June 22-28, 2026
Founded in June of 2022, the Ursus String Camp at UTK offers a one-week advanced precollege program for advanced violinists, violists, and cellists, aged 12-18, on the beautiful University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus each June.
With a small enrollment cap, students will be assured significant access to our world-class string faculty. During the day students will have scale and technique class, single instrument ensemble rehearsals, mini lessons during a 2-hour practice time block each morning, afternoon sight singing classes, and master class/seminars each afternoon. Regular faculty and student recitals throughout the week cap each day.
Tuition / Costs
- Application fee: $58
- Tuition: $840
- Room and Board (optional): $555.88 (includes housing from 6/22-6/28, 3 meals a day starting with lunch on 6/22 to lunch on 6/28).
- Meal plan only (for day students): $304.28 (covering the same meals).
- For students arriving on Sunday, June 21 who are staying in the dorm, add $58.51 for the extra night of housing, dinner on 6/21 (at 5 pm) and breakfast on 6/22.
- Note: A limited number of partial scholarships are available for those who demonstrate need. Please email [email protected] to request scholarship help.
Deadlines
Priority deadline application: March 1, 2026. After this date applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until all slots are filled.
Our Faculty
Wesley Baldwin, Director
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.
Matt Lammers, Violin
Violinist Matt Lammers earned his DMA at Rice University, where he was the Itzhak Perlman Fellow. He is on the violin faculty for both the collegiate and preparatory programs at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice, and is a coach, founder, and director of the Opus 1 Chamber Music School. During summers, he teaches privately and coaches chamber music at the Stringwood Chamber Music Festival. His teachers include Paul Kantor, Carolyn Huebl, Christian Teal, and Ray Shows.
Lammers is the newly appointed First Violinist of the Axiom Quartet. He also appears regularly with the Houston Trio, Kinetic Ensemble, Da Camera of Houston, Music in CONTEXT, Ventana Ballet, the Mercury Chamber Orchestra, Musiqa New Music Ensemble, and as a founding member of Austin Camerata. Active orchestrally, he is a substitute with the Minnesota Orchestra and was a Concertmaster of Rice University’s Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, where he led the Chamber Orchestra in its first unconducted symphonic performance.
Read more about Lammers on his website.
Kenn Wagner, Violin
Kenn Wagner has been a first violinist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra since 1994, and has also served as acting assistant concertmaster of the ASO for one season.
Outside of the ASO, he has also appeared abroad as guest soloist with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra in China, and Christ Church Symphony string section in New Zealand. Nationally he has soloed with the New Orleans Symphony, Arlington Symphony and the Wintergreen Music Festival Orchestra. Locally, Wagner has also appeared as soloist with the Atlanta Community Symphony Orchestra, the Dekalb Symphony, Clark/Spellman Symphony, Atlanta Philharmonic, and the Atlanta Musicians’ Orchestra.
In addition to his solo work and position with the ASO, Wagner enjoys playing chamber music and performs with groups such as the Riverside Chamber Players, Leaptrott Trio (Trio in residence at Brenau University), Atlanta Chamber Players, Awadagin Pratt’s Next Generation Festival, and National Chamber Players with special guest Kenneth Slowik of the Smithsonian Chamber Players. This season he also made his debut at Piccolo Spoleto with the Orlando Chamber Soloists and also performed with members of the Grammy Award winning Cuerteto Latino Americano. Wagner also performed chamber music this summer with former IU faculty member Csaba Erdelyi. Read more about Wagner on Kennesaw State’s website.
Damian Kremer, Cello
Cellist Damian Kremer has been with the Charleston Symphony since 1997. A native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has performed throughout the world as a soloist and as a chamber and orchestral musician. Mr. Kremer studied cello at Michigan State University, Western Illinois University, and Boston University, and spent many summers at the Meadowmount Summer School of Music. His primary cello instructors include Owen Carman, Tanya Carey, and Leslie Parnas.
He has served as principal cellist of several orchestras, including the Chautauqua Music Festival Orchestra and the Lansing Symphony, and for three years played with the New World Symphony Orchestra. He has also been a member of the Metropolitan Orchestra of Lisbon, Portugal, where he was the cellist of the Fidelio String Quartet of Portugal. Kremer also served as cellist in the Honolulu and the Savannah Symphony Orchestras, the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, and is currently with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. He also served for several years as adjunct music faculty at the College of Charleston. He now teaches cello privately at home, where he and his wife, CSO violinist Asako Kremer, are raising their three children. Kremer and his wife comprise the Kremer Duo, which performs recitals frequently in Japan, where the Kremer family enjoys much of their summer vacation time. Read more about Kremer on his website.
Kathryn Dey, Viola
Violist Kathryn Dey holds degrees in viola performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison the Eastman School of Music, where she served as teaching assistant to John Graham. Known for her innovative musicianship and her commitment to using music as a tool for social justice, Ms. Dey has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe and the Caribbean, as well as in such diverse venues as outdoor Haitian community centers, German prisons, and her own front yard. As a Surdna Foundation Fellow, Ms. Dey was awarded a grant to study and perform works for unaccompanied viola by Lillian Fuchs. She is an active supporter of the nonprofit BLUMEHaiti organization, and in addition to collecting over 3000 instruments for that organization, has been a instructor and mentor to countless Haitian musicians through workshops and residencies in that country.
With a unique emphasis on the interdisciplinary connections between music, creative writing and acting, Ms. Dey’s teaching has been recognized by Strings Magazine, the American String Teachers Association, the American Viola Society and Music Teachers National Association, among others. Students from her studio have been recognized at the state, national and international level and now perform and teach around the world. Ms. Dey regularly presents workshops to teachers and students throughout the United States and was a featured presenter at the 2023 International Viola Congress in Bangkok, Thailand. Ms. Dey is a long-time music faculty member at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities and is a co-founder and co-director of the Eastman Summer Viola Workshop in Rochester, NY.
Eric Wong, Viola
Described as possessing a “tone like toasted caramel” and “amazing” (Musical Toronto), Eric Wong is a member of the Blair String Quartet and assistant professor of viola at the Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. He has appeared on the world’s most iconic stages including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Severance Music Center, Kings Place, Koerner Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Banff Centre, and as a featured guest artist at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Wong received both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying violin with Paul Kantor and viola with Kirsten Docter and Lynne Ramsey. He previously served as principal violist of CityMusic Cleveland, Assistant Concertmaster of the Akron Symphony Orchestra, and Associate Concertmaster of the Canton Symphony Orchestra.
He is a frequent guest clinician and lecturer in festivals and institutions of higher learning around the globe that have included Yale University, the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, American University, Montclair State University, the Royal Academy of Music of Århus, Middlesex University, Tongyeong International Music Festival, and the University of Toronto. During the summer season, he is on faculty artist rosters for Encore Chamber Music Institute’s Summer Academy, Pacific Crest Music Festival, Harpa International Music Academy, and Music at Port Milford and is a frequent guest artist at the Geneva Music Festival, Caroga Lake Music Festival, and Summer Music Vancouver. Read more about Wong on Vanderbilt University’s website.