Rocky Ridge Staff

SoYoung Lee - Music Director

SoYoung Lee, Music Director at Rocky Ridge Music Center, received her Doctorate in Musical Arts in Piano Performance from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  An award winning pianist and a Regents Scholar, she is a recipient of the Ernő Dohnányi Piano Prize, Gwendolyn Koldofsky Accompanying Fellowship and the Corwin Composition Award.  SoYoung is involved with a number of music and dance projects including Bach2Brazil and In the Mist chamber ballets in collaboration with choreographer and former Balanchine dancer Viki Psihoyos, a multi-disc recording project of Schumann with pianist Sergio Gallo and baritone Daniel Ihasz.  She has held director positions at Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory Adult Education & Preparatory Department, Millikin University Preparatory Division and the Boulder Arts Academy & Boulder Ballet.  SoYoung served on the music faculty at Millikin, State University of New York, Fredonia and was a visiting Piano Pedagogy faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  She attended the University of Birmingham and the Birmingham School of Music in England, the University of Southern California and the University of California at Santa Barbara on a full music scholarship.  SoYoung is equally at home as a performing artist, teacher, producer, and an arts advocate.

Jean Denney - RRMC Administrator

Jean Denney is active as a performing musician and teacher and is the Administrator of Rocky Ridge Music Center. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Education and a Master’s degree in Violin Performance from Colorado State University. Currently she is a violinist in the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra, Ft. Collins Symphony and Cheyenne Symphony and maintains a private violin studio. Jean has performed with ballets, choruses, orchestras, operas and touring artists throughout the region including Colorado, Wyoming, Indiana, Nebraska, New Mexico and Texas.  Possessing a passion for education, she has pioneered and directed orchestra programs in Colorado, Texas and Indiana, was a charter member of the Indianapolis Symphony’s Educator’s Advisory Committee, served as Executive Director for the String Quartet Program of Northern Colorado, and has coached and adjudicated for numerous organizations including most recently the Youth Orchestra of the Rockies and Colorado All State Orchestra.

Claudia Anderson - Junior Sessions Program Director

 Claudia Anderson’s brilliance and originality as a solo performer (“Flute playing of the highest echelon” – New York Concert Artists Guild; “Vast range of sonorities” – Giornale di Sicilia) have graced audiences throughout the U.S., Europe and Brazil.  A Fulbright scholar to Italy, Ms. Anderson was subsequently principal flute of the Orchestra del Teatro Massimo in Palermo. After returning to the U.S., she was solo piccolo for ten years with the Cedar Rapids (IA) Symphony and is presently principal flute with the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony in Iowa.

Receiving degrees from the Universities of Michigan, Massachusetts and Iowa, Dr. Anderson is a guest artist and clinician at many colleges and music series around the country; she is exclusively a Miyazawa artist and also performs with flutist Jill Felber in the innovative duo ZAWA! (www.zawa.org; www.miyazawa.com).  Equally at home in both the standard and contemporary repertoire, Dr. Anderson has commissioned and arranged works for solo and duo format. Her unique programming and performing styles were influenced by an early background of extensive contemporary music performance and her years of playing opera in Italy.  Her work with Jill Felber of ZAWA! reflects the drama/theatricality of new music and the operatic stage, with their unconventional staging, lighting and costumes. Another recent chamber initiative, New Prairie Camerata--a core ensemble of flute, violin and harp based in Grinnell--links performance with history and architecture by performing in nontraditional spaces that showcase local gems and stimulate community participation.

Faculty positions include Grinnell College (currently), Universities of Iowa and Northern Iowa, Ithaca College and the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Her recorded solo and duo performances can be found on the Centaur, Neuma and CRI labels. Her solo CD, American Flute (Centaur, 1994), was awarded five stars from Classical Pulse in 1995. Duo CDs include ZAWA! (Neuma, 2001), ZAWA2 (ZawaMusic, 2006) and Duos for Flute and Oboe (Centaur, 2005) with Rocky Ridge colleague William McMullen.

Catherine Cox - Events Coordinator

Catherine Cox is the Event Coordinator for Rocky Ridge Music Center this year. She brings a diverse background in marketing, event organization and promotion, sponsorship planning and management. Her experience encompasses collegiate event marketing and management, meeting and conference planning and community event sponsorship, marketing and execution. She helps to create and maintain and excellent working relationship among event stakeholders, as in her involvement with Downtown Boulder Incorporated and the City of Boulder while bringing to fruition the Canyon Skatepark Project. She was an integral part of executing the televised ASA Pro Tour event in Boulder, by bringing in sponsors and developing the tented concession areas throughout the duration of this event-supported by Boulder's Convention and Visitors Bureau. Catherine has also worked on promotion and sponsorship projects for Boulder's Fox Theater and was heavily involved with the inaugural year of the Boulder Creek Winterskate event. Catherine attended Indiana State University where she majored in Marketing.