Concert Experiences

Violinist Charles Rex was born into a musical family in Winter Park, Florida, where his father was a composer and instructor at Rollins College and his mother taught piano. He started his violin studies at age four under Alphonse Carlo, professor of violin at Rollins. Following his debut with the Florida Symphony at age thirteen, Mr. Rex won the Hinda Honigmann Scholarship Award to the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina and toured as soloist with the BMC Orchestra throughout North and South Carolina.

Mr. Rex was awarded a full scholarship to Florida State University, where he studied with Richard Burgin, former Concertmaster and Associate Conductor of the Boston Symphony. Other teachers included Jascha Brodsky and Berl Senofsky. During this time, he won the string division of the MTNA National Young Artists Competition and soloed with the Cincinnati Symphony under Max Rudolf.

Immediately after graduating cum laude from FSU with Bachelor and Master of Music degrees, Mr. Rex joined the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy where he played for eight years before accepting the position of Associate Concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. He relinquished the position in 1999 due to an increasing demand of his time for solo appearances and recordings. Mr. Rex has also served as guest concertmaster of the London Symphony under Sir Colin Davis and also acted as concertmaster of the Dallas, Reading and Delaware Symphonies. He is also the concertmaster of the Endless Mountain Music Festival in upper Pennsylvania.

In 1982, Florida State University honored him as a Distinguished Alumnus, and the FSU School of Music presented him with the Ernst von Dohnanyi Faculty Citation for Excellence in Performance. In 1988, he toured Egypt and Jordan as soloist with the Princeton Chamber Orchestra and was the first American to appear as soloist in the new Cairo Opera House. The Borough of Staten Island of New York City also made March 13 of that year "Charles Rex Day" on the occasion of a special recital he performed there on behalf of the New York Philharmonic.

At Lincoln Center, Mr. Rex has been soloist with the New York Philharmonic in performances of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," the Hindemith Concerto and the Nielsen Concerto to great critical acclaim, and he also gave the New York premiere of the Harbison Violin Concerto and the world premiere of Gunther Schuller's "Concerto Quaternio." He performed the Bach Double Concerto on a Philharmonic tour of Japan, India, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He has also given other significant world premieres, including American composer David Ott’s Violin Concerto commissioned by the Reading Symphony and Stephen Paulus’s Concerto for Violin and Cello, a New York Philharmonic commission in conjunction with the Atlanta Symphony performed with his brother, Christopher Rex, principal cellist of the Atlanta Symphony. Other solo appearances have included performances with the Atlanta Symphony, the Charlotte Symphony, the Tucson Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, the Denver Chamber Orchestra, the Charleston and Florida Symphonies, the Manhattan Philharmonic, the Queens Philharmonic, and the Transylvania, Reading, and Northwest Indiana Symphonies.

A feature-length documentary, [i]Concerto for Two Brothers[/i], by Cristina Cassidy Productions on the Rex brothers’ musical careers and the influence of their composer father, Charles Gordon Rex, on their work is to be released soon at film festivals and on television. Trailers for the film are already on line at www.concertofortwobrothers.com. Charles and Christopher Rex are also featured as soloists on an Elysium label release of Saint-Saens "The Muse and the Poet" for violin, cello and orchestra, accompanied by the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic of the Czech Republic under Peter Tiboris. Other recordings by Charles Rex include the Copland Piano Quartet for EMI and the world premiere recording for Opus One label of the "Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra" written by the American composer, Mary Jeanne van Appledorn, and accompanied by the Polish National Radio Orchestra under Joel Suben.

Mr. Rex plays on a violin made by J. B. Guadagnini in 1740 known as the “Ex-Hill” and formally owned by theremin virtuosa Clara Rockmore.

[b]Zeneba Bowers[/b], the Artistic Director of ALIAS, earned both her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Eastman School of Music in 1994 and 1996, respectively. Zeneba has served as concertmaster of Charleston Spoleto Festival, Festival dei Due Mondi (Spoleto, Italy), and the New World Symphony. She has played under the batons of Michael Tilson Thomas, Zdenek Macal, Pinchas Zuckerman, Hugh Wolff, and Leonard Slatkin. She has also performed with the Rochester Philharmonic and the Britt Festival Orchestra in Oregon.
Zeneba joined the Nashville Symphony in 1999 and won the title of Assistant Principal Second Violin in 2001. She founded ALIAS in the fall of 2002; the group quickly became a major element of Nashville's classical music scene, performing charity benefit concerts at the Belmont Mansion and the East Nashville Center for the Creative Arts, and appearing as part of the Sewanee Summer Music Festival's guest artist series.

Following in a series of world-renowned conductors, such as Leonard Slatkin and Myung-Whun Chung, Paul Haas is now the fourteenth music director of the New York Youth Symphony. He has consistently impressed music critics nationwide with his "fiery brilliance" and "bold, muscular, go-for-broke conducting.” In addition to appearances as the assistant conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Mr. Haas' conducting engagements have included performances with the San Antonio Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, among others, as well as festival appearances. Recently, Paul conducted the National Symphony Orchestra with Itzhak Perlman as soloist.

Paul joined colleagues this summer in presenting the world premiere of REWIND: a revolutionary visual and sonic experience featuring internationally-renowned violinists Anne Akiko Meyers and Colin Jacobsen, as well as The Knights, a chamber orchestra conducted by Haas. “REWIND refits the classical experience for a new century… performed with passion and beauty by Mr. Haas and his young players," raved the New York Times. REWIND spans five centuries, from commissioned and spontaneously-created acoustic and electronic pieces by Judd Greenstein, Joshua Penman, and Joel Morales to music by Schnittke, Schoenberg, Mozart, Purcell, and others. Lighting and other visual elements join forces with the music, creating a feast for the senses. For more information, please visit the website at www.rewindconcert.com .

Mr. Haas recently shared the podium with Michael Tilson Thomas, co-conducting a week of rehearsals and performances with the New World Symphony in Miami to great critical acclaim. These performances emphasized Mr. Haas' continued commitment to working with young orchestra musicians. Haas maintains an active role in the contemporary music scene, having commissioned a new work for every concert he has conducted with the New York Youth Symphony as part of its ASCAP Award-winning "First Music" program. His numerous television and radio appearances include features on a "CBS Sunday Morning" special entitled "American Maestro" and the McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase on New York's WQXR. Mr. Haas and the New York Youth Symphony were recently awarded the ASCAP-American Symphony Orchestra League Leonard Bernstein Award for Educational Programming, the first time that coveted award has ever been presented to a youth orchestra.

Paul Haas is a graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School, where he studied conducting as a Bruno Walter Fellow with Otto-Werner Mueller.