Community Music Instructors
Ashley Addington
Flutist Ashley Addington is an active performer and teacher in the Boston area. A versatile and engaging musician, Ashley brings a thoughtful, collaborative, and elegant approach to her performances and teaching. She is a member of Sound Icon and the Plymouth Philharmonic and regularly performs with Grammy-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), Odyssey Opera, and Callithumpian Consort. Other notable recent engagements include performances with Rhode Island Philharmonic, Portland Symphony, Monadnock Music, and Emmanuel Music.
A dedicated educator, Ashley is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the woodwind coach at Tufts University, and on the faculty at Milton Academy. Ashley’s teaching philosophy focuses on inspiring students to be confident and creative thinkers who are encouraged and guided on their path to becoming well-rounded and successful musicians. She has been the Guest Clinician for the Honors Flute Choir for the New Hampshire Band Directors Association and served as a Masterclass Teacher for the Annual Flute Masterclass sponsored by the Pappoutsakis Flute Competition. A new music advocate, Ashley has recorded and premiered dozens of new works as a soloist and ensemble member.
Ashley holds a MM and BM from The Butler School of Music at University of Texas at Austin. She studied with Marianne Gedigian and Robert Willoughby who both encouraged her to make meaningful music with every note. For more information, visit www.ashleyaddington.com.
Ian Ashby
Ian Ashby is a bassist and composer from Ohio with a jazz bass performance major and creative writing minor from Oberlin Conservatory. Coming from a musical family, Ianhas been performing internationally since childhood and has worked and recorded with the SmithsonianJazz Masterworks Orchestra, Badi Assad, Danilo Perez, The New York Voices, and the Manhattan Transfer. This past year, Ianreceived his masters in global jazz and performed at the JAZZCAMPUS in Basel, Switzerland, and the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, Netherlands as a part of the Berklee global jazz institute.
Adriana Ausch
Ms. Adriana Ausch works at the intersection between music, movement and art. She found in Dalcroze Eurhythmics the space in which she could express her Renaissance approach to all Arts. She received her Master's Degree in Dalcroze Eurhythmics and the Dalcroze License at Longy School of Music. She holds a Master's in Vocal Performance from Longy School of Music of Bard College and a master's Degree in Architecture and City Planning from the "Ion Mincu" University in Bucharest, Romania.
Ms. Ausch integrates all arts in her teaching of musicianship through Dalcroze Eurhythmics to all ages. Currently she is the Chair of Music and Movement and Eurhythmics at the Winchester Music School, and she is on the faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She has taught Dalcroze Eurhythmics workshops in the Boston area, Toronto, New York, Bucharest, and Frankfurt am Main.
In her native country, Romania, Ms. Ausch appeared on television and radio shows, toured Romania, and released a CD in Germany, where she lived before moving to Boston. She holds several performance awards as a singer-songwriter and belonged to the Romanian protest song and folk movement in communist times, when music seemed to be one way to protest against the status quo.
Ms. Ausch has performed in the Boston area primarily as a solo singer, focusing on twentieth-century art song, and appeared with the cabaret group Follen Angels and the vocal group, Pandora's Vox.
Jerry Bussiere
Jerry Bussiere has performed as a guitarist and vocalist in the field of jazz and popular music for over 40 years. His music training includes private studies in guitar with John Scofield and Ross Adams and voice training with Eddie Watson and Mary Healey. In addition, he has studied jazz improvisation and composition with Jerry Bergonzi and Charlie Banacos. Jerry has worked extensively in the field of modern dance as a composer/arranger and is currently employed by Green Street Studios in Cambridge, Cambridge School of Weston and Summer Stages at Concord Academy as an accompanist. He has taught guitar at Tufts University since 1994.
Miguel Pérez-Espejo Cárdenas
Miguel Pérez-Espejo Cárdenas is recognized as “an extraordinary violinist with an outstanding ability to interpret from the heart” (Aaron Rosand), “a very strong leader, a magnificent soloist, with a beautiful tone, impeccable intonation and rhythm, wonderful musicianship and artistic sensibility” (Stanislaw Skrowaczewski), whose performances have been praised as "extremely impressive, I was struck particularly by the Bach Chaconne, of exceptional maturity and expressive depth." (Geoffrey Norris, Chief Music Critic, The Daily Telegraph, U.K.)
Pérez-Espejo concertizes throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, and has released solo CDs for RTVE MÚSICA. He has performed with artists such as principal players and members of the Boston Symphony and Cleveland orchestras, Roberto Díaz, James Dunham, James Buswell, Chee-Yun, Laurence Lesser, and Colin Carr. He performs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, working with the great conductors of our time, including Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. Together with his wife, violinist Hsin-Lin Tsai, he is a member of the acclaimed L’Étoile Duo and Co-Artistic Director of the multi-disciplinary The Renewal Series. Recent and upcoming engagements include collaborations with outstanding American composers Augusta Read Thomas and Kareem Roustom.
Fulbright Scholar, member of the Honor Music Society of the United States and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Spain, winner at The Olga Koussevitzky International Competition, he is the recipient of the Rotary Club’s Paul Harris Award, the Theodore Presser Award, and the New England Conservatory’s Chadwick Medal, among other honors. A pupil of the legendary Aaron Rosand, his teachers include Michèle Auclair, Eric Rosenblith, and Pina Carmirelli, founding leader of I Musici.
Dr. Pérez-Espejo teaches at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, where he also served as Strings and Chamber Music Coordinator, and is affiliated faculty at Tufts and Harvard universities. His students have won numerous competitions, perform as soloists in the U.S. and abroad, and have gone on to study at institutions such as the Cleveland Institute of Music and Princeton University. For more information, please visit www.perezespejo.com.
Lauren Caso, MT-BC
Lauren Caso is a board certified music therapist and music educator from the Boston area, and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music in 2002. She has been teaching music professionally for over 13 years in public schools, community settings and privately. Lauren has traveled to Ghana, Senegal and India to study music and dance, and specializes in Ewe drumming and dancing from Ghana. In 2004, Lauren volunteered to teach HIV/AIDS awareness in a village in Ghana, West Africa. During her stay, she was able to study drumming and dancing in depth with master teachers. She also helped open a drum shop. Since her return, Lauren has brought her drumming and experiences to schools, teachers, and other arts therapists. She brought Ewe dance to Mt. Holyoke and The Five Colleges in Amherst for three semesters. Currently, Lauren is on the faculty at The Community Music Center of Boston as an African Drumming teacher. She has continued to teach private lessons on guitar, piano, violin, theory, etc. at Timeline Music Studio in Wakefield. She also plays violin in the Melrose Symphony Orchestra, and is an active performing member of the Agbekor Drum and Dance Society. Some of her previous teachers include Charlie Banacos and the Agbeli family. In music therapy, Lauren works with children with autism and special needs. She is also an audio engineer and works in concert production at local venues. Lauren's multi-cultural approach to teaching music has enhanced education to the diverse populations she has worked with. Her high energy and ability to adapt to other's needs make her an effective and invaluable teacher.
Arminé Karapetian Donato
Arminé Karapetian Donato was born in Armenia where she studied piano at Yerevan State Conservatory and received her music degrees in performance under Professor Amalia Bayburtian. She has performed across Eastern Europe and Russia as a solo performer and in group and chamber collaborations and has been a guest artist in numerous music festivals. Highlights of Arminé's performing career include the first public performances of Chebotarian's Six Pieces on Folk Melodies, which was dedicated to her, and Chtchyan's Piano Concerto. She also was the recipient of the First Prize at the Khachaturian Competition in Yerevan. She performs regularly with the Lichtenburg Trio. Apart from her performing, Armine has taught piano with the Cambridge Community Schools, worked with the Boston Ballet School and also maintains an active private studio.
Barry Drummond
Barry Drummond has had the good fortune to study with and perform under the direction of many outstanding Javanese musicians, both in the United States and Indonesia. He received a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts, 1984. As a Fulbright Scholar, he resided for over seven years in Surakarta, Central Java under the auspices of the Indonesian National College of the Arts. In addition to teaching Javanese Gamelan at Tufts, he currently is the Artistic Director of the Boston Village Gamelan.
Miriam Eckelhoefer
Miriam Eckelhoefer has a multifaceted career as a performer, teacher and administrator. An active freelance musician, Ms. Eckelhoefer is a member of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra and Michigan Opera Theater and has performed with various other groups throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. Ms. Eckelhoefer served as Director of Preparatory and Continuing Studies at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA, from 2008 until 2013. An avid educator, she taught cello, coached chamber music, and served as Assistant Director of Ensembles at the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, CT from 1999 to 2008. In 2005, she co-founded Elm City ChamberFest, a summer chamber music festival in New Haven, and quadrupled the festival's enrollment by the time of her departure in 2008. Ms. Eckelhoefer holds a D.M.A. from SUNY at Stony Brook, an M.M. from Yale University, and a B.S. in Mathematics and B.A. in Music from the University of Notre Dame. Her principal instructors include Colin Carr, Aldo Parisot, Karen Buranskas, Irene Sharp, and members of the Tokyo and Emerson String Quartets. She has performed at festivals throughout the United States, Canada, England, France, Italy and Holland. Ms. Eckelhoefer maintains a private cello studio in her home and is frequently called upon to coach chamber music groups and youth orchestra sectionals.
Yank'l Garcia
Yank'l Garcia is a violist and board-certified music therapist. She is currently pursuing her Masters of Music degree in music education at Boston University. Yank'l is a violin instructor at Tufts Community Music Program and music director at the El Sistema inspired programs, Josiah Quincy Orchestra Program as well as Youth and Family Enrichment Services.
Jill Gleim
Jill Gleim, MEd from Lesley University – attended the Boston Conservatory for voice and piano studies and studied Dalcroze Eurhythmics at Dalcroze School of Music in NYC and with Lisa Parker at Longy. She is a trained dancer who founded Jillsville School of Dance (1982 -2011) and is the creator of Arts All Day Summer Camp (Director 1983 – present), both in Cambridge. She also teaches music and movement to preschoolers on the North Shore. She keeps current research that states the benefits that movement has on children’s learning and development and applies “Moves that Matter” to her classes to foster, joy, expression, body awareness, self-regulation and control. She is happy to be returning to the Tufts Community Music Program.
Monica Grady
Cellist Monica Grady is a passionate chamber musician, orchestral player, and solo recitalist who aspires to share her artistry with others at venues across Boston, having recently performed in spaces such as the Boston Medical Center, Museum of Fine Arts, and Symphony Hall. She graduated in May 2021 with a Performance Diploma from Boston University's College of Fine Arts. In addition to her musical endeavors, Monica holds a degree in Biochemistry and teaches chemistry at Revere High School.
Phillip Grannan
Since graduating from Tufts Music department in 2012, Phillip Grannan has actively continued pursuing his passion in music composition, performance, and education. He has been teaching private lessons on a variety of instruments and was a counselor at the Tufts Community Music Summer Program for the past few years. Currently, he is a music teacher at the Bright Start after school program in Arlington. This past spring he completed two Masters of Arts at Longy School of Music of Bard College: one in Composition and the other in Modern American Music Guitar Performance.
Anne Howarth
Anne Howarth is a founding member of the chamber group Radius Ensemble, and performs often in the greater Boston area. She holds the position of principal horn with the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra and freelances with other orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Hartford Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and Portland Symphony Orchestra. She maintains a private teaching studio in Somerville, MA, teaches horn at U Mass Boston, and has taught horn and brass methods at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Anne holds degrees from Oberlin College and New England Conservatory.
Elizabeth Jewell
Liz Jewell is a Boston based freelance trumpeter and instructor. As an orchestral musician, Ms. Jewell has performed with regional orchestras across New England, including Vermont Symphony, Plymouth Philharmonic, Symphony NH, Cape Symphony, New Bedford Symphony, as well the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra and Bach Beethoven and Brahms Society. She enjoys playing a variety of styles, and can be found playing in the pit for musicals, and as lead trumpet in Boston’s only all-women big band. As an educator, Ms. Jewell teaches trumpet lessons throughout Greater Boston. She serves as trumpet instructor at the Middlesex School in Concord and for the Concord Carlisle Schools. She received a Master of Music from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a BA in Music from Western Carolina University.
Nando Michelin
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Michelin came to Boston in 1989 to study at Berklee College of Music. He has since remained in the Boston area and has undoubtedly made his impact on the jazz scene. His past bands have included such up and coming artists as bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding and drummer Richie Barshay. His discography includes Art, an album featuring songs dedicated to modern visual artists, and Duende, a collaboration between the three featured artists and an album described in the Boston Globe as a "fluid and literate". Entre Amigos will be his ninth studio album. In addition to being a band leader, Michelin has worked as a producer and as a sideman. He helped create the awarded "Amores Torcidos" with Katie Viqueira and as a sideman he has performed with icons like Jair Rodriguez and Maucha Adnet. He is also an educator, working as a member of the applied faculty at Tufts University.
Rituparna Mukherjee
Born in Mumbai, Rituparna Mukherjee was raised on Tagore songs, ragas, and Sanskrit chantings. She found her love for classical music upon hearing a student playing Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in A minor at a music store in Singapore. She would carry these sounds with her as her family moved to California, Katy, and Houston. Lifelong viola-advocate Judy Offman became her first mentor in Houston. Ms. Offman cultivated a deep appreciation for sharing the gift of music, by taking Ritu to Sheldon School District, an underserved area in Houston.
Inspired by her curiosity about people and their behavior, Ritu pursued a double degree in Viola Performance under Peter Slowik and Psychology with a Minor in Economics. At Oberlin, Ritu was a member of the Performance and Improvisation Ensemble under Jay Ashby and Jamey Haddad, percussionist with Paul Simon. She could explore the sound of the world working with musicians Layth Siddiq (Jordanian), Alain Mallet (French), and Chico Pinheiro (Brazilian). As a result, Ritu recognized a deep desire to use music to connect and cultivate empathy. She was a founding member of ‘Strings at Grafton’ at the Grafton Correctional Institution, uncovering her love for teaching and bringing music to people who did not have access to it. Ritu has taught remotely K-12 students in Mombasa; under The Canales Project at Triple Threat Academy under Carla Canales, Senior Advisor for Cultural Exchange at the National Endowment for the Arts under President Biden’s administration, and in an underserved school district in Central Florida.
Ritu is pursuing her Masters of Music at New England Conservatory, where she received the Presidential Distinction Award, under Nicholas Cords, Violist of the Brooklyn Rider Quartet and Co-Director of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. She continues to pursue creating and imagining on Viola while remaining driven by her commitment to community outreach as a Community Performance and Partnerships Fellow performing in homeless shelters, libraries, and underserved schools around Boston. Ritu’s career has ranged from performing with Steve Mackey as part of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Prelude Concerts to being a part of the 2023 Spoleto Festival Orchestra. She hopes to continue pursuing both chamber music, orchestral and teaching endeavours upon graduation.
John Page
Professor John Page is the Conductor of the Tufts Youth Philharmonic. Visit John Page's profile to learn more.
Timur Rubinshteyn
Timur Rubinshteyn holds a D.M.A. in Classical Percussion Performance from Boston University. He teaches percussion at Tufts University, University of New Hampshire, Boston College, Rivers Conservatory, Concord High School, Belmont Day School. Dr. Rubinshteyn directs UNH Percussion Ensemble and Rivers Conservatory Honors Marimba Ensemble. He also plays principal timpani for Atlantic Symphony and freelances regionally (Portsmouth Symphony, Cape Cod Symphony, Massachusetts Symphony, Lexington Symphony, Plymouth Philharmonic, New England Symphony, and others).
Timur R. completed his B.M. with academic honors and his M.M. with academic honors and performance distinction at NEC, where he received the Zildjian Award for Excellence in the Art of Percussion. He was also a joint winner of the commencement competition (performing solo with the NEC Honors Orchestra) and one of two members of the graduating class awarded the Gunther Schuller Medal for Outstanding Contributions to the Life of NEC. Timur R. was accepted to Schleswig Holstein Musik Festival, and has attended Aspen Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, National Orchestral Institute, and Tanglewood Music Center (twice as a fellow and once as a guest).
Formerly Timur R. was a percussion coach and assistant conductor of the NEC Youth Symphony, and managed the orchestra’s tours of Italy, Greece, and Costa Rica. His other tours have included Israel, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and France. From 2012-16 he was part of the percussion faculty of the NEC’s Festival Youth Orchestra. His students have been accepted into MA All-State Orchestra many times (including numerous principal positions), Interlocken Arts Camp, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Juilliard Summer Percussion Seminar, All-Eastern Band and Orchestra, NAFME All-National Orchestra, and Universities including Brown, Princeton, Cornell and UMass.
Celia Slattery
Celia Slattery has entertained audiences from Boston to Bangkok with her original music and interpretations of jazz and pop standards. In her early career, inspired by the folk tradition and singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Carole King, she toured as a solo acoustic act at coffeehouses and clubs. Later, jazz studies at New England Conservatory with Dominique Eade and Ran Blake introduced her to the Great American Songbook and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. She began to collaborate with some of the finest Boston area musicians with performances at clubs, arts centers and special events, including a regular series at the legendary Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge. She also had a six-month gig singing nightly at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, often named world’s number one hotel. Celia has released three CDs; Metronome Magazine called her 2014 release, Our Life Together, “a wonderfully crafted album full of soul-stirring performances both musically and vocally.” Celia is an Associate Professor in the Voice Department at Berklee College of Music and has a thriving private studio in Davis Square, Somerville. She has a Level III certificate in Somatic Voicework™ (the LoVetri Method), a state-of-the-art vocal technique for contemporary music. In addition she has taught performing arts classes at Lesley and Salem State Universities, and has given master classes in voice technique, vocal health, performance skills, and audition technique at schools and conferences such as New England Conservatory Summer School and the Kennedy School American College Theater Festival.
Holly Stumpf
Holly Stumpf graduated from the University of Rochester and received an M.Ed. in Creative Arts from Lesley University. She attended the yearlong course at the Orff Institute in Salzburg, Austria, where she studied Orff-Schulwerk, which she believes to be an authentic vision of integrated arts education. Ms. Stumpf has taught elementary music in Lexington, Massachusetts, since 1975, and has taught courses at the New England Conservatory and UMassLowell. She has presented several workshops at national American Orff-Schulwerk Association conferences. She has recently traveled to Senegal and Ghana to study African drumming and dancing, and has led community drum circles. Ms. Stumpf received the Lexington Public Schools Diversity Award in 2008 for her multicultural music and movement curriculum and the Yale Distinguished Music Educators Award for 2011.
Hsin-Lin Tsai
Hsin-Lin Tsai has concertized as soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S, Europe and Taiwan, and has performed with distinguished musicians that include principal players and members of the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Montréal and San Diego Symphony orchestras, and with artists such as Andris Nelsons, John Williams, and Sir Colin Davis. The legendary Yfrah Neaman said of her "I have not heard anyone play with such musicality, emotion, and beautiful sound in the last fifty years."
First Prize Winner in the Taiwan National Violin Competition, she gave her New York City recital début at Carnegie Hall, and has released solo CD recordings with the label RTVE MUSICA in Europe and Japan. Dr. Tsai was invited to perform at the Lucerne Music Festival in
Switzerland and venues including Lincoln Center in New York, National Concert Hall in Taiwan, the Víctor Villegas Auditorium in Spain, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. A guest artist at numerous international festivals, she plays in the "extraordinary" (Martín Llade, Melómano music magazine, Spain) L’Étoile Violin Duo with her husband, violinist Miguel Pérez-Espejo. Together they are also Co-Artistic Directors of The Renewal Series, a multidisciplinary concert series that is committed to education. As an orchestra musician, she has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Dr. Tsai’s students have performed as soloists and in recital in venues such as Carnegie Hall, and have won first prizes in competitions and professional orchestra positions, most recently First Prize at the National, Divisional and State MTNA Young Artist (collegiate) String Competitions, and have been invited to international festivals that include the prestigious Stauffer Center for Strings in Cremona, Italy, and performed in master classes with legendary artists Salvatore Accardo, Lynn Harrell and Anne Sophie Mutter, among others.
Hsin-Lin has taught at the International Master Classes of the Mediterranean in Spain, Boston University, and All Newton Music School. She is currently on faculty at Tufts University, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, New England Conservatory prep division, and is affiliated instructor at Harvard University. She has done artist residencies both nationally and internationally; most recently at Tufts University with the composition department and at Taipei National University of the Arts.
Dr. Tsai graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with Distinction in Performance, and received the Artist Diploma from the Guildhall School of Music in London, on a full scholarship. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Violin Performance from Boston University. Her dissertation Poulenc Violin Sonata: An Analysis has become a reference work for scholars worldwide. For more information, please visit: www.perezespejo.com/biography_tsai
Alice Chenyang Xu
Pianist Alice Chenyang Xu has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in the U.S., Germany, Canada, and China since her solo debut in 1996. Most recently she has performed in Boston's Jordan Hall, Leipzig HMT Concert Hall, Chicago's Orchestra Hall, The Myra Heiss Concert Series at Chicago Cultural Center, and Chicago Auditorium Theatre.
She recently collaborated with Borromeo String Quartet, worked with American composer George Crumb on his set of piano work "Makrocosmos," and performed for former U.S. General Colin Powell at the Eisenhower Fellowships in Philadelphia. Ms.Xu has collaborated extensively with the Chicago Chamber Musicians (CCM), and her concert performances have frequently been broadcasted on WFMT classical radio.
Ms.Xu is the recipient of Dorothy Hinton Congleton Memorial Presidential Scholarship for 2013 and 2014, and second prize winner of 10th Southern Missouri International Piano Competition, third prize winner in the 2nd SEILER International Piano Competition in Germany, and the recipient of YAMAHA scholarship for talented young musicians award.
Ms. Xu received her bachelor's from The Curtis Institute of Music and Roosevelt University, studying with Seymour Lipkin, Meng-Chieh Liu, and Winston Choi. Ms. Xu received her master's degree from The New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Wha-Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is currently pursing her Doctoral of Musical Arts degree at NEC with Vivian Weilerstein.