Three new faculty members have joined The University of Akron School of Music. Beginning this fall, all three will teach and two will perform with Solaris, the school’s faculty wind quintet that also includes flutist George Pope, clarinetist Kristina Belisle Jones and hornist William Hoyt.
Bassoonist Cynthia Cioffari comes to UA after serving on the faculties of Capital University, Otterbein College and Denison University. She has also taught at the University of Alabama, Heidelberg College and the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.
In addition to teaching bassoon students and performing with Solaris at UA, Cioffari is the contrabassoonist and section bassoonist of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and bassoonist with the Wintergreen Summer Music Festival Orchestra in Virginia. She has performed with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Southwest Virginia Chamber Orchestra, Toledo Symphony, West Virginia Symphony and others.
Cioffari holds a bachelor’s degree in music performance from Bowling Green State University and a master’s degree in woodwinds from the University of Michigan.
Oboist Jack Cozen Harel comes to UA to teach oboe students and perform with Solaris. Previously he was a teaching artist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and taught at the California Institute of Technology, Long Beach College and Northwestern University.
He also holds the Guinness World Record for “Fastest Oboe Playing.” He set the record in 2008 by performing all 409 notes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” in 26.1 seconds.
Harel began his professional career at age 18 as the second oboist of the San Francisco Sinfonietta, and later became co-principal oboist with the Sinfonietta. A Yamaha Performing Artist since 2008, he won the Leni Fe Bland Competition in 2008, Downbeat magazine’s Best Classical Soloist in 2006 and the Yamaha Young Performing Artist Competition in 2004.
Bass-baritone Frank Ward Jr. comes to UA after serving on the faculties of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Mississippi Valley State University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Interlochen National Music Camp and others.
He has performed in standard operas, oratorios and recitals throughout the United States, including at Symphony Space in New York City, with the Fayetteville Symphony in Fayetteville, N.C., and at the Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco, Calif. He also specializes in songs by African-American composers that were performed in minstrel, vaudeville and musical theater shows in the early 1900s.
Ward holds doctoral and master’s degrees in music from The University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College.
The University of Akron School of Music
With more than 400 majors, The University of Akron School of Music is among the 50 largest public university schools of music in the United States. The school offers bachelor of music degree programs in music composition, education, performance, jazz studies and history/literature, and master of music degree programs in composition, history/literature, performance, music education, technology and theory.
Students and faculty from the UA School of Music, plus a wide array of guest artists, present hundreds of concerts each year on campus in Guzzetta Recital Hall and adjacent E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall, as well as at community venues. For more information, visit the UA School of Music.
Media contact: Cyndee Snider, 330-972-5196 or cyndee@uakron.edu.