Last Guest
Alan Rafferty, Cello
March 25, 2025
Alan Rafferty, a member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra since 2007, holds the Ruth A. Rosevear cello chair. In addition to playing over 1000 concerts as a member of the orchestra both in Cincinnati and around the world on tour, he has been a regular performer on the CSO Chamber Players Series and narrated Education Concerts.
Mr. Rafferty made his solo debut with orchestra at the age of 16 and has been a featured soloist on numerous occasions since. Recent solo appearances have included the North American premiere of Victor Herbert’s first published work, the Suite for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 3 and Don Quixote with the CCM Philharmonia. He can be heard on recordings for Telarc, Sono Luminus, CR and for WGUC Radio Station. As a chamber musician, Mr. Rafferty regularly collaborates with the likes of Leon Fleisher, Matt Haimovitz, Sandra Rivers, the Ariel Quartet, and members of the Cavani Quartet.
Mr. Rafferty is cello faculty member of the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. In demand as a clinician around the world, Mr. Rafferty has presented Master Classes at numerous schools including the Cleveland Institute of Music, Northwestern University, the University of Michigan and Depaul University and has been a visiting faculty member for the Cleveland Institute of Music, Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and makes yearly visits to work with the Fellows at the New World Symphony. In the summer, he is the Artistic Director of the Ascent International Chamber Music Festival currently hosted by the University of Cincinnati, College-Conservatory of Music. In the summer of 2022, Mr. Rafferty joins the faculty of the Aronson Cello Festival at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Each January, he goes to Brazil as a faculty member of the Festival de Music de Santa Catarina.
His students have played as soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony, Louisville Orchestra and Dayton Philharmonic and have been 1st prize winners in the MTNA National Solo Competition, Louisville Orchestra Competition, Cleveland Cello Society and Tennessee Cello Workshop. Additional awards include U.S. Presidential Scholar of the Arts, YoungArts prizewinners and Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award presented by From the Top. Former students hold positions in orchestras all over the world. As Cello/Chamber Music Faculty for the Starling Program at CCM his groups have won the Junior Division Gold Medal and Silver Medal of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition among other top prizes.
Mr. Rafferty holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Northwestern University. His primary studies were with Hans Jorgen Jensen, Alan Harris, Merry Peckham, and Richard Weiss. He and his wife, cellist Dr. Sarah Kim, were recently named the 2016 Ohio String Teachers Association Studio Teachers of the Year. They are the founders and directors of the nationally recognized Cincinnati Young Artists and Ascent Music.
Recent Guests
Nina Lee, Cello
November 8, 2024
Through a public school program, Nina Lee began learning cello in Chesterfield, Missouri, at the age of ten. Six years later, she left home to study with David Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, PA. She went on to complete her Bachelors and Masters of Music at the Juilliard School in New York City with Joel Krosnick, attended the Tanglewood Music Festival, and toured with the Marlboro Music Festival where she collaborated with Mitsuko Uchida, Andras Schiff, Felix Galimir and Samuel Rhodes.
In 1999, Ms. Lee joined the Brentano Quartet with whom she has been privileged to perform throughout North America, Australia, New Zealand, England, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. In addition, she has not only recorded the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven but has also championed new music represented in her quartet’s commissioned works of Stephen Hartke, Steve Mackey, Vijay Iyer, James MacMillan, Bruce Adolphe, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Shulamit Ran (to name a few).
Among the various projects the Brentano Quartet has undertaken, it was asked to record the soundtrack to the 2012 film A Late Quartet, which centered around Beethoven’s Op. 131. The film, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener also featured Ms. Lee playing herself in a cameo.
As important to her life as a musician, Ms. Lee has made a commitment to teaching chamber music. She has been on the faculty at Princeton and Columbia Universities and is currently coaching chamber music at the Yale School of Music, where the Brentano Quartet is in residence. She has also participated as a guest faculty member at the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar and the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. She also has made appearances at the Spoleto Festival USA and La Jolla SummerFest.
Ms. Lee makes her home in Brooklyn, New York, where she lives with her husband and two children. When she isn’t playing the cello or teaching, she loves spending time with her family, cooking, entertaining, organizing chamber music salons and finding new ways to be creative!
Paul Watkins, Cello
January 27, 2024
Acclaimed for his inspirational performances and eloquent musicianship, Paul Watkins enjoys a distinguished career as concerto soloist, chamber musician and conductor. He is the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit (since 2014), the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet (2013-2023) and Visiting Professor of Cello at Yale School of Music (since 2018). He took first prize in the 2002 Leeds Conducting Competition, and has held the positions of Music Director of the English Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra.
Watkins has given regular concerto performances with the major British orchestras, including at the BBC Proms, where he most recently performed with the BBC Symphony and Thomas Ades in Lutoslawski’s cello concerto, and with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the world premiere of the cello concerto composed for him by his brother, Huw Watkins. He has performed with prestigious orchestras across the globe including the Netherlands Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony and Queensland Orchestras, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony, and the Orchestra Nazionale Sinfonica della RAI Torino, under the baton of renowned conductors including Paavo Berglund, Leonard Slatkin, Sakari Oramo, Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Mark Elder, Richard Hickox, Sir Andrew Davis, and Sir Charles Mackerras. He premiered (and was the dedicatee of) Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new concerto with the Antwerp Symphony and Edo de Waart, the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra and Hannu Lintu, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko, and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Andris Nelsons. Highlights of the 23/24 season include a recording of the Richard Rodney Bennett cello concerto for Chandos with the BBC Scottish Symphony), Tippett’s Triple Concerto with the Halle orchestra and Shostakovich with the Aalborg Symphony.
A dedicated chamber musician, Watkins was a member of the Nash Ensemble from 1997 until 2013, when he joined the Emerson String Quartet. With the Quartet he has travelled extensively, performing at major international festivals including Tanglewood, Aspen, Ravinia, Edinburgh, Berlin and Evian and has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Renee Fleming and Evgeny Kissin. After 44 successful seasons, the Quartet has decided to retire, and undertaken an extensive series farewell tours, culminating in their final performances in New York Lincoln Center in October 2023, where the concert is being filmed for a planned documentary by filmmaker Tristan Cook, and the release of their final recording of Berg, Chausson, Schoenberg and Hindemith with prestigious guests soprano Barbara Hannigan and pianist Bertrand Chamayou.
Watkins has conducted all the major British orchestras, and a wide range of international orchestras including the Kristiansand Symphony, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Prague Symphony, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Tampere Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic and the Melbourne Symphony, Queensland and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestras. In 2006 he made his opera debut conducting a critically praised new production of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine for Opera North.
Laura Metcalf, Cello
November 2, 2023
Cellist Laura Metcalf, renowned worldwide as a passionate solo and chamber musician, has been acclaimed for her “brilliant” playing (Gramophone Magazine) and described as “a cellist whose passion for music is as evident as her artistry and talent” (I care if you listen). She has performed throughout the US and on six continents, including South Africa, Nepal, Argentina, Qatar, Mongolia, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Kazakhstan, and Australia. Laura’s debut solo album on the Grammy-winning label Sono Luminus reached #7 on the Billboard Charts, and was called “a way forward for classical music” by AllMusic.
As a sought-after chamber musician and collaborator, Laura is drawn to projects that push boundaries and expand the definition of classical chamber music. Boyd Meets Girl, her duo with her husband, classical guitarist Rupert Boyd, tours worldwide including appearances at Caramoor, Festival Napa Valley, the Morgan Library, Moab Music Festival, Newport Classical and many more, has reached #3 on the Billboard Chart, has had their music streamed over 3 million times on Spotify alone, and will premiere a double concerto written for them by Clarice Assad in 2024. Laura also performs regularly with the popular cello-percussion quartet Break of Reality, selected for an ongoing world tour as musical ambassadors of the US State Department. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura became the founding cellist of The Overlook, a string quartet dedicated towards building a more representative musical tradition, which has already been presented by the Kaufman Center, Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has appeared as a guest with such renowned ensembles as Eighth Blackbird (with whom she premiered a concerto for sextet and orchestra with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra), The Knights, ETHEL and more, and appears regularly as principal cellist of the IRIS Collective in Memphis, TN. As the cellist of string quintet Sybarite5 from 2008-2021, the first-ever string quintet to win the Concert Artists Guild competition and reach #1 on the Billboard Classical Charts, she toured extensively, performing in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Library of Congress, and countless other major venues.
Laura is also a concert curator and artistic director, having co-founded the weekly Sunday morning concert series GatherNYC and the Unfiltered Music Festival at Fotografiska New York, as well as guest curating for the Museum of Arts and Design and Wave Hill. She has appeared onstage with artists including Adele, John Legend, Cher, Shawn Mendes and Nas. As a devoted educator, Laura has given masterclasses and workshops at Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory and countless others, and holds a cello faculty position at Riverdale Country School. Laura lives in New York City with her husband and young son Milo.
Past Guests
The UT Butler School of Music has welcomed an illustrious list of guest artists to visit Austin and work with its students. These cellists have included:
Christopher Adkins
Boris Andrianov
Efe Baltacıgil
Eric Bartlett
Raphael Bell
Mike Block
Jesús Castro-Balbi
Herine Coetzee Koschak
Andrés Díaz
David Finckel
Norman Fischer
Kenneth Freudigman
Elinor Frey
Lynn Harrell
Matt Haimovitz
Desmond Hoebig
Eric Kim
Ralph Kirshbaum
Mark Kosower
Nina Kotova
Antonio Lysy
Yo-Yo Ma
Brian Manker
Anne Martindale Williams
Francesco Mastromatteo
Hai-Ye Ni
Aldo Parisot
Stefan Popov
Sharon Robinson
Marti Rousi
Brinton Averil Smith
Longhorn Cellos 