Victor Advienko, Percussion
A busy percussionist and timpanist, Victor Avdienko not only performs with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, but is also a frequent performer with the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. He has performed with such artists as Johnny Mathis, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, Rosemary Clooney, Mel Torme, Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow, Stevie Nicks, Mark Isham, Bernadette Peters, Doc Severensen, and Wynton Marsalis. Victor has also performed under conductors Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Leonard Slatkin, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, and Michael Tilson Thomas.
Mr. Avdienko was Music Director, composer, and percussionist for the California Shakespeare Festival for nine years. As composer and sound designer, he has scored for King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Othello, and Henry IV, Part 1, gaining critical acclaim and several awards.
Victor Avdienko is a graduate of the Juilliard School where he earned a Master of Music degree. His teachers include Roland Kohloff and Elden Bailey of the New York Philharmonic. Prior to that, he earned his degree with top honors from San Jose State University, studying with Anthony J. Cirone of the San Francisco Symphony.
In addition to making music, Victor spends his time as a Fly-fishing Guide and a Certified Fly Casting Instructor.
Iain Forgey, Bassoon
Bill Harvey, Trumpet
William Harvey is Principal Trumpet of the Oakland East Bay Symphony and Opera San José. He also holds positions with the California Symphony, Festival Opera, Lamplighters Musical Theatre, and the San Francisco Opera Center. In February 2012, he performed the Mieczyslaw Weinberg Trumpet Concerto with the Oakland East Bay Symphony. Formerly a member of the Epic Brass Quintet of Boston and the Cape Town Symphony in South Africa, Mr. Harvey performed numerous works of J.S. Bach and Handel on modern instruments with Emmanuel Music in Boston and at St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town. Upon returning to the Bay Area, he took up the Baroque Trumpet and has performed with numerous period-instrument ensembles including American Bach Soloists and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. A native of Berkeley, he learned trumpet in local public schools, studied music at San Francisco State University and holds a Bachelor of Music from Boston University. Mr. Harvey serves on the faculties of Santa Clara University and Patten University, and mentors young musicians in the Oakland Public Schools.
Don Howe, Low Brass
Don Howe has been a highly respected player and teacher for over 30 years. He has performed with all the major classical groups of the Bay Area, including the San Francisco Symphony, and SF Opera. Teaching is now Don's first love, and most of his performance is with the brass quintet, Brassworks.
Don teaches all the brass except French Horn privately, and is in demand as a coach. He spends several hours a week at Pinole Valley High School, and Miramonte High School in Orinda, and for the MUSE program of Oakland East Bay Symphony. He is writing a book on discoveries he has made that greatly speed learning. Don also arranges and composes music for brass, and has opened a store called BrassClef, at www.SibeliusMusic.com.
Julie Kim, First Violin
Larry London, Woodwind/Clarinet
Larry London did his undergraduate work at Harvard and earned a Master's degree in composition at Mills College. He studied with Darius Milhaud, Terry Riley and Lou Harrison. He has played clarinet in all of the Bay Area's professional orchestras. He teaches music at Ohlone and Merritt Colleges. His compositions have been performed at the Aspen and Cabrillo Music Festivals, by the Oakland Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony chamber series.
Larry London has contributed as a composer, arranger or performer to over fifty films. He composed the music for Isamu Noguchi: Stones and Paper, an American Masters documentary film, recognized as Best Portrait at the Montreal International Festival of Films in 1998. He wrote music for Poumy, A Bridge of Books, and Four Films About Love in 2002 for New Jewish Film Projects.
Yuri Kye, Second Violin
Violinist Yuri Kye is an active orchestral performer, chamber musician, and educator based in Oakland, CA. She is a member of the Sarasota Opera in Florida where she has served as acting principal violinist during the previous season, and performs regularly with many of the orchestras in the Bay Area and beyond, including the Reno Philharmonic, Fresno Philharmonic, Santa Cruz Symphony, Monterey Symphony, and more. An avid chamber musician, Yuri performs with her chamber ensemble Alden Trio, a classical piano trio performing standard literature, and previously was active as lead-violinist of the Elevate Ensemble for three seasons and continues to collaborate throughout the Bay Area in chamber music concerts and outreach/audience engagement initiatives. Active as a crossover artist, Yuri has performed with the likes of Michael Buble, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Tony! Toni! Tone!, and Two Cellos, has appeared onstage at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Super Bowl 50, the San Francisco Bi-Centennial Celebrations, and most recently has been recorded on the soundtrack of the 2019 Emmy-award winning graphic novel “Wolf in the Walls”. Yuri is a passionate educator who maintains a thriving studio of violin and viola students in Oakland and San Francisco Peninsula/Fremont and currently serves as the string clinician at Los Gatos High School. She has also coached the Golden State Youth Orchestra and Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and visits and performs at local schools through the Berkeley Symphony’s education & outreach program.
Jane Lenoir, Flute
Robin May, Oboe
Paul Rhodes, Cello
Paul Rhodes, B.A. Dominican College, M.M. University of Texas-Austin, is a member of the Oakland-East Bay Symphony, Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra, and was recently engaged as assistant principal 'cello of the Sacramento Philharmonic. Locally he has worked with the former Sacramento and San Jose symphonies, New Century Chamber Orchestra, Earplay Ensemble, Santa Cruz Baroque Ensemble, and the symphonies of Berkeley, California, Marin, and Santa Rosa. he spent the 1994-95 season with the San Antonio Symphony and has served as Principal 'cello with the Austin Symphony, with whom he toured France and Germany, Orchestra of Santa Fe, Brazos Valley Symphony (TX), and the symphonies of Modesto, Vallejo, Fresno, and Napa.
Michel Taddei, Bass
Michel Taddei studied double bass with Homer Mensch at the Juilliard School. Other teachers have included Joseph Cascelli, Henry Portnoi, Lawrence Wolfe, and Stuart Sankey, and chamber music studies with Eugene Lehner and Lewis Kaplan. He was invited by Kent Nagano to become Principal Bass with the Opéra National de Lyon (France), while still in graduate school at UC Berkeley. Performances, festivals, tours, and recordings with the Lyon Opera included collaborations with many of the finest artists of our day, including Jessye Norman, Kiri Te Kanawa, Natalie Dessay, and John Eliot Gardiner. Since his return to the US, Michel's career has included tours as Principal Bass with the New York City Opera National Company and Western Opera Theater, as well as performances with the Russian National Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, New Century Chamber Orchestra, Earplay, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. He has toured with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble in the US as well as in Central Asia. Michel will perform with Ma and the SRE again in September of 2008 at the Hollywood Bowl.
Michel is Principal Bassist of the Berkeley, Fremont, and Pacific Chamber Symphonies, as well as the Mendocino Music Festival and San Francisco Chamber Orchestra (SFCO), and serves as Assistant Principal Bassist of the California Symphony. He is a founding member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and has performed on many chamber music series in the Bay Area, as well as at festivals including those of Moab, Utah, and Le Festival des Sept Chapelles, Rives de Gier, and Caves de Roussillon in France. He has been a concerto soloist with the SFCO, the Golden Gate Philharmonic, and the Berkeley Symphony, the last in a work commissioned expressly for Michel.
Alicia Telford, French Horn
Alicia Telford, French Horn, is an alumna of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and San Francisco State University, where she studied Horn with David Krehbiel, former Principal Horn of the San Francisco Symphony and Bill Klingelhoffer, Co-Principal of the San Francisco Opera. She is a well-known freelance artist and teacher in the Bay Area, a tenured member of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, SF Chamber Orchestra, a regular extra with the SF Opera, Symphony and Ballet orchestras, faculty member at UC Berkeley. Alicia performs with her quintet, the Golden Gate Brass, and woodwind ensemble, Bellavente, concertizing throughout the United States. When she puts her Horn in the case, Ms. Telford enjoys working in her garden, reading, and exploring the Berkeley hills with her husband and their dog.
Ed Wharton, Viola