Ann Bobo, flute

Ann Bobo frequently performs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, with whom she has toured throughout the United States, Canada, Japan, and Korea. She also performs with the Boston Symphony and Pops Orchestras during their summer season at Tanglewood and has twice been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. Other engagements include the St. Louis Symphony, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Springfield Symphony, and Boston Lyric Opera. A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Bobo is an avid chamber musician who has been a featured performer at the Carolina Chamber Music Festival and holds awards from the Coleman and Carmel Chamber Music Societies, and the Pappoutsakis Memorial Flute Competition. She has recorded for RCA Victor, Arsis, and New World Records, and is currently on faculty at the Boston Conservatory. (Back to top)

William Kirkley, clarinet

Active as an orchestral musician, recitalist, and chamber musician, clarinetist William Kirkley’s performances have been called “emotional, committed, and intensely exciting” by the Boston Globe. Kirkley has performed to acclaim with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, the Santa Fe Opera, and other ensembles throughout North America. Currently principal clarinet of the Cape Ann Symphony and the Lexington Symphony, he is a faculty mentor with the Gordon Symphony and is on the music faculties at Gordon College and Salem State College.

Mr. Kirkley is a core ensemble member of Boston Musica Viva and the Auros Group for New Music, commissioning and recording works for clarinet and chamber ensemble.  He has also performed with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Harvard Group for New Music, and Brandeis New Music.  He has given recitals and master classes at many colleges and universities in the Northeast, including the New England Conservatory and Harvard University.  Mr. Kirkley’s principal teachers were Robert Umiker, Robert Marcellus, and Anthony Gigliotti.  He has recorded on the CRI, SEAMUS, New World, and Centaur labels. (Back to top)

Robert Schulz, percussion

Described by the Newport Daily Express as "Bare hands, bare feet, tour de force complete!", Robert Schulz has become one of modern music's busiest and most versatile percussionists.  He serves as principal percussionist for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Musica Viva, Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, and Opera Boston Orchestra.  He has worked with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Boston Ballet Orchestra, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston and the Boston Chamber Music Society.  As a timpanist, mallet specialist and multi-percussionist, he has been a featured soloist with the Boston Celebrity Series on numerous occasions. In 2004, Mr. Schulz received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Small Ensemble Performance on Yehudi Wyner’s The Mirror (Naxos). That year he also gave the Boston premiere of Tan Dun’s Water Concerto with BMOP. Schulz leads his own group, the BeatCity Art Ensemble, in performances for the Boston Celebrity Series, Lincoln Center, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. He has toured nationally and internationally with pipa virtuoso Wu Man and was the featured recitalist for the 2006 CrossSound Festival in Juneau, Alaska.  In 2010 he recorded Kick and Ride, a concerto for drumset and orchestra written for him by Eric Moe.  With a performance described as "Stunning" by Fanfare Magazine, it was released by BMOP Sound in 2011 and adds to a growing catalogue of over 30 recordings with that ensemble as principal percussionist.

An experienced drummer in virtually all contemporary styles, Mr. Schulz has performed with Dave Brubeck at the Newport Jazz Festival, jazz violinist Leroy Jenkins, guitar legend Jim Hall, the San Antonio Symphony, and countless jazz combos, cover bands, and original music groups over the last 30 years, including the New England Swing, a big band featuring some of Boston's top jazz musicians.  He was recently the solo percussionist in a new "re-imagining" of Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, developed and premiered by the American Repertory Theater. (Back to top)

Geoffrey Burleson, piano

Equally active as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and jazz performer, Geoffrey Burleson, pianist, has performed to wide acclaim throughout Europe and North America. The New York Times has hailed Burleson’s solo performances as “vibrant and compelling,” praising his “rhythmic brio, projection of rhapsodic qualities, appropriate sense of spontaneity, and rich colorings.” And the Washington Post calls Burleson a “top-notch pianist” whose “piquancy and poetry blend beautifully.”  Current recording projects include “Camille Saint-Saëns: Complete Piano Works”, on 5 CDs, for the new Naxos Grand Piano label. Volume 1 (Complete Piano Études) and Volume 2 have been released to high acclaim from Fanfare and American Record Guide, and both garnered an International Piano Choice Award from  International Piano Magazine.   Other recent recordings by Burleson include “Roy Harris: Complete Piano Music” (Naxos) and “Vincent Persichetti: Complete Piano Sonatas” (New World Records), which received high acclaim from the BBC Music Magazine (“BBC Music Choice”; 5/5 stars) and Gramophone.   Burleson is a core member of Boston Musica Viva, The New York Art Ensemble, and The Pittsburgh Collective. He holds degrees from the Peabody and New England Conservatories, and Stony Brook University. Burleson teaches piano at Princeton University and is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Piano Studies at Hunter College-City University of New York. (Back to top)

Bayla Keyes, violin

Bayla Keyes, violin, is “a charismatic soloist of expressive generosity and technical élan,” noted the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  First performing with the acclaimed Musicians from Marlboro, Ms. Keyes was a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Muir String Quartet, winners of the Evian and Naumburg awards and two Grand Prix du Disque.  Her recent concert highlights include numerous premieres with Boston Musica Viva, as well as frequent performances of the standard concerto repertoire.  Her piano trio, Triple Helix, is in residence at Wellesley College where their series of Beethoven concerts earned them the accolade “Musicians of the Year 2002” from the Boston Globe. Ms. Keyes is Associate Professor of Violin at Boston University, founding director of the String Quartet Institute at Tanglewood, and director of the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Conference. She has recorded for Ecoclassics, CRI, Musical Heritage, EMI-France, Koch, Bridge, and New World Records, and holds degrees from the Curtis Institute and the Yale School of Music. (Back to top)

Gabriela Diaz, violin

Georgia native Gabriela Diaz began her musical training at the age of five, studying piano with her mother, and the next year, violin with her father. Gabriela came to Boston to study at New England Conservatory, where she completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, studying with James Buswell.  As a cancer survivor, Gabriela is committed to cancer research and treatment. In 2004 Gabriela was a recipient of a grant from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation. This grant enabled Gabriela to begin organizing a series of chamber music concerts in cancer units at various hospitals in Boston called the Boston Hope Ensemble. Devoted to contemporary music, Gabriela has been fortunate to work closely with many significant living composers on their own compositions, namely Pierre Boulez, Magnus Lindberg, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Lucier, John Zorn, Roger Reynolds, Steve Reich, Brian Ferneyhough, and Helmut Lachenmann. Boston critics have mentioned Gabriela as “a young violin master... Diaz shone in her extended solo passages.” Lloyd Schwartz of the Boston Phoenix noted, “…Gabriela Diaz in a bewitching performance of Pierre Boulez’s 1991 Anthèmes. The come-hither meow of Diaz’s upward slides and her sustained pianissimo fade-out were miracles of color, texture, and feeling.” Others have remarked on her “vibrant playing,” “polished technique,” and “vivid and elegant playing.” Gabriela is a member of several Boston-area new music groups, including Sound Icon, Ludovico Ensemble, Dinosaur Annex, Firebird Ensemble, and Callithumpian Consort. In the fall of 2012 Gabriela will be joining the faculty of Wellesley College.

Highlights of the 2012-13 season include performances of Roger Reynolds' solo work, "Kokoro," Mozart sonatas with Lois Shapiro, and Philippe Leroux's violin concerto, "(d')Aller" with Sound Icon. Gabriela can be heard on New World, Centaur, BMOPSound, Mode, and Tzadik records. (Back to top)

Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello

Cellist Jan Müller-Szeraws’ musical journey has taken him over three continents as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher. Since his early debut with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Concepción he has performed frequently as a soloist with orchestras in Chile, Germany and the United States. He has been a guest artist at many festivals including the Cape & Islands, Rockport, El Paso Pro-Musica, Strings in the Mountains, Music at Gretna, Sebago Long Lake and Kingston Chamber Music Festivals, and the European Chamber Music Association. 
Recent performances include the world premiere of Bernard Hoffer's Concerto di Camera II for solo cello and ensemble written for him and Boston Musica Viva, the Boston premieres of Gunther Schuller’s Cello Concerto and Chou Wen-Chung’s cello concerto with the New England Philharmonic, Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. He recorded Pedro Humberto Allende’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile, a recording which has been released by the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts as part of the celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of Chilean Independence.

Müller-Szeraws is cellist of the contemporary music ensemble Boston Musica Viva. He is also a member of Mistral, the resident and touring ensemble of the Andover Chamber Music Series, and founding member of QX String Quartet and Trio Tremonti. Müller-Szeraws has been artist and teacher in residence at the Jornadas Musicales Internacionales de Invierno in Concepción, Chile, and has taught Master Classes at the Garth Newel Music Center, Columbus State University and Academia de Música Antonio Vivaldi, Concepción. He also was a guest lecturer at the Universidad Católica de Chile in 2007 and 2008.

A prize-winner at the Washington International Competition, Müller-Szeraws is a grant recipient of the Saul and Naomi Cohen Foundation. He studied at the Musikhochschule Freiburg, Germany, and at Boston University. His teachers include Andrés Díaz, Christoph Henkel, Arnaldo Fuentes and Javier Santamaría. He plays a cello by David Tecchler. (Back to top)