Detroit native Jesse Calcat is a versatile multi-instrumentalist with over 20 years of professional teaching and performance experience across diverse musical settings. Having begun piano lessons at age 4 and strings in high school, Jesse began his college music studies focusing on both piano and viola performance. During his undergraduate studies, he studied viola with Glenn Mellow and Elizabeth Rowin, and piano with Leszek Bartkiewicz, Flavio Varani, and Mary Siciliano, graduating from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan in 2005. While at Oakland University, he was a finalist on both viola and piano for the Oakland University Concerto Competition, and was awarded the MaTilDa Award for Chamber Music in 2005. Jesse went on to earn a Post-Graduate Certificate in Orchestral Studies (Viola) from Wayne State University in Detroit; he studied viola with Detroit Symphony Orchestra members James VanValkenburg and Caroline Coade, and received coachings from DSO members Hai-Xin Wu, Marian Tanau, Marcy Chanteaux, and Larry Hutchinson. While at WSU, Jesse was chosen as a Viola Mentor for the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra. Further graduate studies in viola continued when Jesse was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Florida for viola performance, where he was the violist in multiple graduate chamber ensembles, and studied with Jacksonville Symphony violist Colin Kiely. After his time at UF, Jesse gave in to an ever-growing calling to the cello, an instrument he had studied sporadically on the side since his teenage years. After significant preparation under the tutelage of Michigan Opera Theatre principal cellist, Nadine Deleury, Jesse was accepted to Bowling Green State University (Ohio) in 2013 on full scholarship, where he was also the cellist for the BGSU Graduate String Quartet. Studying with Alan Smith, he earned his Master’s of Music in Cello Performance in 2015.
A proponent of early music and historically-informed performance, Jesse studied viola da gamba and baroque cello with Enid Sutherland in Ann Arbor, and was the recipient of a private scholarship to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music’s Baroque Performance Institute, where he studied viola da gamba with Catharina Meints, and baroque viola with Jane Starkman. During his time at BGSU, he played both baroque cello and viola da gamba in the school’s Early Music Ensemble, and was a featured soloist performing the Porpora Cello Concerto in G Major.
Jesse’s performance credits are numerous, having performed in well over two dozen orchestras throughout the Midwest and Southern United States. He has performed in orchestral first violin, second violin, viola, and cello sections, having functioned as a section player, assistant principal, and principal. As a pianist, Jesse is a versatile and in-demand piano accompanist, having begun professionally accompanying instrumentalists, vocalists, choirs, and ensembles, while still a high school student. He currently is the piano accompanist for Suzuki Music School of Lincoln Park.
Jesse has studied and performed many types of music outside of Western classical music, and had strongly considered a career as an ethnomusicologist. As a teenager, he fell in love with traditional East Asian music, having taught himself the Chinese erhu and guzheng, initially using instruments he built himself. As an undergraduate, he played steel drums, as well as West and Central African traditional music under the tutelage of Mark Stone at Oakland University, and was a member of Bowling Green State Univeristy’s Kusuma Sari Balinese gamelan. Jesse has also been passionate about traditional Celtic music since childhood; he has performed on guitar, fiddle, viola, Celtic harp, guitar, vocals, and accordion in two Celtic bands, one of which he founded.
As a teacher, Jesse has been actively teaching private piano, violin, viola, and cello lessons since 2002, having taught both from his home, as well as in various music studios. He has taught students from the ages of 4 to 74, and focuses on using a custom-tailored approach to each student, based on their strengths, goals, musical and personal backgrounds.
Jesse works during the week as a manager at a downtown Chicago violin shop, and as a church organist and music director on the weekends. He is also a student at the Chicago School of Violin Making, studying the making and repair of violins, violas, and cellos. He is set to graduate the school’s three-year program in 2024. “