Emmy award-winning and gold record artist, Ranaan is most known as a founding member of Time for Three (Tf3) and a double bass educator. He has performed with many esteemed organizations including Musik Verein, Czech Philharmonic, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Opera House, Royal Albert Hall, Night of the Proms Tour, NPR Tiny Desk Concerts, National Anthems at NFL, Nascar, NBA, MLB, and PGA events, International Suzuki Festival, Sofar Sounds Alumnus and has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, and National Symphony. Ranaan’s early musical development occurred in the jazz clubs of Philadelphia. He graduated from the Manhattan School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music. Before Tf3, Ranaan toured extensively with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the bass section. His creativity led him to a philosophy called The Sharing of Knowledge which inspired his founding of both the Wabass Institute in Wabash, IA, and the Utah Symposium for Double Bass in Salt Lake City. He presents workshops worldwide on improvisation, teamwork, and overall outside-the-box learning. He has appeared on a Michael Jackson gold record and made multiple recordings with NFL films. Ranaan has been commissioned to compose over 50 works and tunes and also writes for the pure joy of music. Currently, he is making music with his wife Emily in a duo they call The Rockwins. They both sing and play. And they live right where he started in Southern New Jersey raising two young sons together who make every day more unique than the next.
With playing that is “fierce and lyrical” and works that are “other-worldly” (The Strad) and “evocative” (New York Times), Jessica is a GRAMMY–nominated violist and composer whose passionate musicianship radiates accessibility and emotional clarity. Her first composer/performer portrait album in 2019 debuted at #1 on the Billboard traditional classical chart, where “knife-edge anticipation opens on to unexpected, often ecstatic musical realms, always with a personal touch and imaginatively written for the instruments” (Gramophone Magazine). Past premieres include works for the St. Lawrence String Quartet as the composer in residence at Spoleto Festival USA, CityMusic Cleveland, musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, Five Borough Songbook, Bangor Symphony as the winner of the 2nd Annual Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Composer’s Award, and the Argus Quartet as a winner of Chamber Music America’s Commissioning Program Award. Her first Symphonic Band piece recently premiered by the President’s Own Marine Band was a finalist in the Revelli Prize and had a NY premiere in Carnegie Hall. Her orchestral works have been performed by the Phoenix, North Carolina, Austin, Charlotte, and Vermont Symphonies, the Nu Deco Ensemble in Miami, at Tanglewood in Seiji Ozawa Hall, and all around the country as part of Carnegie Hall’s nationwide Link Up Program. This season includes the premiere of “GAEA”, a concerto for herself and orchestra, in addition to new works for the Dorian Wind Quintet, Hausmann Quartet, Hub New Music, and the Portland Youth Philharmonic in collaboration with the female vocal ensemble In Mulieribus.
Upcoming Performances:
Aug 24 – New Music at Red Earth
Aug 25 – American Minimalism: A Retrospective
Aug 27 – Floating Concert
Renowned worldwide as a passionate solo and chamber musician, Laura is acclaimed for her “brilliant” playing (Gramophone Magazine) and as “a cellist whose passion for music is as evident as her artistry and talent” (I care if you listen). She has performed across the US and on six continents. Laura’s debut solo album on the Grammy-winning label Sono Luminus reached #7 on the Billboard Charts, and was called “a way forward for classical music” by AllMusic.
A sought-after chamber musician and collaborator, Laura is drawn to projects that push boundaries and expand the definition of classical chamber music. Boyd Meets Girl, her duo with her husband, classical guitarist Rupert Boyd, tours worldwide including appearances at Caramoor, Festival Napa Valley, Moab Music Festival, and Newport Classical. Laura also performs regularly with the popular cello-percussion quartet Break of Reality, selected for an ongoing world tour as musical ambassadors of the US State Department. Laura is the founding cellist of The Overlook, a string quartet dedicated towards building a more representative musical tradition. The quartet has been featured by the Kaufman Center, Lincoln Center, Mass MoCa, and the Met. She has appeared as a guest with The Knights, Eighth Blackbird, ETHEL, and the IRIS Collective. As cellist of Sybarite5 from 2008-21, Laura was part of the first-ever string quintet to win the Concert Artists Guild competition and reach #1 on the Billboard Classical Charts.
She is also a founder and artistic director of the weekly Sunday morning concert series GatherNYC, cello faculty at Riverdale Country School, and has appeared onstage with artists including Adele, John Legend, Cher, Shawn Mendes, and Nas. Laura lives in New York City with her husband and young son Milo. www.laurametcalf.com
Upcoming Performances
Sept 10 – Music Hike II: Free Voices of Eastern Europe
Sept 10 – The Four Seasons According to Glass and Piazzolla
Sept 11 – Grotto III: German Masterpieces
Sept 12-15 – San Juan Musical Raft Trip
Hailed for his “trademark brilliance, penetrating sound, and rich character” (New York Times), Anthony enjoys a dynamic international solo and chamber music career and is principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic — the first African-American principal player in the organization’s history. He is the recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Prize, one of classical music’s most significant awards. Anthony appears as a soloist with top orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baltim ore Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Kansas City Symphony. He performed alongside Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gabriela Montero at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, premiering a piece by John Williams. As a chamber musician, Anthony is a collaborator of the Brentano, Daedalus, Guarneri, JACK, Miró, Pacifica, Shanghai, Takács, and Tokyo Quartets, as well as Emanuel Ax, Inon Barnatan, Gloria Chien, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, Midori, Mitsuko Uchida, and Lang Lang. He serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School and is the Artistic Director for Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. He holds the William R. and Hyunah Yu Brody Distinguished Chair at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2020, Anthony’s #TakeTwoKnees campaign protesting the death of George Floyd and historic racial injustice went viral. For more information, please visit anthonymcgill.com.
Demarre is an internationally recognized soloist, recitalist, chamber and orchestral musician. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, he has appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Grant Park, San Diego, Chicago, and Baltimore symphony orchestras. He is the principal flute of the Seattle Symphony, serving previously as principal of the Dallas, San Diego, Florida, and Santa Fe Opera orchestras and acting principal of the Metropolitan Opera and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras.
Demarre has performed and taught in South Africa, Korea, Japan, Quebec, and throughout the United States. He served on the faculties of the National Youth Orchestra (US,) the National Orchestral Institute, Orford Music Festival, and the Curtis Institute’s Summerfests. He is an Associate Professor of Flute at Cincinnati College-Conservatory and is an artist-faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival.
Demarre is a founding member of The Myriad and McGill/McHale Trios and a co-founder of The Art of Élan. He is a former member of Chamber Music Society Two at Lincoln Center and has participated in the Santa Fe, Marlboro, Seattle, and Stellenbosch chamber music festivals. His CDs include “Portraits,” and “Winged Creatures”. Media credits include Live from Lincoln Center (PBS), The Gifted Ones (A&E) Today Show and Nightly News (NBC)) and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with brother Anthony when they were teenagers. A native of Chicago, Demarre began studying the flute at age 7 and attended the Merit School of Music. He received his bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute of Music and a master’s degree at The Juilliard School.
Upcoming Performances:
Sept 1 – House Concert: There Will Always Be Paris
Sept 2 – Music Hike I: Winds in the Canyon
Sept 2 – 100 Years of Ragtime
Sept 4 – Rocky Mountain Power Community Concert
Sept 7 – Grotto II: Winds on the River
Tessa is one of the most captivating artistic voices of our time, consistently praised by critics and audiences for her astounding range of sounds, technical agility, and musical elegance. She is in demand as a classical violinist and is a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky.
Highlights of Tessa’s 2024-25 season include returns to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic, and a debut with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. In recital, she will debut with San Francisco Symphony, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the Artist Series of Sarasota. Tessa reprises Michael Torke’s violin concerto, Sky with the Boulder and Colorado Springs Philharmonicas, as well as the West Michigan, Williamsburg, Shreveport, and Tallahassee Symphony Orchestras. As a chamber musician, she will tour across the U.S. with her string trio project with composer-bassist Edgar Meyer and cellist Joshua Roman.
Tessa’s discography includes The Stradgrass Sessions (2023), with an all-star roster of collaborators including Meyer, Jon Batiste, Sierra Hull, and Michael Cleveland, Grammy-nominated SKY (2020), a bluegrass-inspired violin concerto written for her by Michael Torke with the Albany Symphony, Fantasy, her solo debut on First Hand Records (2019), Invention (2019), a violin-bass duo with Michael Thurber, and a live performance recording of Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aries (2021) with the Buffalo Philharmonic.
In addition to her performance schedule, Tessa is the newly minted Artistic Director of the Moab Music Festival, Artistic Director of Musical Masterworks, a chamber music presenter in Old Lyme, CT and champions young aspiring artists through her work as Co-host/Creative of NPR’s From the Top. She plays a ca. 1600 G.P. Maggini violin on loan from an anonymous donor through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Upcoming Performances:
Nick lights up concert halls across the U.S. three continents as a solo performer and a member of the Emmy Award-winning Time For Three (TF3) and the artist collective East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO).
As a soloist and with TF3 and ECCO, Nick has performed at Carnegie Hall, New York City’s Lincoln Center, on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Schleswig Holstein Festival outside Hamburg, the Hollywood Bowl, BBC Proms, Ravinia Festival, Melbourne’s Hamer Hall, Wiener Musikverein, Marlboro Music Festival, Sydney Opera House, Hyogo Performing Arts Center outside Osaka, Dvořák Hall at Prague’s Rudolfinum, Hong Kong Cultural Center, and at an array of sports arenas across Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Luxembourg as one of the featured artists on the touring super-show “Night of the Proms.”
He has shared the stage with Joshua Bell, Branford Marsalis, Christoph Eschenbach, Joshua Radin, Keith Lockhart, Alisa Weilerstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, Jake Shimabukuro, Aoife O’Donovan, Marin Alsop, Chris Thile, James Gaffigan, Krzysztof Urbański, Chris Brubeck – who composed a jazz-inspired improvised violin concerto for Nick, Swiss pop/soul star Stefanie Heinzmann, and the legendary Irish rock band Simple Minds.
Nick’s special projects include original film scoring, recording new music by living composers, co-writing, producing, and performing on pop albums. Besides the Land soundtrack and recording sessions with the Philadelphia Orchestra of new compositions by Jennifer Hidgon and Kevin Puts, Nick also plays on the latest release of R&B superstar Summer Walker’s hit record, “Still Over It” (Interscope, 2021).
Joshua is a music educator and performer based out of Moab, Utah. An alumnus of Snow College’s Horne School of Music, he holds a Bachelor of Music with an emphasis in Commercial Music. His journey as a performer began in northern Utah as a percussionist in grade school. Since then he has performed in various collegiate and independent ensembles on Percussion, Tuba, and Trombone. Joshua is the current band director for Grand County High School and Margaret L. Hopkin Middle school in Moab, Utah. In his spare time, he serves as the visual caption head for The Battalion Drum and Bugle Corps.
Susan came to Moab 37 years ago with her husband and dogs, and remains in love with the
land, river and light. She worked and played with Moab Community Theatre for many years
directing, acting, laughing and doing whatever else was needed. She participated in the first
group dedicated to preserving Star Hall as a public space.
Susan holds a MFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah. As a dancer she studied,
performed, taught and choreographed primarily in New York and the Washington, D.C. area.
Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, violin; John Pickford Richards, viola; Jay Campbell, cello
Hailed by The New York Times as “our leading new-music foursome”, the JACK Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected groups performing today. JACK has maintained an unwavering commitment to their mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers, and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music. The quartet was selected as Musical America’s 2018 “Ensemble of the Year”, nominated for GRAMMY Awards for recordings in 2018 & 2022, named to WQXR’s “19 for 19 Artists to Watch”, and awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Through intimate relationships with today’s most creative voices, JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers they perform, leading to a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. The quartet has worked with artists such as Julia Wolfe, George Lewis, Chaya Czernowin, Helmut Lachenmann, Caroline Shaw, and Simon Steen-Andersen. JACK’s all-access initiative, JACK Studio, commissions a selection of artists each year, who will receive money, workshop time, mentorship, and resources to develop new work to be performed and recorded by the quartet. JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of new string quartet music. jackquartet.com