History
In 2004, Jade Simmons, a recent graduate of Rice University’s prestigious Shepherd School of Music founded the Impulse Artist Series. After two years of managing her own fledgling concert career, Simmons made a listing of the needs of aspiring concert pianists and decided to found a concert series based on addressing the needs of this unique demographic. Today, The Impulse Artist Series exists to provide performance opportunities and career building assistance to emerging artists who have come to the end of their academic endeavors and are in the midst of embarking on their professional concert careers. Today, Jade Simmons is recognized as one of the leading young artists in her field and uses her expertise to continually cultivate the artistic and educational experience of the featured Impulse Artists.
Since 2004, Impulse has increased its artist honorariums each season, increased its artist benefits and rewards, expanded its reach in the community through school outreach and broadened its mission to provide tangible career building assistance in the form of a career seminar that caters to the specific career needs of the individual artists. In addition to generous honorariums, Impulse Artists receive all-expense paid travel, luxurious accommodations in Houston homes, free promotional materials including, but not limited to, professional audio and video recordings, photography and a press kit made up of all the extensive coverage in Houston press. Due to a partnership with Houston’s KUHF (88.7FM), each artist is featured in interview and performance on the stations popular arts magazine show, The Front Row
This first season featured four pianists all of whom were graduate students in piano performance at both Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music. The Impulse Artist Series prides itself on featuring a diverse selection of artists. The inaugural season included Brazilian pianist Bernardo Scarambone, Bulgarian pianist Vessella Gintcheva, Korean pianist Hyojin Ahn and Italian pianist Calogero DiLiberto. Mr. Scarambone currently teaches piano at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, Mr. DiLiberto is a professor in Sicily, Hyojin Ahn is the resident pianist for the New World Symphony in Florida and Vessella Gintcheva performs duo piano music with her husband, pianist Cameron Smith who was featured in the 2008 Impulse season. Because of the richness of emerging artists in Houston, The Impulse Artist Series is dedicated to featuring those artists and does so by always including one Houston-based artist or artist with strong, recent Houston ties on every season.
2007
February 2007 marked the second season of Impulse which was themed, Year of Les Femmes, and featured four international female pianists as well as an all-female string trio from Austin, Texas named Austin’s Angels. The artists included Iranian-Canadian pianist Neda Nevaee, Korean pianist Clara Shin, Russian pianist Ekaterina Ryndina, American-pianist Jessica Osborne. Austin’s Angels is comprised of Jessica Matheus, violist; Rebecca Browne, violinist; Jou-An Hou, cellist. The season structure changed from quarterly concerts featuring one Impulse artist to a festival format featuring all of the artists in the span of one week.
Prior to the start of the season, Impulse held it’s first benefit concert at the Hobby Center featuring Houston’s most renowned professional pianists. Performers included the world-famous concert pianist Jon Kimura Parker, Houston Symphony pianist Scott Holshouser, Nancy Weems (head of the piano department at University of Houston) and Timothy Hester (University of Houston Professor of Piano), Jane Perkyns (Texas Southern University Professor of Piano) and John Cornelius, acclaimed composer/pianist.
Sponsorships for this second, exciting season came from the Forshey Piano Company and the Winstead Law Firm underwrote the honorariums for two of the Impulse Artists. Our biggest sponsorship, which continues today, came in the form of a venue partnership with Wade Wilson Art. The gallery agreed to serve as Impulse’s main event home for the entirety of the festival. As well, new preview concerts were added in various locales in Houston suburbs, including at The Woodlands United Methodist Church, Sugar Land Methodist Church and Kingwood Presbyterian Church. Local restaurants in the Museum District agreed to sponsorships of artist dinners.
2008
In May of 2008, Impulse held its first ever Kick-Off concert that featured a performance by Impulse Founder Jade Simmons and the announcement of the four Impulse Artists. A live auction was held that consisted of artwork by Jill Moser (the artist highlighted during our first season at Wade Wilson Art) and a private solo recital offered by Jade Simmons. Donations were received at this event and guests received special copies of cd’s from the 2007 season. September of 2008, marked the first Impulse Salon Concert featuring Impulse Founder Jade Simmons at the home of Advisory Board member KC Eynatten. Guests made donations towards artist honorariums and received info about the upcoming September season.
The third season of The Impulse Artists was originally scheduled for September of 2008. Unfortunately, Houston was faced with Hurricane Ike which ultimately hit the city and caused the postponement of the Impulse Season. With its original theme, In Their Own Element, the Impulse season finally took place in December of 2008. due to the date change, the originally scheduled Impulse artist Phyllis Chen was unable to be re-engaged and was replaced on the line-up with series founder Jade Simmons. Other artists included Nigerian pianist, Sodi Braide, Brazilian pianist Vanessa Cunha and American pianist Cameron Smith.
Impulse held its second season at Wade Wilson Art. We operated with the assistance of a few dedicated volunteers but without an elected board of officers. Forshey piano signed on once again as our instrument sponsor and provided not only our main event piano at the gallery but also an off-site piano for our first outreach at Grissom Elementary.
The 2008 season also marked the debut of the Impulse Artist Series Career Seminar at the Hobby Center in downtown Houston. Expert presenters in the areas of creative concert presentation, effective media communication, music promotion and artist development each gave workshops catered to the specific needs of each individual Impulse Artist.
The Impulse Artists each performed in a solo recital, one preview concert in the Woodlands (the original Sugar Land preview concert was unable to be rescheduled), a chamber concert and one outreach concert. The festival concluded with our sunday afternoon Impulse Student concert featuring 10 young student performers from all over Houston.
Of the 2008 Impulse Artists, Sodi Braide has gone on to perform on the prestigious Ravinia Rising Stars series on the recommendation of Impulse founder, Jade Simmons. Mr. Braide continues performances in his resident country of France and often makes tours in the United States. Cameron Smith maintains a busy teaching schedule at DePaul University in Chicago and performs occasionally with orchestra. Vanessa Cunha has completed her graduate studies at the Manhattan School of Music and maintains a teaching studio in New York.
2009 – 2010
In August of 2009, Impulse founder Jade Simmons debuted her innovative performance project Scriabin and Kandinsky: hearing Color, Seeing Sound at Wade Wilson Art as a fundraiser for The Impulse Artist Series. All proceeds from the two night event went towards Impulse expenses.
Impulse is serving as the Fiscal Sponsor for the International Music Academy’s special project the Russian Connection. The Academy’s Director, Ekaterina Ryndina, was a 2007 Impulse Artist. Many of the Academy’s students have been featured on the Impulse Artist Series Student Concert. The Russian Connection program brought 7 Russian music students from the Igumov School in Russia to Houston for performances at the Dowling Music Center and at the Methodist Hospital (February 2010). American students from the International Academy will go to Russian in May of 2010 for special performances and to learn about Russian culture. Impulse has received donations on behalf of the International Music Academy which have all been applied towards travel and other expenses for these students.
