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Elizabeth Brown was born in San Diego, California, and began playing the cello at the age of four.
Ms. Brown has performed with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, Canton Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra and others. Ms. Brown received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Alan Harris.  Ms. Brown is currently in her fourth season as the principal cellist of La Orquesta Sinfonica Sinaloa de las Artes, in Sinaloa, Mexico.




Adam Carter is currently a lecturer in cello at the University of Virginia, member of the Rivanna String Quartet, and principal of the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra.  Before joining the faculty at UVA, he played with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra in Madison, WI. He has also won positions with the Akron Symphony, Evansville Philharmonic, and Cedar Rapids Symphony, and performed with the Erie Philharmonic, Fairfax Symphony, and Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival. An active teacher, Mr. Carter was adjunct professor of cello and bass at Ripon College in Ripon, WI, maintained a large private studio, and taught with the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras and the Sun Prairie Music Academy. His principle teachers include Steven Doane, Rosemary Elliot, Robert Marsh, and Uri Vardi.  

Brooklyn-based cellist Jane Cords-O’Hara has performed extensively in the US, Ireland, the UK and Europe. In recent seasons she has performed with The Knights, Wet Ink, Columbia Composers, Argento, SONYC, Sufjan Stevens, Allsar Quartet and American Composers Alliance, in such venues as Weill and Zankel Hall at Carnegie, Bargemusic, Brooklyn Lyceum (MATA festival), The Stone, Symphony Space, MOBIA, BAM and Merkin Hall. As cellist of the Syrius Trio, she tours regularly in Ireland and the UK, and has recently returned from the Musica Nova festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She recently recorded with The Knights on the Sony Classical label, and with Syrius Trio for Toccatta Classics.

Alex Greenbaum was born in New York and began playing the cello at age three. In the past few years he has performed at venues throughout New York City, including Carnegie Hall, Bargemusic, Merkin Hall, Tonic, the Cutting Room, the Brooklyn Lyceum and at Lincoln Center. As a member of The Knights orchestra he has toured Dresden and Dublin (with Dawn Upshaw), the Canary Islands (with Osvaldo Golijov’s Pasión) and recorded two albums on Sony Classical. Alex has appeared as a soloist with the National Repertory Orchestra and Brandywine Chamber Orchestra. An avid chamber musician and dedicated advocate for new music, he has performed with the FLUX Quartet and Wet Ink Ensemble, and at the Northern Lights Music Festival in Ajijic, Jalisco. Alex was also a member of the Orquesta Sinfonica Sinaloa de las Artes in Sinaloa, Mexico. He attended the Eastman School of Music, the Royal Northern College of Music, the University of Miami and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. His teachers have included Steven Doane, Marcy Rosen, Ross Harbaugh and Andre Emelianoff. Alex plays a cello crafted in 2006 by Michele Ashley. He lives in Brooklyn.
Cellist and composer Kevin McFarland is currently infiltrating the New York City new music scene as a founding member of the JACK Quartet, a string quartet dedicated to the commissioning and performance of contemporary music.  With JACK he has given critically acclaimed performances at a diverse array of venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival, the Venice Bienalle, and the Witten Festival.  The group has featured the complete string quartets of Iannis Xenakis as a cornerstone of their repertoire, notably at a concert at (le) poisson rouge hailed by the New York Times as one of the "most memorable classical music presentations of 2008," and in the form of the first complete recording of these works, now available from Mode Records. Kevin also works as a freelance cellist and has recently appeared with groups such as Alarm Will Sound, Dal Niente, Ensemble De Sade, ICE, Signal, and the Wordless Music Orchestra.  Kevin holds a degree from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied composition with David Liptak, Robert Morris, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and cello with Steven Doane.  At Eastman he was an ardent supporter of new music and premiered over one hundred student compositions.  He continues to compose both acoustic and electronic music and lives in Brooklyn.
Laura Metcalf is an active performer in New York City, where she has been heard recently in Weill Hall and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, the Consulate General of France, the J.P Morgan Library, the Tenri Cultural Institute, and many others. She has attended the International Musician’s Seminar at Prussia Cove, and the Taos, Aspen, Sarasota, and Round Top Music Festivals. She is currently a member of the Sybarite Chamber Players, and was a founding member of the Stella Trio from 2005-2007. She was a semi-finalist in the 2007 Hudson Valley Philharmonic Competition, and gave her New York doncerto debut in 2007 with the Ensemble 212 Orchestra. Laura has studied with Timothy Eddy and Mike Reynolds, and has played in masterclasses for Bernard Greenhouse, Ron Leonard, Pamela Frank, and others.
Michael Midlarsky, currently a student of Uri Vardi and Collins Distinguished Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, has performed extensively as a chamber musician and soloist during his formative years.  He has won numerous awards and distinctions including the National School Orchestra Soloist Award, Queen’s College Cultural Heritage Competition, NJ American String Teacher’s Association Competition, East Brunswick Orchestra Competition, and prizewinner in the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra Competition and Woodmere String Competition.  Recent festivals include the Taos School of Music and Roundtop International Institute.  As a chamber musician he has performed in over 15 states, 4 countries, and on the radio program From the Top, after which he won the ensuing competition.  Known for a “remarkable warmth of sound” and “lilting lyricism” (competition judges), Michael is looking forward to many premier performances as his career continues to blossom.  
Florent Renard-Payen was born in Paris to a family of professional musicians; his parents were both harpists. He studied in France with Annie Cochet and Michel Strauss. At the age of twenty, he moved to Boston to pursue five years of graduate study with Andrés Díaz, culminating in a Master’s degree and the Pi Kappa Lambda award for musical achievement from Boston University in 1996. He completed his musical studies in 2004, earning a Doctor of Musical Arts in Cello Performance from the Eastman School of Music. During his studies in the states, Florent had the honor of performing in master classes for Pieter Wispelwey, Yo-Yo Ma, Roberto Díaz and the late Joseph Gingold. Since 1999, Florent has been teaching cello at Colgate University and chamber music at Hamilton College, NY. A champion of music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Florent is the founder of the Tarab Cello Ensemble, and a guest performer of the Society for New Music in Syracuse. Florent has commissioned and premiered solo cello works by Randall Bauer, Garrett Byrnes, Todd Coleman, Gregory Mertl, Aaron Travers, and Dan Trueman.