Daniel Skidmore and Mary Ann Bills will be performing music for violin and piano in a free concert offered at 3 p.m. Saturday January 24 in the Omwake-Dearborn Chapel at Catawba College.
Skidmore performs regularly as concertmaster of the Salisbury Symphony and as associate concertmaster of the Winston-Salem Symphony. He teaches violin at Catawba College and Piedmont International University and has also served on the music faculties of Wake Forest University, Elon University, and Appalachian State University.
As a soloist, Skidmore has appeared numerous times with the Salisbury Symphony and has also performed concertos with the Winston-Salem Symphony and the North Carolina Symphony. In the summers, he gives violin and chamber music instruction at the Eastern Music Festival and serves as a section violinist in the Eastern Faculty Orchestra. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in violin performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His teachers include Mary Wilson, John Fadial, Blair Milton, and Charles Castleman.
Mary Ann Bills has been an adjunct professor of piano at Wake Forest University since 2001. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Washington State University and a Master of Music degree in Accompanying from the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. In addition to her teaching, Bills works as a staff accompanist at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where she serves as Cantata Singers accompanist as well as music director and pianist for both the undergraduate opera workshop and for the A. J. Fletcher Opera Institute's Educational Outreach Program. She also heads the accompanying staff of Chamber Music on the Hill, an intensive summer chamber music program.
Bills’ teachers have included Loran Olsen, Benton Hess, Andrew Willis, and Peter Kairoff.
Skidmore and Bills met in 2000 at UNCG where they were both graduate students. They enjoyed playing several recitals and other performances, and they are thrilled to be playing together again.
