Maria Newman, composer/ conductor/ violinist/ violist/ pianist, was born into one of the most famous and influential musical families in Hollywood. The youngest daughter of nine-time Academy Award-wining composer/ conductor, Alfred Newman, she grew up surrounded by great music and fine musicians.
Newman was educated at the prestigous Eastman School of Music and Yale University, and graduated both institutions with high honors. Maria Newman has since become known as a serious composer in the field of concert music and continues to receive acclaim from audiences and critics alike.
Newman has been the recepient of many homors and awards, including sixteen consecutive ASCAP awards, as well as Composition Grants from California Arts Council, the Viklarbo Chamber Ensemble and the Composer's Guild, among many others. She was honored with the Debut Award from the Young Musicians Foundation in 2001, and was named Variety's 1997 Composer of the Year. She has been commissioned by numerous organizations and has developed a large library of original works for chamber ensemble (vocal and instrumental), orchestra, choral, ballet, and opera/ oratorio. Recent featured commissions are from the New West Symphony, Pacific Serenades, the Angeli Trio, Colburn School for the Perfroming Art's Orchestra de Camera, Harvey Phillips Northwest Big Brass Bash, and the Kairos Lyceum.
Scott Hosfeld
Violist and Conductor
Internationally acclaimed violist Scott Hosfeld is a favorite collaborator among the world's most renowned chamber musicians, and has toured the globe to critical acclaim. He was violist of the Manhattan based Riverside String Quartet, and with that ensemble won the prestigious Artists International Musicians Competition. Under the auspices of Artists International, the Riverside Quartet presented a critically acclaimed Carnegie Recital Hall debut and toured extensively. Hosfeld served as violist and founding member of the ValCoeur String Quartet and was artist-faculty-in-residence at the University of Arizona. With the ValCoeur, Hosfeld toured nationally and internationally. Tours included concert performances at Mexico's Cervantino Festival Internacional, and in Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and Alma Ata in Kazahkstan, then a part of the Soviet Union. For ten years Scott Hosfeld served as founder, executive and artistic director of the internationally lauded Icicle Creek Music Center in Leavenworth, Washington. During that period Hosfeld realized a lifelong dream: to establish a world class chamber music festival, chamber music institute and year round school of music in a truly inspiring environment. A respected and entrepreneurial conductor, Hosfeld founded both the Icicle Creek Youth Symphony and the Icicle Creek Institute Chamber Orchestra. He has led these orchestras for such respected solo collaborators as Nathaniel Rosen, Steven Doane, the Turtle Island String Quartet, violinists David Perry, Darol Anger and Carrie Rehkopf, and cellist John Michel, among others. He fostered other cross discipline collaborations with bassist Edgar Myer and mandolin virtuoso Mike Marshal including commissioning of the Icicle Suite with Mr. Marshal and Darol Anger. Hosfeld successfully led the acclaimed Central Washington University Chamber Orchestra, eliciting a coveted invitation to perform at the 2005 MENC All Northwest Conference. He is currently artistic director and conductor of the Malibu Coast Chamber Orchestra which includes many of LA's finest musicians, performing as resident enemble of the Malibu Coast Music Festival and a regular season series. Scott Hosfeld is married to composer Maria Newman. The two make their home in Malibu, California where they are raising four beautiful children.
Wendy Prober
Piano
Wendy Prober, has perfromed as a pianist throughout the United States as a critically accclaimed chamber musician and soloist. She has degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Souther California, where she studied with John Perry. Ms. Prober is a frequest soloist adn duo-pianist with Los angeles area orchestras includin the Occidental-Caltech Chamber Orchestra, the West Valley Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Doctor's Symphony. In 2000, Ms. Prober appeared as soloist with the New Symphony Orchestra of Tel Aviv University in the Israeli premiere of Charles Fox Victory at Entebbe.
Ms. Prober is the founding pianist of the Viklarbo Chamber Ensemble with whom she has toured nationally since 1988 and recorded five compact discs. Local perfroemnce venues inclue the Cerritos Center, LACMA, USC's Alfred Newman Recutal Hall, LMU, UCLA, The Nimoy Concert Series, and El Camino College. She recently recorded Grammy-nominated Morten Lauridsen's "Cuatro Canciones" on Larisden: Northwest Journey on the RCM label. As Managing Director of Viklarbo, she has successfully written grants to the National Endowment for he Arts, the California Arts Council, the Utah Performing Arts Tour, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affars. Ms. Prober lectured on self-management for musicians and was a panleist for the Natioanl Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, "Garmmy in the Schools." As an independant radio producer, Ms. Prober co-wrote and preduced "evolutions in Harmony" featuring Viklarbo that was broadcast nationawide via the National Radio Satellite System. An instructor of Piano nad Chamber Music from 1989-1998 at Loyola Marymount Unversity, Ms. Prober has taught at the unversity of Judaism and was the Adukt Choir Director at Ohr HaTorah and Temple Ramat Zion. From 1988 to 2000, she was Executive Director of teh Los Angeles Jewish Symphony where she remains on the Board of Directors.
Andrew Shulman
Cello
Born into a family of professional musicians (his father plays Contrabass and his mother is an opera singer) Shulman studied 'cello and composition at the Royal Academy and the Royal College of Music in London and after winning the major 'cello prizes there, in addition to the "Madame Suggia Gift" and the "Royal Society of Arts" prize, was appointed solo 'cello of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, before being offered the first chair position with London's Philharmonia Orchestra, at the age of 22, by conductor Riccardo Muti. He has performed as soloist with Sir Simon Rattle, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Semyon Bychcov, Franz Welser-Möst and Esa-Pekka Salonen, amongst others. He has also recorded over twenty-five CD's as 'cellist of the Britten Quartet (exclusive to EMI Records), Vivaldi 'cello concertos for Virgin Classics.
Andrew Shulman, first British winner of the 'Piatigorsky Artist Award', comes from London, England. Shulman's careers as 'cellist and conductor have taken him all over the world. As soloist, he has directed and performed all the major 'cello concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Utah Symphony, the Singapore Symphony and orchestras all over Europe, the United States and the Far East, as well as giving recitals in such places as the Wigmore Hall, London "Debussy's 'Cello Sonata, played with fastidious poetry of phrase and technique" (The Times), The Royal Palace in Stockholm, and Buckingham Palace, London (performing 'The Swan' with the Prima Ballerina of the Bolshoi, in the presence of The Prince of Wales). He has also performed Strauss' great tone poem 'Don Quixote' twice at the Royal Festival Hall, London (with Sir Simon Rattle and Benjamin Zander) "The Don Quixote was the finest I have heard" (The Sunday Times) and the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles (with Esa-Pekka Salonen) "Philharmonic principal 'cellist Andrew Shulman's Quixote was always eloquent and passionate" (Los Angeles Times).
Shulman was bestowed with an 'Honorary RCM' by The Queen Mother in 1986, and subsequently became a professor at the historic Royal College of Music in London. He has since given masterclasses all over the world, including Western and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, The Ukraine, The USA, South America, The Far East and New Zealand. In 1990 he won the prestigious 'Piatigorsky Artist Award' at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and returned to the USA on numerous occasions to teach and give concerts. Since coming to Los Angeles he has given many classes, among them those at the University of Southern California (USC), the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Corwin Awards Masterclass at the Los Angeles Music Center, as well as playing and teaching at the Aspen, Blue Mountain, Ojai, Las Vegas and San Diego's 'Mainly Mozart' festivals.
As conductor, he has performed extensively in the UK, Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia, directing the symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Haydn, Mahler, Mozart, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky "The conductor Andrew Shulman really carried the orchestra along...like a British Leonard Bernstein whose brilliance was still burning in Haydn's 'Philosopher' Symphony. This was of a quality for which one may search but rarely find" (Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung)
In 1999 he was appointed first chair cello of the Los Angeles Philharmonic "The new principal 'cellist, Andrew Shulman, whose influence on the string section is beginning to make itself heard...The 'cellos, brilliantly powerful" (Los Angeles Times) and also resumed his activities as one of the most sought after solo 'cellists working in the TV and Movie music industry. At the end of 2002 he left the Philharmonic in order to expand his solo, chamber music, teaching and conducting activities still further, having made his family's home in the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains.
Malibu Coast Chamber Orchestra
Malibu Coast Chamber Orchestra
The Malibu Coast Chamber Orchestra was formed in 2006 by Music Director and Conductor, Scott Hosfeld. Comprised of internationally recognized chamber musicians and soloists, its members are among the finest their field. Dedicated to bringing great music to the coastal community of Malibu, the MCCO regularly gathers in our beach city, as well as convening for concert tours.
Malibu Coast Chamber Ballet
The Malibu Coast Chamber Ballet was formed in 2006 to inspire the creation of new ballets. Comprised of dancers, musicians, librettists, art directors and choreographers, the MCCB is by nature interactive bringing back the tradition of collaborative creations in the forming of new work. This season, MCCB will present composer Maria Newman's new tragic ballet, based on a story of Oscar Wilde entitled, The Birthday of the Infanta.
Eric Lloyd Wright
Architect
Eric Lloyd Wright is an architect and founder of Wright Way Organic Resource Center in Malibu, CA. During Eric's early years in architecture, he was an apprentice to his grandfather Frank Lloyd Wright and father Lloyd Wright. His portfolio includes the restoration and renovation of Frank lloyd wright and Lloyd Wright works, as well as residences and institutional buildings of his own design. Eric's current focus is on the evolution of Organic Architecture and Green Building design. His design philosophy is rooted in the integration of ecology, social responsibility and beauty.
