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Texas Cello School

A SELF SUFFICIENT INSTITUTE WELCOMING MUSICIANS TO COME AND FOCUS, CREATE AND GROW.

Mission Statement

Texas Cello School is a charitable organisation dedicated to making music at the highest level. We foster and preserve a tradition of music making which focuses on freedom of expression and the ability to truly speak to audiences from the heart.

 

Our mission is to sustain this approach to music, nurturing the new generation of musicians to ensure that the highest levels of professional skill are allied with the ability to perform with integrity.

 

The unique value of Texas Cello School lies in the spirit of music-making which is created during the institute. In an era where much learning now focuses on outcomes, and success, our founder Joseph Kuipers, recognized the absolute necessity for musicians to learn to develop their own unique skills and voices in a live environment of immersion, learning to communicate, create and grow by doing.

 

Texas Cello Cello Choir and Institute maintain this ideal, creating a safe musical environment where live musical communication can take place.

Philosophy

Each person is an individual and deserves to be treated uniquely.

Why?

A note from the director.

When I was 14 years old I was lucky to attend the World Cello Congress III in Baltimore. At that young age, the exposure and immersion in cello concerts, recitals, masterclasses, and cello choir had a profound impact on my deep memory. I don’t remember all the specifics, but I remember the sound of David Geringas playing Shostakovich 1st concerto, The energy of Frans Helmerson playing Elgar, Bernard Greenhouse and Janos Starker sharing the stage, Eli Wiesel explaining that while I could never play like Yo-Yo- he could never play like me…

That exposure to the greats of the cello has stayed with me ever since, and gave me a depth of love for cello playing that carried me through many lonely times alone practicing with the instrument. The aim of the Texas Cello School is to create an ecosystem where this kind of  inspiration will spread through the participants. Once you have tasted the real thing, you will never be satisfied without it.

Joseph Kuipers

Historic Campus

The TexasCelloSchool 2025 will take place in the Hill Country town of Fredericksburg, in Houston, and McKinney in Historic Downton McKinney, on the square.

Team

We are a small, committed team, who work closely together in artistic, financial and organizational decisions.

Honorary President :
Joseph Kuipers Executive | Artistic Director

“Joseph Kuipers is one of the rare musical voices of today: the fresh sincerity of his playing, combined with technical sovereignty over the instrument. He draws a dark, singing sound out of his( Gobetti) Cello, and creates lines that seem to float effortlessly.”

-Berliner Abend Post

American cellist Joseph Kuipers is renowned for his creativity and versatility in his captivating performances on both modern and gut strings. Appearing at festivals and music centers around the globe, he has performed at the Ravinia Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Les Festival International du Domaine Forget, Kronberg Academy, SXSW, Ascoli Pinceno Festival, Carl Orff Festival, and the World Cello Congress. Equally at home with modern and baroque performance styles, and often juxtaposing them in concert programs, Joseph is dedicated to the music of our time. He has worked extensively with living composers, among them Robert Cogan, Heinz Holliger, Helmut Lachenmann and Arvo Part.

Recent chamber music appearances include concerts with the Miró, Dover and Escher Quartets, violinists Chee-Yun Kim and Hye-Jin Kim, pianists Alex McDonald and Amy Yang and bandoneonist JP Jofre.

In 2020 he founded the TEXAS CELLOS™ a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that gives back to the community by inspiring and cultivating excellence in youth through music education, ensemble building, and through performance opportunities.

Cellists are a unique bunch, with a shared love for sound, expression, and friendship in music making.’

Since their debut the Texas Cellos have received much attention from press and audiences alike performing works from the Beatles, Radiohead to the world premier performance of Rachmaninoff Vespers transcribed for cello choir.

Joseph is the founder and creative director of TexasCellos SESSIONS concert series ( formerly MUSIC@MILL Music Festival™), “… great music in an old factory space”; TEXAS CELLO SCHOOL | an Int’l Institute™, which in its fourth year has locations in Fredericksburg, Houston, and McKinney, TX.

Teaching plays a large role in Joseph’s musical career. He has held positions at Washington and Lee University, Eastern University, Binningen School for Gifted Students in Switzerland, as well as numerous masterclasses at festivals worldwide, and maintains a private teaching studio of cellists in North Dallas, where he is based. His students regularly win prizes at Collin Country Concerto Competition, Dallas Symphonic Festival, MTNA, TMEA All-State & and All-Region, TPSMEA All-State &All-region and are members of the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra and Fort-Worth Youth Orchestra among others.

Joseph completed his undergraduate studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where his primary teachers were Paul Katz for cello and Pozzi Escot for composition. In order to immerse himself in the European Music Tradition, he subsequently studied for six years in Germany and Switzerland. In 2008, Joseph received an Artist Diploma from the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim, Germany; where he studied with Michael Flaksman. He completed his Master of Musical Arts from the Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel, Switzerland, where he studied with Thomas Demenga. Other important influences came from Richard Aaron, Anner Bylsma, Bernard Greenhouse, Mstislav Rostropovich and Hong Wang, and in chamber-music from Rainer Schmidt of the Hagen Quartet.

He plays a cellos by Francesco Gobetti, Venice ca 1710 and Mason Weedman, 2024, and custom bows by Roger Zabinski, Andrew Dipper, and Kees van Hemert.

Aside from his musical activities Joseph is a composer, painter, chess player, and avid fisherman. He can often be found in the great outdoors with his Australian Shepherd dogs, Yelka and Ronin.

Paul Katz Honorary President

Paul Katz is known to concertgoers the world over as cellist of the Cleveland Quartet, which, during an international career of 26 years, made more than 2,500 appearances on four continents. As a member of this celebrated ensemble from 1969 to 1995, Katz performed at the White House and on many television shows, including “CBS Sunday Morning,” NBC’s “Today Show,” “The Grammy Awards” (the first classical musicians to appear on that show), and in “In The Mainstream The Cleveland Quartet,” a one-hour documentary televised across the U.S. and Canada.

Katz has received many honors, the most recent including the “Chevalier du Violoncelle,” awarded by the Eva Janzer Memorial Cello Center at Indiana University for distinguished achievements and contributions to the world of cello playing and teaching; The Richard M. Bogomolny National Service Award, Chamber Music America’s highest honor, awarded for a lifetime of distinguished service in the field of chamber music; an Honorary Doctorate of Musical Arts from Albright College; and the American String Teacher’s Association “Artist-Teacher of the Year 2003.” Katz is a passionate spokesperson for chamber music the world over, and served for six years as President of Chamber Music America. As an author, he has appeared in numerous publications and wrote the liner notes for the Cleveland Quartet’s three-volume set of the complete Beethoven Quartets on RCA Red Seal.

In 2011, declaring that “our art is passed from one generation to the next, not by books but by mentoring,” Katz launched CelloBello, a website designed to connect cellists of all ages and performance levels. Among the site’s resources are “Cello Lessons,” consisting of footage filmed in Katz’s studio with NEC students; “Legacy” videos from Katz’s own mentors; and a blog coauthored by more than a dozen prominent cellists. Through this medium, Katz is digitizing his own life experience as a student, teacher, and artist of his instrument.

Katz has appeared as soloist in New York, Cleveland, Toronto, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other cities throughout North America. He was a student of Gregor Piatigorsky, Janos Starker, Bernard Greenhouse, Gabor Rejto and Leonard Rose. In 1962, he was selected nationally to play in the historic Pablo Casals masterclass in Berkeley, California. He was a prizewinner in the Munich and Geneva Competitions and for three summers, he was a participant at the Marlboro Music Festival.

Katz’s recordings include Dohnanyi’s Cello Sonata for ProArte Records, and the Cleveland Quartet’s recording on Sony Classical of the Schubert two-cello quintet with Yo-Yo Ma. The Cleveland Quartet has nearly 70 recordings to its credit on RCA Victor, Telarc International, Sony, Philips and ProArte. These recording have earned many distinctions including the all-time best selling chamber music release of Japan, 11 Grammy nominations, Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music Recording and Best Recorded Contemporary Composition in 1996, and “Best of the Year” awards from Time magazine and Stereo Review.

In September of 2001, Paul Katz joined the New England Conservatory faculty, following five years at Rice University in Houston, and twenty years of teaching at the Eastman School of Music. At NEC, in addition to his studio, seminar teaching and other chamber music coaching, and coaching the NEC Chamber Orchestra, he is founder of the Professional String Quartet Training Program. To date, this program has enrolled six emerging quartets, all of which are now experiencing considerable professional success, including a Grammy award for the Parker Quartet’s 2010 Ligeti CD.

Katz has mentored many of the fine young string quartets on the world’s stages today including the Ariel, Biava, Cavani, Chester, Harlem, Jupiter, Kuss, Lafayette, Maia, Meliora, Parker, T’ang, and Ying Quartets. One of America’s most sought after cello teachers, his cello students, in addition to membership in many of the above quartets, have achieved international careers with solo CDs on Decca, EMI, Channel Classics and Sony Classical, have occupied positions in many of the world’s major orchestras including principal chairs as far away as Oslo, Norway and Osaka, Japan, and are members of many American symphony orchestras such as Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, National Symphony, Pittsburgh, Rochester, and St. Louis.

Katz has taught at many of the major summer music programs including twenty years at the Aspen Festival, the Yale Summer School of Chamber Music, the Perlman Music Program, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, ProQuartet in France, Domaine Forget, Orford, and the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, the Steans Institute of The Ravinia Festival, and is a Director of the Shouse Artist Institute of the Great Lakes Chamber Festival. His hundreds of masterclasses worldwide include many of the major music schools of North and South America, Europe, Israel, Japan and China. Katz frequently sits on the juries of international cello and chamber music competitions, most recently the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition, and the international string quartet competitions of Banff, London, Munich, Graz and Geneva.

Paul Katz plays an Andrea Guarneri cello dated 1669.

B.M., University of Southern California; M.M., Manhattan School of Music; Hon. D.M.A. Albright College. Studies with Gregor Piatigorsky, Janos Starker, Bernard Greenhouse, Leonard Rose, and Gabor Rejto. Recordings on ProArte, RCA Victor, Telarc, Sony, and Philips. Former faculty of Rice University, Eastman School of Music.

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