Belmont Abbey College

All concerts, except as listed, are held in the Abbey Basilica (the Abbey Church) on the Belmont Abbey College campus, and are free to the public. Click here to download the schedule (PDF)

The Roth Duo – music for violin and harp

Harpist Bette Roth was raised in Lees Summit, Missouri where she first studied music. She excelled on the harp and won a position to study at the acclaimed Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

She was at Curtis when she took a six-week leave to tour with the North Carolina Symphony. It was then that she met her future husband, Wolfgang Roth, who was a member of the NC Symphony. After graduating from Curtis, Bette spent a year studying in the Netherlands on a Fulbright scholarship. During that year, Wolfgang had returned to Germany and at the end of the year the couple were married in his home country where they took up residence. In 1971, they came to Charlotte where Wolfgang was offered one of the first full-time positions with the Charlotte Symphony. Bette was offered a per service position as Principal Harpist of the CSO Chamber orchestra. In 1983 Bette became the full-time Principal Harpist of the Charlotte Symphony. In 1995 Bette began the Suzuki Harp Society in Charlotte, which has become very large and active.

Wolfgang Roth, Charlotte Symphony principal 2nd violinist, was one of the first full-time musicians for the Charlotte Symphony and was the first full time musician hired in 1971 as concertmaster for the chamber orchestra. He was born in Immenstadt, Germany (Bavaria) and has retained his German citizenship.

Wolfgang earned his Masters degree at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Munich and has performed with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Bach Orchestra, the Graunke Symphony and the North Carolina Symphony. In 1971, Roth started a violin Suzuki program at the Community School of the Arts in Charlotte. He had a large private studio until the 1990s. He and his wife, Bette, have made two recordings of music for violin and harp and have spent many summers touring Germany performing duo recitals. 

PM Carolina Pro Musica High Baroque: Music of Bach and Rameau

The Baroque period evolved differently in the countries of France and Germany. Featured on this concert are works by Bach originally written for solo soprano voice with flute or viol solo and keyboard accompaniment. These demonstrate Bach’s ability to intertwine the vocal line with instruments while giving attention to the text and still treating the voice as another instrument.  In France, Rameau also made solo use of the same instruments but in a different way. The viol, beloved by the French, is used to accompany an impatient singer in a secular cantata and appears in a work which also has a harpsichord solo. 

Carolina Pro Musica use of historic instrument copies and performance practice of the periods in which the music was written allow us to hear the music the way the composers heard it.

Musicians include:
Karen Hite Jacob, harpsichord, who is also Abbey organist, piano teacher, lector in music, director of the Abbey Chorus and director of Arts at the Abbey Holly Wright Maurer, viols, recorder and flauto traverso. Maurer teaches at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. Rebecca Miller Saunders, soprano. A Gastonia native, Rebecca studied early music at Indiana University. She enjoys being a song leader of contemporary worship at Uptown Church in Charlotte. Edward Ferrell, recorder and flauto traverso. Ferrell holds degrees in recorder and musicology but enjoys composing songs, playing guitar and mandolin and leading music for worship services.

Travis W. Alexander received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in performance from the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Presently he serves on the music faculty at North Carolina A & T State University in Greensboro, NC where he teaches Piano, Music History and directs the University Choir and Chamber Singers. 

In constant demand as an organist and conductor, he has given recitals at the Bristol Cathedral and Blenheim Palace in England, Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta in Venice, Italy and at the National Theater in Ghana, West Africa.

As a conductor, he has collaborated with Maestro James Meena, Opera Carolina and the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in the 2008 production of AIDA and an Evening with Denyce Graves, Mezzo-Soprano.  He is Minister of Music at the historic Gethsemane AME Zion Church in Charlotte where he is the founder and conductor of the renowned Concert Choir which tours across the United States and Europe annually M

The Abbey Chorus, under the direction of Karen Hite Jacob,  and other musicians perform holiday selections including carols for all to sing

Acoustic Dessert from Keowee Chamber Music Kate Steinbeck flute Amy Brucksch guitar

Combining finesse with superb artistry, these classically-trained musicians perform an eclectic blend of beautiful tunes and guitar. From Bach to Bossa Nova, Acoustic Dessert delights audiences with their luminous, lyrical playing and rich palette of musical styles.

The Musicians
Committed to the transforming power of music, Kate Steinbeck has distinguished herself as a passionate, unique interpreter and teacher across the US and abroad with a broad range of repertoire ranging from Bach to Balinese. 

Ms. Steinbeck earned a Bachelor of Music from Baldwin-Wallace College studying with William Hebert of the Cleveland Orchestra and completed a Masters Degree at the San Francisco Conservatory, as a student of Tim Day (San Francisco Symphony). A former Fulbright scholar to Belgium, she won a First Prize in chamber music from the Belgian Royal Conservatory in Liège and thereafter spent several years performing and teaching in Germany.

More recently she has been featured in performance with the Mallarmé Chamber Players, Durham, NC, Festival of the German Flute Society, Berlin, Germany, on Sights and Sounds of the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild, at the US Embassy in Brussels, Belgium, at Musicora in The Louvre in Paris, France and throughout the Southeast and Western US. Her critically acclaimed CD, Light in the Corner, was released in 2004 and is now available on I-Tunes.

Kate is the founder and artistic director of Keowee Chamber Music, an artist-run collective of professional musicians presenting concerts around the Southeast. She plays exclusively on a modern wooden flute manufactured by the Abell Flute Co. To learn more about her work, please visit www.katesteinbeck.com or www.keoweechambermusic.org.

Amy Brucksch is an active performer in the South Carolina Upstate area as a soloist and chamber musician. Formerly classical guitar professor at the University of Toledo (Ohio) and Adrian College (Michigan), she has appeared with the Toledo Symphony, Toledo Opera and Prism, a classical/jazz ensemble. As an Ohio Arts Council Touring Artist, she presented classical and contemporary masterworks throughout the Midwest and East Coast, including premieres of new works for flute & guitar.

She has several recordings with the Masterworks Chorale including the virtuosic Romancero Gitano by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco on One World, Many Voices. Brucksch especially enjoys working with other instrumentalists and vocalists, introducing audiences to the diverse repertoire of the classical guitar
She was a featured performer with the Toledo Symphony in the North American premiere of Ole Schmidt’s film score to the Carl Dreyer silent movie La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, with Schmidt conducting. A graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, she has a M.M. in Music Education from Bowling Green State University.

Ayres and Dances from the Time of Queen Elizabeth I Carolina Pro Musica with Steve Ellington, lute

Belmont native Steve Ellington joins the Abbey’s ensemble in residence for an evening of Renaissance delights including music from Shakespeare’s plays to the wonderfully melancholy songs of John Dowland.

A. Steve Ellington, lutenist, holds a Master of Arts degree from Appalachian State University and studied music history at the University of Graz in Austria. While at Appalachian, he directed the Early Music Consort and taught as an adjunct faculty member.  Long involved with sacred choral music, he has sung with choral groups in the U.S. and Europe. He is past director of the choral ensemble Cantores Pastoris which performed in the U.s. and Great Britain.  Steve performed music for the installation of the abbot of Belmont Abbey in 1970, directed Cantores Pastoris at Norwich Cathedral for mass and evensong in 1999. His lute is a seven course Elizabethan style instrument built by George Kelischek of North Carolina.

Ensemble Argos – music of Beethoven, Schubert, Dohnanyi Mellasenah Edwards, violin Christina Placilla, viola, Kenneth Law, cello

Formed in the summer of 2007, Ensemble Argos is a flexible chamber music ensemble comprised of musicians whose collective collaboration spans more than 20 years.  Individually, the members of the ensemble have performed both solo and chamber music concerts in Mexico, Iceland, Germany, England, France, Scotland, Czech Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, Spain, Australia, and across the United States.  In addition to performing works from the standard literature, the ensemble is also dedicated to the commissioning and performing of new works, which reflect the diversity of the ensemble.

Mellasenah Edwards received undergraduate and graduate degrees in performance from the Eastman School of Music, the Yale School of Music and the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. She appeared with the Ritz Chamber Players in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and has performed with the Contemporary Music Theater Festival’s Contemporary Concert Series in West Virginia. Her performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio and on WNYC in New York City.
Currently Dr. Edwards is an associate member of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio, performs regularly with the Greenville Symphony Orchestra in Greenville, South Carolina, is a member of the Ritz Chamber Players based in Jacksonville, Florida and maintains an active private teaching studio.  

Christina Placilla is a viola soloist, chamber musician, scholar and teacher. She earned her Bachelor of Music in performance at California State University, Long Beach, her Master of Musicat the Hartt School in West Hartford, Connecticut and her Doctorate of Musical Arts in viola performance at the University of Colorado. Dr. Placilla is a recent recipient of the Winston-Salem Arts Council Regional Artist Grant which enabled her to produce a CD based on Nationalism in viola-piano literature. Christina is also the head of both strings and musicology at Winston-Salem State University where she teaches a very active upper string studio and conducts of the Winston-Salem State Chamber Orchestra.  During the summer, she serves on the faculty of the North Carolina School of the Arts.

Kenneth Law is Associate Professor of Violoncello at the Petrie School of Music of Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Mr. Law received undergraduate and graduate degrees in performance from the Eastman School of Music and Cleveland Institute of Music, and a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Conservatory. 
In addition to his participation in the Converse Trio, he is a member of the Jacksonville (FL)-based Ritz Chamber Players, and principal cellist of the Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Law has appeared nationally as soloist and recitalist, and chamber music performances include appearances at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jazz at Lincoln Center Concert Series, and Alice Tully Hall in New York City. He has recorded orchestral and chamber music for the New Albion and Telarc labels. Mr. Law was featured on the nationally televised NAACP Image Awards as a member of the Ritz Chamber Players.

All concerts are in the Belmont Abbey Basilica, Belmont Abbey College, (at Exit 26 on I-85) Belmont NC and are free to the public. This series is made possible in part by the Associated Foundation, Inc. of Belmont, The Monks of Belmont Abbey and other private donors.

Karen Hite Jacob, series coordinator
karenjacob@bac.edu

For more information call 704.461.6813 or fill out the Ask A Question form.