Flutist and Yamaha Performing Artist, Sophia Tegart, performs regularly throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a member of the Transformations Duo, the Cherry Street Duo, and Pan Pacific Ensemble. She has performed with the Oregon Mozart Players, Des Moines Metro Opera, Kansas City Chamber Orchestra, and Kansas City Symphony. Tegart is piccoloist in the Walla Walla Symphony and second flute in the Washington-Idaho Symphony. In 2020, she released Palouse Songbook, a CD featuring music by women composers. Currently, she serves on the faculty of Washington State University as Assistant Professor of Flute and Music History (Career Track). Tegart received her DMA in Flute Performance from the UMKC Conservatory.
Keri E. McCarthy has cultivated an international reputation as a chamber musician, soloist, teacher, and clinician, and has been active as a performer and collaborator throughout Southeast Asia. She is co-founder of the Light through Music project with Pan Pacific Ensemble bassoonist Michael Garza, bringing double reed instruments and instruction to music centers in Myanmar and the Middle East. In spring 2014 she spent three months in Singapore, and gave concerts in Yangon, Bangkok, Hanoi, and Kuala Lumpur. In 2011, Keri was a Fulbright Scholar in Bangkok, researching connections between Thai traditional and contemporary musics, commissioning Thai and Malaysian composers, and performing new works with professional oboists in the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore. She also completed a 2008 tour of Southeast Asia, performing commissioned works by composers from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Keri is passionate about new music and has premiered works by American and Southeast Asian composers at International Double Reed Society Conferences in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2014, and 2015. Dr. McCarthy is Professor of Music at Washington State University. Her solo CD, Shadowplay: New Music for Oboe and English Horn, features works by Asian and American composers of the 21st century and is available streaming on Spotify and for purchase from Amazon.
Gabrielle Baffoni is Associate Professor of Single Reeds at Southeast Missouri State University, where she has been on faculty since her appointment in 2012. At Southeast she directs the Chamber Music Sundays at Three series, a concert series that features faculty and guest chamber ensembles at the University’s River Campus. Baffoni earned her Doctor of Musical Arts in Clarinet Performance from the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance where her final doctoral project was a lecture-recital presenting works for clarinet and percussion duo. Baffoni currently performs as principal clarinetist with the Paducah Symphony Orchestra in Kentucky and second clarinetist with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra. She also held the position of second clarinetist with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra from 2008-2011.
Michael Garza is a professional American bassoonist living in Rome, Italy, and former principal bassoonist with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. Michael has been active in music education throughout the Guangzhou metropolitan area, taught woodwind chamber music at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music and at other schools in addition to maintaining a private studio of local bassoon students. Michael promoted contemporary chamber music in southern China, and has presented masterclasses in Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, UNCG Greensboro, JMU in Harrisonburg, VA, and at the University of Idaho. He has commissioned new works for bassoon by Asian composers, and in the past has worked as a volunteer in music education-based projects in Yangon, Burma at the Gitameit Music Center.
Born and raised in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Martin D. King graduated from James Madison University and pursued a career as a band director. After a successful tenure with the Alleghany County Public Schools, King studied horn performance with Charles “Skip” Snead at the University of Alabama and was hired at Washington State University in 2015 after teaching horn at Mississippi State University. Dr. King currently teaches studio horn and leads the music education program at Washington State. An active and versatile performer, King has performed with symphonies including the Guangxi, Spokane, Yakima Symphony, Tuscaloosa, North Mississippi, and Starkville Symphonies. As a soloist, he has performed with the Saigon Wind Ensemble, the Mississippi State Chorale, and the WSU Symphonic Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band. He has performed and given lectures at regional and international horn symposia and his new music reviews can be found in the Horn Call. An advocate of the horn in new music, he has collaborated with composers from around the world and his CD, Solitary Freedom, features 20th and 21st century music for solo horn. He lives in Pullman, Washington with his wife Amber, daughter Lily, and terrier mix Lucy.