Meet the Musicians

Sarah Biber

has played viola da gamba and cello across the United States, Australia and China. In recent collaborations with dance, she has been featured with the Paul Taylor Dance Company performing solo Bach for the company’s first performance with period instruments. Ms. Biber earned her doctorate from Stony Brook University after double-degree studies at Oberlin Conservatory and College and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She relocated to Golden, Colorado in 2010, where she teaches and plays with the Baroque Orchestra of Colorado, Colorado Bach Ensemble, and Byrd on a Wire, her viol consort. Sarah plays an 1815 Lockey Hill cello and a 2015 gamba by François Danger. Sarah was a featured artist at Duke University with baroque guitarist Jeffrey Noonan in fall 2023. She enjoys playing both Baroque and Modern styles. A Colorado native, she has been delighted to be a part of the growth of Early Music in this beautiful state.  Sarah has performed with the Colorado Chamber Players since 2019.

Updated 2024

Ben Cohen

began playing lute for the Oberlin Conservatory Collegium Musicum in the mid 1980s, and served as the assistant director of that group upon graduating Oberlin College with a degree in mathematics. While at Oberlin he also studied baroque flute and recorder with Michael Lynn and keyboard continuo with Lisa Crawford.

Since moving to Denver in 1995, Ben has sung with the St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, played lute continuo for local ensembles Seicento and Diverse Passions, and recorded a CD of Dowland lute songs with soprano Kristine Hurst, available at Centaur Records. Mel Bay published and keeps in print his transcriptions of J.S. Bach violin sonatas for electric bass. Ben also plays mandolin and banjo for Rocky Mountain Jewgrass; bass and tuba for Hal Aqua and the Lost Tribe; and leads his own klezmer band The Klez Dispensers. He nonetheless keeps his day job as an appellate lawyer.

Updated 2025

Barbara Hamilton

is currently Artistic Director and Violinist/Violist with the Colorado Chamber Players, a position she has held for 31 years. She served as principal violist with the Eastern Music Festival from 1990-2005. Barbara has played as principal violist and soloist with the Colorado Symphony, the Orquesta Ciudad de Barcelona, and the Orquesta de Valencia (Spain). She was a member of the New York Philharmonic for one season. Dr. Hamilton received the DMA from Yale School of Music in 1992, where she completed a dissertation on the Alexander Technique and studied with Jesse Levine. She was a prize winner in the Fischoff, Aspen Festival, and Woolsey Hall Competitions, as well as the Young Artists of Young Men and Young Women Hebrew Association (New Jersey).  For the past eight years, Barbara has explored the study and performance of the Baroque, including performances at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute. She is fascinated by period instruments. Barbara has studied Baroque Violin/Viola, Viola d’Amore, and performance practice with Thomas Georgi, Brandon Chui, Stefano Marcocchi, Marilyn McDonald, Peter Harvey, Jeanne Lamon, Ivars Taurins, Robert Mealy, and Cynthia Roberts. She plays on a Tononi baroque violin, brought to the USA in 1937 by her grandfather Max.

Updated 2024

Parish House Baroque

Elisa Wicks
is the founder and artistic director for Parish House Baroque in Colorado Springs, as well as the director of the Collegium Musicum at Colorado College. In demand as a soloist and a chamber musician, she performs on both baroque and modern violin, and has appeared with the Amherst Early Music Festival Orchestra (concertmaster), Chatham Baroque, the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Seicento, the Case Western Baroque Orchestra (concertmaster and soloist), the Pittsburgh Baroque Ensemble, and is looking forward to performing with the Portland Baroque Orchestra later this season. She can also be heard performing with the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs, the Hausmusik String Quartet, the Ute Pass Chamber Players, and the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. Recent solo recordings have included Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Johan Helmich Roman’s concerto in D minor, Joseph Bologne violin concerto in G major, as well as his Duo Concertante in G major, among others. Her teachers include, Carla Moore, Cynthia Roberts, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Julie Andrijeski, Linda Cerone, and Stephen Rose with additional instruction from Rachel Podger. Elisa holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in violin performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music with early music studies at Case Western Reserve University. Her violin is made by Johan Gottlob Ficker in 1793 and was given to her as a special gift.

Jennifer Carpenter
plays recorder and is a music historian. She performs and teaches regularly throughout the Southwest. Her pursuit of early music studies brought her to study at the University of North Texas where she received a Master of Music degree in musicology with an emphasis in early music performance; she has completed the course work for a PhD in the same field. In addition to her private teaching, she has been on the faculty of a number of early music workshops, including the Texas Toot, Next Level Workshops at Hidden Valley Institute, SFEMS Recorder Week, and Amherst Early Music Online. She is a frequent guest teacher with recorder societies and their workshops throughout the US and Canada. Her enthusiasm for working with amateur recorder players led her to serve on the Board of Directors of the American Recorder Society where she now works as their marketing director. Currently, she is the music director for the Denver Recorder Society. A resident of Colorado Springs, Jennifer enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband, son, and corgis.

Pam Chaddon
is the associate principal cellist for the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs and baroque cellist for Parish House Baroque, as well as the finance and human resource administrator for the Visual and Performing Arts Department at University of Colorado Colorado Springs and an on-air host for Classical KCME 88.7FM, where she curates “Encountering Mozart”; “A Journey through the Baroque”; “Music of Friends,” a chamber music hour; and “Women of Note,” a program highlighting women composers past and present. She has developed multiple cross-disciplinary, award-winning educational projects locally, including “Interrupted: Suppressed Composers of the Holocaust,” “Enough: Voices of Intimate Partner Violence,” “Destination: Space” and “A Sensory-friend Carnival of the Animals.” Her love of theater keeps her busy, in addition to serving as cellist for productions at the Fine Arts Center, Theatreworks, Theatre SilCo, and the Colorado Springs Conservatory. She spends her free time immersed in researching and advocating for under-performed, minority, and disenfranchised composers.

Eric Wicks
has served on the staff of First Lutheran Church since 2013, and is currently Minister of Worship and Music. He is also Organist at Colorado College, where he teaches organ and plays harpsichord with the Collegium Musicum. At a very young age, Eric knew he wanted to become an organist and began his studies with John McCreary at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Honolulu, Hawaii. Eric also studied with Kraig Scott at Walla Walla College (now University) in Washington State before receiving both bachelor’s and master’s degrees with Todd Wilson at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he was awarded the Henry Fusner Prize in organ performance. Eric has appeared with the Colorado Chamber Players and as an organ and harpsichord soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs – including performing in this year’s Organ Spectacular concert. In addition, Eric has studied harpsichord with Janina Ceaser, piano with Olga Radosavljevich, eurhythmics with David Brown, and early music performance practice with Ross Duffin.

Updated 2024

Paul Primus

grew up in the Chicago and Cleveland areas, before attending Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in music from UWM. Paul joined the Denver Symphony (now the Colorado Symphony) in 1984, and was Principal Second Violinist from 1985 until 2024. He is now playing section violin, rotating between first and second violin. He coordinated the chamber music program at Denver School of the Arts from 2013-2018. Paul is a founding member of the Colorado Chamber Players, which he and his wife Barbara Hamilton began in 1993. He performs approximately 20 concerts a year with the CCP, and can be heard frequently on Colorado Public Radio. Mr. Primus has performed numerous unaccompanied violin recitals over the years, most memorably one of the complete Paganini Caprices in 1986. Paul is an active teacher in the Denver area and has also taught and performed at Eastern Music Festival, Rocky Ridge, and the Lamont Pre-College Academy at DU. He is a frequent coach and adjudicator for the Denver Young Artists Orchestra. Paul is also an accomplished harpsichordist, and has studied with Robert Hill, Joe Gaucho and Charlotte Neidiger on harpsichord, as well as attending the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute and the Oberlin Baroque Institute. He plays a Hopf Baroque violin

Updated 2024

Rebecca Robinson

a mezzo-soprano, is praised for her “darkly pretty voice.” She is quickly making a name for herself as a rising talent in the opera world. She recently completed the Professional Certificate program at the University of Colorado–Boulder where she was seen in Eklund Opera productions as the title role in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella), Ottone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, as well as in recital with the world-renowned Takács Quartet.  She was awarded 3rd place in the Denver Lyric Opera Guild competition in 2016, and named a finalist in the Bruce Ekstrand Competition, which recognizes and awards development grants to promising graduate students. After two busy and successful years at CU, Rebecca decided to call these mountains home and is now based in Denver, CO.  No stranger to concert work, Rebecca recently made her debuts with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Bellingham Festival of Music (Bellingham, WA), and with Guillermo Figueroa and the Lynn Philharmonia (Boca Raton, FL). She has been seen locally with Central City Opera, the Boulder Chamber Orchestra, the Colorado Bach Ensemble, and as a soloist with the Colorado Masterworks Chorale.  She is also active in recital, performing in communities throughout the U.S.  This is Becky’s second concert with the Colorado Chamber Players.

Updated 2024

Miriam Rosenblum

started playing recorder as a child and went on to study the oboe. She got a bachelor’s degree in music performance from Yale University, where she played recorders in the Yale Collegium Musicum, and earned a Master of Music degree in oboe performance from the University of New York at Stonybrook. While in graduate school, she became intrigued by the haunting sound of the Irish uilleann pipes. This obsession led her to learn to play the pipes as well as the Irish tin whistle and the button accordion, thus launching her life-long interest in ethnic music of various kinds. In the 1990s she fell in love with klezmer music and learned to play the clarinet, which she currently plays with Hal Aqua and The Lost Tribe (nouveau klezmer) and the Klez Dispensers (traditional klezmer). She has been a guest presenter for the Denver and Boulder chapters of the American Recorder Society on many occasions, and teaches recorder and tin whistle to adults and children at Swallow Hill Music School in Denver and online at LessonFace.com. She is certified to teach Suzuki Recorder Books 1 and 2, and opened Denver’s first Suzuki recorder studio in 2015.

Updated 2025

Peter Schimpf

is a Professor of Music at Metropolitan State University of Denver, where he teaches courses in music history, world music, music appreciation, the history of Rock and Roll, and The Beatles. He is also founder and director of the music program’s Early Music Ensemble and regularly performs on lute, theorbo, and Baroque guitar, appearing with groups across the Front Range, including the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, the Colorado Chamber Players, the Colorado Music Festival, Kantorei, St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, and Seicento Baroque Ensemble. He is also a regular member of the California-based Baroque orchestra Sinfonia Spirituosa. Peter earned a PhD and MA from Indiana University in musicology and has a BM in performance from California State University, Sacramento, where he studied both classical guitar and lute.  As a musicologist, he has published articles on the music and career of composer Henry Cowell, and he has presented papers on a variety of topics at international, national, and regional conferences of the College Music Society, the Society for American Music, and the American Musicological Society.  Peter recently recorded a performance video with the Colorado Chamber Players with works by Baroque women composers.

Updated 2024

Carla Sciaky

is a multi-instrumentalist based in Lakewood, Colorado. She plays baroque violin as a core member of the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado since their first season. She has performed with Colorado Chamber Players, Diverse Passions, the Denver Early Music Consort, the Platte River Consort, and the Dufay Consort, including a critically acclaimed Carnegie Recital Hall performance with the latter. She has studied under Cynthia Roberts and Marilyn McDonald. In addition, she is familiar on the folk stage, with a 2024 CD release, Heart of the Swan, and also works with clients as a life coach. See more at www.carlasciaky.com.

Updated 2025