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 recently relocated to Golden, Colorado 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. 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 2022

Bravo Cello

Pictured from left-to-right: Sarah Biber,
Carole Whitney, Heidi Mausbach, Erin Patterson

Carole Whitney
is a highly respected performer and teacher living in Denver. She is the founder of Bravo Cello. In Colorado she regularly performs with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Colorado Ballet, Opera Colorado, and as the Principal Cellist of Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra.  Each summer she returns to Santa Fe as a tenured member of the Santa Fe Opera.  She is the former Assistant Principal Cellist of the New Jersey Symphony, and has also performed with the Metropolitan Opera, the Radio City Music Hall orchestra, and the New York Pops.  Carole is also a collage/mixed-media artist and is a contributing member of the SYNC gallery in Denver.

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 where she teaches and plays with groups like the Colorado Bach Ensemble, Ensemble 29 and Byrd on a Wire, her viol consort. Sarah plays an 1815 Lockey Hill cello and and 2015 gamba by François Danger. She enjoys playing both Baroque and Modern styles. A Colorado native, she has been delighted to be a part of the musical community in the state. 

Heidi Mausbach
is a graduate of the Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. She has enjoyed a fulfilling and diverse career throughout the US. Heidi is a busy freelance musician frequently playing in the Colorado Symphony, Ensemble Faucheux, Bravo Cello, Front Range Chamber Players and Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra. She enjoys teaching and offers lessons at her private studio and also at Front Range Community College. Heidi is a founding member on faculty at Just Chamber Music, a local summer festival for young aspiring music students. In her free time, she enjoys kayaking, biking and hiking around Colorado with her friends and family. 

Erin Patterson
is a cellist currently based in Boulder, Colorado. She enjoys a diverse career as a teacher and performer. Erin has been a member of the Grammy nominated, all cello ensemble Uccello, and the internationally acclaimed Altius Quartet, and performs regularly with the Boulder Philharmonic, Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Opera Colorado, and the Colorado Ballet. She is trained in the world renowned Suzuki Method and enjoys teaching cellists of all ages. Erin holds degrees in cello performance from the University of Cincinnati College – Conservatory of Music and McGill University.

Updated 2023

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 2022

Sarah Graf

plays the cello and viola da gamba and is an avid chamber musician, soloist, and teacher. Since moving to Colorado in 2007, Sarah has performed extensively in recitals and concert series across the state. She earned her undergraduate degree and Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, studying with Alan Harris and Steven Doane, and focusing on performing with the Ossia New Music Ensemble the Collegium Musicum. Sarah has attended festivals including the Freiburg Baroque Academie in Freiburg, Germany, the National Orchestral Institute, and Aspen Music Festival. Sarah has performed in the Colorado Bach Ensemble, as principal cellist of the Aspen Choral Society and the Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared as a soloist with the High Country Sinfonia. As a teacher, Sarah has a private studio and coaches students of the Roaring Fork Youth Orchestra, of which she is also Executive Director. Now based in the Roaring Fork Valley region, Sarah grew up in Frederick, Colorado. This marks Sarah’s 2nd program with the Colorado Chamber Players. 

Updated 2022

Barbara Hamilton

is currently Artistic Director and Violist/Viola d’amore with the Colorado Chamber Players, a position she has held for 29 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 Musicians. She was a prize winner in the Fischoff, Aspen Festival and Woolsey Hall Competitions, as well as the Young Artists of YM-YWHA (New Jersey).

For the past eight years, Barbara has explored the study and performance of the Baroque, including studies at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and at five Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institutes. She is fascinated by the timbres of 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.

While living in Spain, she played with the acclaimed “Cuarteto Martin y Soler,” including tours of Mexico, Scandinavia, and Europe. The quartet played on numerous occasions for the Royal Family of Spain. Dr. Hamilton has performed frequently as a soloist, the Valencia premiere of Penderecki’s Viola Concerto, with Maestro Penderecki conducting. She taught viola, chamber music and Alexander Technique for 7 years with the National Youth Orchestra of Catalunya, Spain (JONDE). Dr. Hamilton currently teaches, coaches and adjudicates with the Denver Young Artists Orchestra and TASHCO.

Updated 2022

Linda Lunbeck

has performed with the Aspen Music Festival, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Colorado Music Festival, Seicento Baroque Ensemble (in which she also sings), Boulder Bach Festival, Colorado Chamber Players, and Denver Early Music Consort, among others. She co-founded Diverse Passions early music ensemble, directed the Colorado Recorder Academy for accomplished young recorderists, and has served on the board of directors for several arts organizations. Linda earned degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and the University of Delaware, and has deep roots in the Orff-Schulwerk approach to music and movement education.  Her activities as an educator include private lessons, coaching ensembles, presenting at conferences, and leading workshops from elementary to university and professional levels.  Historical dance, musical theater, and jazz are other areas of interest. Exploring chamber music with esteemed colleagues is a special delight!

Updated 2022

Elena Mathys

 was born in Riga, Latvia. After graduating from the Latvian State Conservatory, she founded an early music group, Ludus. With that ensemble, she performed in Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, and France. She worked with Johannes Sonnleitner, Emma Kirkby, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Siegfried Pank, and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart orchestra.  After moving to the United States, she worked with several Colorado-based early music performers as well as with Eva Legene, Mary Springfels, Colin Tilney, and Arthur Haas. Focusing primarily on teaching, Elena Mathys has a piano studio, where she works with serious students. Her students have performed in many venues, appearing as soloists with the Colorado Symphony, Breckenridge Festival Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, Boulder Symphony, Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Concerti Sinfonietta, and others.  In recent years, Elena has been collaborating with recorder player Linda Lunbeck in Colorado.  Elena lives with her family in Boulder.

Updated 2022

Ann Marie Morgan

is praised by the Baltimore Sun for her “beguiling musicality.” She is a frequent guest artist with major orchestras and ensembles. Viola da gamba soloist in the Bach St. John Passion with The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst (2017), she has also performed the St. John Passion with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Bach St. Matthew Passion with the Minnesota Orchestra under Bach specialist Helmuth Rilling’s direction (solo arias with Ingeborg Danz and Thomas Quastoff). Other performances of the Bach Passions include those in the U.S. with the Colorado, Helena, Richmond and Quad Cities Symphony Orchestras; in Canada with Les Violons du Roy and the Kitchener/Waterloo Symphony; and at numerous Bach Festivals including Oregon, Bethlehem, Boulder and Winter Park (FL). She has appeared on viola da gamba in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Number Six with The Cleveland Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and at the Boulder Bach Festival.

Ms. Morgan recently served as interim Director of the CU-College of Music’s Early Music Ensemble, coaching strings, voices, harpsichord, and offering lessons on baroque style to students on modern instruments. She has also served as one of four on the Preliminary Judging Panel for the 2020 Indianapolis International Baroque Competition.

Reviews of her playing on Chris Norman: The Man with the Wooden Flute include:

• “Before nearing Ann Marie Morgan,. I would not have believed that so pure a tone could be drawn from a viola da gamba; it is straight from heaven.” – H&B Recordings Direct, 1992
• ” …my hands-down favorite is Ann Marie Morgan’s viola da gamba solo, in Skinner’s ‘Cradle Song….’ lf there was a dry eye in the studio when this was recorded I say someone needs sensitivity training.” – Classic Disc Digest.

Ms. Morgan has her own solo viola da gamba album, Among Rosebuds, of French and English repertoire with William Simms and Daniel Rippe, continuo. The J.S. Bach Flute Sonatas: Sonatas from the “Musical Offering” (Joshua Smith) and The Soulful Bach and
Telemann (Olde Friends) feature her on baroque cello. As a result of her fifteen year appointment with Apollo’s Fire: the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, she can be heard as baroque cellist and violist da gamba on nearly a dozen of that ensemble’s recordings.
Labels upon which one can hear Ms. Morgan perform include AVIE. Centaur, Chandos, Dorian and Naxos.

Updated 2022

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 won an audition with the Denver Symphony in 1984, and was promoted to Principal Second Violinist in 1985, the position he still holds. 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 30 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 for the DYAO.

As a harpsichordist, Paul has attended the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, Oberlin Baroque Institute, and has studied with Charlotte Neidiger, Frank Nowell, Joe Gascho, and currently studies with Robert Hill at CU/Boulder School of Music. He performs on a double manual French model.

Updated 2022

Karl Reque

is very active in the local Denver classical musician scene.  Playing in baroque and classical orchestral settings alike, he brings a breadth of knowledge and experience to the group.   Karl received his BA in Music Education and Viola Performance from Arizona State University and studied Early Music Performance at Windham College. He maintains a large studio of violin and viola students.  Karl performs with Byrd on a Wire viol consort, Seicento Baroque Ensemble, and previously performed with the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado.

Updated 2022

Harumi Rhodes

is the second violinist of the internationally renowned Takács Quartet, performing 80 concerts a year worldwide. Acclaimed by the New York Times as a “deeply expressive violinist”, Rhodes has gained recognition as a multi-­‐faceted musician with a distinctive musical voice. She is Associate Professor of Violin, Artist in Residence and Ralph E. and Barbara L. Christoffersen Faculty Fellow at the University of Colorado-­‐Boulder. Rhodes combines her performing career with a passionate commitment to guiding young instrumentalists, composers, and ensembles.

Originally from New Jersey, Rhodes was born into a family with Japanese, American, Russian and Romanian roots. After studying at the Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory, she co-­‐founded the Naumburg Award-­‐winning ensemble Trio Cavatina, served as artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society and performed extensively with Music from Copland House, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO), Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Musicians from Marlboro.

Rhodes has a vision for commissioning and programming contemporary music: her partnerships with composers of today have resulted in over 100 premieres. As a member of the Takács Quartet, Rhodes has shaped the Graduate String Quartet Residency at the University of Colorado. At the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, Rhodes leads an intensive summer string quartet seminar with the Takács Quartet. When not travelling, Rhodes serves as Artistic Director of the Denver/Boulder branch of “If Music Be The Food…”, a concert series designed to build partnerships through music in order to raise awareness for food insecurity in local communities.

Updated 2021

Miriam Rosenblum

started playing recorder as a child and went on to study the oboe. She got a bachelor’s degree 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 her home studio in Denver and online. She is certified to teach Suzuki Recorder Books 1 and 2, and opened Denver’s first Suzuki recorder studio in 2015.

Updated 2023

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, Marilyn McDonald, Tekla Cunningham, and Dr. Gordon Sandford, and been coached by Marc Destrube, Lara Jeppeson, Sarah Cunningham, and the late Judith Davidoff.

Carla is also known for her career as a singer/songwriter and folksinger, including a recent induction in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame with the group the Mother Folkers. She toured the US and Europe during the 1980s and ‘90s, amassed a discography on Green Linnet and her own Propinquity labels, and was awarded awards and recognition for her songwriting in such arenas as the Kerrville New Song Competition, the Louisville (Kentucky) songwriting competition, the Colorado Arts and Humanities Fellowship for Composition, the Billboard Songwriting Competition, and the Colorado, Utah, and Kansas Artist-in-Residence programs. She is currently working on a solo album and performing annually as part of the “Jews Do…” series.

Outside of music, Carla is deeply committed to the world of alternative medicine, is certified in several energy and holistic health modalities, and has a coaching and healing practice called Doorway to Healing. She is presently writing a book based on her own path of healing and serving others on that path. See more at carlasciaky.com

Updated 2023

Jon Wasserman

is a native of New York and currently based in Madrid. He is a specialist in plucked stringed instruments with experience performing historical instruments, such as theorbo, lute, vihuela, 5 course guitar, and 4 course guitar, in addition to acoustic/electric/classical guitars, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, sitar, bass guitar, and voice among other plucked string instruments. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Classical Guitar and Ethnomusicology and a Masters Degree in Historical Plucked String Instruments, both from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University as well as, the completion of the “formación continuada” program at Escola Superior de Music de Catalunya. He studied with renowned lutenists Nigel North and Xavier Diaz Latorre and has participated in masterclasses with musicians such as Jordi Savall, Hopkinson Smith, Paul O’dette, Ernesto Bitetti, Ellen Hargis, Jakob Lindberg, and Amjad Ali Khan. He has performed in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall in New York to ancient churches in Quito, Ecuador or the Cathedral of Granada, Spain. Wasserman is an in-demand lutenist and guitarist, regularly performing with ensembles across the United States, Europe, and South America. He has performed with numerous ensembles, including Ars Combinatorio, Serendipia Ensemble, Duo Isanta & Wasserman, Anonim, Barekhu, Las Aves, Meridionales, Ensemble Lipzodes, and Voces del Toledo. Jon was recently heard in Denver during the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado’s production of La Púrpura de la Rosa / The Blood of the Rose, music composed by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco and Spanish libretto by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. In 2022, he published a CD with Duo Isanta & Wasserman called “Tonos Humanos” of 17th and 18th century Spanish music.

Updated 2023