Faculty Recital

The artistry of Kathleen Winkler has earned her the plaudits of critics and audiences alike worldwide since her solo debut at the age of seventeen with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has been heard with such orchestras as the Detroit Symphony (with which she has toured on many occasions), the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Danish Radio Orchestra, the Odense Byorkester, the Polish Slaska Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Savannah Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony, to name a few. She has toured throughout the U.S. and Canada as well as having performed in Sweden, Poland, Germany, Spain, and the Canary Islands.

     Desmond Hoebig, Professor of Cello at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, has had a distinguished career as a soloist, orchestral and chamber musician.
     Desmond was born in 1961 and raised in Vancouver, Canada. He studied with James Hunter, Jack Mendelsohn and Ian Hampton. In 1978 he moved to Philadelphia to study with David Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music. He received his BM and MM at the Juilliard School with Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins, and participated in master classes with Janos Starker and Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi at the Banff Centre.
     Mr. Hoebig won the First Prize at the Munich International Competition (1984), the Grand Prize of the CBC Talent Competition (1981) and the
Canadian Music Competition (1980). He was also an award winner at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1982).
     Mr. Hoebig has been a soloist with many prominent orchestras in North America, including; Cincinnati, Cleveland, Houston, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. His international orchestral engagements have been in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Mexico and Columbia.
     As a chamber musician, Desmond was the cellist with the Orford String Quartet when they won a Juno award for the best classical music album in 1990. He has also performed for 30 years with the Hoebig-Moroz Trio and a duo with Andrew Tunis. Mr. Hoebig has taught and performed at festivals throughout North America, including; Aspen, Banff, La Hoya, Marlboro, Music Bridge, Orcas Island, Sarasota and Steamboat Springs.
     Before joining the faculty of The Shepherd School, Mr. Hoebig had been Principal Cellist of the Cleveland, Houston, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras.

Pianist Jon Kimura Parker is known for his charisma, enthusiasm, and dynamic performances. A veteran of the international concert stage, he has performed regularly in the Berlin Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, London’s South Bank, the Sydney Opera House, and the Beijing Concert Hall. He is the Creative Partner of the Minnesota Orchestra, having hosted and given seven concerto performances with them in July 2021, and serves as the Artistic Director for the Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary and Artistic Advisor for the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival.
     Dr. Parker is Professor of Piano at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. His students have performed extensively and won prizes in major competitions internationally. In the past two years, they have given concerto performances of Shostakovich, Beethoven, Khachaturian and Prokofiev in Aspen, San Antonio, Houston, Russia and China, performed at La Jolla Summerfest, been Young Artists for da Camera Houston and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, made guest appearances with the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and performed just last week in a Beethoven festival in San Francisco.
     A collaborator in a wide variety of styles, Jon Kimura Parker has performed with Doc Severinsen, Audra McDonald, Bobby McFerrin, Pablo Ziegler, Sanjaya Malakar and Stewart Copeland. His YouTube channel features a series of Concerto Chat videos, which explore the piano concerto repertoire. In addition, his Whole Notes series, featuring performances of great composers, is available on Amazon Prime Video. His master classes on the Tchaikovsky and Grieg Piano Concerti appear on tonebase.com.
     Jon Kimura Parker studied with Edward Parker and Keiko Parker, Lee Kum-Sing at the Vancouver Academy of Music and the University of British Columbia, Marek Jablonski at the Banff Centre, and Adele Marcus at The Juilliard School. Winner of the Gold Medal at the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition, Parker has also become an Officer of The Order of Canada and has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of British Columbia and the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto.
     Known to friends – new and old – as “Jackie,” Parker is married to violinist/violist Aloysia Friedmann, and their daughter Sophie graduated from Rice University in 2021.
     For further information, please visit jonkimuraparker.com, montrosetrio.com, offthescore.com, minnesotaorchestra.org,  oicmf.org, and honens.com.