EAC’s Concert Series will continue Friday, August 20 at 7 pm, with Chamber Music of Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Biss by Anna Maria Baeza, clarinet, Joachim Woitun, cello; and Gregory Biss, piano.
Clarinetist Anna Maria Baeza is an active solo and chamber musician who has been heard in recital throughout the United States, Canada, France, the Czech Republic and Hungary. She has collaborated with world renowned oboist Maurice Bourgue and French hornist Andre Cazallet in chamber music performances in Prague and Budapest under the auspices of the European Mozart Foundation. She has performed on live television broadcasts on French and Czech television and on public radio in the United States. In collaboration with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Valek, Ms.Baeza recorded and performed “Hradcany”, a work for clarinet and orchestra by Eric Funk. In Maine, she has been featured in the Machias Bay Chamber Concert Series, EAC’s Concert Series, Music at North Church in Eastport, the Mary Potterton Memorial Concert Series in Lubec, Campobello Fogfest, the Summer Concert Series of St. John’s Organ Society in Bangor, and The Winter Harbor Music Festival. Other music festivals include June in Buffalo, Aspen, Taos/Angel Fire, and Banff. Baeza maintains an active teaching studio in Brooklyn, New York, as well as at the Juilliard School with the MAP program. She has been on the faculty of SummerKeys in Lubec since 2000.
Joachim Woitun studied cello at the Richard Strauss Konservatorium and the Hochschule fuer Musik in Munich, Germany. He moved to the United States in 1987 to continue his studies with Michael Flaksman at California State University in Fresno. Woitun earned his MA degree from City University of New York while studying cello with Stephen Kates and Barbara Mallow-Stein; baroque performance practice with Ray Erickson and Fred Hauptman; chamber music with Daniel Phillips; and contemporary music with Ronald Roseman. He has been featured in master classes taught by William Pleeth, Leslie Parnas and Sharon Robinson. His performance credits include being a soloist with the Orchester Kurt Graunke in Munich and the Spokane Symphony Orchestra in Washington State. He has premiered works by Ronald Roseman, Jennifer Griffith and Carmen Braden. As a recitalist, he can be heard regularly in the greater metropolitan area of New York City and in Downeast Maine, where he has performed for the Machias Bay Chamber Concert Series, at SummerKeys in Lubec and at Campobello Fogfest. Woitun teaches at the Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, as well as at the United Nations International School in Manhattan. In addition to maintaining an active private studio in Brooklyn, New York, he has been on the faculty of SummerKeys in Lubec since 2006.
Biss was born in Illinois and educated in New England and Germany. He studied piano with Lionel Nowak and Nadia Reisenberg and composition with Leon Kirchner and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His music has been performed by the Denver Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Vermeer Quartet. Retired from a 20-year career as a scuba diver in the aquaculture industry, Biss remains active as a piano technician and has been a longtime member of the piano faculty at Summer Keys in Lubec. A recent interest has been providing music for dance choreographers; in addition, he is composing a children’s opera to be mounted at the Arts Center in the fall of 2022. Currently the President of the EAC Board, Greg has contributed to the center in many ways over the last 30 years.
Concert Series tickets, which will be available at the EAC box office prior to performances, are $15; attendees under age 18 will be admitted free of charge. CDC guidelines will be followed.
The work of Eastport Arts Center is funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.