The Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music is honored to celebrate the outstanding accomplishments of distinguished faculty members achieving tenure, promotion, or both – and begin this new academic year having passed major career milestones. This announcement recognizes outstanding achievements in teaching, scholarship and research, and community engagement.
“It’s rewarding to recognize these members of the School of Music’s world-class faculty for their leadership in the classroom and within their respective fields,” said Dr. Kevin Sanders, Director of the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music. “We are truly fortunate to have such incredibly talented and accomplished faculty instructing our students at the School of Music.”
Dr. Marcin Arendt, Associate Professor of Violin
A native of Poland, Dr. Marcin Arendt is an active chamber musician, soloist, & teacher. As a professor of violin at the University of Memphis’ Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music, Dr. Arendt enjoys teaching a thriving studio of undergraduate and graduate students as well as playing with his colleagues on the string faculty in the Ceruti String Quartet. Since its first season in 2001, Marcin has played with Iris Orchestra under the baton of Michael Stern, where he regularly holds the Isaac Stern Concertmaster Chair and is heavily involved in the orchestra’s community engagements. During the summers, Marcin is frequently a part of the violin faculty at the Interlochen Arts Camp. It is the artistic director of the Memphis in Poland Festival, which aims to share Memphis’s significant musical, artistic, and cultural contributions on an international stage.
Arendt has been a soloist with several orchestras, including Iris Orchestra and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. He co-founded Memphis Mix, a blues & crossover band that has performed internationally and was the featured ensemble of the first Memphis in Poland Festival. He was a member and regular concertmaster of Colorado’s premiere conductor-less string orchestra, The Sphere Ensemble, and was the featured violinist with the nationally touring crossover-fusion band FEAST. Dr. Arendt’s playing can be heard on recordings spanning several genres, including a series of chamber works by Jacques Castérède on Naxos Records.
The prize winner of several national & international competitions, Arendt has performed alongside many renowned artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Gil Shaham, Jaime Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma, Martin Short, Edgar Meyer, Clay Aiken, Dawn Upshaw, Joshua Bell and Harry Connick, Jr.
Dr. Arendt holds bachelor’s degrees in music and philosophy from Stetson University, a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a post-graduate performance certificate from the Stanislaw Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdansk, Poland. Marcin plays on a Jan van Rooyen original violin modeled after the Guarneri “Carrodus,” & uses a bow made by the award-winning bow maker David Forbes.
Dr. Artina McCain, Associate Professor of Piano
Described as a pianist with “power and finesse” (Dallas Arts Society), Artina McCain enjoys an international career throughout Europe, China and the US as a solo and chamber performer, pedagogue and speaker. McCain’s solo and chamber performances have been heard on radio shows in Chicago, Austin, Toronto and Hong Kong. An American Prize winner for her solo piano recordings, she will release an album of works entitled “Heritage: The American Composer” on the MSR label. She has won performance awards from the Austin Critics Table for the “Black Composers” Concert Series and is a three-time Global Music Awards winner for the album I, Too (Naxos), Shades and Trombone Czar with husband and bass trombonist, Martin McCain.
Recent performance highlights include guest concerto appearances with the Oregon East Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Austin Civic Orchestra and the University of Memphis Symphonic Band. Television appearances include features on CSPAN and an inspirational leader on the PBS documentary series “Roadtrip Nation: Degree of Impact”. Primary teachers include Anton Nel, Kathryn Brown and Carol Leone and additional studies with Jerome Lowenthal, Sergei Babayan, Robert Shannon, and John Perry. She has collaborated in recital with renowned artists such as Donnie Ray Albert, Don Lucas, Ritz Chamber Players Series, Valerie Coleman, Gregory Walker, and Christopher Buckholz.
A passionate pedagogue, Dr. McCain won the Austin District Music Teachers Association award for collegiate teacher of the year two consecutive years. She has taught masterclasses in Universities and conservatories throughout the United States and Southeast Asia. Her pedagogical lectures covering arts entrepreneurship to performance injury have been presented at the National Conference of Keyboard Pedagogy, MTNA, and state music teachers’ conferences. Her article on performance injury and Muscle Activation Techniques was published in Clavier Companion and she is a regular contributor of score reviews for the magazine. She hosts an annual Musicians Wellness Forum, which explores the benefits and options for alternative performance injury care and a YouTube series on Musician Career Building with the McCain duo.
McCain has taught at numerous summer festivals, including the Austin Chamber Music Festival, Illinois Summer Youth Music (ISYM) and PRIZM International Chamber Music Festival. Previous academic faculty positions include Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music, Texas Lutheran University, University of the Incarnate Word and Huston-Tillotson University. McCain graduated cum laude from Southern Methodist University. She received her Master of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music and completed her Doctoral Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. McCain is currently an Assistant Professor of Piano at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music at the University of Memphis and co-artistic director of the Memphis International Piano Festival and Competition.
Dr. Kimberly Patterson, Associate Professor of Cello
Hailed by the Chicago Sun Times as a “superb cellist,” Dr. Kimberly Patterson has earned recognition for her artistry as a solo, chamber, and orchestral musician. Dr. Patterson was the founding cellist for the Tesla Quartet, winners of the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition and prizewinners of the London International Quartet Competition and the Bordeaux International Quartet Competition. She has given chamber recitals in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall and Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. She has held chamber music residencies with Aspen Music Festival, Bravo! Vail Valley, Strings Music Festival and a quartet residency at the University of Colorado at Boulder with the Takács Quartet.
Dr. Patterson is the Assistant Professor of Cello at the University of Memphis and the Ceruti Quartet, Quartet-in-Residence cellist at the University of Memphis. She is also the cellist of the Patterson / Sutton cello and guitar duo. Their debut album, “Cold Dark Matter: Music for Cello & Guitar,” was released by MSR records in 2013. The Patterson / Sutton duo have presented lectures at the International Guitar Research Center in Surrey, UK and the Guitar Foundation of America National Convention. Their performances have been broadcasted on American Public Media’s, Performance Today, Radio New Zealand and South Africa’s Fine Music Radio among others. The Patterson/Sutton duo concertizes throughout the US and abroad with recent engagements as Juilliard Global Artists, performing throughout Vietnam, Ireland, Hungary and Slovakia.
As a soloist, Dr. Patterson has appeared with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and the Manila Symphony of the Philippines, toured nationally with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet Company performing a solo piece by David Lang, and presented solo recitals in the Netherlands, Afghanistan and throughout the United States. Festival appearances include the Verbier Festival, Strings Music Festival, Holland Music Sessions, Aspen Music Festival & School, Sarasota Music Festival & the Miyazaki Festival.
In addition to her extensive chamber music career, Dr. Patterson was a member of the Colorado Symphony. She has performed as principal cellist with Verbier Orchestra in Switzerland and the Juilliard Orchestra. She has also performed with the Utah Symphony, Iris Orchestra, Central City Opera, the New Haven Symphony and was personally invited by Charles Dutoit to perform with the Miyazaki Orchestra in Japan.
Dr. Patterson is a strong believer in the transformative power of music education. Kimberly was a graduate assistant to the renowned Takács Quartet at the University of Colorado at Boulder and has given masterclasses around the country at institutions such as Frost School of Music University of Miami, Louisiana State University, University of Utah, Virginia Tech University, University of Denver, Ball State University, Colorado State University and University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg among others.
In addition to collegiate teaching, she has instructed inner-city students as a Juilliard Morse Fellowship and students of the Aspen Music Festival and School’s M.O.R.E Program. With support from the United States’ State Department, Dr. Patterson taught and performed as a guest artist at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul in early 2014. She has also instructed cellists of the Manila Symphony Orchestra in the Philippines. Dr. Patterson serves on the board of the Colorado Youth Symphony Orchestras and on the advisory board of the Memphis Youth Symphony Orchestras.
Dr. Patterson’s students have won positions with Orchestra Iowa and the Guangzhou Symphony. In addition, students have attended Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra, the Tanglewood Institute, All-National Youth Orchestra, and Colorado and Tennessee All State Orchestras.
A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music with academic honors, Dr. Patterson earned her Master’s of Music Degree at the Juilliard School and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her teachers include Richard Aaron, Andras Fejer, Judith Glyde and Stephen Geber.
Dr. William Shaltis, Associate Professor of Percussion
Dr. William Shaltis is the Principal Timpanist of the Boise Philharmonic Orchestra and New Hampshire Music Festival. Previously, he was Principal Percussionist/Assistant Timpanist of the Evansville Philharmonic and Owensboro Symphony and taught at Missouri Southern State University and the University of Evansville.
Shaltis has performed and presented at music festivals and conventions in the USA and abroad, including PASIC and the NAfME national conventions, the Midwest Clinic, and at music festivals in China, France, and Iceland. He has also presented clinics, masterclasses, and recitals at universities, including Michigan State, Kansas State, the University of Utah, and Western Kentucky. He created the educational video podcast series “Good Beats” and “The Solo Timpanist,” and is published through Bachovich Music Publications.
Shaltis received a BME from Michigan State University, an MM from the Boston Conservatory, and a DMA from the University of Missouri- Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance where he was awarded the Muriel Kauffman Award for Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant. Shaltis is a performing artist/clinician for Grover Pro Percussion, Remo, Yamaha, and Zildjian.
Dr. David Spencer, Professor of Trumpet
David Spencer, Associate Professor (B.M. – Florida State University; M.M., D.M.A. – University of North Texas), enjoys a diverse professional career in orchestral, chamber music, and jazz/commercial idioms worldwide. Dr. Spencer has appeared on numerous classical, film, and popular music recordings in Korea, Japan, and the United States. He has served as principal trumpet with the Seoul Philharmonic, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and the Sinfonica de Asturias in Spain, which included concert and television performances with tenor Luciano Pavarotti.
As a jazz musician, Dr. Spencer has performed with numerous jazz artists, including Freddie Hubbard, Michael Brecker, James Moody, and Marvin Stamm. While at the University of North Texas, he was a member of the Grammy-winning One O’clock Lab Band. Equally active as a clinician, he has presented master classes in New York, Dallas, Cleveland, Istanbul, Scotland, Italy, and Asia.
In addition to trumpet performance, Dr. Spencer also specializes in conducting and repertoire, having studied with Eugene Corporon, Jack Stamp, Dennis Fischer, and Eddie Smith. David Spencer serves on the board of directors for the Memphis chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and was recently named Employment Editor for the International Trumpet Guild. He joined the faculty of the University of Memphis in 1993.
Please join us in congratulating them on the achievement of this milestone and wishing them continued success at The University of Memphis Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music.