Click here to download photos from Artist Series 2010
Every year during Valentine's weekend, Maranatha hosts its formal Artist Series event featuring Christian fine arts personnel. The public is invited to these free events.
The February 2010 Artist Series will feature the Harding Trio--sisters Rachel, Rebecca, and Maaike.
The Harding Trio was formed in 2000. The group received top prizes in the National Fischoff Chamber Competition, senior division, and The Coleman International Chamber Music Competition. In 2005, the Harding Trio received the prestigious Bennet Levine Memorial Chamber Music Award from The Cleveland Institute of Music. The trio has been coached by ltzhak Perlman, Paul Katz, Donald and Vivian Weilerstein and Merry Peckham.
Maaike Harding was born in Troy, Michigan, and completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in Cello Performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She has received many top prizes including the Louis Potter Scholarship, Michigan American String Teachers award, and the Rochester Symphony Concerto Competition. In 2006, Ms. Harding joined the Wô-mèn quartet, which was selected to perform in the Kennedy Center for the “Conservatory Project”, and gave a solo chamber recital sponsored by The Cleveland Chamber Society. During the summers she has attended Music Academy of the West, where she received the Cello Fellowship Award, Aspen Music Festival and School, where she received a one-year fellowship, and the Perlman Chamber Music Program.
Rebecca Harding Mayer is a member of the music faculty at Oakland University and is pursuing a DMA at Michigan State University. She graduated with high academic honor from the Cleveland Institute of Music, receiving both a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music in piano performance. The Cleveland Institute of Music faculty awarded her The Sadie Zellen Prize and the William Kurzman prize in piano.
Rebecca has performed nationally and internationally in master classes and solo concerts, including performances in Prague and Italy. In July of 2003, she made her solo debut at the Carmel Bach Festival in Monterrey, California. In October of 2009, she was invited by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to perform Dvorak’s “Dumky” piano trio with Fedor Amosov and Oleg Larshin at the Max M. Fisher Music Center.
Born in Chicago, Rachel Harding Klaus studied violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where the faculty awarded her the coveted Joseph and Elsie Scharff Prize and the Dr. Jerome Gross Prize. In the fall of 2004, she won the concerto competition at the Cleveland Institute and performed the Bartok Concerto with the CIM Orchestra. In June of 2005, Rachel was a prizewinner in the International Irving M. Klein String Competition.
Rachel has performed as soloist with the Rochester, Birmingham and Kalamazoo Symphonies in Michigan, and the Asheville Symphony in North Carolina. She has won first place in numerous string and young artist competitions, including the American String Competition of, Birmingham-Bloomfield, Rochester, Zerounian, and Jean Hoffman String Competition as well as the Schoolcraft College Music Competition and the Birmingham Musical. She was also chosen from a small handful of young artists to play for the first Starling-Delay Symposium at Julliard, where she performed for Midori and Dorothy Delay in a special master class.