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Chester Englander Professional Development Residency Proposal

Percussionist | Cimbalom Artist | Public Speaker

Meet Ches

Praised by The New Yorke You Need a Cimbalom. (A is a cimbalom virtuoso an who has performed with orchestras and in venues and Carnegie Hall to Skid Jail of Los Angeles.

A frequent collaborator w he has been featured on including Scheherazade.2, Other Mary, and Antony an

ster Englander

er as “The Man to Call When A What?)” Chester Englander nd orchestral percussionist many of the world’s leading s from Vienna’s Musikverein d Row and the Men’s Central

with composer John Adams, cimbalom in major works , The Gospel According to the nd Cleopatra.

Englander has taught for more than 25 years in private studios and at the college level. His former students have gone on to graduate programs at leading conservatories and universities and have joined the New World Symphony, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, the United States Coast Guard Band, and recorded in the Hollywood studios. His career offers students an unusually concrete example of how deep preparation and professional reliability can coexist with curiosity, reinvention, and a willingness to move beyond the path originally imagined.

Introducing The Residency

Video Message Here

Endorsements “Chester has done more to bring the cimbalom to the awareness of American listeners than anyone I know of. His unique combination of superb musicianship and curiosity for new ideas makes him an ideal collaborator for us composers. Over the past decade I have written specifically for him in three of my most ambitious works . . . With his background as an orchestral percussionist, Chester brings a secure rhythmic sense to his playing. If I can think that by writing major parts for him I’ve helped in a small way to flag his talents and the instrument itself to the attention of my other composer friends, that would be a great pleasure. I value both his artistry and his friendship greatly.”

-John Adams,

Composer & Conductor

“Chester is a master of all percussion instruments, but his really special and unique gift to the world is his cimbalom playing. He has brought a new level of facility and virtuosity to the instrument, a new level of tonal color and command that brings cimbalom playing to a whole new level. Having worked with him many, many times with John Adams’s work Scheherazade.2, I can’t imagine a more conscientious colleague who truly loves making music and is also a joy to be around.”

-Leila Josefowicz, Violin Soloist

“Chester’s approach to teaching is holistic. What I thought were going to be percussion lessons ended up being a mentorship in a life in music. What I learned from Chester I was able to flesh out into a meaningful career. I used his percussion knowledge to win auditions for the New World Symphony as well as the United States Marine Band. I have also built a reputable freelance career playing with the likes of the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and the National Symphony Orchestra. Perhaps this area of my life was most affected by Chester’s guidance in preparedness and relationship building. Chester’s multifaceted approach can help any aspiring young professional!”

-Joe Desotelle,

Percussionist, U.S. Marine Band

Professional Developmen Residency A three-day interdisciplinary residency using the evolution of a working musician’s career to help students understand how preparation, curiosity, adaptability, collaboration, and reputation create opportunity.

Chester’s seminar con anyone attempting to music industry and b provide insight and a but professionals at a

Professional Development Taught from the Perspective of a Life in Music

ntains a wealth of information for o break into or sustain a career in the beyond. He is uniquely positioned to advice valuable to not only musicians any level.

-Jonathan Rance Principal Timpani, Washington National Opera Percussion Faculty, George Mason University

The residency combines candid career discussion with performance, coaching, collaboration, and live demonstration. Rather than separating professional development from artistic work, each session shows how professional habits operate in practice—in the rehearsal room, on stage, in an audition, in a collaboration, and at moments when a career changes direction.

Core Ideas Preparation Adaptability Creates Options Expands a Career Technique, discipline, and advance work make it possible to respond when an unexpected opportunity appears.

A professional identity can evolve without abandoning the skills and values on which it was built.

Usefulness Matters

Reput Compo

Listening, collaboration, communication, and solving problems for other people are career skills.

Reliability integrity, consisten and the w professio handles p influence gets calle

The cimbalom is not simply a subject within the residency. It is a living example of t a willingness to evolve can turn an unexpected skill into a defining profe

tation ounds

y, , ncy, way a onal pressure es who ed again.

Who Can Participate Careers Are Built Over Time Success includes setbacks, criticism, anxiety, reinvention, relationships, and the ability to keep growing.

the residency’s central argument: essional advantage.

Music Performance

Composition

Conducting/Ensembles

Music Education

Arts/Humanities/Career Programs

preparation, auditions, rehearsal habits, consistency under pressure, artistic identity

composer-performer collaboration, idiomatic writing, revision, responding to practical constraints

communication, listening, cueing, leadership, balance, timing, professional rehearsal culture

professional ethos, communication, teaching by example, adaptability, sustainable career thinking

transferable lessons in preparation, reinvention, reputation, criticism, networking, professional identity

Day One

REPUTATION

Becoming an Essential Colleague What turns a successful engagement into a sustainable career? The first day focuses on the cumulative choices that determine whether talent becomes a durable career. The emphasis is candid and practical: how professionals behave, communicate, respond to criticism, build relationships, handle pressure, and earn trust over time.

Morning Workshop: Beyond Talent • Developing a personal professional ethos: reliability, preparation, integrity, adaptability • Being useful: solving problems rather than creating them • Networking as genuine professional relationship-building • Receiving and applying criticism without losing confidence • Setbacks, difficult professional situations, and recovery • The long-term value of being someone colleagues trust

Day

Students leave w not image or etique usefulnes

Afternoon

Career Conversation / Individual Coaching Small-group or individual sessions give students space to discuss auditions, graduate school, freelancing, portfolio careers, specialization, uncertainty, and the professional decisions they are beginning to make.

Closing Session Excel in Any Role

A department- or campus-wide seminar connects the residency through one progression:

1 Outcome

with a clearer definition of professionalism: ette but a repeatable pattern of preparation, ss, integrity, adaptability, and trust.

preparation

adaptability

reputation

opportunity

The goal is not to prescribe a single path. It is to give students a durable professional framework they can carry into careers that may develop in ways they cannot yet predict.

Day Two

PREPARATION

Building the Foundation What makes someone ready when an opportunity arrives? Day Two examines the habits that precede opportunity: technical command, preparation, listening, consistency, rehearsal behavior, and the ability to perform under pressure. Applied musical sessions make those principles concrete.

Morning

Applied Coaching / Percussion & Performance • Technical efficiency and facility • Audition and excerpt preparation • Developing consistency under pressure • Listening, balance, and responding to colleagues • Professional rehearsal and performance habits

Day 2 O

Students leave with a concrete opportunity begins long be rehearsal, o

Outcome

e understanding that professional efore the phone call, audition, or performance.

Late Morning

Ensemble Musicianship A practical session on functioning inside an ensemble: following a conductor, matching style and articulation, knowing when to lead and when to support, preparing difficult passages, and arriving ready to contribute.

Afternoon

Workshop: Preparation before Opportunity • The difference between practice, preparation, and performance • Why reliability is an artistic as well as professional quality • How preparation affects confidence and anxiety • What colleagues notice before, during, and after a rehearsal • Becoming the person who can be trusted with difficult work

Evening

Performance / Lecture-Demonstration A public performance that can combine percussion and cimbalom repertoire with brief stories about the professional circumstances surrounding the music, making the careerdevelopment themes visible in performance.

Day Three

EVOLUTION

Expanding the Definition of What You Do What happens when the career you built becomes larger than the career you originally imagined? Day Three uses Englander’s evolution from orchestral percussionist into cimbalom soloist and specialist as the residency’s central case study. Students see that reinvention does not require abandoning an existing identity; it can mean adding capabilities, relationships, and perspectives that make that identity more valuable.

Morning

Cimbalom Demonstration & Career Case Study • How an unfamiliar instrument became a professional specialty • Starting again as a learner after professional training • Recognizing a niche without knowing where it will lead • Developing a new skill to a level colleagues can trust • How specialization and versatility can coexist

Day 3

Students encounter adap professional practice: lea allowing new compe

Late Morning

Cimbalom Masterclass / Hands-On Exploration • Instrument layout, sound, technique, repertoire, and contemporary applications • Efficient movement, articulation, resonance, and color • The relationship between curiosity, technical development, and opportunity

Afternoon

Composer-Performer Collaboration Lab Students bring excerpts, sketches, or works-in-progress. Englander tests ideas, identifies practical issues, demonstrates alternatives, and helps revise material in real time. The session models how careers grow through collaboration: listening carefully, communicating clearly, solving problems, and making another person’s work better.

Outcome

ptability not as an abstract virtue but as a arning, experimenting, collaborating, and etencies to change what is possible.

Evening

Chamber / Ensemble Collaboration

A rehearsal, reading session, or collaborative recital component can connect the day’s themes to live musicmaking and the professional give-and-take of rehearsal.

One Residency, multiple points of entry The residency is designed to live comfortably inside a music department while also supporting broader institutional goals around career readiness, adaptability, communication, collaboration, resilience, and professional identity.

Potential Residency Elements • Applied performance coaching and masterclass • Cimbalom demonstration and hands-on exploration • Ensemble/conducting collaboration • Composition workshop and live reading session

• Professional-development workshop • Individual or small-group career coaching • Public recital or lecture-demonstration • Campus-wide conversation on professional identity and adaptability

Suggested time Allocation 35%

Professional development, career evolution, reputation, and professional ethos

30%

Performance, technique, and applied coaching

20%

Collaboration, ensemble work, and communication

composition, and creative 15% Cimbalom, exploration

Chester’s class inspired our students to consider the challenges they will soon face in their careers and gave them real world examples of how to understand, approach and eventually overcome these obstacles. After the class, numerous students let me know how helpful this was to their thinking and preparation about their professional development. -John Spirtas Principal Percussion, Washington National Opera Percussion Faculty, George Mason University

Possible Campus Partners music • arts & humanities •

career services • honors programs • entrepreneurship • leadership programs • student success • general education

Residency Investment

$2,000 | Professionalism Seminar

One day of instruction in professionalism and career coaching, designed for students of any discipline, including workshops, individual or small group career coaching, and a department- or campus-wide seminar that ties each lesson into enduring principles applicable to all professionals.

$5,000 | Full Residency

The residency fee covers three consecutive days of instructional and performance engagement, including workshops, masterclasses, coaching, classroom participation, collaborative sessions, and an optional public guest-artist component. Travel and lodging are additional and arranged or reimbursed by the host institution at actual cost. Any special equipment, production, or transportation requirements are coordinated in advance.

Typical Host Requirements • Appropriate classroom, rehearsal, and performance spaces • Percussion equipment appropriate to planned sessions • Cimbalom rental, setup, and transportation coordinated in advance • Student scores, excerpts, or works-in-progress submitted in advance when applicable • Institutional coordination for scheduling, publicity, and student participation

“

Englander . . . is a big name in a small world. It is estimated that there are fewer than twenty professional cimbalom players in the United States; Englander could think of only five (including himself) who play in orchestras. The modern cimbalom, which is basically a jumbo hammered dulcimer, was created in 1874, in Budapest, which is where the world’s best cimbaloms are still made. No conservatory in America offers formal study; either you learn from a Hungarian or you teach yourself.

“

Englander took the latter path—a herculean feat.

-excerpt from The New Yorker

“What Is Professionalism?” by Chester Englander

Published in the Journal of Performing Arts Leadership in Higher Education

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