Lila Brown (Artistic Director)
Lila Brown, (viola) is a co-founder and the artistic director of Music from Salem, founded in 1986, and co-founder of the MfS Viola Seminar in 2011. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Brown was a member of the Boston Symphony from 1982-84. She moved to Austria in 1985 to study with Sandor Vegh and to play as principal violist of his Camerata Academica Salzburg. As a member of the Ensemble Modern, the renowned German ensemble for new music, Brown premiered works by Ligeti, Kurtag, Adams, Reich, Rhim, Zappa, and Lachenmann among others, and she has played chamber music tours of England with the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England. Brown is a frequent guest artist at the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, the Boston Artists Ensemble and Horten Kammermusikfest in Norway. She has been an assistant professor at the Vienna Hochschule, professor at the Robert Schumann Musikhochschule in Duesseldorf, and returning to the US in 2009, joined the faculty of The Boston Conservatory where she received a “Distinguished Music Faculty of the Year” award in 2012.
Judith Gordon (Consulting Director)
Pianist Judith Gordon explores diverse repertoire in collaboration with an exceptionally wide range of solo artists and ensembles. She was a member of the percussion-based Essential Music, focusing on the American Experimental tradition, and has been soloist in works from Bach and Ravel to Cage and Boulez with groups including the Boston Pops Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Gordon has been a consulting director of Music from Salem, in Washington County, NY, and the Harvard, MA, Chamber Music Workshop, as well as a featured performer at the Apple Hill, Bard, Bennington, Charlottesville, Music Mountain, Rockport, Santa Fe Chamber Music, and Tanglewood festivals. An associate professor of music at Smith College from 2006-20, she is a graduate of the New England Conservatory, where she recently received an Outstanding Alumni Award. Now based in New Mexico, she plays regularly with the musicians of ChatterABQ.
Rhonda Rider (Consulting Director)
Rhonda Rider (cello) is a founding member of the Naumburg Award winning Lydian Quartet, with whom she played for over twenty years, and is currently a member of the piano trio Triple Helix. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Symphony Space, and the Library of Congress. Rider was featured artist of the Robert Helps Festival of Contemporary Music (Florida), Emmanuel Music’s Bach and Schumann Series (Boston), and as guest artist with Boston Chamber Music Society and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Chamber Music Series. Rider was named 2010-2011 Artist-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Eleven solo cello pieces were commissioned for her residency. During the summer, she is heard at ARIA and the Green Mountain Festivals, as cello coach for the Asian Youth Orchestra in Hong Kong, and most happily at Music from Salem. Rider is Chair of Chamber Music and on the cello faculty of The Boston Conservatory.
John Batchelder
Praised for his “persuasively emphatic and engaging” performances (Boston Musical Intelligencer), violist John Batchelder has captivated audiences as a passionate chamber musician, educator and administrator, deeply committed to the values of chamber music. He has performed as soloist with numerous ensembles such as the Hemenway Strings, Los Colinas Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Arlington, Garland Symphony Orchestra and Worcester Bach Consort and, as well as participated in various summer festivals and masterclasses, such as The McGill International String Quartet Academy, the Banff Centre Masterclasses, St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, the Meadowmount School of Music, The Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, and the Music from Salem Festival in Salem NY. As a member of the award winning Julius Quartet, John has performed in venerated venues such as Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Bargemusic, Moss Arts Center, Shalin Liu Performance Center, and Bing Concert Hall. Furthermore, the group founded EMERGE Coalition Inc: a performing-arts nonprofit organization providing meaningful contemporary arts programming that couples visual and performing arts with social, historical and cultural contexts. As a fervent chamber musician, John has collaborated with numerous artists such as Aaron Boyd, Joseph Silverstein, Andres Cardenes, Andres Diaz and members of the St. Lawrence, Escher, Shanghai, Baumer, and Lydian Quartets. In 2011, he was a winner of the Davis Projects for Peace Grant for his program designed to help, encourage and teach music to the young children of the favelas of Natal, Brazil. Beginning his musical education in Boston, John is a graduate of The Boston Conservatory where he studied with Lila Brown, and of the John J. Cali School of Music Graduate String Quartet in Residence program where he studied with Honggang Li of the celebrated Shanghai Quartet. During the quartet’s tenure as the Peak Fellowship Ensemble-in-Residence at the Meadows School of Music at Southern Methodist University, he served as an Assistant Chamber Music Coach at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. In addition to his work as a performer and educator, John now serves as Executive Director of the Dallas Chamber Music Society, celebrating 79 years of presenting the world’s most esteemed chamber music ensembles. John performs on a viola crafted by Michele Deconet (Venice, 1780) that was previously played by Boris Kroyt of the Budapest String Quartet, loaned to him in memory of Boris and Sonya Kroyt.
Saul Bitran
Saul Bitran (violin), first violinist of the award-winning Cuarteto Latinoamericano, is an Associate Professor at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. A devoted teacher and chamber music coach, his former students now populate many of the finest orchestras in the world. Bitran was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1987 to 2008, and he was also involved with Venezuela’s Sistema for over twenty years. There, together with the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, he created the Latin American Academy for String Quartets, which operated in Caracas from 2008 until 2013. He has also taught at music festivals, including the Dartington International Summer School, Centre d’Arts Orford, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Grenoble Festival, San Miguel de Allende Chamber Music Festival, and many others. Bitran’s noted solo appearances have included the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, and the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, as well as with prominent conductors Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gerard Schwarz, Eduardo Mata, and Keith Lockhart, among others.
Bitran is a cum laude graduate of the Samuel Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he studied with Professor Yair Kless. “Bitran’s staggering virtuosity in the live violin part was jaw-dropping” – Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Joseph Bongiorno
Joseph Bongiorno (bass), a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he studied with Homer Mensch, was a member of both the New York City Opera Orchestra and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra for over two decades. He also served as principal double bassist for the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra under the music direction of Lukas Foss, Dennis Russell Davies, Robert Spano and Stephan Sloan. During his career he has also appeared as principal double bassist with American Ballet Theater, Opera Orchestra of New York, and the American Symphony as well as the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. He has been a guest artist in chamber music performances on the series of the Pierrot Consort, Maverick Concerts, Arbor Chamber Music, Norfolk/Yale Summer Chamber Festival, Spoleto Festival, North Country Chamber Players, and Bargemusic, as well as at Music from Salem. In the commercial realm he has recorded scores for some 100 films, CDs, and television shows. In 2006 Mr Bongiorno was named full time professor at NYU Steinhardt’s Department of Music and Performing Arts, where he served as a member of the string faculty and Director of Orchestral Studies.
Jonathan Brin
Jonathan Brin (cello), earned a Bachelors of Music at the Eastman School of Music studying with Steven Doane, and while at the school founded the Hyperion String Quartet. As a member of the quartet, he continued schooling at Kent State, the Hartt School, and San Diego State University. The Quartet has held residencies with The Sembrich Opera Museum, Empire State Youth Orchestra, Young Audiences, and New Performing Arts of Kentucky, and has been prize winners at the Coleman, Fischoff, Green Lake, and MTNA competitions. Jonathan is a member of the Vermont Symphony and the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, and is also on faculty at Skidmore College and the College of Saint Rose. In addition, he performs regularly with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.
Hyun Jeong Helen Lee
Hailed as being a “superior [and] excellent” violinist (The Flint Journal), Hyun Jeong Helen Lee has captivated audiences throughout the United States, Canada and Asia. Leading into her conservatory career, she attended the Interlochen Center of Arts in the summer of 2009. While there, she was concertmaster of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra for two terms. As a soloist, she has performed with the Chichibu Festival Orchestra, Royal Oak Symphony Orchestra, and The Boston Conservatory String Ensemble as winner of the String Ensemble Concerto Competition. Furthermore, Helen was a winner of The Boston Conservatory’s prestigious String Honors Competition. Helen has also performed in masterclasses for various artists, including Phillipe Quint, Jorja Fleezanis and Joseph Silverstein. She is a graduate of The Boston Conservatory where she studied with Markus Placci, and received an Artist Diploma as part of the John J. Cali School of Music Graduate Quartet in Residence Program where she studied with Weigang Li of the celebrated Shanghai Quartet. Recently, as part of the Peak Fellowship, Helen served as a Teaching Assistant and Assistant Chamber Music Coach at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University.
Scott Kluksdahl
Scott Kluksdahl (cello), made his debut as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, and has been heard as chamber musician, recitalist and soloist in the United States, Europe, Israel, and Central and South America for the past three decades. His particular interest in modern music has led to significant affiliations with Robert Helps, Richard Wernick, Richard Brodhead, David Del Tredici and Augusta Read Thomas. Currently a member of the Veronika String Quartet, Scott was a founding member of the Lions Gate Trio, with whom he performed and recorded for twenty years. He has recorded for the CRI, Albany, Triton, Pierian, Nimbus, and Centaur labels. He serves as professor of cello and chamber music at the University of South Florida, where he is a designated Venette and Theodore Ashford-Askounes Distinguished Scholar. Scott oversees ‘If Music Be the Food…’ in Tampa, a collaboration between the Tampa Bay Harvest, Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church, and Florida west-coast classical musicians and friends, where chamber music is the agent for raising both attention and support for hunger in the community.
Kenny Lee
Kenny Lee (cello) enjoys a diverse career as a conductor, cellist, and educator and has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Recent conducting highlights include collaborations with the Czech Chamber Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Moravská Filharmonie Olomouc, and Gwinnett Chamber Orchestra. Lee recently performed concerti by Dvorak, Haydn, and Gulda. Mr. Lee is also the co-artistic director of the Flatirons Chamber Music Festival. Mr. Lee has won top prizes at the International Conductors Workshop and Competition, New York International Artists Competition, Hudson Valley String Competition, Eastman Concerto Competition, and New England Conservatory Honors Chamber Music Competition as the founding member of the Gioviale Quartet. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee grew up in Oregon. He has a Bachelors degree from the Eastman School of Music, and Masters and Doctorate degrees from the New England Conservatory. His teachers include Laurence Lesser, Paul Katz, Steven Doane, Stephen Sloane, and Charles Peltz. Mr. Lee is currently the cello professor and orchestra director at Western Illinois University. Additionally, he is the conductor of Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Philharmonic Orchestra.
Sharan Leventhal
Sharan Leventhal (violin), has toured four continents as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher. Since winning the Kranischsteiner Musikpreis at the 1984 International Contemporary Music Festival in Darmstadt, Germany, she has built an international reputation as a champion of contemporary music. She has premiered over 130 works, including compositions by Gunther Schuller, Ben Johnston, Pauline Oliveros, Tania León, Simon Bainbridge, Scott Wheeler, and Fred Hersch. Equally active in traditional venues, Leventhal has appeared as a soloist with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and the Toledo, Milwaukee, Gulf Coast, Topeka, Dayton and Albany symphonies, among others. She is a founding member of the Kepler Quartet, Marimolin and the Gramercy Trio. Leventhal has received awards from Chamber Music America, the Fromm Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation, American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Recordings include the string quartets of Ben Johnston with the Kepler Quartet (New World), the violin and piano works of Virgil Thomson (Northeastern Recordings), Gramercy Trio (Parma Recordings, Naxos, Newport Classic, Ltd.), and discs by Marimolin (GM Recordings, Catalyst/BMG).
Leventhal is a professor at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and at Berklee College of Music.
Rane Moore
Rane Moore (clarinet) is well-regarded for her thoughtful, provocative interpretations of standard and cutting-edge contemporary repertoire. Fiercely devoted to the new music communities of the East Coast and beyond, Moore is a founding member of the New York based Talea Ensemble which regularly gives premieres of new works at major venues and festivals around the world. Ms. Moore has recently joined the award winning wind quintet, The City of Tomorrow, and is also a member of Boston’s Callithumpian Consort and Sound Icon. Recent projects with legendary saxophonist Steve Coleman have yielded recordings and performances at The Village Vanguard, Newport Jazz Festival, Saalfelden Jazz Festival, and Jazz à la Villette in Paris. Moore is also a regularly invited collaborator with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, New York New Music Ensemble, Boston Musica Viva, Emmanuel Music, A Far Cry, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Ballet Orchestra and is the principal clarinetist for the Boston Philharmonic. Ms. Moore’s latest festival and series performances include high profile national and international events and festivals such as Tanglewood Music Festival, Lincoln Center Festival, and Wien Modern, Warsaw in Autumn. Ms. Moore is on the faculty of the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at New England Conservatory and has served in the ensemble-in-residence and guest teacher for advanced students in composition and clarinet at many universities and conservatories around the world. Ms. Moore is the co-artistic director of Winsor Music and has recordings on over a dozen labels. Critics have praised her “enthralling,” “tour-de-force,” and “phenomenal” performances.
Matthias Naegele
Matthias Naegele has performed extensively as soloist and chamber musician in Europe, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Asia. He has participated in the Marlboro, Apple Hill, Dubrovnick, Jerusalem, Curagao, California State Summer Arts, Aspen, International Musicians Seminar in Prussia Cove, and Edinburgh music festivals. Many of Naegele’s performances are regularly broadcast over National Public Radio and Public Television. He has also appeared on Dutch, French, Austrian, BBC radio, and BBC television. He performs regularly with numerous chamber music ensembles, including the Kaleidos String Quartet, the Prometheus Piano Quartet, the Music Project, the Chamber Music Society of New York University, Anthony Newman’s Brandenburg Collegium, the Chamber Music Society of New Jersey, Sergio Luca’s Context, An Die Musik, and the microtonal group New Band. He has performed on the Lincoln Center Great Performers Series. Naegele has recorded with the New Jersey Chamber Music Society for Koch International. In 1995 he recorded with Dawn Upshaw for Nonesuch. With his father, violinist Philipp Naegele, he has recorded for Musical Heritage and Beyer Records. Mr. Naegele plays on a Mateo Gofriller cello made in Venice in 1735. This cello was previously owned by Hermann Busch of the Busch Quartet.
Daniel Phillips
Violinist Daniel Phillips enjoys a versatile career as an established chamber musician, solo artist, and teacher. He serves as co-artistic director of the Music from Angel Fire chamber music festival with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, and he’s a founding member of the 36-year-old Orion String Quartet, which regularly performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The quartet’s discography includes the complete quartets of Beethoven and Kirchner. Phillips is a graduate of The Juilliard School and a winner of the 1976 Young Concert Artists competition. His major teachers were his father, Eugene Phillips; Ivan Galamian; Sally Thomas; Nathan Milstein; Sandor Vegh; and George Neikrug. Throughout his career, Phillips has performed as a soloist with ensembles such as the Boston, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, and Yakima symphony orchestras. His festival appearances include Chamber Music Northwest, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the Chesapeake Music Festival. He’s performed at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival every season since 1979, and he’s participated in the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England, since its inception. Phillips’s faculty appointments include the Mannes School of Music, Juilliard, the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and the Bard College Conservatory of Music as well as the summer faculties of the Heifetz International Music Institute and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford. Daniel Phillips is a former member of the renowned Bach Aria Group, and he’s toured and recorded in a string quartet for Sony Classical with violinist Gidon Kremer, violist Kim Kashkashian, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In 2018, he served as a judge for the Seoul International Violin Competition, and last summer he served as a judge for the Leipzig International Bach Competition, where he won third prize in 1976. In September, he’ll serve as judge for the Bartók World Competition in Budapest. Phillips lives with his wife and two cute dachshunds on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Sally Pinkas
Following her London debut at Wigmore Hall, Israeli-born pianist Sally Pinkas (piano) has garnered universal acclaim for her performances as soloist and chamber musician. Among highlights are performances with the Boston Pops, the Aspen Philharmonia and New York’s Jupiter Symphony, and at the festivals of Marlboro, Aspen, Rockport (USA), Pontlevoy (France), Havana (Cuba) and HCMC Conservatory (Vietnam). From a first-ever performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in Bandung, Indonesia, to premieres of George Rochberg’s monumental Circles of Fire for two pianos in Russia and Nigeria, and a revival of rarely-heard 19th-century Filipino Salon Music in its birth city Manila, Pinkas commands a wide repertoire and shares it enthusiastically with young pianists through masterclasses and workshops. Praised for her radiant tone and driving energy, Pinkas’ extensive discography includes music by Mozart, Schumann, Fauré, Debussy, Gaubert, Martinů, Shapiro, Pinkham and Wolff for the MSR, Centaur, Naxos, Toccata Classics and Mode labels. She tours and records regularly with the Hirsch-Pinkas Duo (a collaboration with her husband pianist Evan Hirsch), with Ensemble Schumann and with the Adaskin String Trio. Other recent collaborators include the Apple Hill String Quartet, Cuarteto Latinoamericano and the UK’s Villiers Quartet. This season she will be making her solo debut in Spain, returning to Brazil with the Hirsch-Pinkas Duo and to China on an extensive tour with Ensemble Schumann. Pinkas holds performance degrees from Indiana University and the New England Conservatory of Music, and a Ph.D. in Composition from Brandeis University. Her principal teachers were Russell Sherman, George Sebok, Luise Vosgerchian and Genia Bar-Niv (piano), Sergiu Natra (composition), and Robert Koff (chamber music). Pianist-in-residence at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College, she is Professor of Music at Dartmouth’s Music Department.Sally travels widely as part of the Hirsch-Pinkas Piano Duo (with her husband Evan Hirsch).
Markus Placci
Praised for having “magnificent personality, a superb energy, a total command and extremely convincing taste” (La Libre Belgique), Markus Placci (violin) has performed throughout Europe, the United States, South America, and Asia. Since his solo debut at age 13 with the Bologna Symphony, Placci has appeared regularly with major symphony orchestras including the Barcelona Symphony, the Radio Television Orchestra of Spain, Baden-Baden Philarmonie, Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra Milan, Teatro San Carlo of Napoli Symphony, the St. Petersburg State Philharmonic, and the Annapolis Symphony, among others. He has been heard live on BBC Radio, Bartok Radio Hungary, RaiRadio, RTV Espana, and is the winner of international prizes such as the “Brahms Preis” in Germany and the prestigious “XXVI Vittorio Veneto Biannual Competition” in Italy. Placci earned degrees from the Bologna Conservatory and Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and studied extensively with both Zakhar Bron and Mela Tenenbaum. In 2005, Placci premiered the Violin Concerto by Spanish composer J. Cervelló, to great acclaim, and in 2008 he was appointed to the Boston Conservatory at Berklee faculty. He plays on an 1871 J.B. Vuillaume violin, a copy of the “Alard” Stradivari.
Marc Ryser
Boston-based pianist Marc Ryser is a founding member of Music-by-the-Sea, a festival and artists’ residency on the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island, also serving on the faculty of the festival’s mentoring program for young professionals. He has performed with distinguished artists, including cellists Paul Katz, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, and Anssi Karttunen, violists Steven Dann and Marcus Thompson, violinists, Ernst Kovacic, Marc Destrubé, and Peter Salaff, pianist Judith Gordon, and with the Lydian, New Zealand, and Borealis String Quartets. He has appeared as a guest artist with Music from Salem (NY), Rockport Chamber Music Festival (MA), Boston Artists Ensemble, Rose Colored Glasses Chamber Ensemble, and with the Walden, MIT, Holy Cross, and Smith College Chamber Players. Among the highlights of his solo career are the first performance in Bulgaria of Bela Bartók’s 3rd Piano Concerto with the Vratsa Philharmonic, and concert tours in Switzerland comprising solo and chamber music recitals, and concerto performances with the Sinfonietta de Lausanne. From 2003 to 2005 he served as senior artist and resident collaborative pianist at the Banff Centre, in Alberta, Canada. He currently serves on the piano and chamber music faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School, Smith College, and the Rivers School Conservatory, having also taught at Pomona College, Brandeis University, Drake University, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Eric Thomas
Eric Thomas (clarinet), has appeared as a guest artist with groups including the internationally acclaimed Apple Hill Chamber Players, Sylvan Winds, the Boston Pops Traveling Ensemble, and at festivals such as the Bravo! Festival at Vail, Wellesley Composers Conference and Cabrillo Contemporary Music Festival. He has been featured soloist with the Baltimore Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Keene Chamber Orchestra and at Brown University, Colby College, New England Conservatory, and Phillips Academy (Andover). Also a composer, grants from the Quinney Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts allowed Eric to be artist-in-residence for the Moab Music Festival where he completed a variety of activities in the community. Mr. Thomas has been commissioned to write a Big Band chart for Colby College, a trio for the Maine Teachers Association and Music Teachers National Association, and incidental music for plays at UNC Charlotte and Colby College, as well as a String Octet and Wind Dectet for the Sonad Project. A member of the Phillips Academy Music Department for over 15 years, he was co-author of their groundbreaking music curriculum. Presently, Mr. Thomas is Director of Bands at Colby College and adjunct faculty at the University of Maine [at Orono and Augusta].
“Talent multiplied, a superb musician.” – NY Times
Calvin Wiersma
Calvin Wiersma (violin), is Associate Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at Ithaca College. He has been on the faculties of the Purchase Conservatory of Music, the Lawrence Conservatory of Music, Florida State University, Brandeis University, and the Longy School of Music, as well as teaching at summer programs including Greenwood and Manchester Music. In addition to his teaching activities, Mr. Wiersma was a founding member of the Meliora Quartet, winner of the Naumburg, Fischoff, Coleman, and Cleveland Quartet competitions, and Quartet-in-Residence of the Spoleto Festivals of the U.S., Italy, and Australia. Additionally, he was a member of the Manhattan String Quartet for 20 years, a founding member of the Figaro Trio, and is a frequent performer with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. A noted interpreter of contemporary music, Mr. Wiersma is a member of Cygnus and the Lochrian Chamber Ensemble, and has appeared with Speculum Musicae, Ensemble 21, Parnassus, Ensemble Sospeso, and the New York New Music Ensemble. He has commissioned countless works with these ensembles as well as for solo violin, has toured extensively with Steve Reich and been featured in solo performances for the International League of Composers of Music.