Adam Grabois

Adam Grabois (cello) has performed on five continents as a soloist and chamber musician. Recent highlights include a collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov in a dance by Jerome Robbins for solo dancer and on-stage cellist with performances in the capitals of Brazil, Argentina and in the Caribbean. In addition to the New York Chamber Soloists, Mr. Grabois performs regularly with the Eos Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra as well as at the OK Mozart Festival as part of the Solisti New York Orchestra. He has appeared as a soloist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Adam Grabois was educated at the Kinhaven Music School, Lycée Henri IV and Swarthmore College. He studied with David Finckel and now teaches as his assistant.

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Allen Blustine

Allen Blustine (clarinet) is one of New York’s busiest and most versatile clarinetists. Mr. Blustine has performed with a broad spectrum of musical organizations in New York City, including the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is a member of the Columbia University faculty, Director of Speculum Musicae, and a member of the North Country Chamber Players in New Hampshire.

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Andrew Schwartz

Andrew Schwartz (bassoon) has a wide-ranging career, encompassing frequent appearances with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Jazz recordings with Wynton Marsalis. He has also appeared with such ensembles as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Orpheus Ensemble, the New York Chamber Symphony, and with many of the finest period-instrument ensembles, such as Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque, and the Wien Akademie in Austria. His extensive catalogue of recordings includes Mozart’s complete works for wind ensemble on the Decca/L’oiseau Lyre label.

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Anne Azéma

French soprano Anne Azéma is one of the world's leading interpreters of early vocal music. She has been acclaimed by critics on four continents for her original, passionate, and vivid approach to songs and texts of the Middle Ages. Anne Azéma has also been widely praised in many other repertoires, from Renaissance lute songs to Baroque sacred music to twentieth-century music theatre.

Since 1993, Anne Azéma has been not only the performer but also the creator of her recital programs. She researches and edits the repertoire, frequently transcribing the material herself from original sources. Her genuine and personal involvement with musical scholarship, combined with her performer's flair for immediacy of communication, give her recitals and recordings both a historical depth and an expressive "edge" that are unique in the field.

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Anton Kuerti

Without rehearsal and on just two hours notice, Anton Kuerti stepped in for an indisposed soloist to perform the Beethoven 5th Piano Concerto ("Emperor") with the Boston Symphony on March 12th. The next morning, at a press conference in Montreal, Mr. Kuerti was honored as a 2008 recipient of the prestigious Governor General's Performing Arts Awards (GGPAA) for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, the most illustrious artistic honor conferred upon Canada's performing artists.

Kuerti was born in Austria, grew up in the U.S., and has lived in Canada for the last 35 years. His teachers included Arthur Loesser, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and Rudolf Serkin. At the age of 11 he performed the Grieg Concerto with Arthur Fiedler and, while still a student, he won the famous Leventritt Award. In 2007 he received two more prestigious awards, the Schumann Prize of the Schumann Gesellschaft in Germany, and the National Arts Prize of the Banff Centre.

Anto Kuerti’s distinguished performing career has included tours to nearly forty countries, including Japan, Russia, and most of Europe. His vast repertoire includes some 50 concertos, including one he composed himself.

As a chamber musician, Kuerti has performed the major repertoire with such artists as Gidon Kremer, Yo-Yo Ma, Janos Starker, and the Cleveland, Colorado, Guarneri, St. Lawrence and Tokyo String Quartets.

Anton Kuerti is one of today's most recorded artists, having put on disc all the Beethoven Concertos and Sonatas, the Schubert Sonatas, the Brahms Concertos and works by many other composers. His recordings are heard almost daily on the CBC. Soon to be released is a CD of works for piano and orchestra by Schumann, and a world premiere release of works for violin and piano by Czerny.

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Bridget Kibbey

As hailed by The New York Times, harpist Bridget Kibbey made it seem as though her instrument had been waiting all its life to explode with the gorgeous colors and energetic figures she was getting from it. Ms. Kibbey has received such honors as an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Premier Prix at the International Chamber Music Competition of Arles, France, the Juilliard School Peter Mennin Prize for musical leadership and excellence, an American Harp Society Anne Adams Award, and a Mustard Seed Foundation Harvey Fellowship. She was a winner of Astral Artistic Services 2003 National auditions, and under their auspices, has been presented as soloist and chamber musician in Weill Hall, the Kimmel Center, and Merkin Hall. She appeared as featured soloist with the Haddonfield Symphony, the Juilliard Symphony, the Israel Youth Philharmonic, the Eastern Philharmonic Orchestra, America's Dream Chamber Artists, and the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. She has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has been featured on New York's WQXR, NPR's Performance Today, Philadelphia's WRTI "Crossover" as well as on A and E's Breakfast with the Arts.

Possessing a special interest in new music, Ms. Kibbey has premièred new works by many of today's living composers including Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Kaija Sarriaho, Augusta-Read Thomas, and Charles Wourenin.

Ms. Kibbey enjoys presenting masterclasses - discussing writing for the harp - to university composition students, and is on the harp faculties of New York University and the Juilliard School Pre-College program. She holds both Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, where she completed studies with Nancy Allen.

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Elizabeth Metcalfe

Elizabeth Metcalfe (piano, harpsichord) made her solo debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the age of twelve, and subsequently performed with the Orchestra throughout eastern Canada. Mrs. Metcalfe has appeared as piano and harpsichord soloist and as a chamber musician across the United States and Canada, in repertoire ranging from 17th-century harpsichord music to piano works by Bartok and Crumb. With the New York Chamber Soloists she has been a featured artist at the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Caramoor Festival and on tours of France, Spain and South America. A founding member of the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, she also performs regularly with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, frequently as piano or harpsichord soloist. She was educated in Canada at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music, and was on the music faculty of the University of Vermont from 1966 to 1999.

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Elliot Fisk

A creative innovator linked to the great romantic tradition of the past, guitarist Eliot Fisk is one of the most exciting and unique artists before the public today. Known world wide for his adventurous repertoire and willingness to take art music into unusual venues (including schools, senior centers and even prisons!) he belongs, as his great mentor Andrés Segovia once wrote, “at the top line of our artistic world.”

Eliot Fisk has expanded the repertoire for the guitar enormously through countless ground breaking transcriptions of works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini, and others as well as through commissions from leading composers.

Eliot Fisk’s numerous recordings have elicited unqualified praise and even entered the Billboard charts as bestsellers; most of these recordings include repertoire never before performed on the guitar. Guitar Review wrote that his versions of the complete Bach unaccompanied violin Sonatas and Partitas, BWV 1001-1006 “place him alongside Casals and Gould as one of this century's greatest interpreters of Bach.”

Eliot Fisk was the last direct pupil of Andrés Segovia and also studied interpretation under the legendary harpsichordist, Ralph Kirkpatrick. Eliot Fisk devotes considerable energy to teaching. He is Professor at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, where he teaches in 5 different languages, and in Boston at the New England Conservatory.

Eliot Fisk has performed to dazzling critical and public acclaim in recital, as soloist with major orchestras and in a wide variety of chamber music combinations in most of the great concert halls of the world. Eliot Fisk lives in Boston, Salzburg, and (whenever possible) in his beloved Granada, Spain, with his wife, acclaimed guitarist Zaira Meneses, and their seven year old daughter, Raquel.

Visit the Elliot Fisk web site

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Gary Moreau

Gary Moreau, baritone, is a native of Burlington. He received his B.S. in Music Education, and M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instructional Development from the University of Vermont and is in very much in demand as a soloist throughout Vermont. Gary has performed with the Vermont Symphony, Vermont Mozart Festival, Oriana Singers, Rutland Community Chorus, Middlebury Community Chorus, and Castleton State College Choir among others. He has also performed internationally in Quebec City and at the Vatican in Rome.

Since 1976 Gary has taught in Essex Junction at the A.D. Lawton Intermediate School, where he teaches general music, handbells, and chorus. Gary has been a key figure in the District III Middle School Music Festival where he has served as the Festival Director for more than fifteen years. He is currently the President of the Vermont Music Educators Association and coordinates the Vermont All-State Scholarship Competition.

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Gil Shohat

Born in 1973, Gil Shohat is the composer of nine large-scale symphonies, ten concertos for various instruments, three operas, Oratorios, Cantatas, Solo vocal pieces, and dozens of chamber and piano pieces, and the performer of more than 80 concerts a year worldwide, both as a conductor and pianist. Shohat's music has been performed by major orchestras: the Berlin Symphony, Rome Opera Orchestra, Pomeriggio Musicale Orchestra of Milan, Cologne Radio Orchestra, Bochum Symphony, and all the major Israeli orchestras including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon Lezion.

Gil Shohat came to local and international attention with his opera Alpha and Omega (2001) - the largest original opera production ever staged in Israel - which received enthusiastic reviews worldwide. As a pianist, Shohat performs more than 40 concerts a year, and has given recitals and solo performances with orchestras in 25 nations. In Israel, he performed his first recital at age 12; by age 16 Shohat had performed as a soloist with every major national orchestra including the Israel Philharmonic. Along with a selection of his peers, Shohat established a group of young piano virtuosi, who have undertaken a series of performance "marathons". These have included the complete piano repertoire of Chopin, Schumann, the complete Scriabin sonatas, major piano by Rachmaninoff, and the complete partitas by Bach.

Gil Shohat is the recipient of various prestigious prizes and awards in Israel and abroad, including the Rubin Israel Music Academy prize (1993), first prize for composition from the Arthur Rubinstein International Society (1997), Bracha Foundation grant (2001), Israel Theater prize (2002), Prime Minister's prize for composition (2003), AICF grants (1990-8), Rich Foundation grant (2001), Tel Aviv prize (2002), and Rabinovich Foundation grants (2003). He is a laureate of the prestigious Caesarea Edmond Benjamin De Rothschild Foundation (2001).

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Harumi Rhodes

Harumi Rhodes (violin) was first introduced to Mozart Festival audiences in 2005, and is a dazzling new talent on the scene who is a member of Lincoln Center's Chamber Music Society II. She is also a participant in the American String Project, an elite fifteen-member orchestra devoted solely to performance of the string repertoire, as well as chamber music arranged for this format. Since graduating from Juilliard and with highest honors from the New England Conservatory, Ms. Rhodes has toured and recorded with Musicians from Marlboro and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and performs regularly with some of the world’s most important musicians. Much in demand as a chamber musician, she has performed all around the country, including performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston's Gardiner Museum, the Convention Center of Philadelphia, and with the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

A strong supporter of contemporary music, Ms. Rhodes recently led the first recording of Milton Babbitt's Sixth String Quartet on the Tzadik Composer Series Label. This past spring, Ms. Rhodes was given the honor of having a solo violin sonata written for and dedicated to her by composer Benjamin Lees after a collaboration at the Rose Studio at Lincoln Center. She is part of a distinguished musical family; her father Samuel Rhodes has been violist of the Juilliard String Quartet since 1969.

"There is a magical connection between the performer, the audience, and Mother Nature at the Vermont Mozart Festival. It is this vibrant energy that is intoxicating and keeps me coming back..."Harumi Rhodes

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Jean-Claude Pennetier

A multi-faceted musician -- composer, conductor, teacher, chamber player -- Jean-Claude Pennetier is above all a remarkable soloist and recitalist. Beginning his piano studies at three and a half, he was enrolled at the age of six in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. When he was just ten years old, M. Pennetier was recognized for his extraordinary talent, winning first prizes in piano, chamber music and theory from the Conservatoire. He went on to take the First Prize Gabriel Fauré at 18, First Prize in the International Montréal Competition at 23 and First Prize in the International Geneva Competition at 25. In 2002, M. Pennetier had the great honor of being named a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur.

In great demand for appearances with orchestra and in recital, M. Pennetier performed with the Orchestre de Paris, the Staatkapelle of Dresden, NHK in Tokyo, and at festivals around the world. At the age of 30, however, he interrupted his performing career to pursue composing and conducting and to expand and deepen his repertoire. He explored musical theater and contemporary music, wrote operas for children and award-winning film scores.

After several years of experimentation and enrichment, M. Pennetier returned to the concert stage to great acclaim, and has since been active in many musical capacities throughout Europe, in North and South America and in Japan. In recent seasons, he has toured with the orchestras of Lille, Pays de Savoie, and Poitou, and has performed with l'Orchestre de Paris and the Cannes, Limoges, Lugano and Trieste orchestras.

Jean-Claude Pennetier has recently undertaken a major addition to his substantial and highly regarded discography, a traversal of the 32 Beethoven Sonatas (eight each year) for Lyrinx.

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Jean-François Latour

The vibrant young Canadian pianist Jean-François Latour has established a reputation as a poetic and imaginative artist with brilliant technique and a strong personal voice who can communicate across cultures and generations. Leon Fleisher, with whom he studied at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, calls Latour “a highly gifted and intelligent young artist with fine musical instincts.” Recognized as one of Canada’s most talented young pianists, Jean-François Latour has performed throughout Canada. He was recently named Young Soloist of the Year by the French Language Public Radio Network. As a result, M. Latour’s live performances have been broadcast by the Radio Suisse-Romande, Italian National Radio-RAI, Belgian Radio-Television, and the Société Radio-Canada.

Jean-François Latour made his orchestral debut at the age of eleven with the Orchestre Symphonique de Trois-Rivières. Since then, he has performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Hilton Head Orchestra and the Orchestre Symphonique de la Montérégie among others. He has played under the direction of Timothy Vernon, Christopher Wilkins, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Victor Pull, Agnes Grossman, Marc David, Christopher Warren-Green and Lara Webber. His festival appearances include the Orford Music Festival, the Festival d’été de Québec, the Festival du Domaine Forget, the Festival de musique de Lanaudière, the Fontana Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, and the Vermont Mozart Festval. As a chamber musician, Jean-François Latour has collaborated with Alain Trudel, Philippe Magnan, Jens Lindeman, and the Pacifica Quartet.

In May 2002, Jean-François Latour completed the prestigious Artist Diploma program at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he was a full scholarship student of Leon Fleisher. He also holds a Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody and an Artist Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he was a student of Marc Durand and Leon Fleisher. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Montréal, where he studied with Marc Durand. Mr. Latour has also worked with John Perry, André Laplante, Ellen Mack, Marek Jablonsky and Gilbert Kalish.

M. Latour is the recipient of a Career Grant from the Canadian Council for the Arts. He resides in Montreal.

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Jennifer Grim

Hailed by the New York Times as “a deft, smooth flute soloist,” Jennifer Grim has performed across the United States as an active solo and chamber musician of both the classic literature and contemporary music. In addition to the New York Chamber Soloists, Ms. Grim performs with the Zéphyros Quintet and the Proteus Ensemble and has performed with such groups as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum Musicae, Ensemble Sospeso, Ensemble 21 and the American Festival of Microtonal Music. As a soloist, she has performed with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Yale, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Grim has two B.A.s from Stanford University and a M.M., a M.M.A. and a D.M.A. from Yale University, where she studied with Ransom Wilson. She is currently on the faculty of Franklin and Marshall College, the Pennsylvania Academy of Music in Lancaster, PA, and the Newark School of the Arts in Newark, New Jersey.

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Jill Hallett Levis

Jill Hallett Levis, soprano, has been performing with Vermont's professional music groups for the past 20 years. She appears regularly with the Vermont Mozart Festival, the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble and the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Levis has studied with teachers at the Juilliard and Manhattan Schools and currently takes coaching, at McGill College, with the internationally famous countertenor Allen Fast. In 1987, Jill was the featured singer on the Vermont Mozart Festival's Recording, "Magical Mozart". In 1988, she was selected to participate in the prestigious American Music Competition at Carnegie Hall. Currently, Jill is touring with a recital of music composed entirely by women, entitled, A SONG OF HER OWN.

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Joel Cohen

Joel Cohen (lute) is a leading authority in the field of medieval and Renaissance musical performance. He has received widespread acclaim as performer, conductor, and writer/commentator in his chosen field, and his unique style of program building has made the Boston Camerata ensemble famous on five continents.

Joel Cohen studied composition at Harvard University. Awarded a Danforth Fellowship, he spent the next two years in Paris as a student of Nadia Boulanger. In 1990, Cohen founded the Camerata Mediterranea, an ensemble devoted to the performance of early-music repertoires from the Mediterranean basin. The ensemble's initial tour season took place in France, Italy, Spain, and Morocco; further tours from 1992 to 2004 brought the group's music to audiences in France, the United States, Morocco, Germany, and Holland.

As lutenist, Joel Cohen has appeared with numerous European ensembles. Cohen’s chosen repertoires span many centuries and countries, and over thirty LP-CD programs have been recorded under his direction. He has, however, taken a special interest in French music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and early Baroque. Through a series of CD recordings, including New Britain (1989), The American Vocalist (1992), An American Christmas (1993), Simple Gifts (1995), Trav'ling Home (1997), and The Golden Harvest (2000), his pioneering work in the roots of early American music has also won extensive praise.

Joel Cohen’s professional honors include membership in Phi Beta Kappa, the Erwin Bodky award in early music, the Signet Society medal from Harvard, the Goerges Longy Award, and the Howard Mayer Brown Award for lifetime achievement in early music. He is an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic.

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John Tiranno

Originally from Buffalo, NY, tenor John Tiranno’s 2007 engagements included Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in Hamilton, Ontario (The National Academy Orchestra of Canada), his Avery Fisher Hall debut singing L’Indovino in Leoni’s L’Oracolo (Teatro Grattacielo), a return to Carnegie Hall as tenor soloist in Imant Raminsh’s The Peace of Wild Things (a New York Premiere with MidAmerica Productions), Marco in The Gondoliers (Vermont Mozart Festival), Handel Messiah’s in Wheeling, WV (Bethany College Festival Orchestra) as well as in Newark, NJ (The Discovery Orchestra, formerly The Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey), Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Vermont Mozart Festival), and Arturo in Lucia di Lammermoor (Connecticut Grand Opera).

Other credits include the world premiere of The Passion According to St. Toscanini (Boulder Philharmonic), the title role in Gounod’s Faust (Opera in the Heights), Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni (Opera Colorado), the Duke of Mantua, Nemorino, Tamino, Belmonte, and Camille de Rosillon, as well as appearances with Sarasota Opera, Lake George Opera, Augusta Opera, the Ash Lawn Opera, Fredonia Chamber Players, New England Symphonic Ensemble, and the Three Rivers Choral Society. Mr. Tiranno holds a BM from S.U.N.Y. Fredonia, and a MM from West Virginia University, both in Vocal Performance. He is a past winner of the Dorothy Strayer-Premier Music Award and the Pittsburgh Concert Society Major Audition, and has sung under the batons of Maestri including Vincent La Selva, Boris Brott, David Wroe, Dean Williamson, and William Boggs.

Visit the John Tiranno web site

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Lisa Stokes Chin

Lisa Stokes Chin (double bass) graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 1996. She currently performs with various orchestras and ensembles in the New York City area. In the spring of 1997, she participated in the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ “Grammys in the Schools” program, performing with the Brooklyn Philharmonic strings in elementary schools throughout the five boroughs. The following summer she toured in Europe with the American Institute of Musical Studies Festival Orchestra. She has also appeared with the Riverside Symphony, the Allentown Symphony, the Seoul Symphony of New York, and the Manhattan Virtuosi. Ms. Chin has recorded on Newport Classics label.

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Melvin Kaplan

Melvin Kaplan (oboe), founder/artistic director of the New York Chamber Soloists and the Festival Winds, has been for more than 40 years one of America’s most influential forces in chamber music, both as a renowned performer and as a manager, teacher, lecturer and writer. As a soloist, he has premiered works by Vaughan Williams, Ezra Laderman, Hugh Aitken, Gunther Schuller, Mel Powell, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Jean Francaix. On the faculty of the Juilliard School for 30 years, Mr. Kaplan was also for many years featured regularly as a lecturer/performer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He founded and is the Artistic Director of the Vermont Mozart Festival.

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Menahem Pressler

Honored and decorated by the French and German Government respectively with the highest honors those countries award to civilians, Menahem Pressler was made a Commander of Arts and Letters by France, and from Germany received the Deutsche Bundesdienstverkreuz, Erste Klasse. A founding member and the pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio for all of its thus far 51 years, he has established himself among the world’s most distinguished and honored musicians, with a career that spans more than five decades. Both an outstanding chamber and solo performer, Pressler’s talents have brought him to all of the world’s major music capitals. His musical precision and overwhelming knowledge of piano and chamber music literature have also gained him an international reputation as a remarkable teacher.

Born in Magdeburg in 1923, Germany, Menahem Pressler received most of his musical training in Israel, to which his family, fleeing the Nazis, immigrated in 1939. His life has always been completely devoted to his music. When not on tour with the Beaux Arts Trio, giving solo performances, or teaching master classes, Pressler can be found in his studio at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he holds the rank of Distinguished Professor. In 1994, Mr. Pressler was honored with Chamber Music America’s Distinguished Service Award and in 1998 he received the prestigious Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award. Menahem Pressler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2000.

Menahem Pressler’s world-renowned career was launched after he was awarded first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San Francisco in 1946. This was followed by his successful American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Eugene Ormandy, and appearances with the New York, Washington, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, London and Paris Symphony Orchestras. He also became a recording artist for MGM. Since then, Pressler’s extensive tours of North America and Europe have included performances with the orchestras of New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Dallas, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Oslo, Helsinki and many others.

In 1955 he co-founded the Beaux Arts Trio with Daniel Guilet and Bernard Greenhouse. It has since become one of the most enduring and widely acclaimed chamber music ensembles, and has been credited with giving rise to the enormous popularity of the piano trio repertoire.

Menahem Pressler’s other chamber music collaborations have included multiple performances with the Juilliard, Emerson, Guarneri and Cleveland Quartets as well as the Israel Quartet and the Pasquier String Trio. In addition to over fifty recordings with the Beaux Arts Trio, Menahem Pressler has compiled over thirty solo recordings, ranging from the works of Bach to Ben Haim.

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Patrick Wood

British-Mexican violinist Patrick Wood studied as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and holds a BA and MA with honors in Modern Languages from Oxford University. He began to play the violin in Mexico City as a pupil of Icilio Bredo, later studying at the Royal Academy and with Erick Friedman and Eugene Drucker in the U.S.A. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed widely throughout Europe and the United States.

Patrick Wood is a regular performer with the Berkshire Bach Society, appearing as soloist alongside artists such as Eugene Drucker of the Emerson Quartet, Carol Wincenc, Aldo Abreu and Kenneth Cooper. His chamber concerts in the Musica Viva Festival of New Jersey have been broadcast across the United States on WWFM the Classical Network, and his performance of Saint-Saens' Introduction and Rondo Cappriccioso has been heard in the UK on BBC Radio. Mr. Wood has served as concertmaster of New York Philomusica, is a soloist and Concertmaster for the Vermont Mozart Festival, and performs with the New York Chamber Soloists. From 1989 to 1997, Mr. Wood was a member of The English Mozart Players, as both soloist and Concertmaster with the group in the UK and throughout Europe

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Scott Thornburg

Trumpeter Scott Thornburg has performed as a soloist and chamber musician around the world. Following undergraduate and graduate study at the University of Miami and the Juilliard School, Mr. Thornburg lived in New York City where he was principal trumpet with the New York City Symphony, the Summerfare Opera Orchestra, Philharmonia Virtuosi, the Stamford Symphony, Musica Sacra, and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He performed at the Caramoor Festival as principal trumpet with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and toured South America, Europe, and the United States with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Thornburg is a member of the New York Trumpet Ensemble and has performed with the Canadian Brass, Parnassus and the New York Brass. He was invited to fill in for one of the regular members of the American Brass Quintet who was on leave during the fall 1997 season. Mr. Thornburg spent two months performing around the country with the group and conducting masterclasses and chamber music coaching at the Juilliard School where the American Brass Quintet is in residence. For four years he toured the U.S. and Canada for Columbia Artists with the trumpet and organ duo "Toccatas and Flourished". He has also appeared as soloist with the Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestra, Philharmonia Virtuosi, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, the Juilliard Symphony, the Brass Band of Battle Creek and, most recently, on U.S., European, and South American tours in Spain and Russia and in the Spring of 2000, a tour with the Summit Brass.

Mr. Thornburg's recordings with pianist Silvia Roederer is to be released in 2002 and he has recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's Philharmonia Virtuosi, the New York Trumpet Ensemble, and with organist Richard Morris.

Visit the Scott Thornburg web site

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Shyla Nelson

Acclaimed as a “crystalline soprano,” Shyla Nelson’s numerous concert and operatic appearances have delighted audiences throughout the U.S. and abroad. In the Vermont region, she has been a guest soloist with the Vermont Symphony Orcestra, Vermont Youth Orchestra, and the Vermont Mozart Festival, among her other ensembles and companies. She is a 2003 graduate of the International Institute of Vocal Arts in Italy, where she performed in a semi-staged version of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore as Adina under the direction of Fabrizio Melano (MET, La Scala), and Despina in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. She is also a 2005 graduate of the VOICExperience Program, directed by Metropolitan Opera Baritone Sherrill Milnes and his wife, Maria Zouves. Regional audiences will be able to hear Shyla in numerous engagements in 2007, including an appearance as a guest soloist with the Burlington Choral Society in Mendelssohn’s Elijah in April, gala performances with the Vermont Philharmonic in June, appearances as Gianetta in the VT Mozart Festival’s Summer Festival production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Gondoliers as well as the Countess in VMF’s Marriage of Figaro¸ and Despina in Fresh Young Dynamic Opera’s production of Cosi fan tutte in September

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Ynez Lynch

Ynez Lynch (viola), an original member of the New York Chamber Soloists, has been viola soloist with the Musica Aeterna Orchestra and the Festival Orchestra of New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She has also performed with the Festival Winds and appeared as guest artist with the American and Emerson String Quartets and the Paris Piano Trio. Ms Lynch toured the United States and Europe as a member of the original cast of New York Pro Musica's production of The Play of Daniel, which was recorded by Decca. She has also recorded for CRI and Nonesuch, and has made many radio and television appearances in North America and Europe.