Classical Concert at Odd Fellows Hall

This concert presented by the Wallowa Valley Music Alliance features music for violin and piano and “four-hands” compositions for piano. Performers on that program will be Boise pianists James Cook and Ruth Cook and violinist Lisa Robertson of Enterprise. 

Ruth Cook began her piano training at age 5 in Walla Walla Washington. At age 12 she began studying organ with Dr. Stanley Plummer at Whitman College. When her father took a call to Chehalis, Washington, later that year she continued her organ study with Kenneth Wahlstrom through her junior and senior high school years. After high school she continued her organ studies at Western Washington State College for one year after which she was married and moved with her husband to Hazelton, Idaho where they raised five children together. She moved to Boise, Idaho, to continue her studies at Boise State University where she earned a BA in organ performance. She served as organist and choir director at numerous churches in Boise as well as teaching piano for many years. She met her husband, Jim Cook, in 1992 and they were married in 1994. Together they served in church ministry for several years. When they moved to Revel Independent Living in Eagle, ID, they began playing four-hand piano together. 
 
Dr. James Cook graduated from high school in Walla Walla and has an undergraduate degree from Whitman College. His master’s degree and doctorate in piano performance are from the Juilliard School and the University of Southern California. He traveled and performed in Europe for several years, returning to teach piano and direct music programs at Willamette University, the University of Wyoming, and Boise State University. Dr. Cook has become an expert in the music of the eighteenth century, studying the repertoire and the performance practices of the music, and performing the music on the harpsichord and clavichord. He also has a large repertoire of romantic and contemporary music. Dr. Cook performed the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 in C with the Oregon East Symphony Orchestra in 2017.
 
Lisa Robertson holds a master’s degree in violin performance from the University of Iowa, a doctorate from Florida State University, and did additional studies in Switzerland at the Zurich Conservatory and the Institute of Higher Musical Studies in Montreux. Lisa has taught violin at Florida State University, the Peter-Cornelius-Conservatory of Mainz (Germany), the University of Iowa, Walla Walla University, Eastern Oregon University, the Viennese Musical Institute of KwangJu (Korea), and in the Playing for Keeps program sponsored by the Oregon East Symphony. Dr. Robertson was a member of professional orchestras and chamber ensembles in Europe for fifteen years. She is concertmaster of the Oregon East Symphony, past concertmaster of the Grande Ronde and Walla Walla symphonies, a member of the Siletz Bay Music Festival Orchestra, and serves on the board of the Oregon Chapter of the American String Teachers Association. Lisa is a resident of Enterprise.