CELLO
If you’re a dedicated cellist considering a major or double major in music, The University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam College of Music should be on your radar. Our cello studio and its vibrant culture are among the best.
Our students have achieved remarkable success, continuing their studies at prestigious institutions like Peabody, Oberlin, IU, and FSU. This fall, two of our alumni are studying at Juilliard. UT cello students have also participated in esteemed programs and festivals such as the National Repertory Orchestra, Texas Music Festival, Bowdoin Music Festival, Domain Forget, Hot Springs Music Festival, Sewanee, Chautauqua, Kent-Blossom, Curtis Summerfest, and the National Symphony Summer Music Camp.
Tennessee Cello Workshop
One of the most exciting weekends of the year in the cello studio is the Tennessee Cello Workshop, an exciting event that attracts over 130 cellists aged 5 to 85 from more than 15 states for three days. We host eight nationally renowned guest artists each year for this workshop, offering master classes, technique sessions, concerts, lectures, and cello orchestra activities. Participants also compete in four cello competitions, leaving inspired and enriched. We warmly invite all interested students to join us for this annual event.
Guest Artist Opportunities
Throughout the year, our studio hosts regular guest artists for master classes, seminars, and recitals. In addition to weekly individual lessons, students benefit from group technique sessions and master classes, as well as extra instruction from our graduate teaching assistants. Many students also take advantage of orchestral excerpt classes. Each spring, we offer Suzuki Teacher Training for interested string players at reduced rates.
Studio Culture
Our studio culture is rooted in hard work, musical and intellectual exploration, a passion for excellence and joy in playing, and, above all, mutual respect and encouragement. We host several studio recitals each year, including our “Popper-palooza” featuring memorized etudes, a “Concerto Night” program in the fall, a recital in March highlighting composers traditionally excluded from the Western Art Music canon, and a spring cello ensemble recital. We continuously revisit and refine our studio’s mission statement to ensure it reflects our collective values.
Ursus String Camp
For precollege string students, the UT cello studio offers the Ursus String Camp, a week-long program for advanced players held on the UTK campus in late June. This camp is run and taught by Professor Wes Baldwin.
In addition to our on-campus offerings, Professor Wes Baldwin also teaches at the Hilltop Festival in Kentucky and the Aria Academy in Massachusetts during the summer, both of which welcome precollege students.
We look forward to sharing our passion for music with you and helping you achieve your musical goals here at the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music.
UT Cello Studio: Mission and Core Values
Mission
The University of Tennessee Cello Studio aspires to ever-greater excellence in the craft of cello playing and the art of interpreting music in cello performance. Members of the studio support each other in this shared and individual quest. Members of the studio commit to leading and inspiring others with their example of sustained and intelligent practicing, patience in pursuit of high aspirations, openness to learning from others, willingness to share insights with others, and generosity of spirit towards everyone in our community.
Vision
The UTK Cello Studio members strive to:
- Recognize each day that the journey with cello and music is meaningful and impactful for each of us in the studio as well as for our broader communities.
- Pursue excellence in cello playing and music making through intelligent, significant, and observant daily practicing, with cognizance that growth is often not linear. We relish the complex problem-solving that practicing entails.
- Play and perform and teach at the highest standard anywhere in the world.
- Be a model of inclusive and inviting community-building through openness, mutual respect, responsibility to ourselves and each other.
- Exemplify in our daily behavior a culture that will benefit the rest of the cello studio, the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music, UTK, and our society.
Values
Members of our cello studio are committed to modeling these traits daily:
- We are Respectful, Mutually Supportive, Welcoming and Open-minded.
- We honor and embrace Western classical musical traditions and actively seek to broaden the scope of whose music we study, play, teach, and perform. We seek to widen our canon of literature to be inclusive of composers from all gender and ethnic groups.
- We recognize the humanity, unique skills, background, and perspectives that each member of our studio contributes to our community.
- We value everyone in the studio as a fully vested participant in the cello studio, regardless of where they are in their cello journey.
- We commit to only speaking positively about other studio members, inside and outside of the studio.
- When sharing critiques in studio class and in peer-to-peer teaching, we
- Encourage each other to do our best
- Celebrate each other’s successes
- Create a nurturing and supportive environment for our collective instrumental andmusical growth
- Strive each day for greater musical and instrumental excellence for ourselves and our peers
Meet Our Faculty
Professor Wes Baldwin
Professor of Cello | [email protected]
Cellist Wesley Baldwin holds degrees from Yale College, the New England Conservatory, and the University of Maryland. He performs throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as a soloist and chamber musician. As a soloist with orchestra he has recently appeared with the Laredo Philharmonic, the Oregon Mozart Players, the Symphony of the Mountains, and the Aberdeen, Bemidji, Bryan, Chattanooga, Florence, Germantown, Johnson City, Hot Springs, Knoxville, La Porte, Oak Ridge, Manchester, New River Valley, Salisbury, Wintergreen, and Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestras, among others. His passionate and charismatic performances have been widely lauded.
An advocate for great music from all eras, Mr. Baldwin is one of the only performers of several little known and new concerti for cello, including recently those by Sollima, Wagenseil, Jacob T.V., Behzad Ranjbaran, and Alan Shulman. His recording of music for cello by Alan Shulman, released by Albany records, enjoyed widespread critical acclaim. He has also recorded for the Naxos, Zyode, and Innova labels. His most recent CD release, his fourth on the Centaur label, features the chamber music of Arthur Honegger.
Wesley was the founder of the Plymouth String Quartet, with whom he was a top prize-winner in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and a finalist in the Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition. He was also cellist of the James Piano Quartet for five years, with residencies at both Sweet Briar College and the Wintergreen Festival. Solo and chamber music performing honors Baldwin has received include the Prix Mercure, Homer Ulrich Awards, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Performing Artist Fellowship.
As a member and principal cellist of the New World Symphony, Baldwin performed with many of the world’s great conductors and toured Japan, Scotland, England, Argentina, and Brazil. His orchestral colleagues there selected him as the recipient of the New World Symphony’s Community Board Award for artistic integrity and leadership. For many years Wesley served on New World Symphony regional audition committee panels throughout the U.S.
Dr. Baldwin has performed chamber music at the Aspen, Cazenovia, Hot Springs, Ojai, Sandpoint, Mainly Mozart, May in Miami, Skaneateles, and Sub-tropics Music Festivals, and internationally in Italy, France, Monte Carlo, Spain, Austria, Brazil, Argentina, the United Kingdom, and Costa Rica. In 2017 and again in 2018 he visited China, performing and teaching in Shanghai, Beijing, Xian, Nanjing, Ningbo, and other cities.
For more information about Professor Wes Baldwin, please visit his website at https://www.wesleybaldwincello.com/
