Celebrating 30+ Years of Wild and Scenic Music
2024 – 2025 Artists
The Strad Magazine hailed Daniel Avshalomov (viola) as “one of the finest occupants of that chair, both instrumentally and musically, of any quartet now active.” Avshalomov appears in recital and as a featured performer and concerto soloist at festivals across the country. Before joining the Quartet, Avshalomov served as principal violist for the Aspen, Tanglewood, and Spoleto festival orchestras, as well as for the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Opera Orchestra of New York, and American Composers Orchestra. He also was a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. A frequent guest artist with the Guarneri Quartet, he has performed with such groups as the Da Camera Society, Marin Music Fest, and La Musica di Asolo. He has shared the stage with Norbert Brainin (first violinist of the Amadeus Quartet), Misha Dichter, Bruno Giuranna (a founding member of I Musici), Maureen Forrester, the Juilliard and Tokyo Quartets, and the Bolshoi Ballet (as solo violist). Avshalomov’s articles appear in Notes and Strings; he has edited several viola works for publication and contributed to ASTA’s Playing and Teaching the Viola. He has been the subject of two articles in The Strad magazine and one in Classical Pulse. Avshalomov developed a lecture-demonstration, “Inside Passages,” first presented to the New York Viola Society in 2000. He performed the world premiere of Giampaolo Bracali’s Concerto per Viola, which RAI has broadcast in Europe, and the American premiere of Alessandro Rolla’s Esercizio 3. On his CD, Three Generations Avshalomov, with pianists Robert McDonald and Pamela Pyle, Avshalomov performs works for viola and piano composed by his grandfather, father and brother. The CD was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Avshalomov has been on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music since 1984 and at the Aspen School since 1976. His viola is by Andrea Amati (Cremona, 1568).
DEBRA AYERS, pianist and producer, is director of Montage Music Society, which commissions and performs music inspired by visual art. She has enjoyed collaborations with Abiquiu Chamber Music Festival, Albuquerque Chamber Soloists, Aspen Music Festival Chamber Players; American, Apple Hill, La Catrina and Vega string quartets, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Ballet Pro Musica’s Chamber Ballet, Breckenridge Music Festival, Chatter, Denver’s JAAMM Festival, New Mexico Woodwind Quintet, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Serenata of Santa Fe, Susan Graham, Taos Chamber Music Group and Vocal Artistry Art Song Festival.
A proponent of contemporary music, premieres include works by Ofer Ben-Amots, Matthew Aucoin, William Bolcom, Nell Shaw Cohen, Paul Elwood, Jeff Harrington, Andrew List, Niles Luther, Daniel Schnyder, Ronald Strauss, Bruce Wolosoff and Yehudi Wyner. Debra and cellist Marc Moskovitz presented the North American premiere of the rediscovered Zemlinsky Cello Sonata at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Ayers can be heard on a number of critically- acclaimed recordings, including Music of Ernst Krenek with soprano Ilana Davidson, Music by Ofer Ben-Amots (Milken Archive) and Montage Music Society’s “STARRY NIGHT Project…music based on visual art” (MSR) and the Grammy-nominated “Music of Bruce Wolosoff”.
Violinist ELIZABETH BAKER had a 40 year career with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (10 years) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (30 years) before permanently moving to Taos. She now plays with the finest of New Mexico’s chamber and orchestra ensembles.
Baker performed chamber music with her colleagues in the SFSO and the LA Philharmonic and was a member of XTet and Bach’s Circle, appearing throughout the Western U.S. for Chamber Music Northwest, Sedona, Bach Festivals in Los Angeles, Carmel and Oregon, South Bay Chamber Music, and Colly Soleri Music Center, among others. She was soloist three times during her tenure with the LA Philharmonic, all premieres and all receiving critical acclaim.
Baker served on the faculty at Cal Arts for 12 years and worked with the YOLA youth at HOLA since its inception in 2011. She can be heard on recordings from Hänssler classics, Delos, New World and Crystal labels.
Baker holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (’76) and Indiana University School of Music (’78, with Distinction, and awarded the Performer’s Certificate). She plays on a Sanctus Seraphin Violin, 1733 previously owned by her late mother Virginia Voigtländer Baker.
Matthias Buchholz studied in his hometown Hamburg, in Cincinnati, Detmold and at the famous Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Among his teachers were Bruno Giuranna, Michael Tree, Alexander Schneider and Karen Tuttle. He won top prizes at the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb Bonn 1978, the Fischoff and the Coleman competition in Los Angeles 1982 as well as the International Music Competition Budapest 1984.
Since 1976 Buchholz performed as soloist and chamber musician in most European countries, in Canada and the U.S.A., as well as in South America, Russia, India and throughout the Far East. He was a member of the Brahms Quartet Hamburg, the Ridge Quartet New York and the Heine Quartet in Cologne. Since 1991 he has performed in numerous concerts and recorded more than 25 CD’s with the Linos-Ensemble, who was awarded an ECHO- KLASSIK 2017 for their CD of the Quintet by Franz Schmidt.
From 1990-2024 he has held a position as Professor for Viola at the Hochschule für Musik Cologne and at the HEM Genève 2013-2018. A passionate teacher since very early on, he gave numerous masterclasses in the U.S., in Korea, China, Japan and most european countries. His former students are working today successfully as orchestra members, principal violists and teachers at major conservatories around the globe.
Starting in September 2024, Buchholz will join the American String Quartet as their new violist and he will be teaching chamber music at the Manhattan School of Music.
A founding member of the American String Quartet, Laurie Carney (violin) holds the distinction of performing quartets longer than any other woman in this elite field. The American String Quartet began concertizing while she was still an undergraduate at Juilliard. Apart from the Quartet, she has performed trios with her husband, cellist William Grubb, and pianist Anton Nel; duos with violist Michael Tree; and as an ensemble partner to such artists as Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Salvatore Accardo, Cho-Liang Lin, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Misha Dichter, Ralph Kirshbaum, Alain Meunier, and Frederica von Stade. Carney’s concerto appearances include performing Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with the Bournemouth Symphony, Basque National Orchestra, and the Welsh National Orchestra. She gave the premiere of Gianpaolo Bracali’s Fantasia for violin and piano. Most recently, Robert Sirota composed his Violin Sonata No. 2 for her, and in addition to performing the premiere last spring, she will record the work later this season. A faculty artist at the Aspen Music Festival and School since 1974 and the Manhattan School of Music since 1984, Carney has held teaching positions at the Mannes College of Music, Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, University of Michigan, Shepherd School at Rice University, and the Taos School of Music. Her dedication to the development of young players brings frequent invitations to offer master classes, most recently in California, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, and New Mexico. Carney is a member of a prodigious musical family: her father was a trumpeter and educator, her mother a concert pianist, and all three siblings are professional violinists. Her violin is by Carlo Tononi (Venice, 1720).
Violinist and violist LAURA CHANG, a native of Wisconsin, was born into a musical family, and began her violin studies shortly after her fourth birthday. She earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Peabody Conservatory, under the tutelage of Martin Beaver and Pamela Frank, for whom she was a graduate assistant.
Chang is an avid chamber and orchestral musician whose performances have taken her to venues across the US, Canada, and Europe. While a resident of Washington, DC, she was a member of the National Philharmonic, and the Maryland Symphony, and frequently performed as an extra with the major orchestras in the Baltimore/Washington metro area. More recently, she performed with the Colorado Symphony and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. In 2020, Chang and her family relocated to Albuquerque, where she is the Principal Violist with the New Mexico Philharmonic, and a first violinist in the Santa Fe Symphony. She is also a member of the Central City Opera Orchestra, and performs as an extra with the Santa Fe Opera.
David Felberg, praised by the Santa Fe New Mexican for his “fluid phrases, rich focused tone, rhythmic precision, and spot-on intonation,” is an Albuquerque native and the co-founder and Artistic Director of Chatter. He is also concertmaster of the Santa Fe Symphony and performs with Santa Fe Pro Musica. He has been a featured soloist with the Santa Fe Symphony, New Mexico Philharmonic, New Mexico Symphony, Albuquerque Philharmonic, Los Alamos Symphony, Palo Alto Philharmonic, Balcones Orchestra (Austin), and the Chatter Orchestra. He has performed recitals and chamber music all over New Mexico and the Southwest, and most recently performed a solo violin recital for Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium. Felberg also specializes in contemporary solo violin music, having performed works of Berio, Boulez, Sciarrino, John Zorn, and Luigi Nono. As a conductor, he has directed Santa Fe Pro Musica, New Mexico Philharmonic, the Santa Fe Symphony and Chatter, and has collaborated with such soloists as Anne-Marie McDermott, Rachel Barton Pine, Conor Hanick, and Benjamin Hochman. Felberg made his New York violin recital debut in Merkin Concert Hall in the spring of 2005. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Arizona and a Master of Music degree in Conducting from the University of New Mexico, and has taken advanced string quartet studies at the University of Colorado with the Takacs Quartet. Felberg has also attended the prestigious American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival. He plays a Christian Pedersen violin made in 2020 and a bow by Eugene Sartory.
SALLY GUENTHER received her Bachelor’s degree at Indiana University where she studied with Janos Starker, and a Master’s degree at The Juilliard School of Music, studying with Harvey Shapiro.She also attended the Taos School of Music, Music Academy of the West and International Congress of Strings.
After engagements with several US orchestras, including with the Cincinnati, Fort Worth and Syracuse symphonies, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, she became solo cellist of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway, a position she held for twenty years. Guenther was also active in Norway as a pedagogue teaching at the Grieg Academy of Music, and was a founding member of the contemporary chamber ensemble, BIT 20, an internationally recognized group which records and travels extensively in Europe and Asia.
Since moving full-time to New Mexico in 2006, Guenther devotes herself to chamber music, travelling widely in the Southwest area and participating in chamber music festivals in Santa Fe, Taos, Abiquiu, Los Alamos, and Breckenridge, Colorado. In addition she has played with the New Mexico Symphony, Santa Fe Pro Musica and Santa Fe Symphony orchestras. Guenther maintains a private studio in Santa Fe.
Cellist Walter Haman is a member of the Utah Symphony and is Principal Cellist of the Grant Park Orchestra. He has played with the Chicago Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, New Century Chamber Orchestra, and has been a guest cellist with Pink Martini. He performs regularly on the NOVA Chamber Music Series and Intermezzo Chamber Music Series in Salt Lake City. He also maintains an active teaching schedule and is on faculty at Utah State University. Haman participated in the Spoleto Festival (Italy), Crested Butte Music Festival, Bienalle di Venezia, and received fellowships to the Aspen Music Festival and Tanglewood. An Artist Residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts led to a collaboration with dancer/choreographer Jose Navas. The Haman/Navas Project performed in most of the major cities of Europe, Canada, and the United States. A documentary, “Perpetual Motion”, about the duo appeared on Bravo. Haman is a graduate of the New England and San Francisco Conservatories of Music.
Since 1980, violinist Liang-Ping How has been a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra touring extensively throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia, and appearing frequently as soloist and concertmaster of the conductor-less group.
An active soloist and chamber music musician, How’s performances include the Caramoor, Spoleto, Lochenhaus and Moab Music Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Philomusica at the International Music Festival of Sophia, and as guest soloist for the New Mexico Symphony. In addition he has served as the concertmaster for the Sarasota Opera since 2005 and is regularly engaged as concertmaster to the Monterey Symphony.
How made his solo debut with the National Youth Orchestra of Taiwan at age seven and went on to study at the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Curtis Institute of Music with Jamie Laredo.
He can be heard on numerous recordings with Orpheus on the Deutsche Grammaphon label. A member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, How resides in Santa Fe and plays an 1863 J.B. Vuillaume.
Pianist GLEB IVANOV has wowed audiences around the world since winning prizes in the 1994 and 1996 International “Classical Legacy” Competition and first Vladimir Horowitz Competition. Before moving to the US, Ivanov appeared as soloist with the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic, the Moscow State Orchestra, in the Great Hall at Moscow Conservatory, with the Kremlin Orchestra, and at the Pushkin, Glinka, and Scriabin Museums in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included the renowned Lev Naumov and where he was a protégé of Mstislav Rostropovich. Ivanov earned his Master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music, working with Nina Svetlanova, and was a recipient of a Musical Studies Grant from the Bagby Foundation.
In 2005, Ivanov won First Prize in the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and made his critically acclaimed debuts at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He was also honored with the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists and presented at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The New York Times called him “a young super-virtuoso with musical sensitivity and an appreciation of style to go with the thunder and lightning.”
Ivanov has given concerts at Princeton University, Bargemusic in New York, The Paramount Theater in Vermont, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, “Pianofest” in East Hampton, and the Louvre in Paris.
Numerous concerto performances have included the New Jersey, Knoxville, Dearborn, Las Cruces, Grand Rapids, Springfield, Southwest Florida, Peoria, and Napa Valley symphonies, and with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic.
Ivanov is on the faculty of the Bluthner School of Music in Hoboken, New Jersey, passing on his amazing talents to children of all ages. In June 2023, he assumed the role of Music Director of Saint Peter and Paul Orthodox Cathedral in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he will be starting his own concert series in December.
Graeme Steele Johnson is an artist of uncommon imagination and versatility. Winner of the Hellam Young Artists’ Competition, the Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition and the inaugural CME Lee Memorial Scholarship, he has established a multifaceted career as a clarinetist, writer and arranger.
His diverse artistic endeavors range from a TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, to his reconstruction of a forgotten 125-year-old work by Charles Martin Loeffler, to his performances of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto on a rare elongated clarinet that he commissioned.
Johnson has appeared in recital at The Kennedy Center and Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess series, and as a chamber musician at Carnegie Hall, the Ravinia Festival, Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest and Yellow Barn. Johnson’s concerto appearances include the Vienna International Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Caroga Lake and Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestras and the CME Chamber Orchestra, as well as a performance and recording with the Lviv Philharmonic in Ukraine.
Tara Khozein is a soprano who makes concert music and theater. She was born in Ecuador to a mixed Iranian-American family, and has lived, studied, and worked across the US and Europe. As a multidisciplinary performer, she explores the intersections of classical and experimental singing and physical theatre. She is also a musical director for theater and a performance director for musicians. Khozein moved to Budapest at the end of 2019, and established an online voice studio during Covid, where she continues to teach students from around the world.
Her recent creative projects include her physical and vocal performance in ONCE WITHIN A TIME (2022), a film by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass, the central role in Samu Gryllus’s interactive opera, GEISELOPER (2023), her one-woman show (2023-), and Kate Soper’s one-woman chamber opera IPSA DIXIT. In June of 2024 she performed as a soloist in the world premiere of INES at Opera Köln, by Czech composer Ondřej Adámek. She will also premiere CONNECTION IMPOSSIBLE, a new music theater piece with Ensemble Modern at the 2024 Bregenz Festival.
Since his Carnegie Hall debut in 1994, Wolfram Koessel (cello) has performed as a chamber musician, recitalist and soloist throughout the world. The Strad praised his “exceptionally attractive cello playing.” As a soloist he has performed concertos throughout the United States as well as with Japan’s Osaka Symphony Orchestra and orchestras in Germany and South America. He also has appeared often with the New York Metamorphoses Orchestra, which he cofounded in 1994. His collaborations include performances with legendary tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, distinguished dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, and cellist Yo Yo Ma, among many others. Koessel also appears with a wide range of ensembles, including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Trio+ (a group he formed with violinist Yosuke Kawasaki and pianist Vadim Serebryani), which performs creative and collaborative concerts throughout Japan, the United States, and Canada. Koessel served as music director of the Mark Morris Dance Group from 2004 to 2008 and has toured extensively with the company both nationally and internationally, performing in several world premieres. In the fall of 2009, he was the featured performer in a new dance work, performing Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in C. His cello is by Giovanni Cavani (Modena, 1917).
Described as “phenomenal and fearless” VICKI RAY is a pianist, improviser and composer. She has commissioned and premiered countless new works by today’s leading composers. Ray is a founding member of Piano Spheres and head of keyboard studies at the California Institute of the Arts where she was named the first recipient of the Hal Blaine Chair in Musical Performance. She has appeared on numerous international festivals and was a regular member of the faculty at the Bang On a Can Summer Festival at MASS MoCA.
Ray has been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series as soloist and collaborative artist. Her widely varied performing and recording career covers the gamut of new and old music: from Boulez to Reich, Wadada Leo Smith to Beethoven. Notable recordings include the first Canadian disc of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with the Blue Rider Ensemble, the premiere recordings of Steve Reich’s You Are (Variations) and the Daniel Variations with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and the first recording of John Cage’s Europeras 3 and 4.
Ray’s recording of Cage’s The Ten Thousand Things on Microfest Records received a 2013 Grammy nomination. Recent recordings include the premiere recording of Andrew Norman’s Sonnets with Eighth Blackbird’s Nick Photinos on the New Amsterdam label and YAR – a duo recording on the Orenda label with slide guitarist Scot Ray. Her recording of Daniel Lentz’s River of 1000 Streams – was named by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as one of the top 20 recordings of 2017. Vicki also serves as the chromolodeonist for the Grammy-winning Los Anglees Partch ensemble
Described by Gramophone Magazine as a “violinist who most often takes your breath away” and praised as an “expressive and passionate chamber musician” by the San Antonio Express-News, Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio enjoys a varied performing and recording career as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral leader. Professor of Violin and Viola at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and member of the Argenta Trio, she is also Founder and Artistic Director Emerita of Cactus Pear Music Festival, which she created in 1997 while serving as Concertmaster of the San Antonio Symphony. Previously First Assistant Principal Second Violin of The Cleveland Orchestra, under Christoph von Dohnányi, she toured and recorded internationally with this ensemble for eight seasons. Sant’Ambrogio has performed as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. as well as in Mexico, Canada, Estonia, Sweden, Ghana, Italy, Peru and Chile. In 2009, she was appointed Concertmaster of the Lancaster Festival Orchestra and the following year was appointed Concertmaster of the Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra. That same year she was awarded UNR’s prestigious Alan Bible Teaching Excellence Award. In addition to her active performing career, Sant’Ambrogio is devoted to teaching serious young violinists, many of whom have won positions in America’s symphonies and universities.
Jesse Tatum is a relentless musician, performing chamber music, orchestral music, operas, and solo works. They are Principal Flute of The Santa Fe Symphony, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Opera Southwest Orchestra, and a Principal Player at Chatter. Additionally, Tatum has performed many seasons with The Santa Fe Opera and the New Mexico Philharmonic.
Recognized for their authentic, fearless performances, Tatum was featured on KHFM’s 10 at 10 in 2024 with a program of solo works for flute. In 2022, they performed as a concerto soloist with The Santa Fe Symphony, the New Mexico Philharmonic, Chatter, and Santa Fe Pro Musica. An enthusiast of the intersection of visual and musical performance art, they were a regularly featured performer from 2017-2020 at the trailblazing Meow Wolf in Santa Fe.
As a student, Tatum was a member of the Catania International Music Festival and the National Repertory Orchestra. They studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of New Mexico.
Peter Winograd (violin) joined the American String Quartet in 1990. He gave his first solo public performance at the age of 11, and at age 17 he was accepted as a scholarship student of Dorothy DeLay at The Juilliard School. Recognized early as an exceptionally promising young artist, Winograd was a top prize winner in the 1988 Naumburg International Violin Competition. He then made his New York debut to critical acclaim and has since appeared as a guest soloist with numerous orchestras and in recital across the country and abroad, including annual collaborative performances with cellist Andrés Díaz at the Florida Arts Chamber Music Festival. In 2002 Winograd performed the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the Hartford Symphony; his father, Arthur Winograd, was the featured guest conductor. Winograd has been a member of the violin and chamber music faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and the Aspen Music School (where the American is Quartet-in-Residence) since 1990. Born into a gifted musical family, Winograd began his studies with his parents. His mother was a professional pianist, and his father was the founding cellist of the Juilliard Quartet and a conductor of the Hartford Symphony in Hartford, Connecticut, where Winograd grew up. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard. His wife, violinist Caterina Szepes, is a regular participant in the Marlboro Festival and a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. His violin is by Giovanni Maria del Bussetto (Cremona, 1675).
Alan Zimmerman was born, reared and educated in Texas. After extended stays in Japan and Jamaica, he spent over 3 decades in NYC and then immigrated to Albuquerque in August of 2015. Zimmerman has made sounds with diverse people/ensembles ranging from Seiji Ozawa and the New Japan Philharmonic to the NM based Death Convention Singers.
