Masterclasses
Riley Center for the Arts at Burr and Burton Academy
143 Seminary Avenue, Manchester, Vermont
Wednesdays at 7pm
June 26 and July 10
FREE. Donations welcome.
Masterclasses allow the audience to experience firsthand how chamber music is refined and brought to a whole new level. A visiting artist, ensemble, or faculty member will work with student groups, offering insights on interpretation and style.
Wednesday, June 26:
Roberta Cooper, Cello
Cellist Roberta Cooper won the Artists International Competition, which sponsored her Carnegie Hall debut. She is a member of the Walsh-Drucker-Cooper Trio, which has performed extensively on major series in the U.S. and Europe.
Roberta is the assistant principal cellist of the American Symphony Orchestra and is a member of the American Composers Orchestra and the Westchester Philharmonic. She has performed in the Berlin Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the New York City Opera and the ballet orchestras of both the NYC Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, and has been a guest cellist with the Emerson Quartet in concerts throughout the US and Europe. She has been the continuo player with the Berkshire Bach Society for more than two decades and has been a regular chamber music festival participant, most recently at Classical Tahoe, Festival Napa, and the St Bart’s Music Festival. She made her debut on Frank Almond’s chamber music series Frankly Music in Milwaukee in January 2024.
A favorite project was as featured soloist on pop singer Linda Ronstadt’s recording of jazz standards, titled Hummin’ to Myself. This group, filled with jazz legends, performed for an A&E TV special and at Jazz@Lincoln Center.
Roberta Cooper was a scholarship student of Lorne Munroe and Harvey Shapiro at the Juilliard School, where she earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees and was awarded the William Henderson Prize for outstanding achievement.
Wednesday, July 10:
Eugene Drucker, violin
Violinist Eugene Drucker, a founding member of the multiple Grammy Award-winning Emerson String Quartet, is also a soloist. He has appeared with the orchestras of Montreal, Brussels, Antwerp, Liège, Hartford, Richmond, Louisville, and Jerusalem, as well as with the American Symphony Orchestra, the Aspen Chamber Symphony and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where he studied with Oscar Shumsky, Eugene was concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra, with which he appeared as soloist several times. He made his New York debut as a Concert Artists Guild winner in the fall of 1976, after having won prizes at the Montreal Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. Eugene has recorded the complete unaccompanied works of Bach, reissued by Parnassus Records, and the complete sonatas and duos of Bartók for Biddulph Recordings.
His first novel, The Savior, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and later appeared in a German translation called Wintersonate. A second novel, Yearning, was published in 2021.
Eugene’s suite for string quartet, Series of Twelve, was commissioned by the New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark. It was premiered in Copenhagen and Reykjavik in August 2018 and was later performed by the Escher Quartet in the U.S. He has also composed several settings of poetry by Shakespeare and Denise Levertov for voice and strings.
Eugene Drucker has taught at Stony Brook University since 2002, and recently joined the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. He became Music Director of the Berkshire Bach Society’s “Bach at New Year’s” Concerts in 2017, and was appointed year-round Artistic Director for that organization in 2024. He lives in New York City with his wife, cellist Roberta Cooper.