Biographical Information
Members of the Serafin String Quartet

   Kate Ransom, violinist, currently maintains an active schedule of performances around the nation as chamber musician and recitalist. In over two decades as a performing artist, she has presented hundreds of concerts throughout the United States, and in Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Devoted to organizational advancement of music schools, she has held executive positions at music schools since 1990, and is currently President of The Music School of Delaware.

Ms. Ransom is violinist with the Serafin String Quartet, which has recently recorded its first commercial disc with Centaur, expected to be released this season. The Quartet has received superlatives in the press and is preparing for its overseas debut in London, UK in fall 2010. The Serafins regularly perform in locations throughout the United States and have been Ensemble in Residence at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Prior to her work with the Serafins, her debut violin recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall received high praise in the New York Times, where the performance was described this way: “Impassioned… considerable flair…a beautifully regulated account of the Brahms…a suitably misty and dark Debussy… clear articulation and unity of purpose.” Ms. Ransom was a founding and six-year member of the Alexander String Quartet during its early prize-winning years and rise to international recognition.

In addition to her work with the Serafin String Quartet, Ms. Ransom frequently collaborates with other artists and has presented chamber music concerts with founding cellist of the Tokyo Quartet, Sadao Harada, with William Preucil (the Cleveland Orchestra’s concertmaster), with internationally acclaimed guitarist Eliot Fisk, and with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland, Atlanta and National Symphonies, the Empire Brass Quintet, and with the Lark, Ciompi, Blair and Vega String Quartets.

Her performances include those in major chamber music concert halls around the world, including New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Symphony Space and at Lincoln Center; at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; Teatro Real in Madrid; Wigmore Hall and the Warwick Gallery in London; and in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress.

A regular guest artist at the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina Kate Ransom has participated in numerous other festivals (including Bang on a Can, Garth Newel, Sewanee Summer Music Festival, Norfolk Festival, Fanfare Festival, and others). She is currently an adjunct faculty member at Lehigh University, and has been a visiting faculty member at University of Delaware, State University of New York-Potsdam, St. Lawrence University, and Brevard College. She often presents concerts, lecture-recitals and master classes at colleges and universities, having visited scores of locations around the country in this capacity.

Ms. Ransom earned degrees from Yale School of Music (M.M.) and University of Michigan School of Music (B.M., magna cum laude) and pursued post-graduate chamber music studies at The Juilliard School. She was a violin student of Paul Makanowitzky, Szymon Goldberg and Ivan Galamian and a chamber music protégé of the Tokyo String Quartet.

She has been featured on WQXR (New York), Radio London, Radio France, and National Public Radio. Her recording credits include those on Gallo and CRI Records, a recording of works for oboe and strings, Under a Near Sky on the Klavier label, and the Serafin String Quartet recording project with Centaur Records, soon to be released. Ms. Ransom plays a violin made in 1728 by the Venetian master, Sanctus Serafin.

   Timothy Schwarz, violinist, has been hailed by critics around the world for his exemplary technique and passionate musicianship. Timothy began his violin studies at age four, and within nine months he had won his first solo concerto competition. Four years after that he was invited to solo with the Philadelphia Orchestra in their premiere of Kabalevsky’s Violin Concerto in C Major. In 1986 he began his studies with Dorothy DeLay at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music under a Starling Scholarship. He continued his studies at the Peabody Conservatory, where the National Endowment of the Arts gave him an award for Best Individual Artist in Maryland in 1994. The next year Mr. Schwarz won the Artistic Ambassador Competition in Washington, D.C., which resulted in a nine-week solo tour throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The concerts were a tremendous success, and resulted in several other tours between 1996 and 2001. During this time Mr. Schwarz performed over 75 recitals in 20 different countries, performed and spoke on dozens of television and radio stations, commissioned numerous works combining Arab and American melodies, and received accolades from American Ambassadors and Middle East Ambassadors for his contribution to the Peace Process.

Mr. Schwarz’s recording career spans ten years, with solo albums distributed by EMI, Marquis Classics, and Centaur Records. His latest CD (distributed by Centaur Records) was hailed by the American Record Guide as “Good enough to be the only recording in your collection if you can only have one”. In 2005 he joined the Serafin String Quartet, which performs regularly throughout the United States, including venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Highlands-Cashiers Festival in North Carolina. Their first CD release for Centaur Records will be available in 2010. In 2007 Mr. Schwarz completed his Doctorate in Violin Performance from Temple University, and that same year was appointed Head of the String Department at Lehigh University, where he currently teaches. He plays a violin by Carlo Antonio Testore (1741), generously on loan from Dr. William Stegeman.

   Ana Tsinadze, Viola, is an active chamber musician, recitalist, soloist and orchestral player. She joined Serafin String Quartet in February 2007, and the quartet is a primary and central part of her varied artistic activities. She is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Temple University, and, in addition to her busy concert schedule, she also maintains a teaching studio and is devoted to the development of young musicians.

Ms. Tsinadze was born in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, and began her music studies there at the age of six (first learning the violin). She benefited from intensive studies at the Zakharia Paliashvili Special Music School for exceptionally gifted children, where she worked with renowned Soviet musicians (including professors Alexander Begalishvili and Boris Chiaureli – desciples of the famed Yamploslki school). Graduating with the Gold Medal in 1987, Ms. Tsinadze performed with various ensembles, and was a prize-winner in numerous solo competitions, winning the Tbilisi Solo Instrumental Competition. These successes and training experiences established her resolve to choose music over her other passion, biology.

After entering Tbilisi State Conservatory, Ms. Tsinadze continued with viola studies from the celebrated Soviet Georgian pedagogue, Shota Shanidze. During the conservatory years (1987-93) she took another major prize, and performed with the State Symphony Orchestra (a viola transcription of Saent-Saens cello concerto). By 1989, Ms. Tsinadze had been offered assistant principal positions with the State Symphony Orchestra and the Tbilisi Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, both of which toured extensively throughout the world. In 1994, she accepted a full teaching position at the Tbilisi State Conservatory.

Ms. Tsinadze left her native country a year later due to the difficult economic situation in the Republic of Georgia, and moved to the United States to join the Honors String Quartet at Rowan University (NJ). Under the tutelage of Dr. Bertram Greenspan, this award-winning quartet performed extensively in the tri-state area. Her American education includes a Master of Music degree from Louisiana State University, where she studied with Dr. Jerzy Kosmala. Ms. Tsinadze plays a Carlo Antonio Testore viola from 1752, courtesy of Dr. William Stegeman.

   Lawrence Stomberg, cellist, Cellist Lawrence Stomberg enjoys a wide ranging career as soloist, chamber musician and pedagogue. In addition to his work with the Serafin String Quartet, he has also performed as soloist and chamber musician as faculty at the Eastern Music Festival and Texas Music Festival, and was a founding member of the piano trios Trilogy and the Johannes Trio as well as the Brightmusic concert series in Oklahoma City, OK.

In October of 1999, his New York recital debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall was hailed in Strings Magazine for its "style and elegance" and "lyrical expressiveness". As a committed performer of contemporary music, Stomberg has premiered works at New York's Miller Theater and Merkin Hall, and, in 2000, released a debut recording of solo contemporary music entitled The American Cello. In addition to this disc, he has also recorded for the VAI and Centaur labels.

In 2006, Stomberg embarked on a concert tour of the United States and China, performing solo recitals of modern works and presenting master classes for conservatory students. As an orchestral performer, Stomberg served as Assistant Principal Cellist in the Oklahoma City Philharmonic from 2002 until 2004, after four years as a member of the Tulsa Philharmonic. He was a student of Shirley Trepel at Rice University, where he graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Music degree, and continued his studies with Timothy Eddy, receiving his Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts Degrees at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.br>
An active and dedicated pedagogue, Stomberg served on the faculties at Truman State University in Missouri and Oklahoma State University before joining the music faculty at the University of Delaware in 2004 where he is Associate Professor of Cello. He lives in Delaware with his wife, cellist Jennifer Crowell Stomberg, and their three children.

Lawrence Stomberg plays a School of Testore cello, circa 1727, obtained with the generous assistance of Dr. William Stegeman.

John Dee, Oboe, is the Professor of Oboe Studies and the Bill A. Nugent Endowed Professor of Music Performance at the University of Illinois. He was Principal Oboe of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra and Florida Grand Opera Orchestra from 1981-2004 and Professor of Oboe Studies at the Harid Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton from 1992-2004. Mr. Dee was Professor of Oboe at the University of Miami from 1986-1998, and Principal Oboe of the Florida Orchestra in Tampa from 1978-1981. He was also Principal Oboe the Chicago Chamber Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

As Principal Oboe of the Florida Philharmonic, he was featured in the Alamo weekly national radio broadcasts on over 140 radio stations and his solo performances of the Mozart and Strauss Concertos were met with critical acclaim. The Miami Herald wrote, “His shading and inflection were worthy of major recording artists who trot the globe.” His third solo CD recording,“Under a Near Sky,” was released internationally by Klavier Records featuring the Mozart and Krommer Oboe Quartets, and a world premier written for him by Clark McAlister for oboe, guitar and string quartet. The International Double Reed Society CD critic wrote, ”I was delighted to encounter Robert Bloom’s recording Robert Sprenkle’s, and later John Mack’s version, but even happier to recommend John Dee’s interpretation. John Dee has that not-too-bright, not-too-dark, just right, liquid, melting tone that becomes a malleable vehicle for discourse, while retaining its own timbral beauty.” He has recorded on the Klavier, Altarus, Spectrum, CDS, Harmonia Mundi, CBS Masterworks and Philips record labels.

Mr. Dee has performed and recorded with the Chicago Symphony with conductors, Carlo Maria Guilini, James Levine, Claudio Abbado, and Sir Georg Solti and served as Principal Oboe of the Ravinia Festival Orchestra for many years with Eric Kunzel. He has performed and taught at the Sewanee Music Festival, the Highlands Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina and the Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire. He has performed and recorded with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and has traveled to Mexico with the Lyric Opera of Chicago. In addition to performing with Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras in various opera productions and solo performances, he performed with Jose Carreras and the National Symphony in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. In Italy, he was guest soloist with the I Solisti Aquilani String Orchestra, and in Japan he assisted the Yamaha Corporation in the development of their professional model oboe.

This summer he performed with Sinfonia da Camara in Beijing and Shanghai, China taught and played in Seoul and Buson, Korea in 2006 with the “IQ” Woodwind Quartet and spent the 2006 and 2007 summers working in Spain with the University of Illinois Burgos Chamber Music Festival.

Mr. Dee is featured on the internationally syndicated television show, ”The Joy of Music,” with organist and host Diane Bish. His performances were recorded in Vancouver and Victoria B.C., throughout Alaska, and in California at Saint Mary’s Cathedral and the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Seven one-hour television shows are to be released internationally featuring John as oboe soloist.

Throughout his thirty years in music performance, John has worked with and/or recorded with many artists including: Renee Fleming,Dawn Upshaw, Kiri TeKanawa, Cecilia Bartoli, Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Yahudi Mehnuin, Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein, Uto Ugi, Isaac Perlman, Pinkhas Zuckerman, Yo-Yo-Ma, Lynn Harrell, Janos Starker, Mistlav Rostropovich, the Alexander, Miami, Ying and Lark string quartets, Van Cliburn, Martha Argarich, Andre Watts, Emanual Axe, Yefim Bronfman, Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan, Linda Ronstad, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Nelson Riddle, Peter Nero, , Doc Severensen, Wynton Marsalis and Ella Fitzgerald. He has received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the National Endowment for the Arts several times and appears in the “Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.” He has been a frequent guest of NPR’s “Performance Today,” Adelphia and Comcast Television in performances, interviews and as an advocate for the Arts.

Mr. Dee’s oboe students have won oboe and English horn positions with such orchestras as the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Bangkok Philharmonic, Vera Cruz Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Eugene Symphony, Portland Opera and Ballet Orchestras, Tucson Symphony and Ashville Symphony Orchestras.

Marianne Gythfeldt, Clarinet, a native of Norway, has distinguished herself as an adventurous performer and teacher of clarinet. She earned the position of Assistant Professor of Clarinet at the University of Delaware after fifteen years of professional life in New York City's finest chamber ensembles, orchestras, and educational institutions. Early clarinet studies began in the Oslo community bands, and continued in the All-State bands and orchestras of New Jersey. Ms. Gythfeldt graduated from the Eastman School of Music and SUNY at Stony Brook with the Bachelor and Masters degrees, as a student of Stanley Hasty and Charles Neidich, and worked with electro-acoustic composers as a Doctoral student at IRCAM in Paris.

Marianne Gythfeldt's musical life includes all aspects of clarinet performance. She has become known as a diverse and flexible musician, equally at-home in traditional, contemporary and alternative/cross-over genres. She is the clarinetist of Zephyros Winds and Del'Arte Woodwind Quintet, and performs with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Critics have noted her exceptional ability with contemporary technique, and as a clarinetist who sings through the instrument.

Recent performances have included a solo appearance at the 2005 Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, a tour to Europe with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and multi-media productions of Frank Zappa and Paquito D'Rivera's music at the Bergen Festival in Norway and Bremen Festival in Germany. Marianne appears in concert at summer festivals across the country, including Tanglewood, Chamber Music Northwest, June in Buffalo, Cooperstown Music Festival, and Skaneateles festival in New York State, and has made several appearances at the Mt. Desert Island Chamber Music Festival in Maine. Ms. Gythfeldt is also on the faculty of the Chamber Music Festival and Composer's Forum of the East, which takes place at Bennington College every summer.

Ms. Gythfeldt can be heard on recordings by CBS Masterworks, CRI, Albany, and Koch. She recorded two solo clarinet pieces by Robert Morris, on Albany Records, which was released in 2005. In addition to performing and teaching, Ms. Gythfeldt raises money through grant-writing for special projects. The Koch recording of Feldman's works, performed by New Millennium Ensemble was one such project, and she is currently working on a project with Zephyros Winds to record the unrecorded chamber pieces of Wolfgang Rihm.

Robert Maggio, Composer, has had his music called "lyrical, passionate, melodic, and rhythmically charged." Hailed as a composer of music that is “smart, vital, and inventive” (Philadelphia Inquirer), Maggio has created a substantial body of works in nearly every genre, each creating a unique connection between the composer’s “wondrously eclectic vocabulary” (New York Times) and the demands of a diverse body of commissions. His orchestral music has been performed by the Boston Pops, Philadelphia Orchestra and the Atlanta and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Current commissions include an orchestral work to celebrate Longwood Garden's Centennial celebration in July 2006 and a work for the Philadelphia Gay Men's Chorus to celebrate their 25th Anniversary Season. Robert is a Professor of Music Theory and Composition in the School of Music at West Chester University. A graduate of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, he lives in Lambertville with his partner, the artist Tony LaSalle, and their daughter Annamaria.

Richard Prior, Composer & Conductor, began his musical training in his native England, where he received a B.A. from Leeds University and a D.M.A in both conducting and composition from Nottingham University. His performances have been reviewed in the professional press as having "stirring conviction," "precision" and "stylishness and flexibility" while another article cited the "meteoric rise" of ensembles under his direction. Dr. Prior's principal teachers and mentors include Sir Simon Rattle, William LaRue Jones, James Fulkerson and Philip Wilby.

Previous faculty appointments include Oklahoma State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, Davidson College, Franklin & Marshall College and St. Catherine’s College (Oxford University), where he was the 1997 Visiting Fellow-in-Music. Prior was a selected participant in the 2001 Pierre Boulez Professional Training Workshop at Carnegie Hall, NY and the 2002 Conductors’ Workshop of America; he was the recipient of the OSU 2003 Wise-Diggs-Berry Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence in the Arts and the 2004 Golden Torch Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Leadership and Service.

Guest appearances include concerts with the Charlotte Symphony, the New Orleans Civic Symphony, and the Tulsa Signature Symphony. In demand as an adjudicator and clinician, Prior has conducted numerous honor orchestras and at festivals and conventions, including the Midwest Convention of 2003. Most recently, he was invited to serve as conductor of the 2006 Delaware All-State Orchestra. He holds professional memberships in the American Symphony Orchestra League, the Conductors Guild, BMI, GMEA, MENC, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Kappa Kappa Psi. Prior is Past President of the College Orchestra Directors Association (CODA), South Central Division.

Highly active as a composer, Prior’s music has been performed, recorded and broadcast widely in Europe and throughout North America, with several works featured at national conventions and international festivals. He served as the composer-in-residence for the 2003 Association for Music in International Schools Festival (AMIS) at the Hague, in the Netherlands; his work for orchestra Cimarron Portrait was premiered at the 2003 Midwest Convention and his Concertino for Horn and Wind Ensemble was featured at the 2004 regional CBDNA conference in Atlanta with horn virtuoso Eric Ruske.

Prior joined the faculty of Emory University in 2004 as Director of Orchestral Studies. He conducts the University Symphony Orchestra and serves as Coordinator of the Emory Chamber Music Program; he is also the founder and conductor of the Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Sandra Rivers, Piano, enjoys a reputation today as one of the foremost performing artists of her generation. She has concertized throughout the world and has appeared at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Tanglewood, Aspen, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Kennedy Center and on the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center. She has performed in most of the major halls in the world.

In addition to her solo career, Ms. Rivers has become widely known for her concert partnerships with many of the world’s leading soloists including Itzhak Perlman, Kathleen Battle, Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell, Cho-Liang Lin, Kyung-Wha Chung, Sarah Chang and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, among others.

Her collaborations with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Sarah Chang have taken her twice to the “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno respectively.

In the 2007-2008 season, Ms. Rivers will appear with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony Orchestra and with the Oakland East Bay Symphony Orchestra, Michael Morgan, conducting. She will be a guest artist for two chamber concerts in Toledo,appear in a duo-recital with the concertmaster of the Las Vegas Philharmonic in Las Vegas and be a guest artist for two chamber concerts at Chamber Music Alive! In Sacramento, California.

She has recordings on the following labels: Teldec, RCA Victor Red Seal, EMI/Angel, Pony Canyon, CBS Masterworks, Musical Heritage and Zafiro (Spain).

Ms. Rivers is currently on the keyboard faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Maurice Wright, composer, Described by the New Grove Dictionary as "extremely prolific," Maurice Wright's work is a synthesis of his diverse interests: vocal and instrumental music (new and old); technology and acoustics; and drama and film. Composer and critic Kyle Gann, writes: “Wright’s ideas – thoughtful, gritty, and quick to break into fantasy – develop within a well-calculated symmetry. To follow this interplay of textures as they shift, dart away, and return, is to hear the qualities that make Wright one of the most subtle and eloquent of recent composers.”

Outstanding ensembles and soloists, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Emerson String Quartet, the American Brass Quintet, the Riverside Symphony, and the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, have commissioned work from Wright, who has been honored with awards from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Recordings on New World, Innova and CRI include his compositions.

Wright is founder and curator of the electroacoustic music and video series CYBERSOUNDS, which presents concerts of media compositions old and new At Temple University’s Rock Hall. He collaborates with video artist Peter d’Agostino, providing music and sound designs for projects including Y00 (YearZEROZERO), Between Earth & Sky, and @Silicon.Valley. Working with the outstanding American soprano, Laura Heimes, Wright is creating a series of settings of the poems of William F. Van Wert (1945-2003) whose texts constitute a large portion of The Lyric’s Tale, "an entertainment" for baritone voice, actress, chamber orchestra and projected video, that plays themes of religion, existentialism and science against one another in a fast-paced, 45 minute work featuring dozens of characters, including Galileo, Sigmund Freud and Martin Luther.

Increasingly interested in the folk music of Scotland and its emigration to the American Applachians, Wright has composed a number of works based on this music: Fantasy Meditation on “Kingsfold”, Song Cycle (“Crow, Black Chicken”) Plaints and Airs and Variations on “Adieu, Dundee.” Since 1981 Wright has contributed to the solo repertoire of percussionists, with Marimba Music, Set-up Music, Movement in Time, Grand Duo, and Concertpiece for Marimba and Orchestra.

Maurice Wright was born in 1949 in Front Royal, Virginia, a small town situated between the forks of the Shenandoah River and near the Blue Ridge Mountains; he began composing at age 10. He attended Duke University and Columbia University, where he explored diverse interests that included music composition, computer science and film, receiving a doctoral degree in 1988.

Wright was introduced to the craft and technology of film when he met Director Gene Searchinger in 1976 and contributed an electronic score for an unusual film about recycled aluminum, "Metallic Tales: The Social Life of a Non-Ferrous Metal," which received a Golden Eagle Award. Over the next two decades Wright continued to work with Searchinger, most recently contributing music and special sound for the three-program series about linguistics, "The Human Language," broadcast in the United States and Japan.

His interests in image were incorporated into two electronic operas: The Trojan Conflict (1989), and Dr. Franklin, an opera about Benjamin Franklin, produced in Philadelphia in 1990 as part of the Electrical Matter Festival. In both works a video screen was embedded in the set, and short scenes written and directed by Wright were integrated into the operatic fabric. Since then he has experimented with visualization of musical sound and with digital animation, making his first professional presentation as an animator in March, 1996. Shortly thereafter he was commissioned by the Network for New Music to create a work for computer animation and computer sound for their 1996-1997 season in Philadelphia. The resulting work, "Taylor Series," was described in the Philadelphia Inquirer as "visionary" and "lyric." Recent work, which he calls “sound animation” has been seen and heard in festivals in San Diego, Miami, Eugene (Oregon), Richmond (Virginia), DeKalb (Illinois), Philadelphia, Beijing and the United Kingdom.

Wright is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Music Composition at Temple University's Boyer College Of Music and Dance, where he co-founded the Interactive Arts and Technology Laboratory and the Presser Center for Creative Music Technology. He served as Interim Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Financial Aid and Technology in 2004, and is now Director of Graduate Studies and Coordinator of the Music Composition Programs at Temple. In 2006 he received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. He recently served as Composer in Residence at the Center for Advanced Music at Istanbul Technical University, and will teach electroacoustic music at the University of Pennsylvania as Visiting Professor for the Fall Term, 2006.