Faculty & Instructors
Heidi Lehwalder has performed as a guest artist with more than 65 orchestras throughout the United States and Canada, including the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as with the symphonies of Phoenix, Buffalo, Louisville, Wichita, Savanna, Syracuse, and Honolulu.
She has made 55 appearances with the Seattle Symphony and has collaborated with conductors Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado, Erich Leinsdorf, Arthur Fiedler, Gerard Schwarz, Lucas Foss, Andre Kostelanetz, Dennis Russell Davies, and Charles Dutoit. Her recent performances include a 10-city tour with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and two performances during their 2006-07 season at Alice Tully Hall in New York City.
An esteemed chamber musician, Lehwalder has performed in numerous concerts with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1972 to the present. She has participated in the Mostly Mozart, Caramoor, Santa Fe, and Spoleto Festivals. Lehwalder is the only harpist ever to be invited to tour with Rudolf Serkin’s famed Music from Marlboro. During summer 1987, she served as Professor of Harp in Korea’s First International Chamber Music Festival. As a member of the Orpheus Trio, she toured for eight years throughout North America and Europe with flutist Paula Robison and violist Scott Nickrenz. She has also toured extensively with flutist Carol Wincenc.
Lehwalder is the inspiration for numerous harp concerti, both written for and dedicated to her, including Jose Serebrier’s Colores Magicos, Roberto Camano’s Concerto for Harp, and Michael Colgrass’ Auras, as well as Sheila Silver’s From Darkness Emerging for harp and string quintet.
As a recording artist, Lehwalder has recorded for RCA, RCA Red Seal, CRI, Nonesuch, and Vanguard. Her collaborations include recordings with the Orpheus Trio, The Philadelphia Singers, Benedita Valente, Maureen Forrester, James Galway, Richard Stolzman, and the Tokyo String Quartet.
She has appeared on national television on the Firestone Hour, Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, NBC’s Today Show, CBS Cable with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and PBS, both in joint recital with the Annapolis Brass Quintet and during the 1998-99 season as part of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Star-Studded 30th Anniversary Gala.
Lehwalder is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Fredericksburg Festival of the Arts, which has been nationally broadcast on NPR for 17 of the last 19 seasons. She also has served as Artistic Director of Belle Arte Concerts in Seattle and as Artistic Administrator of the Seattle International Music Festival. Lehwalder was Professor of Harp at the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia from 2003 to 2006.
She is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant, and has the distinction of being the first recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize. (Session 1)
Karen Gottlieb has been critically acclaimed as “an artist who has something extra – the flair, the confidence that makes a mere musician into a star performer.”
Since 1985, Ms. Gottlieb has performed as second harpist with the San Francisco Symphony and as a member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (since 1990) Ms. Gottlieb has recorded regularly with the Grammy Award Winning San Francisco Symphony and toured extensively on the Symphony’s European, Asian and National Tours, appearing at many of the major music festivals of Europe including Lucerne, Salzburg, the London Proms & Edinburgh. In 1983 she soloed with the San Francisco Boys Chorus on their concert tour of Australia and New Zealand. In addition she served as principal harpist with the California Symphony for 20 years (1988-2008) and the Cabrillo Music Festival. She has appeared and performed regularly with the San Francisco Opera and Ballet orchestras, The Kirov Ballet Orchestra-1995 USA Tour, The Russian National Orchestra 2010 USA Tour and many of the Broadway Touring companies. She has accompanied the leading pop & contemporary singers, The Pacific BoyChoir, San Francisco Girls Chorus & the SF Symphony Chorus and recorded many of the major movie and TV soundtracks with Skywalker Symphony Orchestra. Since 1992 she has been a member of the San Francisco Symphony-”Adventures in Music” program with many different groups- the flute, harp & viola/cello trio Silver & Gold, Plus, the flute, voice, harp and bass quartet 4 Sounds, Strings & Things and The Harp, Accordion & Tuba trio-THAT! Group; educating thousands of children in the San Francisco public school system. She has also performed with Music at Kohl Mansion for the Burlingame/San Mateo Public Schools for the past 15 years in flute and harp or tuba and harp duets.
Ms. Gottlieb received her Bachelors degree from the University of Washington in Seattle, and her Masters in Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music. She is currently on the faculty of San Francisco State University and Mills College and she teaches privately. She is also the San Francisco Bay Area service technician for Lyon & Healy and Salvi Harps of Chicago. (Session 1)