Double bassist Peter Seymour has performed with many of the world’s most highly acclaimed artists and ensembles, including the Cleveland Orchestra, New World Symphony, Houston Symphony, New York City Ballet,  Iris Orchestra, and the Colorado Music Festival. He received the Downbeat Magazine Award for Best Jazz Soloist and shared the stage with luminaries like Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, and Bobby McFerrin.

Carrie Henneman Shaw is known across the US as a singer who weaves style and emotion into vivid Baroque and contemporary classical music performances. Praised in the New York Times “as graceful vocally as she was in her movements,” “consistently stylish” (Boston Globe), and as a “cool, precise soprano” (Chicago Tribune), Shaw is a member of Quince Ensemble...

Zach Shemon is Assistant Professor of Saxophone at the University of Missouri – Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance. Additionally, he serves on the music faculties at the Interlochen Arts Camp and Interlochen Saxophone Summer Institute.

Shemon was awarded first prize at the inaugural International Saxophone Symposium and Competition in Columbus, Georga.

James Shields joined the Oregon Symphony as Principal Clarinet in the autumn of 2016.

Before relocating to Portland, James served as principal clarinet of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, as well as the New Mexico Philharmonic in Albuquerque.

The music of composer Marilyn Shrude is characterized by its warmth and lyricism, rich timbre, multi-layered constructions, and complex blend of tonality and atonality. The result is a bright, shimmering and delicately wrought sound world that is at once both powerful and fragile. Her concentration on color and the natural resonance of spaces, as well as her strong background in Pre-Vatican II liturgical music, give the music its linear, spiritual, and quasi-improvisational qualities.

David Skidmore is an ensemble member and Executive Director of Third Coast Percussion.

As a chamber musician, David has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center Festival, Kimmel Center, EMPAC, June in Buffalo, Klangspuren Schwaz, the Ojai Music Festival, the Bang On a Can Marathon and three Percussive Arts Society International Conventions. David was a member of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble from 2007-2011 and Ensemble ACJW from 2008-2010.

Josh Skinner is the Manager of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho. He has served as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth and professor of Double Bass and Jazz Studies at Utah State University and BYU-Idaho. Skinner has been involved with planning every aspect of jazz festivals for over ten years, including the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival, the UNC-Greeley Jazz Festival, and the Head of the Lakes Jazz Festival.

Spektral Quartet actively pursues a vivid conversation between exhilarating works of the traditional canon and those written this decade, this year, or this week. With its most recent album described by Gramophone as “highly-interactive, creative and collaborative... unlike anything its intended audience — or anyone else — has ever heard,” Spektral is known for creating seamless connections across centuries, drawing in the listener with charismatic deliveries, interactive concert formats, an up-close atmosphere, and bold, inquisitive programming. 

Weston Sprott enjoys an exciting career that includes orchestral, chamber, and solo performances, as well as numerous educational and outreach efforts. He is currently Acting Principal Trombone of New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, of which he has been a member since 2005. He has been recognized as “an excellent trombonist” with a “sense of style and phrasing [that] takes a backseat to no one”.

An exceptionally versatile cellist, Eric Stephenson’s style ranges from classical to jazz to rock and folk. He has performed with numerous orchestras like the IRIS Orchestra in Memphis, Tennesee and the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder. Eric was also a regular substitute for the Cleveland Orchestra.

Chicago area composer James Stephenson’s works have been performed by leading American orchestras and around the world, and have been hailed by critics as having “straightforward, unabashedly beautiful sounds” and “Stephenson deserves to be heard again and again!” (Boston Herald). His music incorporates a fresh and energizing sound scape that engages the audience while maintaining integrity and worthwhile challenges for the performing musicians. This rare combination has rewarded Stephenson with a host of ongoing commissions and projects.

A New York City native and Eastman School of Music graduate, Curtis Stewart has performed as a soloist with the National Repertory Orchestra at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. He has made chamber music appearances at Zankel Hall and the Rochester International Jazz Festival, holding his audiences “spellbound” with his “warm, clear sound…sparkling rhythmic energy” and “prodigious technique” (New Amsterdam Times, SoundWordSight).

Winner of "Ettore Pozzoli" International Piano Competition in Italy, pianist Anna Stoytcheva is described this way: “Stoytcheva’s tonal palette was a whirl of fabulous colors. Her agility was stunning at lighting speed” (Coral Gables Gazette). Currently Ms. Stoytcheva is the Co-Chair of Executive Board of “Bulgarian Concert Evenings in New York” series, held at the Bulgarian Consulate and at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. She is also the pianist of American Chamber Players five-member ensemble, which performs extensively throughout the United States.

Taimur Sullivan enjoys a prolific career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator. His performances have taken him from the stages of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to engagements in Russia, Germany, and throughout Latin America.

The New York Times praised him as “outstanding… his melodies phrased as if this were an old and cherished classic, his virtuosity supreme.”

Mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland gives detailed, stylistic performances of early and new music with “soul-infused expressiveness and unselfconscious joie de vivre” (New York Music Daily).

Ellie is a core member of Ekmeles, a sextet dedicated to exploring microtonal tuning and extended vocal techniques, and Alkemie, an ensemble made up of medieval specialists that celebrates the vibrant and timeless sounds of the past and present.

Equal parts passion, grit, and musical ecstasy, Sybarite5 is an intoxicating cocktail of genre-breaking artistry, expressed through the virtuosity of violinists Sami Merdinian & Suliman Tekalli, violist Caeli Smith, cellist Laura Andrade, and double bassist Louis Levitt. It’s the first ensemble of its kind to win the prestigious Concert Artists Guild competition, and the group continually evolves, defying categorization and keeping audiences on their toes.

Third Coast Percussion is a GRAMMY® Award-winning Chicago-based percussion quartet and GRAMMY®-nominated composer collective. For over fifteen years, the ensemble has created exciting and unexpected performances that constantly redefine the classical music experience.

Marcus Thompson, violist, has appeared as soloist, recitalist, and in chamber music series throughout the Americas, Europe and the Far East. He has been a soloist with the orchestras of Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Saint Louis; The National Symphony, the Boston Pops and the Czech National Symphony in Prague. He performed the west-coast premiere of the Harbison Viola Concerto with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; the Chicago premiere with the Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Boston premiere with the New England Conservatory Honors Orchestra.

Hailed by The Mercury News (San Jose, CA) as "a pianist with insight and passion, practically vanishing into the notes…" Jingwen Tu has forged a chamber and solo career throughout North America and Europe. Recent performances have taken her to such venues as Alice Tully Hall, the Rose Studio at Lincoln Center, The DiMennaCenter, The Morgan Library and Museum, the Banff Center, and Matav Music Hall in Budapest, among many others.

Its name derived from creation mythology found in Native American Folklore, the Turtle Island Quartet, since its inception in 1985, has been a singular force in the creation of bold, new trends in chamber music for strings. Winner of the 2006 and most recently, the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album, Turtle Island fuses the classical quartet esthetic with contemporary American musical styles, and by devising a performance practice that honors both, the state of the art has inevitably been redefined.