SEASON 4

Molly Barth is the Associate Professor of Flute at the Blair School of Music and the Associate Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy. Barth specializes in contemporary music and particularly thrives on curating events combining many disciplines of the arts. Having performed on many of the world’s most prestigious stages, Barth holds a Grammy Award and has an affinity for commissioning and performing works written by historically under-represented composers. Barth has been an adjudicator for some of the nation’s largest music awards, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Herb Alpert Music Award, the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition, and the MidAtlantic Arts International Travel Award. As a recipient of the Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Faculty Fellowship, Barth has been making music videos, curating performances, and commissioning works for her “Together We” series. Please visit https://www.mollybarth.com and https://www.youtube.com/c/MollyBarth/videos

Performances by Andy Hudson have been hailed as “a treat for the listener” and have been praised for “an uncommon singularity of purpose, technical virtuosity, youthful vigor and a mature sensitivity.” Currently Associate Professor of Clarinet at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, Andy has recently performed with the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Charlotte, Sarasota, and North Carolina, and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on their MusicNOW series. He was appointed Bass/3rd Clarinetist of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in 2020, and is currently clarinetist/bass clarinetist with Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble and the Raleigh-based ensemble earspace; other festival appearances include the Lucerne, Bang on a Can, Hot Air, Sound Atlas, and Great Lakes Chamber Music festivals. Praised for his "measured sophistication and expansive phrasing" (Voix des Artes), Andy has been a top prizewinner at the MTNA National Woodwind Competition and has received other prizes in numerous competitions.

Andy is Artistic Director of the international sextet Latitude 49, with whom he can be heard on the albums Wax and Wire (called “a must-have album for any lover of contemporary music” by The College Music Symposium), The Bagatelles Project, Don’t Say a Word, and Obsolete Music. His debut solo album halfway home was called “exceptional” by The Clarinet; he has also recorded for the Sony Masterworks, Naxos, and New Amsterdam record labels. A noted pedagogue and advocate for the music of our time, Andy has co-authored two books for Conway Publications with composer Roger Zare and has given masterclasses for many of the world’s great conservatories, including centers for musical study in Egypt, Romania, Canada, South Korea, and across the United States. He is an Artist-Clinician for Buffet Crampon, a Vandoren Performing Artist, and an Ambassador for Rovner Products. When he’s not practicing, Andy enjoys cycling, reading, listening to baseball on the radio, and finding deep purpose in sharing music with his home community in Northeast Wisconsin.

Violinist Kiku Enomoto maintains a dynamic and versatile career that redefines the notion of a multi-faceted musician. A native of Las Vegas, NV, Kiku began her early studies at the Nevada School of the Arts, and later made her solo debut at the age of ten with the Las Vegas Symphony Orchestra. She went on to attend high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. Since moving to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music, Kiku has had the opportunity to collaborate with artists and shows in a variety of musical genres. As a classical violinist, she has performed with Pierre Boulez, John Williams, Luciano Pavarotti, Mark Morris Dance Company, ICE, The Knights, and Alarm Will Sound. On the popular music circuit, she has collaborated with Jay-Z, Beyonce, Adele, Björk, Post Malone , Raye, Kanye West, H.E.R.,James Blake, Ed Sheeran, Beck, Tony Bennett, The Who, Evanescence, Sufjan Stevens, Bright Eyes, and Mary J Blige, to name a few.

Kiku is committed to playing and premiering new music and has worked with numerous ensembles and composers worldwide. She has enjoyed playing with the Nu Deco Ensemble in recent years attesting to her love of crossing the musical genre divide.

Her Broadway chairs include Ragtime, West Side Story, Follies, Nice Work If You Can Get It, The Bridges of MadisonCounty, On the Town, Allegiance, The Cher Show, Mrs. Doubtfire, Bad Cinderella, Spamalot! and is currently at Moulin Rouge. Off Broadway: Giant, Kid Victory, The Mad Ones, Einstein’s Dreams, and Only Gold.

Kiku's teachers and mentors include her parents, Mary Straub, Hal Grossman, Teresa Ling, Neil Weintrob, Enrico DiCecco, and a personal friend as well as a patron of the arts, Mrs. Bernice Fischer.

Joshua Burel is a violinist, composer, and educator whose career spans international performances, acclaimed recordings, and nationally recognized compositions. He made his international violin debut at age 15 with the Blue Lake International Youth Orchestra in Germany and France and, at 18, toured Mexico with the International Holland String Quartet, receiving a goodwill ambassador award for representing the City of Holland, MI in the Annual Festival Celebration of Santiago in Querétaro, Mexico. He has performed with the Huntsville, Tallahassee, West Michigan, Battle Creek, Southwest Michigan, Holland, and Kalamazoo symphonies and recorded an album of Ernst von Dohnányi’s music with the Florida State University Symphony Orchestra on the Naxos label.

For over a decade, Burel has been the violinist of the new music ensemble What Is Noise, touring extensively throughout the United States with performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the FSU Biennial Festival of New Music, Berklee College of Music, Longy School of Music at Bard College, Boston Arts Academy, University of Houston, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, George Mason University, and many other universities nationwide. The ensemble has held residencies at Furman University (2023-2026), The Parish School in Texas (2020-2021), the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County in Maryland (2018-2019), Webster University’s Young Composers Competition (2016), and the Taneycomo Festival Orchestra (2015). What Is Noise has collaborated with leading composers including Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Lansing McLoskey, David T. Little, Don Freund, Jennifer Higdon, and others. Their debut album, Equivocal Duration, was released on Centaur Records in 2019, with a follow-up, Temporal Echoes, forthcoming in 2026.

As a composer, Burel’s work exploring underrepresented voices and social justice has been recognized with awards from the Theodore Presser Foundation and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His music has been performed at major venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, National Sawdust, the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, the University of Tennessee Contemporary Music Festival, Florida State University’s Biennial Festival of New Music, the International Double Reed Society Symposium, and International Clarinet Association Conferences. He has collaborated with ensembles such as the Huntsville Symphony, Decatur Orchestra Sul Ponticello, Elicio Winds, Vuorovesi Trio, Konza Wind Quintet, Tennessee Valley Woodwind Quintet, Three Reeds Duo, Rintrah Duo, and Coreopsis Quintet. His works have been nationally honored by The American Prize—including third prize for Elegy: Beneath the Peddler’s Moon—and he received the 2020 Alabama Music Teachers Association State Commission Award for Bone Music. His music is featured on recordings including Jeffrey Jacobs’ Contemporary Eclectic Music for the Piano, Vol. 26, Elicio Winds’ Grammy-submitted Convergence: Music & Cultural Legacy, Vuorovesi Trio’s Excursions, Amalia Osuga and Aimee Fincher’s forthcoming album of art songs, and both What Is Noise albums.

Burel holds a Doctor of Music in Theory and Composition from Florida State University, a Master of Music in Composition, and a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance and Music Education from Western Michigan University. He has held faculty positions at Webster University and the University of Puget Sound, and currently serves as Chair and Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he received the University Distinguished Teaching Award in 2023.

Katja Yeager is a versatile violist with an active career as an orchestral and chamber musician, studio recording artist, and dedicated educator. She earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Viola Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey.

Growing up in Northern Virginia, Katja began her musical training through the Suzuki Method. She credits the foundations of her musical appreciation and technique to her very first teachers: David Strom (Northern Virginia Suzuki Music School) and Tsuna Sakamoto (National Symphony Orchestra).

As an orchestral musician, Katja has performed in both leadership and section roles with ensembles such as the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Owensboro Symphony, Gateway Chamber Orchestra, Lexington Philharmonic, Verbier Festival Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony, and the New World Symphony. She has played under the baton of distinguished conductors including Gianandrea Noseda, Klaus Mäkelä, and Manfred Honeck, and has collaborated with a wide range of internationally acclaimed soloists.

Her performance experience spans festivals including the Verbier Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Castleman Quartet Program, along with chamber music engagements with the Nashville Chamber Music Society. Highlights include a 2012 appearance at the International Viola Congress, a 2013 Proms debut at London’s Royal Albert Hall with the inaugural National Youth Orchestra of the United States, and a 2019 Southeast Asia tour with the Lincoln Center Stage Piano Quintet aboard Holland America’s MS Westerdam. Katja is also active as a studio musician on Nashville’s Music Row, contributing to a range of projects for companies including Sony and Netflix.

In addition to her performance work, Katja is deeply dedicated to music education and currently serves on the faculties of Tennessee State University and Nashville State Community College. Outside of music, her greatest joy is spending time with her partner and their beloved Norwich Terrier.

Passionate and communicative, Max Geissler is a versatile cellist whose broad musical interests span multiple genres and disciplines. From performing in international chamber music series alongside distinguished artists, to premiering works by world-renowned composers with the new music ensembleLatitude 49, to historical performances on baroque cello with gut strings, Max’s artistic range is as diverse as it is dynamic. Currently, Max is the Assistant Professor of Cello atButler University after previously serving on faculty at East Tennessee State University. Max spends his summers teaching and performing at ENCORE Chamber Music Institute andKalmia Garden Music Arts Foundation, a non-profit organization Max founded and directs in Durham, CT, just celebrated its 12th season.

Maintaining an active presence as a performer, Max has been presented by prestigious international organizations such as La Jolla ChamberFest, Taipei Music Academy & Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Geneva Music Festival. He has shared the stage with celebrated musicians such as Lynn Harrell, Mathieu Herzog, Clive Greensmith, Mihaela Martin, Frans Helmerson, Jon Kimura Parker, Cho-Liang Lin, and Martin Beaver. Eager to expand the scope of the solo cello repertoire, Max enjoys collaborating with and commissioning visionary contemporary composers such as Theo Chandler, Hilary Purrington, Erberk Eryılmaz, Chen Yihan, and Andrew Rindfleisch.

When serving as Co-Artistic Director of Latitude 49, Max premiered works by dozens of composers, bringing to life a diverse range of pieces from inspiring student compositions to collaborations with Juno and Pulitzer Prize-winning composers such as Joan Tower, Juri Seo, Christopher Cerrone, Mark Kilstofte, and Jared Miller. The ensemble continues to perform in major venues each season, including the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival, Constellation Chicago, Princeton Sound Kitchen, Bowling Green State University’s New Music Festival, and New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s The Cube. With Latitude 49, Max has recorded and released five albums, including publications with New Amsterdam Records. The ensemble’s annual summer festival,Sound Atlas Sound Festival, presented at Contemporary Calgary, has been praised as “one of Calgary’s most exciting festivals to look out for.”

Max is deeply committed to cultivating a studio of young cellists who are engaged collaborators in their communities. In addition to his studio teaching at ETSU, Max regularly teaches at various academies and festivals such as ENCORE Chamber Music Institute’s Summer Academy and the Tennessee Cello Workshop, alongside distinguished colleagues from Northwestern, Rice, Indiana, McGill University, Oberlin, and San Francisco Conservatory. Max is also in high demand for teaching and performing residencies at universities including Oberlin Conservatory, Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Tennessee, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Colorado State University, Baylor University, and SUNY-Fredonia. Max’s students have been accepted into top-tier festivals and degree programs, and have earned prestigious awards in national and international competitions, including the From The Top audition, the YoungArts Competition, the Grand Prize Virtuoso Competition in Bonn, Germany, and the Johansen International Competition.

In 2024, Max received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. During his Master's and Doctoral studies at Rice, he served as Desmond Hoebig’s teaching assistant and taught the university’s non-major cello studio. Max earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan under the mentorship of Richard Aaron and also participated in the University’s Arts in Paris program, where he took lessons with Michel Strauss from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.

In search of new modes of communication and expression, pianist and Yamaha Artist Justin Snyder explores performance as an immersive and integrated experience, reimagining the ways in which we listen and think about music. Through the cross-pollination of music with scent, dance and movement, science, visual art, architecture, technology, and beyond, Justin seeks to illuminate entirely new perspectives borne out of experimentation.

Driven a great deal by collaboration, Justin Snyder has joined forces with artists spanning a wide spectrum of backgrounds, from choreographers, poets, and digital artists to perfumers, durational performance artists, fashion designers, and laser artists. With a focus on the music of living composers, he has had the great privilege of working with Libby Larsen, Molly Joyce, Vijay Iyer, My Brightest Diamond (Shara Nova), Kelly Moran, Jonathan Dove, Evan Ziporyn, William Bolcom, and Jake Heggie, amongst many more artists.

Justin has appeared at venues such as The Kennedy Center, Shanghai Concert Hall, Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou Opera House, The Horse Hospital (London), Leighton House Museum (London), The United States Supreme Court, The Marigny Opera House (New Orleans), The Tank (New York), The Barbican Centre (London), Harvard University, The Mexican Cultural Institute (D.C.), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), The Smithsonian Museum (for the National Endowment for the Arts 50th Anniversary), The American Consulate (Chengdu, China), Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Teatro del Lago (Chile), Wigmore Hall (London), The Detroit Institute of Arts, National Center for the Performing Arts (Beijing), Sadler's Wells (London - in performance with Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal), Cranbrook Art Museum, Happyland Theater (New Orleans), Trinosophes (Detroit), Holywell Music Room (Oxford), The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (Orchestra Hall + The Cube), Mori + Stein Gallery (London), Panoply Lab (New York), LSO St. Lukes (London), City University New York, TEDx conference stage ('MidAtlantic'- D.C.), Wasserman Projects (Detroit), Society of Electroacoustic Music in the United States, and the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival.

With an interest in how we can more fully engage in the listening experience, Justin, along with Irena Menk (former Senior Art Editor of Elle Magazine Brazil), formed Escforescent - an artistic endeavor merging music and scent. Working with perfumers to create custom scent and sound pairings, Escforescent seeks to spark a deeper discovery and awareness of our intertwined senses.

Justin completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan with Christopher Harding and a masters degree in Collaborative Piano with Martin Katz. He attained his second masters degree in Collaborative Piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, studying with Pamela Lidiard and Graham Johnson. Justin is also the creative director of the ensemble New Music Detroit and curator of the Strange Beautiful Music festival, now in its 18th year.

Matt Smallcomb is currently a percussionist with Alarm Will Sound, a collaborative ensemble at the forefront of contemporary music and reputed as “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene” (New York Times). With a career spanning across diverse genres, Smallcomb has performed with leading artists and musicians including Tyondai Braxton, Rashad Becker, The Knights Chamber Orchestra, Regina Carter, Madeski Martin and Wood, Tyshawn Sorey, Wordless Orchestra, King Britt, Novus NY, Betsy Wolf, Mario Cantone, Peter Martin and has recorded on Nonesuch, Sony, Bedroom Community, Tzadik, and Cantaloupe record labels.

Smallcomb is currently the drummer/percussionist for Cabaret on Broadway and recently held the drum chair at West Side Story and percussion chair for The Cher Show on Broadway.. Smallcomb has also performed in the Broadway productions of Hell's Kitchen, Sweeney Todd, Moulin Rouge, The Music Man, Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, War Paint, Spongebob Squarepants and Something Rotten.

As an orchestral percussionist, Smallcomb was Principal Percussionist with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra in Duluth, Minnesota for four seasons, as well as section percussionist with Symphony in C for seven seasons. Smallcomb has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Symphony, Malaysian Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Vermont Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Lukes, The Pennsylvania Ballet and has performed various ensembles throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Australia.

Smallcomb is an artist endorser for Zildjian, Vic Firth, Evans, and Pearl. Currently Smallcomb is on the percussion faculty at the Boston Conservatory of Music and has studied drums and percussion with teachers Bob Nowak, Marko Marcinko, Barry Centanni, Mike Werner, and James Preiss.

He currently lives in New York City with his wife, Sherry.