Bassist, Performer
Bassist Timothy Cobb joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Bass in May 2014, after serving as principal bass of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and principal bass of the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra since 1989.
He has appeared at numerous chamber music festivals worldwide, including the Marlboro Music festival, through which he has toured with the Musicians from Marlboro series. A faculty member of the Sarasota Music Festival, he is helping to launch a new bass program for the Killington Music Festival in Killington, Vermont. Mr. Cobb also serves as principal bass for Valery Gergiev’s World Orchestra for Peace, an invited group of musicians from around the world who donate their time biannually and perform to promote international harmony. Mr. Cobb has been designated a UNESCO Artist for Peace from his affiliation with the World Orchestra.
He has an ongoing collaboration with actor Stephen Lang, for whom he recorded a solo bass sound track for Mr. Lang’s animated short film The Wheatfield, which depicts a human drama from the Battle of Gettysburg. The two were invited to Gettysburg in July 2013 on the 150th anniversary of the battle to perform in the Salute to the States event held there, and they will continue to collaborate for future events.
Mr. Cobb serves as bass department chair for The Juilliard School as well as on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Purchase College, and Rutgers University. He is also a distinguished visiting artist for Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida.
A native of Albany, New York, Timothy Cobb graduated from The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Roger Scott. While at Curtis, Mr. Cobb was a substitute with The Philadelphia Orchestra and in his senior year became a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Georg Solti. Mr. Cobb can be heard on all Metropolitan Opera recordings released after 1986, as well as on a recording of Giovanni Bottesini’s duo bass music with bassist Thomas Martin on the Naxos label.
Clarinetist, Performer
Eric Umble is a versatile, award winning clarinetist hailed as “lovely”, (New York Arts) and known for his “… nuanced and coloristic playing.” (The Clarinet). Eric enjoys a diverse international career as a soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, and music educator. An advocate for and avid performer of contemporary music, he is founding member of SoundMind, sTem, and DuoHelixensembles; all champion music by living composers.
Eric served as clarinetist in residence at Chamber Music Silicon Valley, the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, and New Music on the Point. He has performed with renowned ensembles including the Orchestras of the Lucerne Festival Academy and Alumni, the WindScape Quintet, American Modern Ensemble, LoftOpera, ECCE, Tenth Intervention, Cantata Profana, Ensemble Echappee, Tactus, Contemporaneous, and Ensemble Mise-en. Eric has performed in the world’s major venues including Carnegie’s Stern Auditorium, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, and National Sawdust in New York; as well as the Kölner Philharmonie, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, and the Cultural and Congress Center of Lucerne, Switzerland. Eric has participated in residencies at Princeton, Cornell, Millersville, Miami, and Sul Ross State, Universities.
Dedicated to using music as a force for positive change, Eric produced benefit concerts that raised thousands of dollars for public health, shelters, and disaster relief. He has received awards and honors including the grand prize of the Naftzger Young Artist Competition, Lancaster Red Rose Award for Community Service, Gordon Parks Memorial Competition, Skokie Valley Young Artist Competition, and the Fuchs Chamber Music Competition. As an educator, Eric is a teaching artist with the Bridge Arts Ensemble, and he is a Music Theory teacher at the Washington Heights Community Conservatory in Manhattan. Eric served as an adjunct instructor at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University. He enjoys relationships with the Escuela Nacional de Música in Mexico City and Casa de Las Américas in Havana, Cuba where he has presented numerous lecturers, masterclasses, and recitals. Eric received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Manhattan School of Music studying with David Krakauer and Anthony McGill.
Composer, Performer
Long regarded as Broadway’s preeminent orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick is known for his facility and creativity in scoring the works of others, primarily those of Stephen Sondheim. However he is also a skilled and versatile composer who has written in all forms; orchestral, chamber and vocal. A native New Yorker, Jonathan Tunick grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and was educated at the High School of Music and Art, Bard College and Juilliard.
His first major credit was Promises, Promises (1968), which led to a long series of other Broadway musicals, which include Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, A Chorus Line, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Nine, Into the Woods, Passion, Titanic, The Color Purple, Road Show and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.
His credits as composer, arranger and conductor of music for film and television include Find Me Guilty, Fort Apache, The Bronx, Endless Love, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, The Fantasticks, The Bird Cage, Murder, She Wrote, and Columbo.
He has been awarded honorary Doctorates by Bard College and Oklahoma City University.
He is one of eight living “EGOTs”, holding all four major awards (Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Oscar). In 2009 he was inducted into Broadway’s Theater Hall of Fame.
Narrator, Performer
Annie Bergen is the midday host at Classical New York, 105.9FM, WQXR. Her classical radio career began in New York City on WNCN and continued on WQXR in 2004. In between, she was an award winning arts reporter for Bloomberg Radio and Television. An avid music lover, her interests include jazz, dance and world music. Annie has been featured on broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. As a voice artist, she and can be heard on underwriting on WNYC, on audio guides at the Metropolitan Museum, and announcing stops on the number 7 subway line in NYC.
Annie grew up an Air Force brat in various cities in Europe and the USA and attended Boston College. An eclectic interest in music and the arts keeps her out and about at the latest theater and performing arts events.
Composer, Conductor, Performer
A major force in 21st century concert music, Victoria Bond leads a dual career as composer and conductor. Her compositions have been praised by the New York Times as “powerful, stylistically varied and technically demanding,” and her conducting has been called “impassioned” by the Wall Street Journal and “full of energy and fervor” by the New York Times.
Bond has been commissioned by The American Ballet Theater, Pennsylvania Ballet, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Houston and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, Cleveland and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras, Women’s Philharmonic, Soli Deo Gloria, The Young Peoples’ Chorus, Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Choral Society of the Hamptons and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her compositions have been performed by the Dallas Symphony, New York City Opera, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Anchorage Opera, Irish National Orchestra (RTE), Shanghai Symphony and members of the New York Philharmonic, among others. She is the recipient of the Victor Herbert Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Walter Hinrichsen Award, the Perry F. Kendig Award and the Miriam Gideon Prize.
Bond has served as Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony and guest conducted throughout the United States, Europe, South America and China. The first woman awarded a doctorate in orchestral conducting from The Juilliard School, Bond has served as Music Director of the New Amsterdam and Roanoke Symphony Orchestras, Artistic Director of Opera Roanoke, Harrisburg Opera and Bel Canto Opera, Music Adviser of the Wuhan Symphony in China and is Principal Guest Conductor of Chamber Opera Chicago.
She has guest conducted the Honolulu, Buffalo, Richmond, Louisville, Albany, Anchorage, Dallas and Houston symphony orchestras; Cleveland and St. Paul chamber symphonies; Opera Carolina; Festival of Contemporary Music in Santos, Brazil; Radio Telefis Eirann in Dublin, Ireland; Center for Contemporary Opera in New York; and the Shanghai, Hunan, and Wuhan symphony orchestras and Beijing Central Opera in China. She was assistant conductor of New York City Opera under Beverly Sills, and conducted orchestral concerts for Ray Charles, leading his 70th birthday concert in Warsaw, Poland. She has worked with Andre Previn, Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sixten Ehrling, Leonard Slatkin, James Conlon, Herbert Blomstedt, and Herbert von Karajan.
Recent performances of her compositions include: Bridges by the Michigan Philharmonic and the National Repertory Orchestra; Soul of a Nation by the Riverside County Philharmonic; How Lovely is Your Dwelling Place from Psalm 84, commissioned by Soli Deo Gloria at Temple Emanuel and St. John the Divine sung by a combined choir; Rashomon by Kyo-Shin Arts, Instruments of Revelation by Ballet Chicago and the Orion Ensemble, and the workshop performance of her opera Clara about Clara Schumann. Scenes from Bond’s opera Mrs. President were performed by the New York City Opera as part of VOX in 2001 and the complete opera was performed in concert by the Anchorage Opera in October 2012. Of the opera, Allan Kozinn in The New York Times wrote: “Victoria Bond has struck gold.” Bond’s Hanukkah opera Miracle! Was commissioned by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and will be premiered in 2016. She has composed eight operas, six ballets, two piano concertos and numerous orchestral, chamber, choral and keyboard compositions. Ms. Bond produces Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival in New York and is a frequent pre-concert lecturer for the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall and for the Metropolitan Opera’ HD simulcasts at Guild Hall. She has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and on NBC’s Today Show and featured in People magazine and in the New York Times. Her music is published by Theodore Presser, C.F. Peters, G. Schirmer, and Subito Music and recorded on the Koch International, Albany, GEGA, Protone, and Family Classic labels.
Bond has a masters and doctorate from the Juilliard School and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California. Her teachers include Ingolf Dahl (composition, USC), William Vennard (voice, USC), Roger Sessions (composition Julliard), Jean Morel, James Conlon and Sixteen Ehrling (conducting, Juilliard), Leonard Slatkin and Herbert Blomstedt (conducting, Aspen) and Herbert von Karajan (master class, Juilliard). She has taught at Juilliard, The Conductor’s Institute, New York University and in the spring will design and teach online courses for Nyack College. She has honorary doctorates from Hollins and Roanoke Colleges, and Washington and Lee University. She was voted Woman of the Year, Virginia in 1990 and 1991.
http://www.victoriabond.com/
Performer, Trumpet
Trumpeter Kevin Quill is known for his sound and musicality. A native of Nanuet, New York, Mr. Quill has been playing the trumpet since the age of nine. While in high school, he performed at the Eastman Theatre in the 2009 and 2010 New York All-State Symphonic Band, playing principal trumpet on several works. In June 2010, he played principal trumpet for the National Honor Band, where he performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. In his later high school years, he began taking lessons with Ethan Bensdorf of the New York Philharmonic.
After graduating high school, Mr. Quill moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School where he began studying under Raymond Mase and Mark Gould. He currently holds both a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School. Upon receiving his Bachelor’s degree, he was awarded the John Erskine Prize for an exceptional level of scholastic and artistic achievement. Mr. Quill was a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship during his years in the Master’s program. Mr. Quill is currently studying towards a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Juilliard, becoming the first trumpet player in many years to be accepted into Juilliard’s C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship program.
As a member of the Juilliard Orchestra, Mr. Quill has played principal trumpet on numerous works, including Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, Strauss’s Don Quixote, and Alan Gilbert’s concert arrangement of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. He has performed under numerous world class conductors including Alan Gilbert, Valery Gergiev, Esa Pekka Salonen, Semyon Bychkov, Charles Dutoit, and Jaap Van Zweden. He has performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, David Geffen Hall, and Peter Jay Sharp Theater, as well as Carnegie Hall. In the summers of 2014, 2015, and 2016, Mr. Quill was a member of the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland. Highlights from the Verbier Festival include performing principal trumpet on Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 under Zubin Mehta and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 under Michael Tilson Thomas.
Mr. Quill is excited to be returning to Switzerland in the summer of 2017 to perform with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. Additionally, he was principal trumpet of the New York Youth Symphony, which he performed with from 2011 to 2014, playing eight concerts in Carnegie Hall. In January of 2014, he was invited to play with the Music for Life International Orchestra in a benefit concert performing at Carnegie Hall dedicated to providing aid to children living in war-torn Syria. This orchestra performed Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 and was largely made up of members from the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. In February 2017, Mr. Quill performed again with the Music for Life International Orchestra, performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in the benefit concert of Mahler for Vision: A Concert for the Restoration of Vision for the Millions Affected By Cataract Blindness.
In his sophomore year, Mr. Quill won the Juilliard Trumpet Concerto Competition and performed Tomasi’s Trumpet Concerto as a soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra under the baton of Emmanuel Villaume at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. His most recent solo performance with orchestra was in the fall of 2015, when he played Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto with the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble. As a winner of the 2011 West Point Band Young Artist Solo Competition, he performed Arban’s Carnival of Venice with the West Point Band. Mr. Quill has given two solo recitals at The Juilliard School where he has played music from the standard repertoire as well as his own arrangements.
Starting in September of 2015, Mr. Quill formed the brass quintet, Apex Brass, with several colleagues from Juilliard. Apex Brass has performed at many venues including Alice Tully Hall, Paul Hall, Morse Hall, the New York State Supreme Court Rotunda, and most recently at St. Paul’s Chapel of Columbia University. Apex Brass will be competing at the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition this May.
In 2015, Mr. Quill also collaborated with other trumpet players at Juilliard to herald the naming of Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall and to perform alongside Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs during his Emperor’s Ball at The Marquee Club in Manhattan. In the spring of 2016, he performed at the United Nations with a small brass ensemble to celebrate the signing of the Paris Agreement on Climate. Mr. Quill performed music from Renaissance Venice with the American Brass Quintet at Paul Recital Hall in October of 2016.
While pursuing his doctorate at The Juilliard School, Mr. Quill looks forward to engaging in rigorous academic study while furthering himself in the realms of solo, chamber, and orchestral playing.
Horn, Performer
Audrey Flores is a freelancing horn player in New York City. She attended the Juilliard School and the Mannes College of Music, and regularly plays on Broadway and with orchestras in the tri-state area.
Formerly Principal Horn of both the Allentown Symphony and the Haddonfield Symphony, Audrey has also played with the New World Symphony, the Miami Symphony Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Orchestra, and the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. She was a musician in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular Orchestra in 2011 and 2012, and in the New York Spectacular in the summer of 2016.
A frequent soloist and chamber musician, she has performed with the Jupiter Chamber Players, the OMNI Ensemble, and was featured as a soloist with the Haddonfield Symphony for performances of the Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings. She has also performed at the Sunriver Music Festival, the Vermont Music Festival, the National Repertory Orchestra, and as a part of the Bravo! Vail Summer Music Festival.
She is currently recording her first solo album which will be released in the summer of 2017. This is her second performance as a soloist with the Broadway Bach Ensemble.
Horn, Performer
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Sarah Boxmeyer is a horn player currently based in New York City. Before moving to New York, she received her master’s degree from the Yale University School of Music and bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in her hometown of Philadelphia.
An active musician and educator, Sarah has participated in concerts, music festivals and tours across the United States and abroad including performances in Germany, Italy, Costa Rica, and the Czech Republic.
Sarah is delighted to make her Broadway Bach Ensemble debut with this performance.
Horn, Performer
Midwest-born hornist Alexander Chin moved to New York in 2007 and studied with Mr. Erik Ralske, Principal Horn of the Metropolitan Opera at Manhattan School of Music where he received his bachelor of music degree. He continued his studies at Mannes The New School for Music under the wing of the New York Philharmonic’s Principal Horn, Mr. Philip Myers and went on to receive his master of music degree.
Mr. Chin has played with members of the New York Philharmonic, Met and Philadelphia orchestras as well as world-renowned soloists Placido Domingo and Rachel Barton among others. Traveling the world Mr. Chin has taken part on the international stage performing in spectacular venues such as China’s National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the Czech Republic’s Dvorak Hall in Prague, Vienna’s Musikverein, Leipzig’s famed Gewandhaus among other famous American stages such as Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall and at Lincoln Center on a regular basis.
He is a member of the Bridge Arts Ensemble, the Patriot Brass Ensemble, and remains an active freelancer and teacher in the Greater New York area.
Horn, Performer
A horn player of diverse experience, Steven Behnke has performed extensively in the New York City area including appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. He has also been featured on WQXR and has won numerous concerto competitions.
In 2008 he became a member of the Wholly Brass Quintet and has completed several national tours with the group. Steven completed a bachelor’s of music degree at the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Michelle Baker and Eric Ralske. Previous teachers include David Jolley and Sharon Moe. He has also taken lessons and participated in master classes with Thomas Jöbstl, Julie Landsman, Eric Ruske and Jonathan Lipton.
In 2009 he founded the Patriot Brass Ensemble, a ground breaking non-profit brass group that performs for veterans of the United States Military.
