Violist Amelia Hollander Ames is a passionate advocate for music. The 2024– 25 season brought many recording projects: notably Philip Glass’s Songs and Poems for solo viola, to be released this fall on Glass’s OMM label, as well as music by Yoon-Ji Lee, Reynaliz Herrera, folk duo Ari and Mia, and Amelia’s own band, Violabajo. In the same period, Amelia performed and held residencies at the UNAY (Universidad de Artes Yucatán); Conservatoria Massotti in Murcia, Spain; Piemonte, Italy; Bordeaux, France and Exeter, UK, and she premiered Ixchel, a concerto written for her by Judith Alejandra Gonzalez Benitez, in Mérida, Mexico.

In 2024, New Focus Recordings released Swirl, debut album by RAHA, Amelia’s duo with pianist Elaine Rombola Aveni, featuring new music by Matthew Aucoin, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Marti Epstein, Curtis Hughes, Emily Koh, and Evan Ziporyn.

A native of Jersey City, Amelia founded Con Vivo Music, which brings excellent, adventurous and free chamber concerts to her hometown. She frequently returns to play with them. In the Boston area, Amelia plays principal viola with the Vista Philharmonic and is a member of Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Shelter Music Boston, and Semiosis Quartet. International festivals include the Singapore Arts Festival, Panama Jazz Festival, Kneisel Hall, Vancouver Jewish Music Festival, Verbier, Keshet Eilon, and the Israel Festival. She loves teaching, and carries what she learned from her own teachers- including Martha Katz, Karen Ritscher and George Taylor- to her many private students as well as groups she coaches at Lexington Chamber Music Center. Amelia lives in Arlington with her husband, two sons, and their bloodhound Beatrix.

Violinist Lilit Hartunian performs at the forefront of contemporary music innovation, both as soloist and highly in-demand collaborative artist. First prize winner in the 2021 Black House Collective New Music Soloist Competition, her "Paganiniesque virtuosity” and “captivating and luxurious tone” (Boston Musical Intelligencer) are frequently on display at major concert halls and leading academic institutions, where she often appears as both soloist and new music specialist. Ms. Hartunian appears regularly with A Far Cry, Emmanuel Music, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Sound Icon, and Ludovico Ensemble. Recent highlights include co-founding violin and cimbalom duo Lamnth, performing at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s “Ligeti 100” chamber music concerts in Symphony Hall, and appearing on the 2023 Grammy winning album for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Described as “brilliantly rhapsodic” by the Harvard Crimson, Ms. Hartunian can be heard on New Focus Records, Innova Recording, Albany Records, and New Amsterdam Records. For recordings, photos, and news, visit www.lilithartunian.com

Praised for her “warm, colorful mezzo” (Opera News) and her “astonishing range and flexibility” (BostonMusical Intelligencer), Sophie Michaux has become one of New England’s most versatile and compelling vocalists. Born in London and raised in the French Alps, Sophie’s unique background informs her artistic identity, making her feel at home in an eclectic span of repertoire ranging from grand opera to French cabaret songs. Recent solo engagements include the roles of Alcina in Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (Haymarket Opera), Olofernes in Scarlatti’s La Giuditta (Haymarket Opera), Ceres in Lalande’s Les Fontaines de Versailles (Boston Early Music Festival), and Clorinda in Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda ( A Far Cry), as well as soloist in the world premiere of Kevin Siegfried’s arrangement of Three Shaker Songs (Boston Symphony Chamber Players), in Handel’s Dixit Dominus (Upper Valley Baroque), and in De Falla’s El Amor Brujo (Lowell Chamber Orchestra). She is thrilled to collaborate with Blue Heron, Lorelei Ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, A Far Cry, Palaver Strings, Les Délices, Bach Collegium San Diego, Ruckus, Upper Valley Baroque, and other ensembles performing across the US.

Camila Parias, Colombian-born soprano, is recognized for her versatile and expressive voice across a wide range of styles, from Medieval to contemporary music. She has performed with acclaimed ensembles including The Boston Camerata, Handel and Haydn Society, Upper Valley Baroque, La Donna Musicale, and Dünya. From 2012 to 2023, she was a chorister with the all-professional Choir of The Church of the Advent in Boston.

Parias has appeared at notable venues such as Boston Symphony Hall, Jordan Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, and Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango. She was featured in The Boston Globe for her role in Carmina Burana with The Boston Camerata, where she has also performed leading roles in The Play of Daniel and Dido and Aeneas. International tours have taken her to France, Germany, Austria, and Finland in productions like Borrowed Light, a collaboration with The Tero Saarinen Dance Company.

As a soloist, Parias has premiered new works at the New York Festival of Song and appears on recordings with Harmonia Mundi and Label Lindoro, including performances of Latin American Baroque music. She also stars as Suzan in the GRAMMY®-nominated opera Othello in the Seraglio by Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol, a fusion of Italian and Turkish musical traditions.

Photo credit Yoon S Byun

Hailed by The New York Times as “imaginative and eloquent” and dubbed “a local hero” with “silken tone and subtle attention to each note” by the Boston Globe, cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer maintains a vibrant and diverse career as one of Boston’s most celebrated artists. He is principal cellist of Emmanuel Music and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and a core member of many notable chamber music organizations throughout New England, including the Chameleon Arts Ensemble and Winsor Music.

Mr. Popper-Keizer is a member of nationally acclaimed conductorless string ensemble A Far Cry, which has won recognition for both artistic excellence and its democratic model of collective decision-making at every level. In 2017, A Far Cry commissioned, premiered, and recorded a new piano concerto by Philip Glass, with soloist Simone Dinnerstein. The release of this recording was followed up a few months later by the group’s album Visions and Variations, which received two Grammy nominations. A Far Cry’s recent and upcoming performance schedule includes tours of California and Colorado, regular appearances at the Rockport Music Festival and Central Park in NYC, and a concert at the Kennedy Center in DC featuring the Tchaikovsky Serenade played from memory.

In 2019, Mr. Popper-Keizer was appointed Artistic Director of Monadnock Music, where he has been in residence every summer since 2002. Based in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the central mission of Monadnock Music is to bring free concerts featuring world-class artists to the villages and towns of the region.

Mr. Popper-Keizer has been featured on over two dozen recordings, including the premieres of Robert Erickson’s Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra, Thomas Oboe Lee’s cello concerto Eurydice, Yehudi Wyner’s De Novo for cello and small chamber ensemble, and Malcolm Peyton’s unaccompanied Cello Piece.

His most recent solo recording, on Musica Omnia, is a disc pairing two monumental works for unaccompanied cello: Zoltan Kodaly’s notoriously virtuosic Sonata for Solo Cello and Ralf Gawlick’s At the still point of the turning world, a powerful exploration of sonority and silence written for and dedicated to Popper-Keizer.

As an alumnus of the New England Conservatory (A.D. 1999, M.M. with honors 1997), Mr. Popper-Keizer studied with master pedagogue and Piatigorsky protégé Laurence Lesser; at the Tanglewood Music Center he was privileged to work with Mstislav Rostropovich and was Yo-Yo Ma’s understudy for Strauss’ Don Quixote under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. His prior teachers include Stephen Harrison of Stanford University, and Karen Andrie at the University of California in Santa Cruz. At the age of ten he began undergraduate coursework in mathematics at UCSC, where he was accepted as a full-time student two years later.

Mr. Popper-Keizer is currently on faculty at Gordon College in Wenham, MA, and has previously taught at Philips Exeter Academy, Brandeis University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With A Far Cry, he has participated in college and university residencies nationwide, including guest lectures and presentations at Baldwin Wallace University and Connecticut College, and masterclasses at Yale University.

Adam Jacob Simon is a composer, singer, arranger, string plucker, and ivory tickler based in New England. As a composer/arranger, he has enjoyed many recent performances and commissions from nationally acclaimed ensembles, including; A Far Cry, Cantus, Lorelei Ensemble, Ruckus, Boston Baroque, Conspirare, Seraphic Fire, Palaver Strings and WordSong Boston. He is an avid folk music singer as well, performing frequently with the world folk ensemble Culomba, and VT based vocal ensemble Northern Harmony, traveling throughout Europe, South Africa and the United States.  Adam is Director of Music at Edwards Church in Northampton, MA, located in Western Massachusetts where he resides with his wife, daughter and multiple cats.