, and pianist Sullivan Fortner ’08; violinist Yan Tong ’10, and pianist Minjung Kim ’08.

Daniel Tappe
The program will open with a performance by Tappe of Jean Langlais’ Fête. A native of Anrochte, Germany, Tappe attended the Musikhochschule in Lübeck, Germany, where, in addition to studying organ with Martin Haselböck and Lorenzo Ghielmi, he studied church music (conducting with Gerd Müller-Lorenz, improvisation with Karl Berhardin Kropf, and piano with Evelinde Trenkner) and music education. From 1990 until 2001 he held positions as organist in North Germany. Tappe has performed in master classes with Marie-Louise Langlais, Andrea Marcon, Olivier Latry, Harald Vogel, and Carole Terry. Enrolled in the Conservatory’s combined bachelor and master of music program, Tappe studies organ with Professor of Organ James David Christie, harpsichord with Associate Professor of Harpsichord Webb Wiggins, and clavichord and fortepiano with Associate Professor of Historical Performance David Breitman. Tappe, who is also organist at Christ Church in Oberlin, will earn a bachelor of music degree in organ performance and a master of music degree in historical performance in May 2007.

Jonathan Hepfer
Hepfer will perform “Solo de Vibraphone” (from Le Livre des Claviers) by Phillippe Manoury. Under the guidance of Professor of Percussion Michael Rosen, with whom he studies, and Ruth Strickland Gardner Professor of Music Timothy Weiss, he has performed works by such composers as Applebaum, Aperghis, Cage, Donatoni, Feldman, Globokar, Ligeti, Manoury, Wuorinen and Xenakis. Hepfer has consistently worked to organize chamber music projects of his own, and is the co-founder of the contemporary music sextet Echoi. In the summer of 2004 he attended the Aspen Music Festival and, in 2005, he was a fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute, where he worked with composer Steve Reich. In February 2006 Hepfer participated in Carnegie Hall’s Professional Training Workshop with David Robertson, where he performed the solo glockenspiel part on Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques. That summer he performed with Ensemble SurPlus at the June in Buffalo festival, and received a full scholarship to study with Jean-Pierre Drouet at Centre Acanthes in France. He recently performed with the Slee Sinfonietta to inaugurate SUNY Buffalo’s Center for 21st Century Music.  Hepfer is from Buffalo, New York.

Stephanie Washington
Washington, a vocal performance major who studies with Associate Professor of Singing Lorraine Manz, will sing four songs from Claude Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliées, accompanied by pianist Daniel Michalak. In her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, she has performed as the soprano soloist in Schubert’s Mass in G, and she was the winner of the citywide Martin Luther King Jr. Talent Competition. Washington represented Oklahoma in the national Prince Hall Masons’ Talent and Scholarship Pageant in Philadelphia, where she was awarded the prize for first runner up. In 2003 she participated in the Quartz Mountain Summer Arts Institute, taking a master class with soprano Leona Mitchell. Her Oberlin Opera Theater credits include the role of Clarina in Rossini’s La Cambiale di matrimonio and the choruses of Orpheus in the Underworld, Dialogues des Carmélites, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, and Così fan tutte. In Oberlin’s upcoming fall opera, L’elisir d’amore, she will be singing the role of Giannetta.

The jazz ensemble will announce their piece from the stage.

Theo Croker
Croker, from Leesburg, Florda, is a student of Visiting Professor of Jazz Trumpet Marcus Belgrave and grandson of the legendary trumpet player Doc Cheatham. Croker was featured as a special guest with trombonist Al Grey at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, and has appeared at Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola and Cleopatra’s Needle in New York City, at Snug Harbor, The Palm Court, and Cafe Brazil in New Orleans, and Murphy’s, Nighttown, The Bop Stop, and Flow Cafe in Cleveland. He has performed with musicians Wynton Marsalis, Jimmy Heath, Wendell Logan, Donald Byrd, Gary Bartz, Nicholas Payton, Louis Hayes, Ellis Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Eric Lewis, The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Clark Terry, Henry Butler, Marcus Belgrave, Wycleff Gordon, Roscoe Mitchell, and others.

Chris Mees
Mees, of San Diego, California, has studied with Bob Magnusson and John Clayton.   At Oberlin, he studies with Professor of Jazz Studies and Double Bass Peter Dominguez. Mees has spent the past five years playing with some of the West Coast’s premier jazz musicians; at Oberlin, he is a member of the Theo Croker Quintet and is an active performer on the Cleveland jazz scene. Interested in both classical and jazz idioms, he hopes to pursue a teaching career that will fuse the two worlds.

Charles Foldesh
Foldesh, from Prescott, Arizona, studies with Assistant Professor of Jazz Percussion Billy Hart and is a receipient of the John Coltrane Scholarship. He has shared the stage with Marcus Belgrave, Gary Bartz, George Benson, John Clayton, Bryan Lynch, and Roscoe Mitchell. He performs in Toledo, Ohio with Claude Black, Clifford Murphy, and Alex Han, and has performed at such festivals as the Texas International Jazz Festival, the Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Festival, and the Sedona Jazz on the Rocks Festival. Foldesh has recorded with Marcus Belgrave and the John-Davis Quartet, and appears on Alex Han’s debut album, Fourteen.

Sullivan Fortner
Fortner is from LaPlace, Louisiana, and was valedictorian at the New Orleans Center of Creative Arts. He has won scholarships to the Skidmore Jazz Studies Summer Program and the Vail Jazz Institute. Fortner has performed as a jazz and gospel musician throughout Louisiana, and has appeared in Washington, D.C., with Clyde Kerr Jr., Kent Jordan, Donald Harrison, and Nicholas Payton. He studies with Visiting Assistant Professor of Jazz Piano Dan Wall.

Yan Tong
Tong will perform the Moderato nobile movement of Erich Korngold’s Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, accompanied by pianist Yu Sakamoto. She is a native of Shanghai, China, and studied with Shi Xiang Zhang and Zheng Shi Sheng at the Shanghai Conservatory, where she was ranked as the top middle school candidate. She has performed numerous solo engagements in her native China. Tong also attended the Josef Haydn Conservatory and the University of Vienna, and was a scholarship student at the Summer Strings Academy in Australia, at Canada’s Music Bridge at Mount Royal College, and at the Meadowmount School. She has won several national and international competitions, including third prize in the Postacchini International Violin Competition in Italy, first prize in the International Violin Competition in France, third prize in the Austrian Brahms Competition, and Grand Prize and Best Performance Prize in the First International Strings Competition in Kazakstan. She studies with Professor of Violin Marilyn McDonald.

Minjung Kim
Kim will close the concert, performing Paraphrase on Rigoletto by Franz Liszt. A native of Seoul, South Korea, she entered her first competition at the age of 7. She was an honors student at Seoul Arts High School and in 2004 came to the United States to study at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She has also studied chamber music under the coaching of Myung-Hwa Chung in Korea. Kim has won the Korea Times Music Competition, Eum-youn Piano Competition, and Teenagers Music Competition in Korea. She has participated master classes with many distinguished musicians, including Yoheved Kaplinsky, Jose Feghali, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Yong Hee Moon, Hye-sun Baek, and Jin-woo Jung. She recently performed in the Vienna Music Festival and at the TCU-Cliburn Institute of Music. Kim is a student of Associate Professor of Piano Haewon Song.

For more information please call the Conservatory’s 24-hour concert hotline at 440-775-6933.