BAHLEST EEBLE FACULTY
2019-2020

Sasha Callahan, violin

Violinist Sasha Callahan has established a vibrant and diverse career as recitalist, chamber and orchestral musician. She has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan and is a founding member of Sheffield Chamber Players and the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival. Chamber music has been one of Sasha’s great loves since she played her first string quartets with her sister Eve and their grandparents. She’s especially interested in projects that make classical music approachable by forging connection and community between audience and performers.

The Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, Sheffield Chamber Players, and the educational string trio All Ears were each formed with this in mind. Sasha is committed to sharing new music with audiences, and has worked closely with many composers such as Joan Tower, Gabriela Lena Frank, Nathaniel Stookey, Andrew Waggoner, Osvaldo Golijov, Jakov Jakoulov, Andrew List, Daniel Wohl, Theodore Antoniou, Kenji Bunch, Lukas Foss, and Gunther Schuller.

Recent highlights include a sold out run as concertmaster for the American Repertory Theater’s revival of Porgy and Bess, performances as soloist on concertos by Bach, Brahms, and Philip Glass, and a solo Bach performance at the National Cathedral (D.C.). As an active chamber musician, Sasha can often be heard playing duos with her husband, cellist Leo Eguchi, as well as performances with groups such as the Aurea Ensemble, Walden Chamber Players, the Corigliano Quartet, the Lunaire Quartet, Trio Veritas, and ALEA III, and frequent chamber performances at the New Hampshire Music Festival (even on the occasional mountain top). 

Sasha can also be heard as a member of the Portland (Maine) Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and New Hampshire Music Festival, as well as with the Boston Pops, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Lyric Opera, Odyssey Opera, Emmanuel Music and the Boston Ballet Orchestra. A native of Portland, Oregon, Sasha received her BM degree in violin performance from Rice University and MM from Boston University. Principal teachers include Lucia Lin, Sergiu Luca, Denes Zsigmondy, and Carol Sindell. She currently resides in Boston with her husband Leo Eguchi, daughter Freya, and two rather sedentary cats named Max and Katya.

Leo Eguchi, cello

Boston-based cellist Leo Eguchi, has been described as “copiously skilled and confident” (New York Times) with performances that were "ravishing" (New Bedford Standard-Times) and "played with passion and vitality" (Boston Music Intellegencer).

A native of Michigan, Leo has performed extensively across North America, Europe and Asia.  He enjoys an active and multi-faceted performance schedule – Leo can be heard in myriad chamber music settings, including the Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival (an innovative summer festival in Oregon Wine Country, which pairs wine and chamber music) and Sheffield Chamber Players; in larger ensembles as principal cellist of the New Bedford Symphony, a member of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the New Hampshire Music Festival and the Portland Symphony; and in frequent appearances with the Boston Pops and Boston Ballet.  

A strong advocate of new music, Leo has premiered dozens of pieces by, and worked closely with, many notable composers including William Bolcom, Bright Sheng, George Crumb, Lukas Foss, Joan Tower, Ken Ueno, Yehudi Wyner, Marti Epstein, Nathaniel Stookey, Gabriela Lena Frank, Evan Ziporyn, Ketty Nez, Michael Daugherty, and Kati Agocs.

Recent performing highlights include several Grammy nominated recording releases from Parma recordings on Navona Records, several concerto appearances, an artist residency and solo performances in Kabul, Afghanistan, and opportunities to share the non-classical stage with the likes of Pete Townshend, Melissa Etheridge, Demi Lovato, Brian Wilson, Kelly Clarkson, C-3P0, Peter Gabriel, Billy Idol, Jennifer Hudson, Nick Jonas, Josh Groban, and Audra McDonald, to name a few.

Degrees include BM (Cello Performance) and BS (Physics) cum laude from the University of Michigan, and MM (cello performance) from Boston University, where he received the String Department Award for Excellence.  Leo, along with violinist wife Sasha Callahan and cat-obsessed daughter Freya, live in Boston and spend their non-musical time free time appreciating the outdoors, food and wine.  Leo has tasted enough obscure wine grapes to earn a Doppel membership in The Wine Century Club.

Haruka Fujii, percussion

Multi-percussionist Haruka Fujii has become one of the most prominent solo percussionists and marimbists of her generation. She has won international acclaim for her interpretations of contemporary music, having performed premieres of works from composers including Tan Dun, Nico Muhly, Vijay Iyer, Joji Yuasa, and Maki Ishii. Since 2010 Ms. Fujii has performed as a member of the Grammy Award winning Silk Road Ensemble, joining a group of international musicians founded by Yo-Yo Ma. She has frequently collaborated with composer Tan Dun, performing his Water Percussion Concerto, Paper Percussion Concerto, and opera Tea in major venues across the world

Ms. Fujii’s passion for introducing audiences to new percussion music has put her on stage with diverse orchestras and ensembles. She has appeared as a soloist with the Munich Philharmonic, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Nationale de Lyon, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. She is a member of Flexible Music  and the Line C3 Percussion Group and two New York based ensembles and also Utari Percussion Duo, a duet project with her sister Rika which actively commission new compositions from young composers. Her world premiere recordings can be found on the SONY, Kosei, ALM Records, and Deutsche Grammophon labels. In addition to her career as a performing artist Ms. Fujii directed the percussion department at the University of Connecticut from 2009-2011, and has been a frequent guest instructor at Juilliard Summer Percussion Seminar and several international percussion festivals.

Born in Saitama, Japan, Ms. Fujii began her musical studies on the piano at the age of three. Influenced by her mother, noted marimbist Mutsuko Fujii, she developed interest in percussion instruments. She studied music at the Tokyo National University, the Juilliard School, and the Mannes College of Music.

Chris Froh, percussion

Percussionist Christopher Froh specializes in promoting and influencing the creation of new music through critically-acclaimed performances and dynamic lectures. A member of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Empyrean Ensemble, Rootstock Percussion, and San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Froh has premiered over 100 chamber and solo works by composers from 15 countries. He is known for his energized performances which have been hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “tremendous” and San Francisco Classical Voice as “mesmerizing. As a soloist, he has appeared at festivals and recitals across Japan, China, Turkey, Europe, and the United States including the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center. He has recorded, to critical acclaim, with the San Francisco Symphony on SFS Media; as a soloist on Albany, Bridge, Innova, and Equilibrium labels; and as a chamber musician on Music@Menlo LIVE. He frequently tours Japan with marimbist Mayumi Hama and with his former teacher, famed marimba pioneer Keiko Abe.

Active in music for theatre and dance, Froh has recorded scores for American Conservatory Theater, performed as a soloist with the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and composed original music for Oakland-based Dance Elixir. His score for the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s exhibition of Thoreau’s Walden: A Journey in Photography has toured the United States.

Currently, Chris teaches percussion at the University of California at Davis and CSU Sacramento.

Michi Wiancko, violin

Michi Wiancko is an internationally-acclaimed and multi-dimensional composer, violinist, and collaborator. Strad Magazine described her music as “intriguing and exquisitely beautiful…music that breaks through the pop classical barrier.”

Michi gave her violin solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed her recital debut in Carnegie’s Weill Hall, and released a solo album of works by Émile Sauret on Naxos. Michi holds a B.Mus. in performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Master’s degree from Juilliard, where she studied with the Donald Weilerstein and the late Robert Mann, respectively.

Valued for her dedication as a collaborator, Michi has worked closely with musicians across a vast musical spectrum: Missy Mazzoli, Steve Reich, Silk Road Ensemble and Yo-Yo Ma, Wye Oak and Jenn Wasner, Emily Wells, Laurie Anderson, William Brittelle, Daniel Wohl, Emanuel Ax, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Vijay Iyer, International Contemporary Ensemble, The Knights, A Far Cry, to name a few. She has also toured several times with Musicians from Marlboro, and is a co-founder of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra.

Michi’s compositions and arrangements have been performed by orchestras, ensembles, and bands throughout the country and around the world. She has been commissioned by the Ecstatic Music Festival, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The SPCO’s Liquid Music series, Enso Quartet, Sybarite5, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, violinist Mark Fewer, NOW Ensemble, and also composes music for film, commercial, and for her own band, Kono Michi.

Michi’s work has been performed by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Arkansas Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Harvard Chamber Orchestra, Burlington Chamber Orchestra, Boston Conservatory Orchestra, and The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, as well as by youth orchestras in Australia and Colombia.

A native of California, Michi lives in Gill, a small farming community in western Massachusetts, where she and her husband, composer Judd Greenstein, run Antenna Cloud Farm, a music festival and artistic retreat on their 100 acre hilltop home.

Melissa Reardon, viola

Melissa Reardon is the violist in the Grammy-nominated Enso String Quartet. Lauded by Classical Voice for her “elegant” and “virtuosic” performances, the Massachusetts-born musician won first prize at the Washington International Competition, and is the only violist to win top prizes in consecutive HAMS International viola competitions, as well the Tourjee Award in 2002. Solo engagements have included performances at the Stevens Center, Kennedy Center, Symphony Hall, and Jordan Hall. She has performed as a soloist with Camerata Notturna and the Boston Symphony. In 2006, she was chosen as one of four violists internationally to participate in “Chamber Music Connects the World,” in Kronberg, Germany, alongside Gidon Kremer and Yuri Bashmet.

Melissa is also a founding member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), and is a sought-after collaborative musician. She has performed with the Miami, Miro, Daedalus, and Borromeo Quartets, and with members of the Guarneri, Mendelssohn, Brentano, St. Lawrence, and Shanghai Quartets, and the Beaux Arts Trio. Melissa has appeared in numerous festivals across the United States, Europe, India, and Korea. She has toured with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and with Musicians from Marlboro.

Melissa holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and the New England Conservatory. Her principal teachers include Kim Kashkashian, Michael Tree, Joseph dePasquale, Karen Tuttle, Samuel Rhodes, and Hsin-Yun Huang, in addition to early chamber music studies with Eugene Lehner. Melissa held the position of Assistant Professor of Viola at East Carolina University From 2006-2013. She is married to the cellist Raman Ramakrishnan.

Melissa: The event that made me want to devote my life to music occurred when I was twelve years old. I was at a summer music camp in Massachusetts, and I was listening to a student group perform the first movement of the Dvorak Piano Quintet. I had never heard the work before, and I was mesmerized. I remember getting chills during the performance. The beautiful, soaring melodies in that piece were so exhilarating, I remember thinking, “This is it! I want to do this for the rest of my life!” The excitement I felt at that moment has never left me. I feel very fortunate that I have been able to make a profession of the thing I love most. Playing music may be one of the most rewarding jobs in the world, and I am grateful to have the opportunity in each performance to share my excitement with others.

Raman Ramakrishnan, cello

Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan is a member of the Horszowski Trio with violinist

Jesse Mills and pianist Rieko Aizawa. The New Yorker has called the trio "the most compelling American group to come on the scene." They perform across the United States, and they will return to Asia for another tour in the Fall of 2018, and they will make their European debut in 2019, including a performance at London's Wigmore Hall.  

As a former founding member of the Daedalus Quartet, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan won the grand prize at the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition. With the quartet, he has performed coast-to-coast in the United States and Canada, in Japan, Hong Kong, and Panama, and across Europe. The quartet has been in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. 

Mr. Ramakrishnan has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., and has performed chamber music at the Aspen, Caramoor, Charlottesville, Four Seasons, Lincolnshire (UK), Marlboro, Mehli Mehta (India), Oklahoma Mozart, and Vail Music Festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro, is a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has collaborated with musicians from the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra and performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt.

Mr. Ramakrishnan was born in Athens, Ohio and grew up in East Patchogue, New York. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a Master’s degree in music from The Juilliard School.  His principal teachers have been Fred Sherry, Andrés Díaz, and André Emelianoff. He is on the faculty at Bard College.

Jessica Rivera, soprano

Possessing a voice praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for its “effortless precision and tonal luster,” Grammy Award-winning soprano Jessica Rivera is one of the most creatively inspired vocal artists before the public today. The intelligence, dimension and spirituality with which she infuses her performances on great international concert and opera stages has garnered Ms. Rivera unique artistic collaborations with many of today’s most celebrated composers, including John Adams, Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jonathan Leshnoff and Nico Muhly, and has brought her together with such esteemed conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Bernard Haitink and Michael Tilson Thomas.

During the 2017-2018 season, Ms. Rivera travels extensively throughout North and South America to perform a vast range of concert repertoire with leading international orchestras. A proponent of Latin American culture and music, Ms. Rivera’s season begins at the Grant Park Festival with Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, followed by a performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with Colombia’s Orchestra Filarmónica de Bogotá led by Juan Felipe Molano. A seasoned performer of sacred and secular oratorio, Ms. Rivera performs the Mozart Requiem with the San Diego Symphony under the baton of Markus Stenz and with Roberto Abbado leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, as well as the lush Brahms Requiemwith the Kansas City Symphony, the Mozart orchestration of Handel’s Messiah with Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Poulenc’s Gloriawith the Fresno Philharmonic, Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with the Butler Philharmonic and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Grand Rapids Symphony. Ms. Rivera has long championed contemporary vocal music, and this season she appears at the Ford Theater in association with LA Opera to reprise her performance of Paola Prestini’s multidisciplinary The Hubble Cantata, which she premiered at the BRIC Festival in Brooklyn in August 2016 with acclaimed baritone Nathan Gunn. She also sings Salonen’s Five Images After Sappho for her debut with the Colorado Symphony. Additionally, she joins in the celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial at the Celebrity Series of Boston with a broadcast of Rob Kapilow’s What Makes It Great radio program, and performs Bernstein’s Wonderful Town with the Seattle Symphony.

In 2017, Ms. Rivera gave the world premiere of Gabriela Lena Frank’s Requiem with baritone Andrew Garland and the Houston Symphony and Chorus, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. The artist also performed John Harbison’s Requiem with the Nashville Symphony and Chorus under Giancarlo Guerrero, which was recorded for future release on the Naxos label. Ms. Rivera treasures a long-standing collaboration spanning over a decade with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and was recently featured as soprano soloist in Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem and Jonathan Leshnoff’s Zohar with the ASO and Chorus at Carnegie Hall; additionally, she joined Spano on Christopher Theofanidis’s Creation/Creator in Atlanta and at the Kennedy Center’s 2017 SHIFT Festival of American Orchestras, where she also performed Robert Spano’s Hölderlin Lieder, a song cycle written specifically for her and recorded on the ASO Media label. Recent orchestral highlights include Mozart’s Requiem with the Calgary Philharmonic under Roberto Minczuk, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with Karina Canellakis and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Strauss’s Orchesterlieder with Johannes Stert and the Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Falla’s Siete Canciones Populares with Nicholas Carter and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with Franz Welser-Möst in Ms. Rivera’s debut with the Cleveland Orchestra. During the summer of 2017, Ms. Rivera returned to Cincinnati Opera to perform the role of Musetta in La Bohème, led by Louis Langrée.

Ms. Rivera has worked closely with John Adams throughout her career, and received international praise for the world premiere of Adams’s opera A Flowering Tree, singing the role of Kumudha in a production directed by Peter Sellars as part of the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna. Subsequently, she has performed the role in her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle, the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon and the Cincinnati Opera led by Joana Carneiro, and under Adams’s baton, she has sung Kumudha with the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lincoln Center and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. Ms. Rivera made her European operatic debut as Kitty Oppenheimer in Sellars’s acclaimed production of Adams’s Doctor Atomic with the Netherlands Opera, a role that also served for her debuts at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Finnish National Opera and Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Spain. She joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera for its new production of Doctor Atomic under the direction of Alan Gilbert. Ms. Rivera has also performed Nixon Tapes with the Pittsburgh Symphony under John Adams’s direction, as well as his composition El Niño with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson, San Francisco Symphony under John Adams and at the Edinburgh International Festival with James Conlon and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Rivera made her critically acclaimed Santa Fe Opera debut in the summer of 2005 as Nuria in the world premiere of the revised edition of Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar. She reprised the role for the 2007 Grammy Award-winning Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Spano, and bowed in the Peter Sellars staging at Lincoln Center and Opera Boston, as well as in performances at the Barbican Centre, the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Cincinnati Opera, and the Ojai, Ravinia, and New Zealand International Arts Festivals. The artist’s first performances of Margarita Xirgu in Ainadamar, a role created by Dawn Upshaw, occurred in the summer of 2007 at the Colorado Music Festival under the baton of Michael Christie and she reprised the part recently for the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Committed to the art of recital, Ms. Rivera has appeared in concert halls in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Las Vegas and Santa Fe. She was deeply honored to have received a commission from Carnegie Hall for the World Premiere of a song cycle by Nico Muhly entitled The Adulteress, given on the occasion of her Weill Hall recital performance.

Matthew Worth, baritone

Hailed by The New York Times for a voice that is "fully powered and persuasively expressive,” Matthew Worth is quickly becoming the baritone of choice for innovative productions and contemporary works on the operatic leading edge. This season he will perform the title role in Harvey Milk with Opera Parallele, Billy Bigelow in Carousel at Central City Opera, premiere a number of song cycles through the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and perform in recital with Tyson Deaton at Shenandoah Conservatory.

Highlights of recent seasons include the title role in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Boston Lyric Opera, the premiere and recording of the Narrator in Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua, the title role in the world premiere of JFK with Fort Worth Opera, the world premiere of The Manchurian Candidate with Minnesota Opera, and Moby Dick at Washington National Opera. Lauded for his work in the standard operatic repertoire, Matthew’s Guglielmo (Così fan tutte) was deemed “vocally impeccable…open and incisive” by Boston Classical Review. Other notable appearances include the title role in Don Giovanni, Dottore Malatesta (Don Pasquale), Mercutio (Roméo et Juliette), Valentin (Faust), Harlequin (Ariadne auf Naxos), and Tarquinius (The Rape of Lucretia). He has performed leading roles at Santa Fe Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Castleton Festival, Tanglewood Festival, Pittsburgh Opera, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, under such luminary conductors as James Levine, Lorin Maazel, and Sir Andrew Davis.

Matthew is a committed recitalist and active concert soloist. He performed Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and was praised by The New York Times as “simply superb, singing with exquisite sensitivity.” Matthew made his Carnegie Hall debut in Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem under James DePriest while still a student at the Juilliard Opera Center. He made his Alice Tully Hall debut with the Richmond Choral Society in Carmina Burana and has since been featured in concerts with the Atlanta Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston Pops Orchestra, and has performed with conductors Donald Runnicles, Robert Spano and James Conlon.

Molly Morkoski, piano

Pianist Molly Morkoski has performed as soloist and collaborative artist throughout the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean, and Japan.  Her playing has been recognized by The New York Times as “strong, profiled, nuanced . . . beautifully etched . . . .  an energetic and focused player . . . .  with flexibility and warmth . . .” and The Boston Globe called her “outstanding.”  In 2007, she made her solo debut in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage playing Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126.  As a soloist, she enjoys championing the classics, such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations and contemporary masterworks such as Ives’ Concord Sonata and Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus, as well as premiering new works of current composer colleagues, such as John Harbison, Steven Mackey, and Gabriela Lena Frank.  Molly Morkoski has performed in many of the country’s prestigious venues, including Weill and Zankel Halls, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, (Le) Poisson Rouge, Boston’s Gardner Museum and Jordan Hall, St. Louis’ Powell Hall, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian.  Internationally, she has performed at the Teatro Nacional in Santo Domingo, the Strasbourg Conservatoire, the U.S. Embassies in Paris and Nice, and in Japan’s Suntory Hall.  She has performed concertos with the Raleigh, Asheville, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Tuscaloosa Symphonies, and with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra. 

An avid chamber musician, Molly Morkoski is a member of Meme, Open End, and Exponential Ensembles and has collaborated with some of today’s leading musicians, including Dawn Upshaw, John Adams, John Corigliano, and David Robertson.  She has performed with the New York Philharmonic Ensembles, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, New World Symphony, Speculum Musicae, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.  Her debut solo CD, Threads, was released on Albany Records, to critical acclaim, and she has enjoyed numerous other recording collaborations, most recently Compadrazgo a disc dedicated to the piano music of Gabriela Lena Frank.  Molly Morkoski was a Fulbright Scholar to Paris, where she was an apprentice with the Ensemble Intercontemporain.  The recipient of many awards, she holds degrees from UNC Chapel Hill, Indiana University Bloomington, and SUNY Stony Brook.  She has given masterclasses at numerous universities and has served as a chamber music coach for programs at Juilliard Pre-College, New York Youth Symphony, SUNY Stony Brook, Columbia and more. She is currently Associate Professor of Piano at CUNY-Lehman College in the Bronx.

Tony Arnold, soprano

Hailed by the New York Times as “a bold, powerful interpreter,” soprano Tony Arnold is internationally acclaimed as a leading proponent of contemporary music in concert and recording, having premiered hundreds of works by established and emerging composers. A strong advocate for the creation of new music, Tony Arnold’s artistry has attracted many of the most gifted composers of our time.  The growing repertoire of vocal chamber music now includes major works written for her voice by Georges Aperghis, Eric Chasalow, Philippe Manoury, Josh Levine, George Crumb, Pamela Madsen, Fredrick Gifford, David Liptak, Brett Dean, Christopher Theofanidis, Jason Eckardt, Hans Tutschku, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Jesse Jones, Nathan Davis, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, John Zorn and David Gompper, amongst others.  In 2012, Arnold and violinist Movses Pogossian were the recipients of a Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant to support the creation of Seven Armenian Songs by Gabriela Lena Frank.

Tony Arnold is a graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University. Growing up in suburban Baltimore, she composed, sang and played every instrument she could persuade her parents to let her bring home, but never intended to become a professional vocalist.  Instead, she applied her varied musical background to the study of orchestral conducting.  Following graduate school, she was a fellow of the Aspen Music Festival (as both conductor and singer), and she enjoyed success as the music director of several orchestras in the Chicago area.  In her early thirties, Tony reconnected with her love of singing, and discovered a special ability for making the most complex vocal music accessible to every audience.  Having been inspired by many mentors, she is especially indebted to the teaching of sopranos Carmen Mehta and Carol Webber, conductors Robert Spano and Victor Yampolsky, and composer György Kurtág.

www.screecher.com

Manuel Barrueco, guitar

Legendary guitarist Manuel Barrueco is internationally recognized as one of the most important guitarists of our time. His unique artistry has been continually described as that of a superb instrumentalist and a superior and elegant musician, possessing a seductive sound and uncommon lyrical gifts.

His career has been dedicated to bringing the guitar to the main musical centers of the world such as the Musikverein in Vienna, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Royal Albert Hall in London, Philharmonie in Berlin, Teatro Real in Madrid, and Palau de la Musica in Barcelona. He has completed a dozen tours of Japan and made repeated appearances in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China, and Hong Kong, and in Latin America he has performed in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Puerto Rico.

Barrueco's commitment to contemporary music and to the expansion of the guitar repertoire has led him to collaborations with many distinguished composers such as Steven Stucky, Michael Daugherty, Roberto Sierra, Arvo Pärt, Jonathan Leshnoff, Gabriela Lena Frank, Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky, and Toru Takemitsu.

In 2007 Manuel Barrueco received a Grammy nomination for the “Best Instrumental Soloist Performance” for his Solo Piazzolla, which was the first recording to be released on his exclusive Manuel Barrueco Collection on Tonar Music. Tango Sensations and Sounds of the Americas followed in collaboration with the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the latter received a Latin Grammy Award for “Inca Dances” by Gabriela Lena Frank for “Best Classical Contemporary Composition.” In 2010 he released, Tárrega!, which received a Latin Grammy nomination for “Best Classical Album,” Medea, which includes Barrueco’s arrangement of the ballet by flamenco guitarist/composer Manolo Sanlúcar recorded with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra and Víctor Pablo Pérez conducting and received a Latin Grammy nomination for “Best Classical Album” as well.

Manuel Barrueco began playing the guitar at the age of eight in his native Cuba and he immigrated with his family to the United States in 1967 as political refugees. Later, he completed his advanced studies at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he now shares his love for music with a small number of exceptionally gifted young guitarists from all over the world. In 2011, Manuel Barrueco received the United States Artist Fontanals Fellowship for Artistic Excellence.

http://www.barrueco.com/

Del Sol String Quartet

Hailed by Gramophone as “masters of all musical things they survey” and two-time winner of the top Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the Del Sol String Quartet shares living music with an ever-growing community of adventurous listeners.

Recognized as a “vigorous champion of living composers”, Del Sol has premiered well over 100 works through its extensive commissioning and innovative performances.  The composers represent a diverse range of contemporary voices, including Terry Riley, Mason Bates, Frederic Rzewski, Ben Johnston, Gabriela Lena Frank, Chinary Ung, Tania León, Ken Ueno, Peter Sculthorpe, Reza Vali, Mohammed Fairouz and Per Nørgård.

Many of these works are included in Del Sol’s eclectic discography — nine, critically-acclaimed, full-length albums that reflect the ensemble’s fascination with the intersection of place and culture. PopMatters praised Del Sol’s “unfettered mastery” on the “addictive” “Dark Queen Mantra” (2017, Sono Luminus), featuring a collaboration with guitarist Gyan Riley and world premiere recordings of music by Terry Riley and Stefano Scodanibbio. The NY Times questioned, when listening to Scrapyard Exotica (2015) “if your foot can stay still once you put on this funky disc of rhythmically infectious…music played by the adventurous Del Sol String Quartet.”

With its deep commitment to education, Del Sol has reached thousands of K-12 students through inventive school performances, workshops, coaching and residencies. The Quartet members also have worked closely with student composers, musicians and faculty artists at universities across the country, including Dartmouth, MIT, Brandeis, Northeastern, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, University of New Mexico, University of California at Berkeley, San Diego, and Santa Cruz, Chapman, Augustana, Illinois State, the Peabody Institute, the Manhattan School of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

http://delsolquartet.com/

Doug Shadle, Scholar in Residence (Cycle 12)

As a tenacious advocate of historically marginalized musicians, Douglas Shadle in an essential public voice in conversations about the role of symphony orchestras and orchestral music in American life.

His first book, Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise (Oxford, 2016), explores the volatile relationships between composers, performers, critics, and audiences throughout the nineteenth century and demonstrates why American composers rarely find a home on concert programs still today. The first comprehensive study of its kind, Orchestrating the Nation has been cited in several major press venues, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.

Shadle is also leading expert on fellow Little Rock native Florence Price (1887–1953), the first African American woman to win international acclaim as a composer. He won a Southeaster Conference Faculty Travel Grant to study Price’s manuscripts in 2016, and his research on Price has been featured on radio stations around the globe as well as in the New Yorker, the New York Times, NewMusicBox, and I Care if You Listen. He wrote liner notes for the world premiere recordings of Price’s two violin concertos (Albany) and fourth symphony (Naxos) and has consulted on educational materials for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s “Music in Color” series.

Shadle holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.M. in viola performance, summa cum laude, from the University of Houston. He is now Associate Professor of Musicology and Chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Vanderbilt University, where he mentors students on how to unleash their potential as they pursue meaningful lives in music.

Lina Gonzalez-Granados, Guest Conductor

Praised for her "attention to orchestral colors" (OperaWire) and ability to create "lightning changes in tempo, meter and effect" (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Lina Gonzalez-Granados has firmly established herself locally and abroad as a talented conductor of opera, classical, and contemporary music. From 2017-19, served Lina as the Taki Concordia Fellow, a position created by Maestro Marin Alsop to foster entrepreneurship and talent of female conductors. Starting in the fall of 2019, she will begin her new appointments as Conducting Fellow of the Seattle Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra. This upcoming season will include appearances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Stamford Symphony, San Francisco Conservatory and the Orchestra Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias. 

Lina is a staunch proponent of the music of Latin American composers, work which earned her recognition as one of the "Latino 30 Under 30" by El Mundo Newspaper in 2016. In 2014, she founded Unitas Ensemble, a Boston-based chamber orchestra specializing in Latin American music. Her work with Unitas Ensemble has yielded multiple World, North American, and American premieres, as well as the creation and release of the Unitas Ensemble album "Estaciones," recorded alongside the Latin Grammy-winning Cuarteto Latinoamericano. 

Born and raised in Cali, Colombia, Lina made her conducting debut in 2008 with the Youth Orchestra of Bellas Artes in Cali. She earned her Master’s Degree in Conducting and a Graduate Diploma in Choral Conducting from New England Conservatory, and is pursuing her Doctoral degree in Orchestral Conducting at Boston University. Her principal mentors include Marin Alsop, Bernard Haitink, Bramwell Tovey, and Charles Peltz.