What began as a casual evening of music-making among three colleagues from the Kettle Moraine Symphony has blossomed into the Fifth Avenue Trio. The trio is named after the Fifth Avenue United Methodist Church in West Bend, WI—rather than New York City’s famous avenue—where the ensemble rehearses and performs. Since their inaugural performance in 2022, they have been dedicated to promoting repertoire for this captivating combination of instruments through their annual concert series and outreach at local schools. The trio features Kimberly Hawkinson on oboe, Andrea Clark on bassoon, and Peter Gibeau on piano.
Andrea Clark earned her Master of Music in Bassoon Performance from UW-Madison in 2007, studying under Marc Vallon. During her time there, she won the inaugural UW-Madison Shane Woodwind and Piano Duet Competition and served as principal bassoonist in both the Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra.
Currently, Andrea is an active freelance musician and performs on bassoon and contrabassoon throughout the greater Milwaukee area. She holds the principal bassoon position with the Kettle Moraine Symphony and plays contrabassoon with several orchestras, including the Festival City Symphony, Wisconsin Philharmonic, Fox Valley Symphony, and Weidner Philharmonic. Additionally, she has performed with the Bel Canto Chorus and was honored to play principal bassoon in Italy with the group last summer. As a chamber musician, Andrea is a founding member of the Fifth Avenue Trio and has collaborated with various chamber groups across Milwaukee.
Kimberly Hawkinson currently holds the position of principal oboe of the Kettle Moraine Symphony and second oboe/english horn of the Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra. An active freelance musician, she has recently performed with the Wisconsin Philharmonic, LaCrosse Symphony, and the Milwaukee Philharmonic.
As a chamber musician, Kimberly is a founding member of the Fifth Avenue Trio and a member of Five’s Company Wind Quintet. She has held principal oboe positions with the Fox Valley Symphony and the Garden State Philharmonic (NJ) where she appeared as soloist performing Aaron Copland’s Quiet City.
Kimberly was born and raised in Green Bay, WI and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Oboe Performance and Chamber Music Performance Certificate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has studied with Wayne Jaekel, Howard Niblock, Paul Kramer, Martin Woltman, Andrea Gross Hixon and Katie Young Steele.
Peter Gibeau started playing piano at the age of four and has been playing ever since. He has a Piano Performance degree from Oberlin and studied Piano Chamber Music for a year at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He has graduate degrees in Early Music Performance, Music Theory, and Choral Conducting and was a professor of music for 32 years at the University of Wisconsin Washington County campus. He taught piano and coached chamber music at Philipps Academy in Andover, Mass. for seventeen summers.
As a recent retiree, Peter has had more time to enjoy non-musical pursuits, such as theater (he played Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman), transcribing German Baroque cantatas from hi-res scans of handwritten manuscripts and uploading them to IMSLP, and,with a group of Germans over Zoom, transcribing documents in Kurrentschrift, the old German cursive script.