Musicians

 : Musicians

February 2000

Becky Baron* was reared on the cello in Chicago, followed by stints in California and now in Boston where she enjoys playing as much chamber music as she can get. She studied with George Neikrug at Boston University and has performed in the MIT and Harvard chamber music programs since 1994. her off-hours are spent as a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

A graduate of Harvard College, Michael Bonner* has been trained at Longy and the Eastman School of Music, studying with George Seaman, Jonathan Miller, and, most recently, Rhonda Rider, for whom he serves as a teaching assistant at Boston Conservatory. A recipient of the David McCord Prize for musical excellence at Harvard, Michael has played under Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Institute, and has held principal positions in the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, the University of Rochester Symphony Orchestra and the Longy Chamber Orchestra. He has participated in master classes with Menahem Pressler, Eugene Lainer and David Deveau, and performs as a chamber musician and freelance cellist in the Boston area.

Born in Venezuela, Orlando Cela* has studied flute at DePaul University in Indiana, where he was the winner of the concerto competition four years in a row. He is currently a scholarship student of Paula Robison at the New England Conservatory of Music. In addition to his concerto and orchestral experience, he is an avid chamber musician in Boston. His most recent project, a compact disc of solo flute music, will be released this November.

John Chapin*, horn, has performed chamber music in the San Francisco and Boston areas for 10 years. He spent 8 years with the Haute Aire woodwind quintet and premiered Se Potessi for horn, soprano, and chamber orchestra by Giancarlo Aquilanti. Currently, in addition to the Aurelius Ensemble, he is a member of the New England Philharmonic and the Roaring Jelly contradance band. To support his music habit, he teaches computer science at MIT.

Nina Chen* started playing violin at the age of five under the direction of Sister M.Riccardo. She gave her first solo performance with the Elmhurst symphony at the age of nine under the direction of Ruth Ray. She was a winner in the Glen Ellyn Musician's Club Music Competition as well as the St.Paul Federal Saving Fine Arts Competitions, and in 1982 she won solo concert appearances with the Elmhust Symphony, the DuPage Symphony, and the Fox River Valley Symphonies. She participated in the 1983 Aspen Music Festival, studying under Dorothy Delay and Kurt Sassmanhaus. Nina has performed in the MIT Chamber Music Society for over 5 years and recently graduated with a Masters from the Architecture Department.

An affiliated artist of the Music and Theater Arts section, Elaine Chew* recently completed her PhD in mathematical modeling in music at MIT (supervisor: Jeanne Bamberger). She received a BAS (1992) in Music and Computational Mathematics at Stanford University, and an SM (1998) in Computational Finance at MIT. An active performer, she has been featured as soloist with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, as a young artist at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival and as recitalist at the Embassy Series in Washington DC. Her teachers include David Deveau, James Goldsworthy and Ong Lip-Tat; and her chamber music coaches Marcus Thompson, John Harbison, Jean Rife and Lynn Chang. This year, she will be performing at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center in March, and in Jordan Hall in May.

Joseph Davis is currently a PhD candidate in the Division of Bioengineering and Environmental Health at MIT. He has played bassoon for twelve years and has performed extensively on the MIT campus and in the greater Boston area. He has studied with Paul Stebbins and Linda Burleson in Dallas and Donald Bravo in Boston. Joseph originally hails from rural Texas, where his mother raises chickens, "because they're neat."

Eran Egozy* leads the dual life of an entrepreneur and a musician. Studying clarinet with Jonathan Cohler and William Wrzecien, he has performed extensively as a member of the MIT Chamber Music Society, as a soloist with the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and as a long-time participant in the Apple Hill Chamber Music festival in New Hampshire. To explore the musical world beyond our traditional 12 tone scale, Egozy regularly performs on Indonesian gongs, drums, and metalophones with Boston's Balinese Gamelan orchestra, Gamelan Galak Tika. After earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from MIT, Egozy proceeded to co-found an interactive music software company, Harmonix Music Systems, where he is now the Chief Technical Officer.

Jennifer Grucza* is a student at MIT, where she is pursuing a master's degree in Computer Science. She has been playing the viola for 12 years and currently studies with Prof. Marcus Thompson. Groups she has participated in include the University of Illinois Summer Festival Orchestra, MIT Symphony Orchestra, MIT Chamber Music Society, MIT String Sinfonietta, and most recently, the Aurelius Ensemble. She and Kay Ann Chen, violin, were winners in the 1997 MIT Concerto Competition, playing Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante.

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Grant Ho* is currently a graduate student studying Electrical Engineering at MIT. He began playing the violin at age four, and has been Concertmaster of the Toronto Chinese Youth Orchestra and Assistant Concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra. At MIT, he has been actively involved in chamber music, a four-time recipient of MIT's Advanced Music Performance Scholarship, winner of the 1996-97 MITSO Concerto Competition, and recipient of the 1997 Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. In the summertime, Grant loves to play his violin in Harvard Square.

Peter Jung* has been playing the cello for 15 years in the Boston area. He was principal cellist in the New England Conservatory Youth Symphony Orchestra, touring with them throughout Europe, and he was also a member of the NEC Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, touring with them in South America. He also performed with numerous chamber ensembles in the NEC Extension Division. He is currently taking time off from MIT, where he has played in the MIT Symphony Orchestra as co-principal cellist, the MIT Sinfonietta, the MIT Summer Philharmonic, and a number of chamber groups. Peter plans to get a straight bridge some time this summer.

Annette Klein*, born in Boston, has recently returned from living in Germany for 12 years. She has been an avid chamber music player since she picked up the viola at 12. She studied with Kim Kashkashian and Ulrich Koch in Freiburg and chamber music with Franco Rossi (Quartetto Italiano), Gyorgy Kurtag (Hungary), Louis Krasner and the Melos String Quartet. A memberof the Berlin-based chamber orchestra "Ensemble Oriol", Annette performs regularly in the Berlin Philharmonie and has toured Mexico, Panama, Brazil, Macao and much of Europe. To compliment her current work in a medical research lab, she is experimenting with original instruments and improvisation.

Oliver Klein*, violin, has enjoyed playing chamber music since his high school days at Longy School of Music and Greenwood Music Camp. In 1993, shortly after completing a Master's degree in Materials Science at Dartmouth College, he spent a year in Panama where he performed and taught violin. He has been a member of the Boston Philharmonic for two years, and has performed with other local groups including Triptych and the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

Jennifer Montbach, oboe, has performed with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Boston Philharmonic, and as principal oboist of the North Shore Philharmonic, the New England Conservatory Symphony Orchestra and the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra. An active chamber musician, she has appeared with the Montbach Reed Trio, the Callithumpian Consort, Just In Time Composers and Players and the Harvard Group for New Music. A proponent of contemporary music, her annual recitals at Harvard have included numerous rarely-heard works for oboe and chamber ensemble and several commissions by her peers. Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College, and a Master of Music from New England Conservatory, where she studied with Alfred Genovese, then principal oboist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She is the Cabot House Music Tutor at Harvard and the Marketing Coordinator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Dawn Perlner* grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Acton-Boxboro Regional High School. At MIT, she has just completed her freshman year and is double-majoring in math and music. She started violin at three and began entering competitions at 10. She has soloed with orchestras in Massachusetts and Brazil and has participated in community theater and academic competitions. At MIT, she is a member of CMS, MITSO, and Sinfonietta.

Ronni Schwartz received her Bachelor's degree in Piano from the University of Michigan, and her Master's in Music Theory from New England Conservatory of Music. Although she regularly performs in the Boston area, Ms. Schwartz's solo career began in the Dominican Republic, where she performed at the request of the Dominican government, as part of the Distinguished Performers Series at the National Conservatory of Music in Santo Domingo, made several appearances on Dominican television, and for the American Embassy. Ms. Schwartz was recently heard in recitals at Woods Hole, at the New School of Music, at the Brookline Public Library, at Dartmouth College, and at MIT's Killian Hall; she is currently planning a duo-piano recital with Elaine Chew. In addition, Ms. Schwartz occupies the position of Administrator of the MIT/Woods Hole Joint Program, and is deeply involved in scholarship of the Napoleonic Wars, and the career of the first Duke of Wellington.

Agnieszka Stachowiak has studied flute for ten years, most recently under Suellen Hershman as part of the Emerson music scholarship program. She grew up in Rochester, New York, where she played in the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and participated in music festivals from the city to the eastern states regional level. She is currently a sophomore in chemical engineering at MIT, where she plays in the symphony orchestra.

Yukiko Ueno* is a Ph.D. candidate in Biology at MIT. Born in Japan and raised in New York, she is currently studying piano with David Deveau. In the past several years, she has been an active participant of the MIT Chamber Music Society as well as the Advanced Music Performance program.

* = founding player