Instrument: Piano
Originally from: Lubbock, TX
Now reside in: Houston
Age: 44
Birthday: November 25 – Go Sagittarius
How did you get started? My parents had friends that owned a piano. Whenever they would visit I wandered into the other room and began to teach myself. Eventually my parents bought an upright piano for $75 and I started taking lessons when I was 10.
What do you do when you’re not playing with ROCO? I perform with DIVAS World, a Houston-based organization dedicated to philanthropy through music. I also do quite a bit of photography work and recently completed a coffee table book about yacht building.
What did you do this summer? I was in Maine with the DIVAS group performing concerts in July, then I went to a Buddhist meditation retreat near Santa Cruz, CA for a week in August.
Interests outside music: Photography, meditation and Hefeweizen
Links: www.DivasWorld.org
Education:
Mannes College of Music, BM and MM
Pianist Rodney Waters is a core artist of DIVAS World Productions, an organization dedicated to philanthropy through music. DIVAS stands for Dedicated Innovative Variety Artists of Service. He has performed with the Houston Symphony, Musiqa, St. Cecilia Friends of Music, Da Camera, River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and in venues including Carnegie Hall (New York), Orchestra Hall (Detroit), and Asahi Recital Hall (Tokyo). In 2003 Naxos released his recording with Curt Thompson of the complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Charles Ives to outstanding reviews from The New York Times, Gramophone Magazine and Strad Magazine.
An advocate for the use of art in service of social causes, his work with refugees resettled by Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston resulted in the CD Seeking Refuge, which combines music, poetry, and photography to raise both money and awareness for refugees in the United States. For three years he was the Artistic Director of the Mukuru “Arts for AIDS” Series, a program of AIDS Foundation Houston that raised funds for HIV prevention programs in the Houston area. A native of Lubbock, Texas, Rodney earned his Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees from the Mannes College of Music in New York, where he studied chamber music with Felix Galimir and piano with Leon Pommers and Richard Goode.
