Beethoven Tribute: Part I
January 30th, 2027
7:30 PM
​
Christ United Methodist Church

Featuring
Horacio Nuguid, pianist
Helen Chang Haertzen, violinist
Greg Milliren, flutist
J. Christopher Marshall, bassoonist
​​
Program

To Be Announced
Year 2027, as the world commemorates the 200th death anniversary of Beethoven, RCMS is offering two concerts this season devoted to selected chamber music of this arguably the greatest composer of all time! The first program features Minnesota Orchestra members with Horacio Nuguid playing the Kreutzer Sonata for piano and violin and the seldomly performed Trio for Piano, Flute, and Bassoon.

Horacio Nuguid

Filipino-American pianist Horacio Nuguid holds degrees in piano performance from the University of Santo Tomas (Manila), the University of Northern Iowa, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In addition to presenting solo recitals, Dr. Nuguid has performed with orchestras in the Philippines, Mexico, and the United States. He also collaborates regularly with distinguished singers and instrumentalists as founder, pianist, and artistic director of the Rochester Chamber Music Society.
Dr. Nuguid is the recipient of Rochester’s Ardee Award for Outstanding Artist. As a music educator, he has presented master classes internationally and has served as an adjudicator for piano competitions in the United States, the Philippines, and South Korea. He has been a member of the artist faculty of the Young Artist World Piano Festival in Minnesota for more than twenty years and has taught as a guest artist at the Philippine High School for the Arts. His pioneering anthology, Philippine Piano Pieces, has been widely acclaimed for its scholarly editions of works by Filipino composers.
Dr. Nuguid currently teaches piano privately with his wife, Rosanna, in Rochester. He also serves as Co-Artistic Director of the Bethel University Summer Piano Academy and as a faculty member and juror at the Asian International Piano Academy and
Festival in South Korea.

Helen Chang Haertzen

​Helen Chang Haertzen joined the Minnesota Orchestra’s first violin section in 2003. In 2006 she appeared as soloist in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Orchestra under Andrew Litton’s direction. She has performed often at the Orchestra's Chamber Music concerts. 

Haertzen, who formerly was associate and principal second violin of the Bamberg Symphony in Germany, has toured with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and played with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She also served on the faculty of Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, teaching orchestral training and chamber music to international students. As soloist, Haertzen has
performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Esplanade and Junge Philharmonie Erlangen, and with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig. In 2024, she made her Ravinia debut as guest artist with the Rodney Marsalis Philadelphia Big Brass.  

Growing up in the Boston area, Haertzen studied under Bo Youp Hwang and Roman Totenberg. She attended Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, the Salzburg Mozarteum and the San Francisco Conservatory. Her principal teachers also included Szymon Goldberg, Felix Galimir, Ruggiero Ricci and Camilla Wicks. Haertzen was a prizewinner of the Karol Lipinski-Wieniawski
Competition in Poland. In 2017, the Minnesota State Arts Board awarded her the Artist Initiative Grant.

Haertzen was a longtime member of the Isles Ensemble and has performed as a guest artist with  the Walden Chamber Players and the Bamberg String Quartet. She has taken part in innovative collaborations with dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and collaborated with the Boston Ballet in a performance of Vaughan Williams’ The
Lark Ascending. In Boston, she has appeared at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Goethe Institute. She played the Jascha Heifetz "David" 1742 Guarneri del Gesù violin in recital at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor and has appeared as a recitalist throughout Europe. In 2005 Cavalli Records released Haertzen’s recording of the Bach Partitas for Solo Violin, which drew critical acclaim from the American Record Guide. She has also produced and played on American Avenues, a medley of American classics for Centaur Records.  

​In addition to performing, she enjoys teaching. Her students have gone on to study at top conservatories and music festivals, and to win orchestra positions.

Greg Milliren

​Greg Milliren joined the Minnesota Orchestra as associate principal flute in 2009. He has performed as guest principal flute with the Dallas Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Seattle Symphony. Additionally, he has performed with the major orchestras of Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, National, Colorado and Jacksonville. He
performed with the Russian National Orchestra during their tour to Minnesota, with the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, and the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston. He regularly plays flute and piccolo with the Lakes Area Music Festival in Brainerd and has also played with the Arizona Music Festival.

Milliren has performed on the Orchestra’s chamber music series many times and with chamber music groups across the Twin Cities. He has also played at the Music in the Vineyards chamber music festival in Napa, California. While based in Los Angeles, he was a producer and performer for numerous concerts with The Definiens Project, a group which brought fun and inventive contemporary chamber music to diverse audiences in relaxed and accessible settings. He performed Christopher Rouse’s Flute Concerto in 2012 with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra and has been a featured soloist with several other community orchestras in the Twin Cities.

As an educator, Milliren is in demand locally and nationally as a teacher and audition coach. He has given performances and masterclasses at the University of Southern California, the Colburn School, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Idyllwild Arts Academy, St. Olaf College, Iowa State University, the University of Wisconsin Madison, the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Duluth, and the MacPhail Center for Music. His students have won local competitions and have gone on to their own careers in music. He has performed many times for pre-school and kindergarten audiences at Friends of the Minnesota Orchestra's Kinder Konzerts series. He is also a frequent volunteer with the Minnesota Orchestra’s many internal working committees.

Growing up in the Milwaukee area, Milliren began studying piano as a six-year-old and picked up the flute at age 10. His experiences with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony nurtured a love of symphonic music and set him on the path to music as a profession. He first performed with the Minnesota Orchestra as a substitute musician while earning his undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota. He subsequently completed a master’s degree at the University of Southern California, not realizing at the time he would end up back in Minnesota a few years later. He credits his many music teachers, mentors and parents for helping him succeed. Milliren and his husband live in St. Louis Park with their rescue pit bull, Sadie.

J. Christopher Marshall

​Texas native J. Christopher Marshall, a member of the Minnesota Orchestra since 1999, earned his master’s degree in bassoon performance at the New England Conservatory of Music. He holds two undergraduate degrees from Northwestern University, one in bassoon performance and the other in mechanical engineering. Before joining the Minnesota Orchestra, Marshall was a
member of Florida’s New World Symphony, the Rhode Island Philharmonic and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

Marshall has appeared as a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra in performances of Dietter’s Concerto for Two Bassoons in 2008, reprising the work in subsequent seasons. An active chamber musician, he also performs regularly on the Minnesota Orchestra’s Chamber Music series offerings. He has performed as a soloist with the Bloomington and Mankato symphonies,
and has appeared with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Symphony and Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony. He has participated in numerous music festivals, including Tanglewood, Pacific and Spoleto.

​As a clinician, he has led master classes and sectionals for many universities as well as community and youth orchestras; since 2022, he has served on the faculty of the University of Minnesota’s School of Music. Marshall was a recipient of a McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians in 2009. An avid Dallas Cowboys fan and triathlete, he lives in Plymouth with his wife Kari, the Minnesota Orchestra’s Director of Artistic Planning, and their sons Robert and Jonathan.
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