We get by with a little help from our friends.
We get by with a little help from our friends.
Some of the fantastic musicians we enjoy working and playing with:
Although her family hails from New Mexico, Ava De Lara was raised in the City of Twentynine Palms, California. The youngest of four children, she did her Bachelors degree work at California State University, Northridge, before moving to Northern California to study voice with tenor Evaldo Dal Poggetto.
Ava has performed in recitals, music festivals and concerts in Northern and Southern California, Europe, Central Mexico, and the Philippines. In addition, she has sung at benefit performances for the Sacramento Women's Chorus and a local AIDS care program. She recently sang benefit concerts for Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild homes in New Orleans after the devastation from hurricane Katrina, and for "at risk" children in Napa, CA. Other concert appearances include guest performances in several festivals and concerts commemorating Leonard Bernstein, Bach, Brahms, various French composers, and a concert in remembrance of the Holocaust.
In 2005, she gave a recital as part of the Westminster Concert Series in Sacramento, and in 2004, Ava sang for the 50 year anniversary of the Sacramento Saturday Club at the Crocker Art Gallery.
She has performed on numerous occasions with the Camellia Symphony Orchestra.
The Camellia Symphony Orchestra - Most members of the Curvd Aire Brass Quintet also play with this fine local orchestra which features great classics of the standard repertoire and new and underperformed works as well.
Camellia String Quartet - The Camellia String Quartet, formed in 1980, is a group of professional musicians from the Sacramento area. The presence of the Camellia String Quartet adds an air of distinction and style that will complement any theme. If you want to add a touch of class to your special occasion, call the Camellia String Quartet.
Fair Oaks Woodwind Quintet - Comprised of professional musicians, the quintet is based out of the township of Fair Oaks, California. The group has been performing together for eighteen years and has a refined sound that only comes from knowing each other’s playing down to the finest nuance. The blend and balance of the quintet is world class and one of the gems of the greater Sacramento area.
Tatiana Scott is a fine local pianist, closely allied with the Sacamento and Bay Area opera scenes.
Liberace and High Noon Woodwind Quintets - Two fine woodwind quintets based at CSU Sacramento. Coached by famed hornist Peter Nowlen, their musicality and enthusiasm are infectious. High Noon is named after their standard rehearsal time.
Millington Strings - has played in the Sacramento area for some twenty years. We play together both commercially and socially, and individually play in local orchestras and ensembles. We also produce semi-annual concerts featuring favored string/wind/vocal ensemble literature.
Aaron Entertainment - based in the stunning Sonoma Wine Country of Northern California, proudly presents the corps d’elite of professional musicians who blend the very finest of the San Francisco Bay Area’s talents so as to offer a luxuriant and noble tone to any exclusive occasion. Giselle Walker of the Camellia Symphony heads up this fine group of musicians - "They practice!"
Members of the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Napa Valley Symphony, the Symphony of the Redwoods and the Mendocino Music Festival Orchestra are all represented amongst AaronEntertainment’s Corps d’Elite of classical musicians, "The Bernoulli Effect."
Liz Barton - Horn
Elizabeth Barton is currently finishing a Master of Music in Horn Performance degree program at Sacramento State University under Professor Peter Nowlen. She is an active orchestral and chamber music performer in Northern California. Recently, she served as principal horn of North State Symphony Orchestra, and has also played in the horn sections of Camellia Orchestra, All Hallows Orchestra, and Apollo Orchestra.
Catherine Young, Horn
Born in Mesa, AZ, Catherine has studied with William Scharnberg and Pete Nowlen, among others. Her professional music career began playing ukelele on the corner at age 8; she began horn studies in the public schools at age 10. She toured China with the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra and earned her BA at Chadron State College (Nebraska). In addition to Curvd Aire, Catherine plays with the Camellia and CSUS Symphony Orchestras and the Liberace Quintet. She has performed Schumann’s Konzertstukke at CSU, Sacramento where earned her masters degree in music performance.
Mike Miles, Trombone
Mike Miles holds degrees in music performance from the University of the Pacific and Boston University. His former teachers include Robert Halseth, Steve Perdicaris, Joel Elias, Ron Barron and Doug Yeo. During his junior year he traveled to London, England for a year where he attended the Trinity College of Music and was a trombone student of John Edney.
He has performed locally with the Sacramento Symphony and the Stockton Symphony. Currently, he is starting on a Masters of Music History degree at CSU Sacramento and performing with the California Wind Orchestra.
Thomas Mueller, Trumpet
Thomas is a member of the trumpet studio at CSU Sacramento. Thomas has played with the Camellia Symphony, the CSUS Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble; and other ensembles.
Steve Miller, Trumpet
Steve has studied composition and trumpet at the Oberlin Conservatory and CSU Sacramento. He has studied with Bernard Adelstein of the Cleveland Orchestra, John Beer at the University of Iowa, and Gary Dilworth at CSU Sacramento. He is now also studying composition at CSUS. He has played principal trumpet with the Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Symphony, the Sierra Nevada Wind Orchestra, the CSUS Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the Auburn Symphony.
Jeff Falkner, Horn
Geo-bio-graphical musical information for Jeff Falkner, hornyst
Jeff Falkner, hornist (got it right that time), was born north of Narragansett Bay. He spent his pre-formative years shuttling east and west between the Monongahela River and Mosquito Lake. His formative years were spent east of the Thames River, and his pre-pubescent years north of the Iowa River. He spent his misinformative years south of Lake Ontario, his post-adolescent years south of Cayuga Lake, and his pre-maturity years west of the Okefenokee Swamp. Cleverly bypassing maturity, he now resides west of Lake Tahoe, south of the American River, east of the Sacramento River, and north of the Rancho Seco nuclear reactor cooling ponds. Because of this continuous geographic disorientation, no one was ever quite sure if Jeff ever really knew where he was going or if he ended up where he understood that he thought he wanted to be. And Jeff never learned how to swim either.
His initial musical training was in marching band practice which was abruptly halted early one morning by his father, after he unabashedly paraded onto the football field behind his house, undaunted, and undiapered, flashing drum majors and majorettes alike to the mesmerizing rhythm of the percussion line. He was appropriately switched to piano and violin until his hearing-damaged instructors demanded that he forego the aesthetic beauty of a stringed instrument, and return to band. He successfully camouflaged all talents while in junior high by using an "A" barrel on his B-flat clarinet. This technique did not succeed in high school because the music director, observing Jeff's saxist attitude (and embouchure), misguided him into a marching band to the beat of a different drummer. Eventually, the school's administration succumbed to outside political pressures of powerful religious zealots, and coerced Jeff into graduating one year early. Undaunted by this unsolicited professional discouragement, he seditiously studied clarinet at the Eastman School of Music, where the faculty, staff and student body heartily recommended and then finally escorted Jeff to Ithaca College, the home of the Bombers. In spite of his repeated attempted malfeasance with the Bombers' marching band majorettes, and radical mores of not threatening to burn his draft card in a bar, he eventually graduated from Ithaca with a BA in Liberal Arts.
Bearing the pride of a Bomber alumnus, Jeff patriotically avoided the draft by joining the Air Force (ours). In the interests of national security, he was immediately sent to a small town south of the Mekong River, and was invited to play with an NVA band north of the Mekong River. Surviving the cacophony of the nonharmonious discordant activities northeast of the Ménam Khong River (undoubtedly caused by the incompatability of eastern and western music cultures and theory), Jeff was finally transferred to McClellan AFB, south of the Feather River. Since his reputation as a clarinetist preceded him, Jeff was forced to join the Sacramento Valley Concert Band as a hornist and then percussionist. As years bored on, Jeff did not adjust well to Sacramento's intensely hot summers, so he enthusiastically moved north to escape the oppressive temperatures, and ended up in Redding, CA where he played with the Shasta Symphony.
After several years of blitzing forest fires with and without an airplane (which disinfectantly earned him the moniker "bonsai"), Jeff acceded to the city fathers' suggestions (accompanied by the dissonant strains of the CDF and USFS joint choruses), and moved on again, this time to Seattle (incognito). There he secured a position with the incredulous Dr. Fred Lippert's Bavarian Village Band of Seattle, WA, which represented the zenith of his dubious musical career. In December 1984, Jeff was awarded the singularly prestigious and coveted Bavarian Village Band Mounted Superchicken, and in September 1985, Jeff and the band opened (and closed) the Munich Oktoberfest at the Paulaner brewery tent.
After the Munich hangover, the diminutive stature of life's remaining challenges were insignificantly banal, so Jeff took his cue from Michael Jordan and retreated from infamy by Ignominiously returning to Sacramento. Although currently under a threat of extermination exacerbated by viciously inhumane anonymous hate mail cleverly disguised as AFM Local 12 semi-annual dues, Jeff defiantly plays with the Camellia Orchestra, and the Auburn Civic Symphony. He also has played with the El Dorado Brass Band of Old Sacramento, the Sierra Nevada High Winds of Grass Valley, and various local area chamberpot groups.
Larry Tyrell, Trombone
Larry earned his BM at the University of Pacific and his MA at CSU Sacramento. He has been a public school teacher for 27 years and is a member of the Auburn Symphony and played with the Sacramento Symphony before its unfortunate demise. Larry has played with the 561st Air National Guard Band and the 59th Army Band for a combined total of 21 years. His other playing experiences include the Music Circus, Ice Follies, California Wind Orchestra, and other freelance performance in Sacramento.
Clyde Quick: Trumpet
Clyde earned his bachelors degree in Music from the Berklee College of Music in Boston , Ma. He also holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia , CA . He has spent the last two years teaching in the Davis Unified School District and performing in the greater Sacramento area. During the previous twelve years Clyde performed as a freelance trumpet player in the Los Angeles area with groups as wide ranging as Dakah hip-hop orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
Kevin McKee, Trumpet
Kevin is a fine trumpet player currently attending CSU, Sacramento, and is a student of Gary Dilworth. He has played with numerous amateur and professional ensembles in the Sacramento area, and is one of the bright young lights of the Sacramento music scene. Kevin will soon be studying with Chris Gekker at the University of Maryland.
Claudia Kitka, Soprano
Claudia has sung and/or narrated for many organizations and teaches voice at CSU, Sacramento
Christmas Gainsbrugh, Flute
A graduate of CSU, Sacramento, and currently enrolled in a masters degree program in Colorado
Patty Wassum, Clarinet
A graduate of (and faculty member at) CSU, Sacramento, Patty plays with numerous orchestras and other groups, and directs the CSUS Clarinet Ensemble.
Cathy Ettle, Saxophone
and the Sierra Saxophone Quartet