Kenny Barron with Strings

Violin I

Dana Zulpykharova – Almaty, Kazakhstan

Melquiades Alvarez – Canary Islands, Spain

Raphaella Brown – Berkeley, California

Yun Chen – Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Christine Chen – Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Jun Woo Beck – Seoul, Korea

Violin 2

Finneas Moore – Guilford, Connecticut

Riya Lakshman – Bangalore, India

Ding Sng - Singapore

Clara Chisholm – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Soo Choi – Seoul, Korea

Viola

Tamir Tarhan – Izmir, Turkey

Connor Valcy – Acworth, Georgia

Niki Yeracaris – Newton, Massachusetts

Cello

Peter Sumner – Durham, North Carolina

Thiago da Silva – Mococa, SP, Brazil

Queralt Giralt – Soler, Catalunya

Sammy Wetstein – Simsbury, Connecticut 

Bass

Ian Banno – Providence, Rhode Island

Eric Gould:

Eric Gould has enjoyed a multifaceted career as a pianist, composer, arranger, and educator. He has performed and recorded in collaboration with world-renowned instrumentalists such as Jimmy Heath, Ron Carter, James Newton, Bobby Watson, Antonio Hart, Winard Harper, Cindy Blackman, Terri Lynne Carrington, Cecil Bridgewater, Robin Eubanks, and Leon Lee Dorsey in addition to leading his own trio in performances from the Midwest to the East Coast.

Gould has composed music for various other ensembles as well, including “The Fire Within,” a piano quintet commissioned by Chamber Music Wilmington in 2014; “Bohemia After Dark,” a concert of arrangements of the music of Oscar Pettiford featuring the legendary Ron Carter along with an all-star octet; “Diaspora of the Drum,” a 30-minute work for chamber orchestra, jazz ensemble, and tap dancer Savion Glover;  “An American City,” commissioned by the Canton Symphony through the National Endowment for the Arts; “Dameron’s Dance: A Tribute to Tadd Dameron,” featuring NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath; “Midnight Excursion,” premiered by the Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony in 2003; and “He Speaks in Shadows,” performed by the critically acclaimed Cavani String Quartet at Merkin Concert Hall in New York, at the Chamber Music America Festival in New York, and at the Britt Music Festival.

As an educator, Gould is currently a professor in the Piano Department at Berklee, where he formerly served as chair of the Jazz Composition Department. Prior to that, he served as director of the Department of Music for the Cleveland Music School Settlement, one of the oldest and largest community music schools in the country. He also has been on the faculty at Cleveland State University and has taught at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the College of Wooster, in addition to conducting numerous workshops, residencies, and classes, along with private instruction, festival organization, and arts management consultation. In his roles as executive director and managing consultant of the Excellence in Music Initiative in Cleveland, Ohio, Gould played a substantial role in the development of the preparatory music program at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C).

Eugene Friesen:

Four-time Grammy Award-winner Eugene Friesen is active internationally as a concert and recording artist, composer, conductor and teacher. Friesen has worked and recorded with such diverse artists as Dave Brubeck, Martin Sexton, Toots Thielemans, Betty Buckley, Dar Williams, Will Ackerman, and Dream Theater.  

Friesen’s passion for improvised music has been featured in concerts all over the world with the Paul Winter Consort and with Trio Globo (Friesen, Howard Levy, and Glen Velez). He appeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, playing with Keillor and superstar soprano Renée Fleming, and has performed as a soloist at the International Cello Festival in Manchester, England; Rencontres d'Ensembles de Violoncelles in Beauvais, France; the World Cello Congress in Baltimore, Maryland; and the Rio International Cello Encounter in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

A love for children and music education led Friesen to create his popular program for young audiences, CelloMan, and has fueled his work teaching new cello techniques and improvisation in the United States, Asia, Europe, Egypt, and South America.  

Recording credits include five albums of original music, more than 30 CDs with the Paul Winter Consort, and hundreds of tracks featuring his rapturous cello playing on instrumental albums, films, and television scores. Friesen is also an artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and on the faculty at Berklee College of Music in Boston.