Allison graduated summa cum laude from Appalachian State University in 2006 with a degree in violin performance. She completed a master’s degree in 2008 in violin performance at the graduate school of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In addition to modern and baroque violin, treble, tenor, and bass viola da gamba, Allison performs on viola d’amore, a rare 14-stringed instrument.
Allison is a founding member of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra and Raleigh Camerata. She performs frequently with numerous ensembles, including the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Magnolia Baroque, the Bach Society of Charleston, and SC Bach. Allison has appeared as a soloist with the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, the Winston-Salem Symphony, the Salisbury Symphony, and NC Theatre. She maintains a private studio from her home in Wake Forest, NC, and occasionaly serves as guest lecturer at universities and colleges. Allison is also a yoga instructor, and finds that yoga supports the lifestyle of an active musician.

Ms. Blaker has performed as a soloist and with various ensembles in the United States, Denmark, England and the Netherlands, including the Farallon Recorder Quartet and the recorder duo, Tibia. She teaches privately and at workshops throughout the United States, including the San Francisco Early Music Society Baroque workshop and Port Townsend; she is a co-director of the Amherst Early Music Festival, Inc. Ms. Blaker is the author of The Recorder Player’s Companion and the “Opening Measures” column in the American Recorder, and a collaborator and performer on the Disc Continuo series of recordings.

… with American Bach Soloists, Folger Consort, Boston Early Music Festival, Concert Royal, Dallas Bach Society, Vancouver Early Music Festival and Collegio di Musica Sacra in Poland. With these ensembles has recorded for the Centaur, Albany, Koch, Radio Bremen, Bard and Dux labels as well as in the soundtrack for the Touchstone film Casanova. His online video article, “The Cello Music of Bononcini” can be viewed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music and several of his teaching videos are posted on the website of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. He served as president of that society from 2000 through 2004 and chaired its international Pan-Pacific Gamba Gathering in Hawaii during the summer of 2007.

In addition to teaching cello at UNC, he directs its Cello Choir, Viol Consort and Baroque Ensemble; he also teaches classes in Historical Performance Practices and String Methods for Music Education Students as well as a First-Year Seminar in the Physics of Music with Laurie McNeil, chair of the Physics Department. He has served as mentor of the Kenan Music Scholars and is chair of the String Area.

His current research and performance interests include the cello music of Benjamin Britten, Chopin’s Cello Music on period instruments and French Gamba Music. A graduate of the Crane School of Music at Potsdam College in NY and of Penn State (MM cello, 1978), he also studied with John Hsu at Cornell University and was an NEH Fellow at Harvard in the 1993 Beethoven Quartet Seminar. He has taught at the College of St Scholastica in Minnesota (1978-82), Chautauqua Institution and the 1997 Aston Magna Academy at Yale; and has presented lectures, master classes and recitals at schools, colleges and workshops throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

He founded and co-directs Philadelphia baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare.

Soloist engagements have included a two-season nationwide tour of the complete Bach lute suites, and lute concerti with the Handel & Haydn Society of Boston and Cleveland baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire. Solo recordings include the world premiere of the complete lute concerti of Silvius Leopold Weiss, Johann Friedrich Fasch’s lute concerto, lute suites by Weiss, and new theorbo music by David Loeb. A‑R Editions has published Stone’s reconstructions of the Weiss concerti in its Recent Researches series.

Stone is also one of the most highly regarded baroque vocal accompanists on lute, archlute and theorbo in the United States. He has accompanied today’s best-known vocal artists, including Christine Goerke, Lorraine Hunt, Julianne Baird, Christine Brandes, Jeffrey Thomas and Drew Minter. He has played with Taverner Players, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Consort of Musicke, Apollo’s Fire, Handel and Haydn Society, New York Collegium, Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Glimmerglass Opera and Mark Morris Dance Group. Recording and broadcast credits include Deutsche Grammophon, Lyrichord, PGM, Musical Heritage, Polygram, Vienna Modern Masters, ATMA, Eklecta, Centaur, Bis, Chesky, NPR, BBC CBC, and Czech Radio 3-Vltava.

Stone teaches baroque lute and theorbo and is a vocal coach at the Peabody Conservatory. Stone studied guitar with David Starobin at SUNY Purchase, then lute with Nigel North as a Fulbright Lusk Fellow at the Guildhall School in London, and with Patrick O’Brien at the Mannes College of Music in New York.

…the 2013-14 New England Conservatory Violin Competition, and the 2007 Concord Young Artist Competition, he has appeared as a soloist with the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Concord Symphony, University of Evansville Symphony Orchestra, New England Conservatory Philharmonia, and others, as well as in recital in the United States and Europe. He is currently a member of the first violin section of the North Carolina Symphony in Raleigh, NC.

From 2015 to 2018, Robert was concertmaster of the Evansville Philharmonic and part of the Eykamp String Quartet, whose members served as the faculty artists-in-residence at the University of Evansville. During his time in Evansville, he helped administrate the chamber music course at the University of Evansville, and also helped found “Coffee and Classics,” a chamber music series at a local music venue and coffee house. In 2016, the Eykamp Quartet was presented with the Mayor’s Ensemble Award by the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana.

As a chamber musician, Robert has collaborated with such artists as the Borromeo String Quartet, James Buswell, Stephen Drury, Grigory Kalinovsky, Jeffrey Irvine, and Carol Ou, and has performed on the stages of Carnegie Hall and Jordan Hall. Summer 2019 will see him taking on the role of acting second violinist of the Jasper String Quartet as they tour across the United States. From 2015 to 2017 Robert was a member of the Larchmere String Quartet, which gave recitals and masterclasses across the United States and Canada in such venues as the Chicago Cultural Center, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and the University of Louisville’s Comstock Hall. In 2013 he was a recipient of NEC’s Quartetutopia fellowship as a member of the Petrucci String Quartet and used the attached grant to research and lecture on the original manuscripts of Beethoven’s string quartets. An avid proponent of new music, he has worked closely with composers Roger Reynolds, Christian Wolff, John Heiss, Stratis Minakakis, Menachem Wiesenberg, Katherine Balch, David Hertzberg, Ralph Farris, Zack Browning, and others in premieres and performances of their works, many of which were written specifically for him.

Since 2014, Robert has held the position of principal second violin of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, where he also served numerous times as acting concertmaster. Other orchestral engagements include appearances as guest concertmaster with Indianapolis Opera and Orchestra Kentucky, as well as performances and recording projects with a variety of larger ensembles including the Boston-based chamber orchestras A Far Cry and Discovery Ensemble, Odyssey Opera, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), and the Callithumpian Consort.

A graduate of James Buswell’s studio at the New England Conservatory (BM 2012, MM 2014), Robert was a recipient of the Dorothy J. Bales ’41 Violin Scholarship and was awarded the 2014 Gunther Schuller medal for outstanding graduate study. He received additional training at the Taos School of Music, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Heifetz Institute, where he worked with the Borromeo, Brentano, Miro, and Shanghai String Quartets, as well as Michael Tree, Robert McDonald, Thomas Sauer, Sylvia Rosenberg, Virginia Weckstrom, and Grigory Kalinovsky, among others. Passionate about passing on the knowledge he has gained from these mentors, he is a committed teacher, and is currently on the faculty of the Chapel Hill Chamber Music Workshop, the North Carolina Chamber Music Institute, and the Lamar Stringfield Music Camp. Previous teaching posts include the University of Evansville, the North Bennet Street School, the Ip Piano School, and the Arthur Russel Strings Festival, and he has presented masterclasses at UNC Chapel Hill, Otterbein University, and the University of Evansville. In addition to music, Robert enjoys good coffee, bad movies, and the great outdoors.

Apollo’s Fire, the Baltimore Consort and the Violins of Lafayette.

He has recorded on the Dorian, Electra and Cantaur labels. In addition to his teaching duties at Hood, he is a faculty member at Mount St. Mary’s University and the Interlochen Arts Academy.

With MacGyver-like determination they create, inspire and commission works using only the limited materials at hand – a cello, a bass, two voices, a sense of humor, a touch of theater, and a willingness to do almost anything.

Since their inception in 2010, they have traveled the country entertaining audiences with cello/bass chestnuts, brave new works, daring arrangements, vocalizing and storytelling. They have performed together as soloists with the Boise Philharmonic and the Winston-Salem Symphony, and in recital at Interlochen and the Arizona MusicFest. Low and Lower has inspired new works by Joshua Davis, Bruce Tippette, Ching-chu Hu and John Allemeier, and a live video of Lawrence Dillon’s Poke filmed during their 2012 Alaskan tour has gone viral, spreading across the world from the US to Europe, Africa, South America and the Philippines. The New York Magazine called their recent AMR-Naxos recording of David Feurzeig’s Lingua Franca, “More than just funny ha-ha…theatrical, intimate, nimble, layered, refined, and shot through with startling delights.

…and subsequently taught viola da gamba, pedagogy and directed the viol consort there from 1988 to 2002. Ms. Schroeder has performed extensively as soloist and in various chamber music ensembles, participating in numerous radio and television productions, and on recordings for such labels as DHM, Sony Classical, Ricercar, and Erato. Ms. Schroeder is in demand as a teacher and ensemble coach at workshops for the Viola da Gamba Society of America, the Amherst Early Music Festival and Mountain Collegium. Currently living in North Carolina, she teaches privately, freelances on viola da gamba, and is artistic director of Asheville Baroque Concerts.

Stewart serves as Teacher of Baroque Flute at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Kulas Visiting Artist at Case Western Reserve University, and is Assistant Director for the Seattle Baroque Flute Workshop. Stewart has performed as soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Opera, Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Washington Bach Sinfonia, ARTEK, and Turn the Corner Irish Band. Stewart has performed at the BBC Proms, Snape Proms, Tanglewood Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Music Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, New World Symphony’s Baroque Festival, Oberlin College Artist Series, National Academy of Sciences, Library of Congress, and Dumbarton Oaks Series. Stewart is a faculty member of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where she serves as Curator of Harpsichords in the Historical Performance Department and additionally taught baroque flute for nearly twenty years. A proponent of historical temperaments, she tunes and maintains the Conservatory’s world-class collection of historical harpsichord reproductions.

Stewart appears on fourteen recordings with Apollo’s Fire including solo performances in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. IV (AVIE) and Telemann’s Concerto in E Minor for Flute and Recorder (AVIE). An accomplished Irish flute player, she can be heard on Scarborough Fayre: Traditional Tunes from the British Isles and the New World, Come To The River: an Early American Gathering, and Sugarloaf Mountain: an Appalachian Gathering. Radio appearances include holiday specials on National Public Radio, NPR’s World of Opera, SymphonyCast, and Performance Today. Her concerts have been broadcasted on Britain’s BBC Radio, Canada’s CBC, European Community Radio, and on WCLV’s “Seaway” syndication network carried by member stations of the European Broadcasting Union.

Stewart holds a Bachelor of Music degree from West Virginia University as a student of Joyce Catalfano and a Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music as a student of Thomas Nyfenger. She completed doctoral coursework at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as a student of George Hambrecht and participated in Eiji Hashimoto’s Baroque Ensemble. Fascination with the traverso led her to the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin Conservatory where she studied baroque flute and recorder with Christopher Krueger.

…“one of the gutsiest and most individual recital programs,” and she was celebrated as “an artist of keen intelligence and taste, well worth watching out for.” An improviser, composer, and multi-instrumentalist, Jennifer is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and founder of the group Tres Americas Ensemble. She has appeared as a soloist with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Venezuela and the Knights Chamber Orchestra; performed in Romania in honor of George Enescu; given world premieres at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York; collaborated with composer John Adams at the Library of Congress; and appeared at El Festival de las Artes Esénias in Peru and festivals worldwide. An educator with a focus on music as humanitarian aid, Jennifer has also collaborated with musical shamen of the Andes, improvised for live radio from the interior of the Amazon jungle, and taught and collaborated with Kurdish refugees in Turkey.

…Missouri (Kansas City). As a student, she attended the Music Academy of the West, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival. She also toured Europe with the New World Symphony (where she met her future husband) and the North Carolina School of the Arts Orchestra. After seven seasons with the Virginia Symphony and Opera, she joined the North Carolina Symphony in 2005. She performs regularly with the NC Symphony Wind Quintet, and was a soloist with the Orchestra in performances of Schumann’s Konzertstuck for four horns.

Trained at the Alexander Alliance in Philadelphia, she has been a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique for over 10 years. She maintains a busy schedule of private lessons, and gives workshops for musicians all over North Carolina and Virginia, including the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, and recent Southeast Horn Workshops at Appalachian State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and UNC-Greensboro. She works with Yoga students at Global Breath Yoga in Durham, teaching Alexander Technique and Anatomy. She volunteers with the Jobstart program in Raleigh, where she teaches yoga and mindfulness to 10 women inmates every Monday.

She married her horn section colleague Christopher Caudill at the Outer Banks, and they love living in North Carolina. As a duo, Rachel and Chris have performed on both Baroque and Natural horns with North Carolina Baroque Orchestra and the Brussels Chamber Orchestra, playing copies of horns from 18th and early 19th-century Paris.

Together, they have rescued two extremely sweet girl dogs, and more than a few cute cats.

…made him fall in love with the horn. At Northwestern University he studied with the Chicago Symphony’s solo horn Dale Clevenger and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. He spent two summers with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and toured Russia with the American-Russian Youth Orchestra.

He was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach for three years (where he met his future wife, NCS horn section colleague Rachel NIketopoulos) before being invited to play Principal Horn with the Honolulu Symphony for the 1997-98 season. After two years with the Virginia Symphony he joined the North Carolina Symphony in 2003.

He has performed on Natural Horn with the North Carolina Baroque and the Brussels Chamber Orchestra and he and his wife perform on Baroque and Classical horn copies by Richard Seraphinoff of Indiana University.

…including such groups as Quebec’s Les Violons du Roy, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and the Apollo Ensemble. She has recorded for the Dorian Label, Naxos, Hungaroton, and Centaur Records.

Fanfare Magazine, in a review of the Naxos recording of Quantz flute sonatas, gives “a particular bow to Stephanie Vial, who manages to make each cello intervention a delight to the ear.” Vial received her training on the modern cello at Northwestern University with Alan Harris, followed by a Master’s Degree at Indiana University with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi. She holds a doctorate in 18th-century performance practice from Cornell University. Her book, The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century: Punctuating the Classical “Period,” published in 2008 by the University of Rochester Press’ Eastman Studies in Music Series, was praised by Malcolm Bilson as “inspired scholarship” and “essential reading.” Vial has taught at Cornell University, Duke University, and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Together with Elizabeth Field, she directs The Vivaldi Project’s Institute for Early Music on Modern Instruments and is a regular guest teacher at The Curtis Institute.

…and Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, and as concertmaster with Jubilate Baroque Orchestra, the California Bach Society, Apollo Baroque Orchestra, the Dayton Bach Society, and Ensemble Musical Offering.

An avid chamber musician, he performs with Magnificat, the Albany Consort, Ensemble Vermillian, and Lux Musica, and he is a founding member of Florilegia, Ensemble Seicento, Aurora Baroque, and the Galax Quartet. A co-founder of the Bloomington Early Music Festival, he performs regularly at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival. He has taught Baroque violin at Indiana University, where he earned the Doctor of Music degree in Early Music, and he holds degrees in violin from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Georg Muffat on Performance Practice, published by Indiana University Press.

…and with the English Country Dance band Collard Greene, Wild Rose, and various Broadway touring shows. He performs with regional early music ensembles, maintains a studio of thirty students, and leads the Meredith College Fiddlers, a reading group for youngsters.

She studied baroque cello at the Conservatory of Music in Hilversum, the Netherlands with Phoebe Carrai. While living in Europe, Barbara performed, toured and recorded with Concerto Koln. Krumdieck performs and has made several recordings with Ensemble Vermillian, a group she formed with her sister, recorder player Frances Blaker. Ensemble Vermillian has performed fringe concerts at both the Boston Early Music Festival and the Berkeley Early Music Festival. In addition to performing in numerous chamber ensembles throughout the southeast, Barbara is also co-founder and principal cellist of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. She is currently the artistic director of Music at St. Alban’s and Music at St. Peter’s, concert series in Davidson and Charlotte, NC.

…including most of the Europe, Japan and Korea. Russian native, he accomplished his conservatory training in St. Petersburg, and currently is completing his DM in violin performance at IU Jacobs School of Music, minoring in historical violins and music history.A former member of Grammy-nominated St. Petersburg String Quartet, Matvey collaborated with such musicians as Alex Kerr and Barthold Kuijken, among others. Duo Amabile, a chamber music duet formed with his wife, pianist Katya Kramer-Lapin, performs intensively across US and in Europe. As a historically informed performer, Matvey performed with Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble ad Libitum. Demanded teacher, Matvey currently teaches violin and viola for Virginia Tech Outreach Program and Renaissance Music Academy of Virginia. He is a faculty member of the Ameropa International Chamber Music Festival and Courses in Prague, Czech Republic.

Recent performances and engagements have taken him all over the world, including recitals and masterclasses at Orfeo Music Festival in Vipiteno/Sterzing, Italy, the Paris Conservatory, Institutes of Music in Curitiba and Porto Allegre in Brazil, the University of Iowa, Cleveland Institute of Music, World Bass Convention (Wroclaw, Poland), University of North Texas, University of Michigan, Interlochen Arts Academy, and two of Brazil’s International Double Bass Encounters in Pirenopolis, Brazil. Solo engagements with orchestra have included appearances with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra de Camara Theatro Sao Pedro (Porto Allegre, Brazil), Lubbock Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Chamber Orchestra, and Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival Orchestra, and Aspen Young Artists Orchestra. He has been a guest artist at MusicFest (Arizona), Green Mountain Music Festival (Vermont), Pine Mountain Music Festival (Michigan), the Anchorage Festival of Music, the Festival of Two Worlds (Spoleto, Italy), and 20th Century Unlimited (Santa Fe, NM).

As a student of Jeff Bradetich he received the B.M. degree in Performance from Northwestern University, and he earned the M.A. degree in Music from the University of Iowa studying with Diana Gannett. While in school he received fellowships to the Tanglewood Music Center, Aspen Music Festival, and the Pacific Music Festival (Sapporo, Japan). He has been a prizewinner at several solo competitions, including the International Society of Bassists (ISB) Solo Competition in 1997, and winner of the Aspen Music Festival’s Double Bass Concerto Competition in 1996, and is a founding member of the bass quartet Bad Boys of Double Bass, all former prizewinners of the ISB International Solo Competition. He is also 64.5% (by weight) of the innovative cello-bass duo, “Low and Lower,” with cellist Brooks Whitehouse. In addition to his duties as professor at UNCSA he is Principal Bass of the Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra and Piedmont Opera. He served as Principal Bass of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra from 1996-2007, and performed frequently with the Fort Worth Symphony and San Antonio Symphony while living in Texas. Before coming to UNCSA he held faculty positions at Texas Tech University, the University of North Texas, Augustana College (Rock Island, IL), and the Preucil School of Music (Iowa City, IA).

…made him fall in love with the horn. At Northwestern University he studied with the Chicago Symphony’s solo horn Dale Clevenger and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. He spent two summers with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, and toured Russia with the American-Russian Youth Orchestra.

He was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach for three years (where he met his future wife, NCS horn section colleague Rachel NIketopoulos) before being invited to play Principal Horn with the Honolulu Symphony for the 1997-98 season. After two years with the Virginia Symphony he joined the North Carolina Symphony in 2003.

He has performed on Natural Horn with the North Carolina Baroque and the Brussels Chamber Orchestra and he and his wife perform on Baroque and Classical horn copies by Richard Seraphinoff of Indiana University.

In the summers she plays in the Sebago Long Lake Music Festival in Maine.

Previously she was a member of the Peabody Trio, in residence at the Peabody Institute, during which time the group won the Naumberg chamber music competition. Early in her career Ms. Thron was assistant principal cellist of the Denver Symphony for a season and she played and recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. She has had a long history with the Apple Hill Chamber Players as a guest artist and chamber music coach and was involved in the group’s first Playing for Peace tour to the Middle East in 1991.

Ms. Thron has performed concertos with the North Carolina Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Panama National Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and various other orchestras in North Carolina and her original home state of New Hampshire. She received Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Juilliard School. Her teachers include Lynn Harrell, Harvey Shapiro, Norman Fischer and Elsa Hilger.

Ms. Thron also received a BSN from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and worked as a nurse for several years as a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital and as a case manager in home care nursing during which time she was a cello teacher at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Ms. Thron and her husband, clarinetist Fred Jacobowitz, have a teenage son – Pianist, clarinetist and computer whiz Louis.

…at the College of Charleston. She has been a featured soloist with the North Carolina Symphony and the Brussels Chamber Orchestra. Jacqueline received first prize, the audience choice award and a solo performance at the South Carolina Philharmonic Competition and was honored with the Russel Award at the Coleman International Chamber Music Competition in Pasadena, CA.

She has had the pleasure of performing for Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in Chicago, Il., the late Itzhak Rabin’s family in Jaffa, Israel, and in 2001, for the Vice President of the United States and other high government officials in Washington D.C. Jacqueline has spent past summers at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, in the Chautauqua Symphony in New York, at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut, at the Steans Institute for Young Artists in Highland Park, Il., at the Rome Festival in Italy, the Thessaloniki Festival in Greece, Keshet Eilon in Israel and the Weathersfield Music Festival in Ludlow, VT. She was invited by the Verbier Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra on separate occassions to tour several European Countries with Joshua Bell, James Levine and the late Mstislav Rostropovich. She has also had the honor of working with Kurt Masur, members of the Tokyo, Vermeer and Cleveland String Quartets, Yuri Bashmet, Bill Preucil, Claude Frank, Miriam Fried and Joseph Silverstein. Mrs. Wolborsky received her Bachelors of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory with renowned professors Roland and Almita Vamos and her Masters of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music under the tutelage of distinguished professor, Donald Weilerstein.

She received her Suzuki teacher training at the Cleveland Institute of Music and has been a private teacher for over 18 years.