Featured Performers
Taya Ricker, violin
Franklin Keel, cello
Dr. Daniel Weiser , Concert Pianist and Founding Director of AmiciMusic
“TREMENDOUS TRIOS”
GREAT WORKS BY MENDELSSOHN, DEBUSSY, AND HIGDON
Join us for a powerful program of piano trios with Asheville natives Taya Ricker, violin, and Franklin Keel, cello, who will join forces with pianist/Artistic Director Daniel Weiser. Ricker is the daughter of cellist Frances Duff, who has been a cellist with the Asheville Symphony for many years while Keel is currently Associate Principal Cello in the Asheville Symphony. Ricker now lives and free-lances in New York City, but has returned for this thrilling program that includes Felix Mendelssohn’s epic C Minor Piano Trio, a colorful work by contemporary composer Jennifer Higdon, and a little-played Trio by Claude Debussy that he wrote just when he finished his schooling.
Taya Ricker, violin, is an avid chamber, orchestral, and jazz musician who has performed in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. As an orchestral musician Ms. Ricker has been a member of the Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra and also served as Associate Concertmaster in the Western Piedmont Symphony. She has also performed in the violin sections of the Asheville, Richmond (Virginia) Symphony, and the Wintergreen Summer Festival Orchestras. She appears on the Grammy nominated recording of ‘Children of Adam’, a work commissioned by the Richmond Symphony Orchestra for their 60th anniversary, by Mason Bates. Taya enjoys collaborating with musicians in all genres and has performed with many artists including Look Homeward, Falls, Jacob Whitesides, Molly Ringwald, PJ Morton. She can be found on albums by Between the Buried and Me, Anne-Claire and the Wild Mystics, and Buffalo Rose, and has been a regular guest performer with the UNCG Jazz Ensembles I and II. She currently is a tenured member of the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, an associate musician in the Columbus Symphony (Ohio), a core member of the Pittsburgh-based contemporary music ensemble Alia Musica, and performs with Cellist and conductor Amit Peled and his Mount Vernon Virtuosi. During the 2022/2023 season she has appeared as guest concertmaster with the Spartanburg Philharmonic, guest assistant concertmaster with the Asheville Symphony, and principal second violinist with the Mount Vernon Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. n 2010, Taya, along with Pianist John Salmon, began a concert series in Greensboro North Carolina in collaboration with the MacKay Foundation for Cancer Research with all proceeds going to Wake Forest University School of Medicine section on Hematology and Oncology. The MacKay Foundation concerts continue to bring together notable jazz and classical musicians who have donated their time, energy, and talent. Taya Ricker is a high school graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She holds her Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music in Violin Performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro under the instruction of Dr. Fabian Lopez. She also holds a Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Jazz Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro under the instruction of Professor Chad Eby. In May of 2019 Taya completed an Advanced Music Studies Certificate at Carnegie Mellon University under the instruction of the great Maestro and Violinist Andrés Cárdenes. Taya is currently based in New York City where she freelances and maintains a private teaching studio. For more on Taya, please visit https://www.tayaricker.com/
Franklin Keel, cello, began studying violin when he was three years old before he discovered the cello at the age of six. He earned scholarships to the Eastman School of Music, the Brevard Music Center (where he was a finalist in the Jan & Beattie Wood Concerto Competition), and the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival. He has appeared as a soloist with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra, the Brevard Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Blue Ridge Orchestra. He has shared the concert stage with Emmanuel Ax, Warren Haynes, Bright Eyes, Ben Sollee, Free Planet Radio, Stephanie’s Id, the Get Right Band, the Jon Stickley Trio, and Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band. He has recorded with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, the Jonathan Scales Fourchestra, Ben Lovette, Jane Kramer, the Secret B-Sides, and Holiday Childress, as well as full-length albums for Ben Phantom, Free Planet Radio, and Sirius.B. He is now Associate Principal Cello with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, and he performs in many locally and regionally acclaimed projects such as the Opal String Quartet, Ben Phantom, Upland Drive, and Sirius.B. As an avid chamber musician, he has collaborated regularly with Pan Harmonia, Amici Music, and the musicians of the Asheville Symphony. Also a passionate educator, Mr. Keel taught orchestra and chorus for Henderson County Public Schools, served as a conductor for the Hendersonville Symphony Youth Orchestra program as well as interim conductor for the Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra. Alongside his colleagues in the Opal String Quartet, he continues to give clinics and classes to young string players across Western North Carolina. He currently teaches string orchestra at Asheville Middle and High Schools and is the strings coach for the Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Daniel Weiser, piano, has a Doctorate in Piano/Chamber Music from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Samuel Sanders and Robert MacDonald and won the Richard Franko Goldman prize for outstanding contribution to musical and education life. He has performed on many great stages, including the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, the National Gallery of Art in D.C., and on the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago.
He has also concertized around the world, including Israel, Thailand, Holland, and France and was the 1996 U.S. Artistic Ambassador Abroad, for which he performed on an eleven-country tour of the Middle East and Asia. He has been on the music faculty of Dartmouth College and the prestigious St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH.
Besides founding AmiciMusic, he co-founded and still serves as Artistic Director for Classicopia, a similar type of chamber music organization based in New Hampshire. He was also a founding member of the Adirondack Ensemble, which won a Chamber Music America award for inventive programming and outreach. He has participated in the New Hampshire Music Festival, Musicorda, and the Apple Hill Chamber Music Festival and has been the Music Director of the Da Corneta Opera Ensemble, the Opera North Young Artist program, and Opera New England.
A phi beta kappa graduate of Columbia University with a degree in American History, he also spent a year at Harvard Law School and was a classmate of President Obama. A native of Buffalo, NY, he currently lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife, Dr. Kisha Weiser and their fifteen-year old twin daughters, Rose and Sophie.
AmiciMusic is a chamber music organization based in Asheville, NC and Baltimore, MD, dedicated to performing the highest quality chamber music in intimate venues and non-traditional spaces. We are committed to breaking down barriers between performers and audiences by setting up a more relaxed and informal atmosphere at concerts and through informative talks about each composer’s life before each piece is played.
