ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Charlotte Marckx

Violinist Charlotte Marckx was a 2019 Davidson Fellowship Laureate and is a Jack Kent Cooke College Scholar. She won the Gold Medal and Bach Prize at the 2018 Stulberg International Competition, and was a major prizewinner at the 2023 ArsClassica Competition and the 2018 Johansen International Competition. Charlotte has soloed with many orchestras, including the Seattle Symphony, Burbank Symphony, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Colburn Orchestra, and the Kalamazoo Symphony, and has performed with the Seattle Chamber Music Society, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and Colburn Chamber Music Society. Charlotte, originally from the Seattle area, has won the KING FM Young Artists Awards and the Seattle Young Artists Music Festival among other honors. She has been featured on NPR’s From the Top and in Strings Magazine. Marckx is a student at the Colburn Conservatory, where she studies with renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett. Highlights of her upcoming season include appearances with the Pasadena, Port Angeles, and Reno Symphonies.

Olivia Marckx

Cellist Olivia Marckx was a top prizewinner at the 2022 Coeur d’Alene National Young Artists Competition. She has been featured on NPR’s From the Top radio program and in Strings Magazine. Since her orchestral debut at age 11, she has soloed with several orchestras, including the Seattle Symphony, Colburn Orchestra, Cascade Symphony, Port Angeles Symphony, and San Fernando Valley Symphony. An avid chamber musician, Olivia has performed with the Seattle Chamber Music Society, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and Colburn Chamber Music Society, and has collaborated with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Jon Kimura Parker, Chee Yun Kim, Noah Bendix-Balgley, and Time For Three. Marckx won the Seattle Young Artists Music Festival and the KING FM Young Artist Awards. She was a YoungArts winner, received a Jack Kent Cooke Young Artists Scholarship, and is an alumnus of the Perlman Chamber Music Program and the Aspen Music Festival. Marckx is an orchestration student of GRAMMY® nominee Tim Simonec, and a recent graduate of the Colburn Conservatory where she studied with Clive Greensmith. She will begin her DMA program at USC’s Thornton School of Music this fall.

Rich Capparela

In 1972, an employment counselor asked Rich Capparela, “If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?” Without hesitation he replied, “A classical music radio announcer!” Today Capparela is one of the best-known classical music radio personalities in the United States. He is currently a senior announcer/producer at KUSC-FM in Los Angeles. His recording company, Cardiff Studios, produces commercials and programming for U.S. arts organizations, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Kansas City Symphony.

He’s appeared as narrator at Carnegie Hall in music by Benjamin Britten and has performed in Southern California with the Boston Pops and conductor Keith Lockhart, narrating The Night Before Christmas. In 2009, he began an association with the Metropolitan Opera when he hosted the Met’s prestigious Western Regional Finals competition. Since 1995, Capparela has hosted live radio broadcast concerts by Pacific Symphony.

In Dec. 2001 as part of Los Angeles Music Week, Capparela was honored in chamber by the Los Angeles City Council for his contributions to the city’s music community. In 2002, Capparela provided program notes for the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet’s GRAMMY®-nominated album “LAGQ: Latin.” Rich continued his association with the GRAMMYs® in Feb. 2004 when he presented the year’s classical GRAMMYs® in Los Angeles. In Jan. 2010, Capparela hosted the GRAMMY® Salute to Classical Music honoring Placido Domingo.

He is active as a lead singer and guitarist with a four-piece cover rock band, Otherwise Normal. Capparela and his wife Marcia, a private school administrator, live in Santa Monica.