Musicians:

Nina Chen, violin Dawn Perlner, violin Wilson Hsieh, viola David Laurence, viola Becky Baron, cello Sean Murray, cello Bernd Schoner, cello

Sarah Brady, flute Eran Egozy, clarinet Elaine Chew, piano Ronni Schwartz, piano

Rebecca Baron (rmbaron@bics.bwh.harvard.edu) was reared on the cello in Chicago, followed by stints in California and now in Boston where she enjoys playing as much chamber music as she can get. She studied with George Neikrug at Boston University and has performed in the MIT and Harvard chamber music programs since 1994. her off-hours are spent as a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Sarah Brady (bradyflute@hotmail.com), flute, earned a Bachelors Degree in Performance from the University of Connecticut. A two time Concerto Competition winner, Ms. Brady has soloed with both the University of Connecticut's Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. She has performed extensively throughout New England with various chamber ensembles, the United States Coast Guard Chamber Players, the Hartford Festival Orchestra, and the New England Philharmonic. Ms. Brady is working on a Master's Degree at the Longy School of Music where she is a student of Robert Willoughby. This year she was an Honors Competition winner at Longy and won second place in Boston's prestigious Pappoutsakis Flute Competition.

Nina Chen (nchen@mit.edu) began violin studies at the age of five. Her main musical mentor was Ruth Ray, who prepared her for her concerto debut with the Elmhurst Symphony at the age of seven. In 1982, she won solo concerto appearances with the Elmhust, DuPage, and Fox River Valley Symphonies. The following year, she attended the Aspen Music Festival, studying under Dorothy Delay and Kurt Sassmanhaus. A musically-trained architect, Nina has participated in MIT's CMS for over 6 years and received her BSAD (1990) from the Architecture Department at MIT. Her undergraduate research won her the Eloranta and the Carol Wilson Research Awards, which took her to Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco and Spain to study vernacular courtyard forms. After working as an architect in Berlin and Zurich, she returned to MIT in 1996 to do an MArch (1998) degree, focusing on design and technology for mobile professionals. She is currently working as an architectural designer for Jenson Design/Build, a contracting firm in Central Square.

Elaine Chew (eniale@mit.edu), an Affiliated Artist of MIT's Music and Theater Arts, is concurrently a PhD candidate at the Operations Research Center, where she researches computational models for tonal analysis. She received her BAS (1992) in Music (distinction) and Computational Mathematics (honors) from Stanford University, and an SM (1998) in Computational Finance from MIT. A 1998 recipient of the Weisner Award, she has been an active participant of the MIT Chamber Music Society and Advanced Music Performance program since 1992 where she studied with David Deveau. Her main musical interest is in presenting contemporary Chinese piano music. In the past year, she has performed with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center and at the Embassy Series in Washington D.C. Her upcoming performances include return engagements at the two latter venues and in Boston's Jordan Hall.

Eran Egozy (eran@media.mit.edu) leads the dual life of an entrepreneur and a musician. Studying clarinet with Jonathan Cohler and William Wrzecien, he has performed extensively with the MIT Chamber Music Society, the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and at the Apple Hill Chamber Music Festival in New Hampshire. In 1994, he performed the technically demanding Nielsen Clarinet Concerto with the MIT Symphony. In addition, Eran has spent the past 5 years playing Indonesian gongs and metalphones with Boston's Balinese Gamelan orchestra, Gamelan Galak Tika. After earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science from MIT, Eran co-founded an interactive music software company, Harmonix Music Systems, where he is now the Chief Technical Officer.

Wilson Hsieh (wilson@cs.utah.edu), a native of Poughkeepsie, NY, received his SB & SM (1988), and Ph.D. (1995) degrees in Computer Science from MIT. Following a postdoctoral stint at the University of Washington in Seattle, Hsieh has been an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah since 1997. In 1999, he won the prestigious NSF Career Award for young faculty to pursue his work on optimizing compilers. While a student at MIT, Hsieh studied viola with Professor Marcus Aurelius Thompson for 10 years, and it was he who bestowed the name on this group. Also a skilled pianist, Hsieh studied the piano for 10 years and presented the Schumann piano concerto with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic in 1984. Hsieh also enjoys dancing Argentine tango, which has deepened his appreciation for Astor Piazzolla's music.

David Laurence (altonero@mit.edu), 35, moved to Boston from San Francisco in June, 1998. Related to the musical Zimbalist family, he is cousin to Efrem, Sr & Jr, and Sam, the movie Producer (Ben Hur; Quo Vadis). Laurence grew up on Long Island (please don't hold this against him!) and studied for 10 years with Olga Bloom, founder of Bargemusic, Ltd., in Brooklyn. He has studied Viola and Violin with Roy Malan and advanced Music Theory with David Cope at UC Santa Cruz. He interrupted his graduate studies in Historical Musicology to tour the US and Europe with productions of The Music Of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Peter Pan. Founder of the Speakeasy String Quartet in 1989, Laurence recently received a grant from the MIT Arts Council to re-form the group in Boston.

Sean Murray (s_a_murray@hotmail.com) began cello and chamber music studies at the age of ten at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music where he performed extensively for 15 years. He studied music at Oberlin Conservatory and Columbus College, where he received a BM. Principle teachers include Martha Gerschefski, Norman Fischer, and Andy Mark. He performs with the Adirondack Ensemble and as a freelancer in the New England area.

Dawn Perlner (perlner@mit.edu) grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Acton-Boxboro Regional High School. At MIT, she has just completed her sophomore year and is double-majoring in math and music. She started violin at three and began entering competitions at 10. She has won numerous competitions, and has soloed with orchestras in Massachusetts and Brazil. She has also participated in community theater and academic competitions. At MIT, she is a member of CMS, MITSO, and Sinfonietta. Dawn received an Advanced Music Performance scholarship last year. She also likes to sing, and this summer is acting and singing in an opera workshop and MITGSP's premier of the musical version of "The Admirable Crichton." She is also a calculus tutor for Interphase, a summer program for underrepresented minorities who are incoming freshmen.

Bernd Schoner (schoner@media.mit.edu), born and raised in Germany, holds engineering degrees from the University of Technology in Aachen, Germany, and Ecole Centrale de Paris, France. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab, working on sensing and modeling of musical instruments. His research on the design of a digital violin has won him a number of awards, among them the Henry-Ford-II prize (Cologne, 1997) and the Distinguished Paper Award at the International Computer Music Conference 1998 in Michigan. As a cellist he has been a member of a variety of European student ensembles and of the German Army Band II. At MIT he has performed with the MIT Symphony Orchestra, the String Sinfonietta and the Chamber Music Society.

Ronni Schwartz (mspiggy@mit.edu) received her Bachelor's degree in Piano from the University of Michigan, and her Master's in Music Theory from New England Conservatory of Music. Although she regularly performs in the Boston area, Ms. Schwartz's solo career began in the Dominican Republic, where she performed at the request of the Dominican government, as part of the Distinguished Performers Series at the National Conservatory of Music in Santo Domingo, made several appearances on Dominican television, and for the American Embassy. Ms. Schwartz was recently heard in recitals at Woods Hole, at the New School of Music, at the Brookline Public Library, at Dartmouth College, and at MIT's Killian Hall. In addition, Ms. Schwartz occupies the position of Administrator of the MIT/Woods Hole Joint Program, and is deeply involved in scholarship of the Napoleonic Wars, and the career of the first Duke of Wellington.

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