André Emelianoff

André Emelianoff has toured throughout North America, Japan, Russia, Austria, and England, and given recitals throughout central Asia and the Mediterranean as an American Ambassador for the Arts, sponsored by the USIA. A cellist with the Da Capo Chamber Players since 1976, he is also a member of the Aeolian Chamber Players, and has been involved with the Music Today Ensemble. Winner of a 1985 NEA Solo Recitalist Award, he has commissioned works by Aaron Kernis, Joan Tower, George Perle, Richard Wernick, Shulamit Ran, Stephen Jaffe, and Gerald Levinson. His guest artist appearances include the Houston Da Camera, New Jersey Chamber Society, Lincoln Center Chamber Society, a participant in the Marlboro, Chamber Music West, and Piccolo Spoleto Festivals, and soloist with Albany Symphony. Mr. Emelianoff is on the faculty at The Juilliard School, as well as the Round Top (Texas) Festival and the Perlman Program. He has recorded for CRI, Opus One, New World Records, Nonesuch, GM Recordings, RCA, Bridge Records, and Pro Arte. In 1997, Mr. Emelianoff made his Salzburg Festival debut with performances of chamber music.

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Curtis Macomber

Curtis Macomber is one of the most versatile soloists/chamber musicians before the public today, equally at home in repertoire from Bach to Babbitt. As member of the New World String Quartet from 1982-93, he performed in virtually all the important concert series in this country, as well as touring abroad. He is the violinist of Speculum Musicae and Da Capo, and a founding member of the Apollo Trio. His most recent recordings include: a solo recording ("Casting Ecstatic"), on CRI; the complete Grieg Sonatas on Arabesque; and an all Steve Mackey record ("Interior Design") on Bridge. Mr. Macomber is presently a member of the chamber music faculty of the Juilliard School, where he earned B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees as a student of Joseph Fuchs. He is also on the violin faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, and has taught at the Tanglewood, Taos and Yellow Barn Music Festivals.

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Blair McMillen

Blair McMillen has established himself as one of the most versatile and sought-after young pianists today. The New York Times has described his playing as "brilliant," "riveting," and "prodigiously accomplished and exciting." Recent appearances include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Caramoor, Harvard University, Maverick Concerts, Concerten Tot un Met (Amsterdam), concerto performances with American Ballet Theatre, and Miller Theatre's 15th-anniversary "Piano Revolution" series. Equally at home in both new and traditional repertoire, Mr. McMillen recently gave the U.S. premiere of Frederic Rzewski's piano piece "Dust," and he presented a critically-acclaimed recital at Columbia University featuring keyboard music from the late 14th-century Codex Faenza. A solo CD "Soundings," with music by Liszt, Scriabin, Copland, and Debussy; was released in late 2004. In addition to Da Capo Mr. McMillen is pianist for the composer/performer collective counter)induction, as well as the downtown NYC-based Avian Orchestra. An active improviser and self-taught jazz pianist, he is currently on the piano faculty at Bard College. 

For more information, see Blair McMillen's home page.

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Patricia Spencer

Patricia Spencer's recital in Moscow for the Alternativa Festival (October 02) was a fresh highlight in a career devoted to new music. Her highly acclaimed premiere of Shulamit Ran s flute concerto, Voices, for the 2000 National Flute Association convention, is one previous highlight. For the Sonic Boom Festival in the fall of 2001, she premiered solo flute works by Louis Karchin and Eugene Lee to audience and critical acclaim. As a soloist and as a flutist with the Da Capo Chamber Players, she has toured throughout the United States and abroad, including solo performances at the 1999 International Computer Music Conference in Beijing, China. An exciting repertoire of pieces has been written for her, including title works of her solo CD, Thea Musgrave s Narcissus and Judith Shatin s Kairos (Neuma Records). An earlier CD, with pianist Linda Hall, features Boulez s Sonatine along with works by Carter, Perle, Korde, Talma, Martirano, Kreiger, and Jaffe. Both CDs have been greeted with rave reviews from Fanfare and the American Record Guide. Ms. Spencer has received awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music for her solo recordings and commissioning projects. As a recitalist and as a Da Capo member, she has commissioned more than 80 solo, duo, and chamber works for flute.

A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, where she was a student of Robert Willoughby, Ms. Spencer continued her studies with Marcel Moyse, John Wummer, and Josef Marx. She teaches flute and chamber music at Bard College and Hofstra University.

For more information, please visit Patricia Spencer's Home Page.

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Meighan Stoops, Clarinet

Clarinetist Meighan Stoops has distinguished herself in both in the classical and new-music realms as a solo, chamber and orchestral performer. In 2005 alone, she performed with artists as diverse as Peter Schickele, Elvis Costello, and tabla virtuoso Pandit Samir Chatterjee. A member of the Naumburg Award–winning Da Capo Chamber Players (www.da-capo.org), she has appeared at the Moscow Forum and Autumn festivals; St. Petersburg Sound Ways festival; Merkin Hall; the Knitting Factory; the Fischer Center at Bard College; and many other prestigious venues. In addition to more than 100 commissions over 35 years, Da Capo is the ensemble-in-residence at the newly founded Bard Conservatory of Music. Recent Da Capo premieres include John Harbison's Songs America Loves to Sing, Chinary Ung's Oracle and Shirish Korde's Phoolan Devi Songs. In a recent New York Times review of a program of works by Joan Tower and George Crumb, Allan Kozinn noted that "Meighan Stoops…had a star turn in Ms. Tower's Wings." Another review glowingly said she "energized Shulamit Ran's Private Game with real musical dash." Ms. Stoops can be heard with other ensembles, such as Gotham Sinfonietta, American Modern Ensemble, the Colorado Quartet, Sequitur, Music from Japan, International Society of Contemporary Music, John Eaton's Pocket Opera Players, Ensemble Sospeso, Sylvan Winds and the Quintet of the Americas. With the Quintet, she had the great honor of performing at the September 11th Commemorative Ceremony at ground zero. She is currently principal clarinet in the Garden State Philharmonic and routinely plays with several New York orchestras: Brooklyn Philharmonic, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's and Dicapo Opera, to name a few. She has recorded for CRI, Naxos, Albany, and Chesky Records (Area 31, Grammy nominated). She can be heard on the soundtrack of Muhammed: Legacy of a Prophet, a PBS documentary with music by Martin Bresnick and Solidarity, a short film directed by Nancy Kiang with music by Richard Carrick. Ms. Stoops is thrilled to be making her co-compositional and theatrical debut this year in Greed: A Musical Love $tory, a new musical written and directed by Robert Honeywell as part of the $ellout Festival at the Brick Theater (www.bricktheater.com). According to www.nytheatre.com, "…Stoops' witty and tuneful score kept me laughing the entire time (days later, I'm also still humming the songs—a great sign)." Ms. Stoops holds degrees from Northwestern and Yale universities, where her teachers were Russell Dagon, Charlie Neidich and David Shifrin. Ms. Stoops teaches clarinet, recorder, and piano and each summer she coaches young composers at the Walden School in Dublin, NH.

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