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Matt Springer, a research professor at the University
of California, San Francisco, is also an avid musical performer (piano/violin/percussion/erhu)
and arranger. He has played violin and timpani
in the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra since 1999 (check out PSO At Home "Meet Our Musicians" interview). In the 1990s, Matt appeared
as piano soloist and as mallet percussion soloist with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra,
with which he played violin and timpani during graduate school and subsequent
research positions until 1999, and he gave several multi-instrumental recitals
in the Stanford Music Department during that time. Before his years at Stanford, he
belonged to the Stanford Percussion Ensemble, the Redwood Symphony Orchestra,
the UC Berkeley
Symphony Orchestra, used to perform frequently with TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, and toured
nationally with the Santa Clara
Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps in 1982. Matt played erhu (Chinese violin) for many years in the San Jose area's South Bay Chinese Orchestra and in the Golden Gate Ensemble
in San Francisco, having studied with the well-known erhuist Chen Jiebing. He has also performed
occasionally on erhu and percussion with San Francisco's Melody of China, and has appeared as erhu soloist with the San Francisco Civic Symphony and the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra.
Matt's published music arrangements include Four Pieces from the Gayane Ballet Suite (music of Aram Khachaturian arranged for mallet percussion ensemble; 1994), the Jewish Folksong Suite for String Quartet (Springer compositions based on Jewish folk melodies; 1996), Three Grieg Dances (music of Edvard Grieg arranged for mallet percussion ensemble; 1996), Sleepers Awake (Ronald Dishinger's string quintet version of Bach's music condensed for string quartet; 2001), and Chinese Celebrations (Chinese orchestral music by Lee Chun-Ping, Su Wen-Ching, and Chen Ju-Chi arranged for string quartet; 2006). He has contributed articles for Strings Magazine about his Jewish and Chinese string quartet music. |