Ursus String Camp

June 24 – 30, 2024

Schedule

The typical daily schedule for the week will be:

Time	Event
9:00 a.m.	Scales class
10:00 – Noon	Practice time with faculty dropping in on each student for practice help
Noon	Stretching break
12:15 p.m.	Lunch
1:00 p.m.	Cello Ensemble and Violin Ensemble rehearsals
2:30 p.m.	Sight Singing/Ear Training
3:30 p.m.	Daily Master Class/Seminar sessions
5:00 p.m.	Dinner break
7:00 p.m.	Concert (faculty recital, student solo recital, or ensemble recitals)

On June 24, we have registration/sign-in at 9:30 a.m. and begin at 10 a.m.

On June 25, we will modify the schedule to allow everyone to go on a hike at the nearby Ijams Nature Center.

On June 30, we will have scales class at 9:30 a.m., then an open performance class with family and friends of all students invited to attend, followed by a 12:30 p.m. farewell pizza party.

Schedule is subject to change.

Tuition / Costs

Application fee: $55
Tuition: $810
Room and Board (optional): $518.94 (includes housing from 6/24-6/30, 3 meals a day starting with lunch on 6/24 to lunch on 6/25).
Meal plan only (for day students): $284.05 (covering the same meals).
For students arriving on Sunday, June 23 who are staying in the dorm, add $54.63 for the extra night of housing and breakfast on 6/19.

Note: A limited number of partial scholarships are available for those who demonstrate need. Please email wbaldwin@utk.edu to request scholarship help.
Note, a faculty member’s recommendation for admission may substitute for an audition video submission.

Deadlines

Priority will be given to applications received by March 15, 2024. We will accept applications 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. Read more about Baldwin on UT COM’s website.

Matt Lamars, Violin

Violinist Matt Lammers earned his DMA at Rice University, where he was the Itzhak Perlman Fellow. He remains on the Preparatory Violin Faculty of the Shepherd School of Music 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.

Matt 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 Lammars on his website.

Ken 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.

Katrin Meidell, Viola

Violist Katrin Meidell, DMA, enjoys a prolific career as a performer, pedagogue, and lecturer. Her diverse abilities have taken her across the USA, to Canada, Finland, Austria, Poland, Brazil, the Netherlands, Thailand, and New Zealand. A strong proponent of new music, she consistently premieres works commissioned by and written for her. In addition to frequent solo and orchestral engagements, she also performs chamber music on a regular basis. She is a founding member of Violet (www.duetviolet.com) with Dr. Elizabeth Crawford, clarinet. Their self-titled debut album, Violet, was released on Albany Records in 2019. 

Meidell has been published in the Journal of the American Viola Society (AVS)and American String Teacher, and was highly involved for eight years— first as a volunteer, then as a board member— with the AVS, culminating in her organizing and hosting the 2022 American Viola Society Festival & 47^th International Viola Congress.

She is a Karen Tuttle Coordination pedagogue, with recent master class engagements at International Viola Congresses (Thailand and Netherlands), the Poznań International Viola Forum (Poland), University of Alabama, Boston University, the University of North Texas, and many more. Her students are winners of competitions and orchestral positions alike. Read more about Meidell on her website.

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.