Biography
By mingster On September 27th, 2009| Jason Ikeem Rodgers is currently in his last year of a two year program as a graduate student in Conducting renowned Cleveland Institute of Music. He is a student of Carl Topilow. Professor of Conducting at the Cleveland Institute of Music. This degree will be the second Master’s of Music in Conducting for Jason.
Jason is also a graduate of the Masters Conducting Program at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he studied under Maestro Serge Zehnacker and Maestro Mark Norman. Mr. Rodgers holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Piano Performance from the same institution, where he studied with Clifton Matthews. At the North Carolina School of the Arts, Jason was awarded the Matthews Piano Scholarship, Merit Scholarships, and the Wallace-Carroll Memorial Scholarship. As a pianist, he performed in recitals for the North Carolina Music Teachers Association, and numerous recitals at NCSA. |
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| Jason’s love of piano came at an early age as he listened intently to his grandmother and mother play gospel music in his hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Jason was active in school musical productions and was as a role model and mentor for music students at the Wanamaker Middle School in Philadelphia.
In Philadelphia, Jason was awarded scholarships from the Philadelphia Foundation, the Pro Arts Society, the National Alliance for Black School Educators, Sidney DeKnight Piano Scholarship from the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Settlement Music School, the Wallace Loeb Performing Arts Fund, and the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. Jason also won second place in the Kal Rudman/Cunningham Piano Company Classical Piano Competition and performed for the Philadelphia Piano Festival held at the Ethical Society in June 2001. In the summer of 2006, Jason served on the piano and conducting faculty of the School District of Philadelphia’s citywide Summer High School String Orchestra. In addition, John Mauceri, Chancellor of the North Carolina School of the Arts, and conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra invited Jason to Hollywood to study conducting as his apprentice at the Hollywood Bowl. One of Jason’s greatest conducting achievements was his conducting premiere at the Stevens Center in 2006, where he conducted the North Carolina School of the Arts Symphony Orchestra in the performance of Franck’s Symphony in d minor. From 2006-2007, Jason has served as the choral director for Beck Lutheran Church located in Winston-Salem, and was on the piano faculty for the Masterworks School of the Arts in Davidson, NC. This past summer, Jason was the musical director for The Stained Glass Playhouse’s production of A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to the Forum in Winston-Salem, and was featured as the guest conductor for the Ocean City Pops “Favorites” concert held in Ocean City, N.J. Clifton Matthew, Professor of Piano, describes Jason as “….. a great artist: strong, bold, brilliant, dramatic, spontaneous, with wonderful lyricism and sensitivity …. Jason has an innate musicality, physical facility, imagination, and personality to burn.” |
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