Musicians
Founding Members
Nicolas Orbovich – Artistic Director/Violin
Nicolas Paul Orbovich enjoys a reputation among adventurous American violinists. His highly acclaimed career spans a wide variety of musical styles and genres, while expanding into prolific artistic entrepreneurial endeavors.
As a performer, Nic has been honored widely. In 1987, he was awarded the Bronze Medal at Her Royal Majesty’s International Festival Competition in Aberdeen, Scotland (UK). Orbovich was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition as a member of the Amherst String Quartet. In 2001, he was featured as a soloist on the Grammy Award nominated release, “The Hot Springs Music Festival: Louis Moreau Gottschalk” (Naxos). That same year, Nic was a prominent figure in the Emmy Award winning documentary, “The Sound of Dreams.” In 2008, Nic was concertmaster on a “Top Ten of the Year” selection of Gramophone Magazine, “Rudolf Haken; Concertos” (Naxos). He has soloed with numerous orchestras around the country, having performed concertos and brilliant works by Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, Sarasate, J.S. Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi.
He enjoys a reputation as an outstanding recording artist in many genres. Besides the aforementioned Grammy nominee and Gramophone magazine award winner, Nic appears in “The Hot Springs Music Festival; Creole Romantic Composers” (2001-Naxos), “Music of Jerome Moross” (2002-Naxos), “Music of Jerome Starer” (1997-Albany), and appears on an album of jazz violinist Diane Delin.
As an orchestral performer, his work is prolific. Nic has been concertmaster of the South Bend Symphony, the Hot Springs Festival Orchestra, the Southwest Michigan Symphony, the La Porte County Symphony, the Lake Shore Symphony and many others. In this role, he has performed on stage with some of the most acclaimed names in classical music. Some of those names include; Itzhak Perlman, Gidon Kremer, Joshua Bell, Andre Watts, Hilary Hahn, Lang Lang, Garrick Ohlson, Shlomo Mintz, Daniel Barenboim, Lorin Maazel, Leonard Slatkin, and Sir Georg Solti. Currently, he holds the Principal Second Violin chair with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra (SBSO), where he is also a member of the SBSO String Quartet and String Quintet, performing over 20 concerts a year with those chamber ensembles.
Nic’s favorite form of musical expression is through chamber music. His involvement with existing ensembles and musicians is prodigious. He has coached with Rostislav Dubinsky (Borodin String Quartet), Alexander Schneider (Budapest Quartet), and Alan Grishman (Mendelssohn String Quartet). Orbovich has performed chamber music with Rachel Barton Pine, Christopher O’Reilly, Nancy Ambrose King, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony. His performances of chamber music have been featured on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”
He is the co-founder (with wife Sunny) of the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival (MCCMF), and performs as violinist in their annual concerts. Through his leadership and dedication, the MCCMF is quickly becoming recognized as one of the country’s best chamber music festivals. In 2013, he was the guest speaker at the Indiana Suzuki Teachers Conference, where he delivered an address on the importance of teaching chamber music to young musicians. Visit Artist Website.
Learn More About Nic Orbovich
Nic has garnered much attention in the “pop” genre as well. He has performed on stage with such popular artists as Rod Stewart, Amy Grant, Michael Bolton, Clay Aiken, Arturo Sandoval, Tony Bennett, the Duke Ellington Big Band, Frank Sinatra Jr., Bobby Vinton, the Moody Blues, Roger Daltry, Kansas, Melissa Manchester, Ben E. King, Tito Puente Jr., Ben Vereen, the Platters, the Ink Spots, and Barbara Mandrell, just to name a few.
Nic lives in Michigan City, Indiana with his lovely wife Sunny and beautiful daughter, Sophia. He also enjoys many altruistic and philanthropic endeavors. Orbovich serves on the Board of Directors of the Keys to Hope Drop In Resource Center (a Center for the homeless), the Recovery House of Michigan City, volunteers at the Community of Faith Men’s Shelter, the Michigan City Soup Kitchen, and has served on the Board of the Dunes Fellowship Recovery House.
Sunny Gardner-Orbovich – Director of Educational Programs
Sunny enjoys a growing reputation as one of Northwest Indiana’s most respected artistic pedagogues for children. She has developed a unique general curriculum of arts education which includes cultural diversity, world and natural history, folk idioms and ideas and disciplines from the most current educational research minds.
Currently, “Mrs. G.O.” (as she is affectionately called by her students) is an Art Teacher in the Michigan City Area Schools Systems. Her artistic and musical experience, however, go far beyond the conventional limitations of public schools.
Sunny is also a respected painter, muralist and musician (viola and soprano). She graduated from Wichita University with honors in painting. Ms. Gardner-Orbovich also holds a certificate of education from Indiana University, Bloomington and a Masters of Arts Education from Indiana Wesleyan University. She has studied voice with the acclaimed Sonia Rasmussen at IU-Bloomington and acquired 6 years of Suzuki string method experience while residing there.
As a musician, she is an active violist with the LaPorte County Symphony Orchestra and is co-founder of the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival. Sunny is also co-founder of the Michigan City Ecumenical Community Children’s Choir (Michigan City, IN), established in 2005, and is founder of and facilitates the annual “Children’s Choir Institute,” held every July in Michigan City at FPC.
Charter Members
Robert Auler – Piano
Robert Marshall Auler is Assistant Professor of Piano at the State University of New York at Oswego, and maintains an active national and international performing career. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in June of 2005 and recently presented a series of concerts throughout Venezuela, performing modern works of American and Venezuelan composers. As a winner of the Young Keyboard Artists’ Association Piano Prize, Auler presented concerts throughout Germany, France, the Netherlands and Denmark, receiving critical acclaim for his performance of Gershwin’s Concerto in F. He has also appeared in concert in New York, Detroit, Dallas, Syracuse, Indianapolis, Louisville, Santa Barbara, Rochester, Greensboro, Austin, and other cities. Visit Artist Website.
Wesley Baldwin – Cello
Cellist Wesley Baldwin performs throughout the United States and Europe as soloist and chamber musician. As a soloist he has appeared with the Laredo Philharmonic, the Oregon Mozart Players, the Symphony of the Mountains, the Bryan Symphony, the Oak Ridge Symphony, New River Valley, Salisbury, and Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestras and the Wintergreen and Hot Springs Festival Orchestras, among others. Concerts this year include performances of the David Ott Double Cello Concerto in Tennessee and Missouri, solo cello concerti in South Dakota, and Minnesota, as well as solo recitals throughout the United States. In the summer of 2012 Wesley performed the complete Bach Cello Suites at the Wintergreen Festival, a cycle he will repeat several times in the 2012-13 season. In the 2013-14 season Baldwin will perform concertos with the Florence, Oak Ridge, Manchester and Chattanooga Symphonies.
An advocate for great music from all eras, Mr. Baldwin is one of the only performers of several little known and new concerti for cello, including recently those by Wagenseil, Jacob T.V., Behzad Ranjbaran, and Alan Shulman. His recording of music for cello by Alan Shulman, released by Albany records in 2010, enjoyed widespread critical acclaim. He has also recorded for the Naxos, Zyode, Centaur, and Innova labels.
Wesley was the founder of the Plymouth String Quartet, with whom he was a top prize-winner in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and a finalist in the Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition. Other performing honors Baldwin has received include the Prix Mercure, Homer Ulrich Awards, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Performing Artist Fellowship. Visit Artist Website.
Learn More About Wesley Baldwin
Dr. Baldwin has performed chamber music at the Aspen, Cazenovia, Hot Springs, Ojai, Sandpoint, Mainly Mozart, May in Miami, Skaneateles, and Sub-tropics Music Festivals, and internationally in Italy, France, Monte Carlo, Spain, Austria, Brazil, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica.
Wesley is now cellist of the James Piano Quartet, formerly in residence at Sweet Briar College and the Wintergreen Festival. In the summers he performs and teaches at the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival, the ARIA International Academy, and at the Wintergreen Festival, where he serves on the faculty of the Wintergreen Academy and holds the Leonard Rose Memorial chair as principal cellist of the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra.
Melisa Barrick-Baldwin – Soprano
Soprano Melisa Barrick Baldwin is a versatile vocal artist, equally fluent in the fields of opera, early music, and new music. Often engaged as a concert soloist with orchestras throughout the United States, Ms. Barrick Baldwin has given performances of Carmina Burana, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, Nielson’s 3rd Symphony, the Fauré Requiem, the Brahms Requiem, the St. John’s Passion and Magnificat of Bach, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Beethoven Mass in C, as well as Stravinsky’s Les Noces, and many Bach Cantatas. Last summer found her on a concert tour throughout China, where she also gave multiple master classes for aspiring opera singers.
A prizewinner in the MacAllister Young Singer Competition, Homer Ulrich Performance Competition, and the Psi Iota Xi Award, she is an alumna of the Peabody Conservatory, the University of Maryland, and the AIMS program (American Institute of Musical Studies) in Graz, Austria. As an advocate of new music, she has given première performances of works by composers Joelle Wallach (her provocative Daughters of Silence song cycle), George Chave, George Wright, and P. Kellach Waddle, who wrote his Danielewski Serenade for Ms. Barrick Baldwin and her husband, cellist Wesley Baldwin. Melisa recently sang the world premiere performance of the Michael White song cycle “A Child’s Garden”.
Her favorite operatic roles include Pamina (The Magic Flute), Adele (Die Fledermaus) , Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), and Amore in L’incoronazione di Poppea, which she performed with conductor Kenneth Slowik at the Smithsonian Institution. She has concertized under the batons of Mei-Ann Chen, Edward Polochick, Cornelia Laemmli, Richard Rosenberg, Peter Bay, Serge Fournier, Frederik Prausnitz, Dan Allcott, and, at age 19, the late Julius Rudel. A charter member of the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival, Melisa has also been on the performance faculties of the Hot Springs Music Festival and the Mid-America Chamber Players, and guest artist at the Wintergreen Festival, the Sewanee Festival, and the Sweetbriar College Fringe Festival. Her critically acclaimed recordings include the Jerome Moross ballet Frankie and Johnnie, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Ave Maria, both of which are available on the Naxos label. Her performances have been often broadcast nationally on NPR’s Performance Today. Melisa lives in Knoxville with her husband and four amazing children: Jack (18), Ella (13), Poppy (9), and Maisie (11 months).
Rudolf Haken – Viola
Rudolf Haken is a composer and violist internationally renowned for his creative melding of disparate musical styles and genres. He is particularly known for his work with extended-range violas, appearing in concert on four continents with his Rivinus five-string viola and Jensen six-string electric viola.
Performances of his compositions, including numerous commissioned works, have met with great success both in live performance and recordings. In September 2012, violinist Rachel Barton Pine premiered Rudolf Haken’s solo violin work Faust at Chicago’s Beethoven Festival. Pine had commissioned this work from Haken as part of an effort to bring heavy metal influence into solo acoustic violin music. In April 2011, Haken’s Violin Concerto for Stefan Milenkovich was premiered at the NOMUS Festival (Novi Sad, Serbia) and at Kolarac Hall in Belgrade. A Centaur CD of concertos composed by Rudolf Haken was chosen as a 2007 “Critics’ Choice” by American Record Guide. In 2004, WTTW-Chicago produced a video featuring Haken performing his transcriptions of Van Halen and Metallica on a Jensen five-string electric viola. This video was shown frequently in passenger areas at O’Hare and Midway airports in Chicago.
Professor Haken has performed his Concerto for Five-String Viola with several orchestras in North America, South America, and Europe. He has also composed commissioned works for Paul Merkelo (principal trumpet of the Montreal Symphony), oboist Nancy Ambrose King, flutist Jean Ferrandis, clarinetist William King, Nobel Prize laureate Paul Lauterbur, pianist Robert Auler, patrons George Brock and Harry Triandis, and numerous others. Visit Artist Website.
Learn More about Rudolf Haken
Guest Artists
Kurt Civilette – Horn
Kurt Civilette is a freelance performer and teacher based in East Lansing, Michigan. He holds several permanent orchestral positions in the area including principal horn with the South Bend Symphony and principal horn with Midland Symphony. He is also 3rd horn in Flint Symphony and Ann Arbor Symphony. As a member of the South Bend Symphony principal wind quintet and Ann Arbor Symphony Brass Quintet he performs chamber concerts and educational concerts. Other recent freelance engagements include playing sub/extra on stage with Detroit Symphony, Saint Louis Symphony, Utah Symphony, and Ft. Wayne Philharmonic and in the opera pit with Michigan Opera Theater and Santa Fe Opera. He is frequently asked to play guest principal, playing that role with Ann Arbor, Flint, Michigan Opera Theater, Kalamazoo, Saginaw Bay, Windsor (ON), and West Michigan Symphonies. He is the horn instructor at Lansing Community College and Michigan State University’s Community Music School.
For 15 years from 1995-2010, Kurt was full-time 3rd horn/associate principal with New Mexico Symphony in Albuquerque, substituting as interim principal horn for the entire 2001-02 season. Before winning the permanent job in New Mexico, he held temporary positions as principal horn with Charleston (SC) Symphony, acting principal horn of the Savannah(GA) Symphony, and assistant principal with Honolulu Symphony. While in New Mexico he was also 3rd horn with Santa Fe Symphony and appeared with Santa Fe Opera orchestra. As a successful freelance musician, he has appeared with Chicago Lyric Opera, Chicago Symphony, Grant Park, Jacksonville and North Carolina Symphonies, and played many commercial jingles and recording sessions.
During the summers, Kurt plays principal horn with the Southern Illinois Music festival in Carbondale, appearing as a featured soloist in 2012. He has appeared in various US and international summer festivals including Spoleto festival in USA and Italy, the Assisi festival (Italy), the Kumamoto festival in Japan, and Music from Angel Fire.
Jill Dispenza – Bassoon
Jill Dispenza, is a freelance bassoonist in the Chicago metropolitan area. She holds a Master of Music Degree from The Juilliard School where she studied with Loren Glickman and a Bachelors of Music from North Carolina School of Arts where she studied with Mark Popkin. Jill plays principal bassoon with the South Bend Symphony in Indiana and with the Central City Opera Festival in Colorado. Jill has performed with Tulsa Opera, Chicago Light Opera Works, Elgin Symphony, the Chicago Ensemble, the Memphis Symphony, Key West Symphony, Texas Opera Theater, Virginia Symphony and Opera and the National Symphony in Washington DC, and Wolftrap at the Barns Opera Orchestra. She has worked with conductors Leonard Bernstein, Jorge Mester, Sixten Ehrling and David Zinman. Noted performances include the American Premiere of Benjamin Britten’s Glorianna and the World Premiere of the opera Gabriel’s Daughter by Mollicone. Jill has recorded for Newport Classics and can often be heard on National Public Radio broadcasts of the Central City Opera.
Zofia Glashauser – Violin
Zofia Glashauser has been the concertmaster of the South Bend Symphony Orchestra and the Lira Orchestra of Chicago. With these orchestras, she has soloed on violin concertos by Tchaikovsky, Vieuxtemps, Mozart, and on brilliant works by Wieniawski and Kreisler. These performances were lauded by audience and critics alike and has helped garner her a reputation as one of the American Midwest’s most sought-after violinists. Her playing is characterized by, and well-known to audiences, as having a sublime, yet fiery passion and a fine, crystalline technique.
Ms. Glashauser was born in the beautiful and historically rich city of Krakow, Poland. Upon her arrival in America, she was immediately accepted into the studio of renowned pedagogue, Renata Knific at Western Michigan University. While there, Zofia was both a winner of the 2001 concerto competition and a semi-finalist in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She then continued her studies in the Chicago, IL area at Northwestern University as a master’s candidate in the acclaimed combined studio of Roland and Almita Vamos.
She is an avid performer today, having been a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Kalamazoo Symphony, and assistant concertmaster of the Northwest Indiana Symphony. With these, and other orchestras, she has worked under conductors Daniel Barenboim, Claudio Abbado, and Sir Neville Mariner.
Zofia is also a very active chamber musician, being a violinist with the acclaimed Michigan City Chamber Music Festival, was first violinist with the South Bend Symphony String Quintet, and continues to perform chamber music around the country.
In 2016, Zosia (as she is affectionately known to friends) won a full time position with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in Tennessee. She lives there, where she keeps an active and thriving private teaching studio. She enjoys many activities, including cooking, reading, and especially running, having participated in numerous races. Zosia loves sharing these interests with her family; husband Jason, and her three beautiful children, Simon, Gabriela, and Susannah.
Jennet Ingle – Oboe
Jennet Ingle loves the oboe. She has built an active career around performing, teaching, making reeds for, and writing about it, and believes deeply that everyone else loves it, too. Perhaps they just don’t know it yet. Jennet’s passion for performance and outreach led her in 2013 to create Musicians for Michiana, a chamber music series dedicated to connecting musicians and audiences with local non-profit organizations to the benefit of all.
All professional oboists make their own reeds, but Jennet has taken this task to new levels. As the owner and operator of Jennet Ingle Reeds, she makes and sells over a hundred fifty handmade reeds every month to oboists all over the country. For the past four summers, she has run an Oboe Reed Boot Camp to teach the craft to others, and last year began a series of monthly Reeding Circles, in which reedmakers of various abilities can come together to learn new tricks and techniques from each other as they work socially.
In her spare time, Jennet pours her energy into Prone Oboe, a blog about her active life and a behind-the-scenes look at the process of learning, teaching, and performing music at a high level.
Jennet is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Richard Killmer. Visit Artist Website.
Steven Ingle – Bassoon
Composer and Resident Conductor of the innovative Elgin, IL based Chamber Music on the Fox, Steven Vance Ingle has led recent performances of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat and Michael Daugherty’s Dead Elvis and has conducted CMOTF’s Crime Classics concerts featuring early radio plays by Bernard Herrmann. He conducted Daron Hagen’s vibrant film score Piano Concerto No. 2: Chaplin’s Tramp at the 2017 Elgin Short Film Festival before returning in 2018 to conduct his own score to Georges Méliès’s 1902 classic, Le Voyage dans la Lune.
Steve’s compositions REAPER! and Quiet, please!, multimedia homages to early fantasy and horror radio, were premiered by CMOTF and by Musicians for Michiana respectively, and his Air for Oboe and Piano and Facets: Subtle Variations for Trumpet and Piano were premiered at the Pine Mountain Music Festival in Houghton, Michigan.
Steve has conducted on the Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra series and more recently led the South Bend Symphony Orchestra’s Young People’s Discovery Concerts in 2015 and 2016.
Steve’s highly dynamic and versatile career has also led him to perform as a bassoonist with many organizations. He is a former member of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and with the symphony orchestras of Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Kalamazoo, South Bend, Memphis, Knoxville and numerous others. In 2017, he performed as contrabassoonist for Joffrey Ballet’s production of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet at Lincoln Center.
Steve has performed on Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess and Music in the Loft series, at venues including the Ravinia Festival’s Bennett Gordon Hall, and on live radio from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. In 2005, he was honored to perform under the direction of Pierre Boulez for Mr. Boulez’s Derive 2 for thirteen instruments at Chicago’s Harris Theater.
Steve is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and of the Eastman School of Music. He currently serves on the faculty at Valparaiso University and lives in South Bend with his wife, oboist Jennet Ingle, and their daughter Zoe. Visit Artist Website
William King – Clarinet
William King has been a professional clarinetist for over 30 years. He currently holds the tenured 2nd/bass clarinet chair in the Michigan Opera Theatre Orchestra, Detroit’s opera company based in the beautifully restored Detroit Opera House; he won the chair in 2005. He has also held tenured chairs in the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Orchestra (Principal), the Illinois Symphony (2nd), and Sinfonia da Camera (2nd). He has been first-call substitute with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, including regional touring, the Colorado Symphony, and the Phoenix Symphony, and has subbed with the Cincinnati Symphony. He performs regularly with the River Rasin Ragtime Revue, an ensemble dedicated to recreating the original popular music of the United States, and is the Coordinator of Woodwind Chamber Music at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. Each summer he performs at the Michigan City (IN) Chamber Music Festival, and free-lances throughout southeast Michigan, western Ontario, and northern Ohio.
Nancy Ambrose King – Oboe
Nancy Ambrose King, oboe, is the first-prize winner of the Third New York International Competition for Solo Oboists, held in 1995. She has appeared as soloist throughout the United States and abroad, including performances with the St. Petersburg, Russia, Philharmonic, Prague Chamber Orchestra, Janacek Philharmonic, Tokyo Chamber Orchestra, Puerto Rico Symphony, Orchestra of the Swan in Birmingham, England, Festival Internacionale de Musica in Buenos Aires, New York String Orchestra, Amarillo Symphony, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, and Sinfonia da Camera. She has performed as recitalist in Weill Recital Hall and as soloist at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.
She has recorded nine CDs of works for the oboe on Boston Records, Cala Records, Equilibrium, Naxos and Centaur Records. Recent releases include “Global Reflections” recorded with the Prague Chamber Orchestra and featuring the works of Strauss, Skalkottas, Sierra, and Foss, as well as the premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Oboe Concerto with the University of Michigan Symphony Band and a Youtube video channel, “Trois Trios/Deux Duos” with colleagues Jeffrey Lyman, bassoon and Martin Katz, piano. She can also be heard in performances on the Athena, Arabesque, and CBS Masterworks labels. She was a finalist in the Fernand Gillet Oboe Competition held in Graz, Austria, and has been heard as soloist on WQXR radio in New York City and NPR’s “Performance Today”. She is on the faculty of the Sarasota Music Festival, has appeared as a recitalist throughout the world and was a member of the jury for the esteemed 2009 Barbirolli Oboe Competition. She will serve on the jury for the internationally recognized Muri, Switzerland Competition 2016.
Ms. King has written a highly successful e-book for Apple I-Tunes titled “Making Oboe Reeds from Start to Finish with Nancy Ambrose King”. Her playing has earned high praise from a variety of critics, including the American Record Guide:
“Marvelously evocative, full of character, sultry and seductive, with a soft-spoken, utterly supple tone, and as musically descriptive as any I have heard…a fine exhibition of thoroughly musical oboe playing”; “She plays not only with delicacy, but also with an intense, almost rapturous sound that is second to none in expressivity and gradation. Delightful!”. “…a lovely player with a tone that surpasses that of most other American oboe soloists. It defines delicacy, yet is strangely assertive, like a soft-spoken woman who nonetheless speaks up strongly when her mind is made up.”, Fanfare: “Nancy Ambrose King is clearly a skilled musician of great promise, with a sterling technique”, and The Double Reed: “…thoughtful, expressive, and perfectly controlled performance of consummate accuracy. It’s not that she makes it sound easy-she makes it sound perfect”, “Ms. King’s fluid technique, combined with clean and accurate articulations, makes the most complex passages flow and sounds effortless. Combine these aspects with a beautiful tone and a sensitive touch in the lyrical passages, all oboists have a new level to which to strive.”
Learn More About Nancy Ambrose King
Ryan King – Clarinet
Ryan King holds a Bachelor of Music in Clarinet Performance from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Daniel Gilbert. Ryan has performed and recorded with many notable ensembles, such as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the River Raisin Ragtime Revue, the Dearborn Symphony, and the Cut-Time Players. He attended the Aspen Summer Music Festival, Brevard Music Festival, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in New York City. He performed as principal clarinetist on the GRAMMY award nominated recording of Milhaud’s opera L’Orestie d’Eschyle with the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra.
In addition to his classical performance, Ryan has a strong presence in the Michigan rock scene. As a founding member of Ypsilanti-based progressive jam band Stormy Chromer, Ryan has spent years touring the midwest’s rock clubs and bars. Though his role is primarily that of bassist and songwriter, every now and again the clarinet will make a guest appearance!
Trevor King – Bassoon
Trevor King, bassoon, is a senior at the University of Michigan with a major in Bassoon Performance studying with Professor Jeffrey Lyman, and a minor in Biology. He has performed in the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Band, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra Institute at Whistler, British Columbia Chamber Orchestra festival, Marrowstone Music Festival, Eastern Music Festival, Idyllwild ChamberFest, and Detroit Civic Orchestra. He is a member of the Cobalt Winds, a featured chamber ensemble at the Thy Chamber Music Festival in Denmark. He was awarded the MTNA Award for Outstanding Instrumental Soloist of the Year for his performance of Michael Daugherty’s ‘Red Cape Tango’.
Anna Mayne – Horn
Originally from El Paso, Texas, hornist Anna Mayne, joined the Northeastern Illinois University faculty in January of 2012. She is amember of the South Bend and Illinois Symphonies, and actively freelances throughout the tri-state area. Ms. Mayne has played with the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra; the Milwaukee Symphony; the Green Bay Symphony; the Northwest Indiana Symphony; the New Philharmonic Orchestra; Chicago Sinfonietta; Mannheim Steamroller; the Marin Symphony; the El Paso Symphony; El Paso Opera; the Southwest Symphony (NM); Chicago Arts Orchestra; and the Oistrach Orchestra.
An avid chamber musician, she has been a member of the CINCO Brass Quintet since 1998. As a member of CINCO, Ms. Mayne was a semi-finalist at the Carmel, Coleman, and Fischoff National Chamber Music Competitions. In 2003, CINCO was the first ensemble to be invited to take part in the Chicago Chamber Musicians (CCM) Professional Development Program which partnered CINCO with members of CCM on several subscription concerts and live radio broadcasts on WFMT (98.7). CINCO has performed all over Chicago, most notably at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, the Shakespeare Theater at Navy Pier, the Rush Hour Concert Series at St. James Cathedral, and the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center.
Ms. Mayne’s principal teachers include William Barnewitz, Dale Clevenger, Robert Ward, and Gail Williams. She received fellowships to attend the Colorado College Summer Chamber Music Festival; the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival; and the Aspen Music Festival.
Her playing has been critically acclaimed, and she can be heard on several recording labels, including the Arsis label and most notably on Albany Records with the Houston Grand Opera and the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble. In addition to her busy performance schedule, she maintains private horn studios throughout the Chicagoland area.