Experience the Intimate Harmony of Chamber Music

Serenata of Santa Fe’s professional musicians bring you rarely performed and recently composed chamber music as well as loved masterpieces.

COVID Message Video Postcards

COVID-19 Update

Serenata of Santa Fe is not rehearsing together for concerts due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, we’ll strive to maintain community and connection virtually through our Musical Postcard Project.

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We appreciate your patience as we plan a season that is safe for the Fall of 2021.

Serenata will forge ahead through the current challenges, but your donations are critical at this moment to ensure we can stay funded and work to bring classical music back to our community post-pandemic. We ask for your support, as we continue to navigate these unprecedented times.

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Musical Postcard Project

With the cessation of all live concerts due to the COVID 19 pandemic, it became vital for Serenata to remain connected our with audience and to continue its mission of making important and personal chamber music available to the Santa Fe community.

Each postcard is 32 – 36 minutes in length.

Elemental Acts

Elemental Acts features music for solo instruments performed by Six of Serenata’s musicians and arrived at the end of September.

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Pairings

Pairings was born in mid October and represents iterations of two entities together, such as musicians in a pod, composer and performer, or pairs of works.

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Vistas

Vistas was produced in late November and reflects individual landscapes now, either physical or psychological.

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Lucian Avalon

Oboe

Oboist Lucian Avalon, 23, has enjoyed an eclectic musical career beginning at age 6, which has taken him from Zimbabwean marimba, to Santa Fe Opera vocalist, to classical oboist. He is currently completing his Masters of Music degree at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Elaine Douvas, with additional instruction from Nathan Hughes and Linda Strommen (Oboe), Richard Dallessio and Scott Hostetler (English Horn), and is a proud recipient of both the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship and the Michael S. Currier Scholarship. For two years he attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy where he studied with Daniel Stolper. Upon graduation he received the Academy’s highest honor, the IAA Young Artist Award, and was named a National YoungArts Foundation Honorable Mention winner. Previously he studied with Pamela Epple, Artistic Director of Serenata of Santa Fe, for seven years.

Lucian has played under the baton of many influential conductors including Alan Gilbert, David Robertson, Jeffrey Milarsky, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Gary Wedow, Edward Gardner, Robert Spano, and Hugh Wolff, and has performed with the Juilliard Orchestras, New York String Orchestra, New World Symphony (FL), Montclair (NJ) Orchestra, Boulder (CO) Symphony, Music and Medicine Orchestra (NY), New York Youth Symphony, and all of the Aspen Music Festival and School orchestras. His chamber performances include the New Juilliard Ensemble, AXIOM, and Aspen Contemporary Ensemble for new music, and Juilliard Chamberfest 2018, Cantori New York, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, and the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall.

Recently, Lucian was recognized as a National Finalist and the Texas Regional Winner of the National Society of Arts & Letters 2018 Woodwind Competition, a Juilliard 2018 Concerto Competition Finalist, a finalist for the Pittsburgh (PA) Symphony and for the New World Symphony (FL).

His summer studies have included the Aspen Music Festival and School, Brevard Music Center, Sewanee Music Center, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, and National Orchestral Institute. He has played side-by-side with leading oboists, including Elaine Douvas, Alex Klein, Mingjia Liu, and Elizabeth Koch-Tiscione; and has performed in Master Classes with Francois Leleux, Olivier Stankiewicz, Stefan Schilli, and John Ferrillo.

Born and raised in the small, rural village of Coyote, New Mexico, Lucian recognizes the value of community. Since middle school he has organized concerts to fund local farmers markets, homeless shelters, and the Santa Fe Food Depot. In NYC, he mentors students from the NY Youth Symphony, Juilliard Pre-College and the Music Advancement Program, (serving underprivileged and underrepresented students), and regularly performs in the Juilliard Lab Orchestra with student conductors.

In addition to oboe, Lucian was trained as a competitive figure skater and became a USFS Moves Gold Medalist in 2013.

Kathleen McIntosh

Harpsichord

Like most musicians, Kathleen McIntosh found most of her 2020 engagements cancelled. The Postcard project has been a delightful respite, and she was also invited to “layer in” a continuo part for a production of the Havana based group, Conjunto de Musica Antigua Ars Longa. Another such project awaits with Cuban recorder virtuoso, Raul Zaballa, for a festival in Chile. She is nearly through Bach’s monumental “Art of Fugue”, perhaps for a future performance.

Phoenix Avalon

Violin

Phoenix Avalon, is passionate about his study of the violin, being the proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship at the Juilliard School, studying with Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin.

Previously, he was a scholarship student at the Cleveland Institute of Music Young Artist Program with Jaime Laredo and Jan Sloman. Phoenix studied chamber music with members of the Cavani and Cleveland Quartets and attended the Meadowmount School of Music and the Perlman Music Program.

Phoenix has enjoyed solo performances with the Jena Philharmonic, the Cleveland POPS Orchestra, the Boulder Symphony, the Arapahoe Philharmonic, the New Mexico Philharmonic, and Performance Santa Fe Orchestras. He has been featured on USA national radio programs Performance Today and From the Top, as well as giving a solo presentation for TedXABQ.

Phoenix has won numerous competitions, most recently receiving first place at the Louis Spohr International Violin Competition, third place at the Johansen International Competition and Silver Medal at The Fischoff National Chamber Music Association as a member of the Razumovsky Quartet. He is honored to also be a recipient of a 2019 EMCY Prize.

Actively dedicated to community service, Phoenix has played for numerous fundraisers and outreach programs, and has developed and toured an interactive presentation of classical music history for school children as part of ‘From the Top’s Leadership Training’. Phoenix is grateful to be playing on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume violin, c. 1850, generously loaned by Kenneth Warren and Son Ltd. of Chicago. In addition to violin, enjoys philosophy, history and cooking.

Mike Kelley

Viola

Mike Kelley, Apple Hill String Quartet violist and Co-Artistic Director at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, graduated from The Walnut Hill School for the Arts and has received degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and The Juilliard School. His teachers have included Leonard Matczynski, Jeffrey Irvine, and Karen Tuttle.

A Primrose International Viola Competition finalist at the age of 18, Mike joined the resident ensemble of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music three years later and has been performing and touring internationally with the group for over 20 years. He is the Music Director and Coordinator of Apple Hill’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop where he directs sessions, performs concerts, and coaches chamber music throughout the summer in New Hampshire.

An active composer, Mike has been a Teaching Fellow in Electronic Music at Juilliard, and a guest lecturer at Harvard on the subject of electronic dance music. Under a pop-disco alias, he has performed worldwide in clubs such as Webster Hall (NYC), the O2 (London), and Berghain (Berlin), and has written and produced music for many pop acts, including Metro Area, Caribou, Madonna, and Pharrell. His albums have been selected for the “best of the decade” lists of music magazines Stylus and Fact, and have been highly recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, and the Guardian.

Max Zeugner

Double Bass

Bassist Max Zeugner is currently Associate Principal Bass with the New York Philharmonic. Previously he served as Principal Bass with the BBC Philharmonic and the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and was a member of the Netherlands Philharmonic. A native of Worcester, MA, Max attended the Juilliard School and Boston University before working as a chamber and orchestral musician in Europe for 8 years. He now resides in New York City, where he teaches at the Mannes College of Music and is an avid tennis player.

Kathlene Ritch

Soprano

Kathlene is comfortable performing in many different genres – early music, choral, and sacred, to musical theater and cabaret. From having grown up in church choirs and summer stock, with a year in Salzburg studying music after high school, to the halls of the University of Texas in Austin, Kathlene found a common thread in whatever style she was performing…the connection with the audience.

After earning a Bachelor’s of Music Studies degree from the University of Texas at Austin, she moved to New York City where she sang with such noted ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, London Sinfonietta, and the Vienna Philharmonic. In 2001, she made her solo debut at Lincoln Center with the American Symphony Orchestra in Liszt’s Dante’s Inferno.

Kathlene’s true passion, musical theater, has been a lifelong pursuit. Her first role came at the age of 4, when she was cast as Marta in The Sound of Music. Some of her favorite roles include Sandy in Grease, Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, Maria in The Sound of Music, and Eliza in My Fair Lady. Two of her career highlights were performing Sweeney Todd at Lincoln Center with George Hearn, Patti Lupone and Neil Patrick Harris, as well as the concert version of Carousel at Carnegie Hall with Audra McDonald and Hugh Jackman. She is also an experienced music director, having led from behind the piano for Oklahoma!, Follies, Working, The Fantasticks, and Godspell, to name a few.

In 2011, Kathlene moved to Santa Fe to be the accompanist for the Santa Fe High School Choral Department and the Director of the Royal School of Church Music at the Church of the Holy Faith. In 2012, she became an on-air announcer for Classical 95.5 KHFM Albuquerque/Santa Fe, for which she has received a New Mexico Broadcasting Award. In 2016, Kathlene joined the voice faculty at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design in their musical theater program. She still continues to sing with such groups as the Santa Fe Desert Chorale and the Grammy-winning ensemble Conspirare, with whom she is a featured soloist in their PBS special “Conspirare, a Company of Voices” and their most recently Grammy-nominated “Considering Matthew Shepard” CD.

Joanna Jenner

Violin

Joanna Jenner is a violinist, violist, and teacher born in Seattle who studied at the University of Washington, the Juilliard School and the Mannes College of Music.

1972 saw her becoming a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and since that time she has toured internationally with them as well as making between 40 and 50 recordings.

She has also been a member of the Orchestra of the 20^th Century, the International Trio that were resident at the University of Northern Iowa, a founding member of the Roerich String Quartet and The Empire Trio, with whom she performed in the studio and toured nationally.

Very involved in music festivals on a national and international level, she founded the Riverrun Chamber Players who are a resident ensemble at the Vermont Festival of the Arts. She has appeared as a soloist on many occasions and has also commissioned several violin works.

Her album tally is extensive and not restricted to one genre of music with her work being heard on Blue Minor by Elizabeth Brown, Golden Days by Jerry Hadley & Mario Lanza, Gershwin’s Worldby Herbie Hancock, A Set Pieces: The Music of Charles Ives by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Best Of… by Marcus Miller, Dress Casual by Mandy Patinkin, PNYC by Portishead, and Hideaway by David Sanborn to name a few.

In the field of musical education she has been the artist-in-residence at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, on the faculty of Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Bennington College, Mannes College of Music Preparatory Division and the University of Iowa, and held masterclasses at various venues.

Emily Cole

Violin

Emily Cole joined the Oregon Symphony in 2011. An avid chamber musician, Emily is a member of the Mousai Remix string quartet with fellow Oregon Symphony musicians Shin-Young Kwon, Jennifer Arnold, and Marilyn de Oliveira. She has also performed locally with Third Angle Ensemble, fEARnoMUSIC, 45th Parallel, and Northwest New Music. During the summer months, Emily has performed with the Oregon Bach Festival, the Seattle Opera, and the Apollo Music Festival. Emily is on the faculty at Lewis & Clark College; she also coaches chamber musicians with Portland Summer Ensembles and Seattle’s Music Northwest.

Emily earned her M.M. from the University of North Texas, where she held a teaching fellowship and studied with Emanuel Borok. She received her B.M. from the University of Texas at Austin, studying with Brian Lewis. A native of Seattle, Emily was also a longtime student of former Seattle Symphony concertmaster Ilkka Talvi.

Elise Kuder

Violin

Called “first-rate” by the Boston Globe, Elise Kuder is the first violinist of the Apple Hill String Quartet and a Co-Artistic Director of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music where she has been a resident musician since 1998. With Apple Hill, Elise has performed and taught in venues as diverse as the Curtis Institute of Music, Moscow Conservatory, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Zipper Hall at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, the Institutes of Music in Damascus and Alleppo, Gitameit Music Institute in Burma, the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica in Lima, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the Ketermaya refugee camp outside of Beirut, and the General Store in Harrisville, New Hampshire. With the Apple Hill String Quartet, described as “dashing and extraordinary” by The Strad magazine, recent studio recordings include a premiere of Dana Lyn’s Suite for Fiddler and String Quartet, a revival of Ahmed Adnan Saygun’s String Quartet No. 1, and transcriptions of Purcell Fantasias. Elise serves as a Music Director for Apple Hill’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop.

Elise is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory and The Juilliard School where she studied with Marilyn McDonald and Joel Smirnoff. She attended the Tanglewood Music Center where she won the Kohn Award for outstanding musicianship and served as concertmaster of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra under conductors Robert Spano and Bernard Haitink. As a Fulbright Scholar, Elise studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England with David Takeno.

In her spare time away from Apple Hill, she has performed at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem with disco legends Patrick Adams, Black Ivory, and Donna McGhee and teaches violin in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire.

Diva Goodfriend-Koven

Flute & Piccolo

Diva Goodfriend-Koven has performed worldwide as a soloist, in chamber music, and with major orchestras including the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, American Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, NY City Opera, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra. She lives in New York City where she is a long time member of the ABT orchestra, American Composer’s Orchestra, and American Symphony Orchestra.

A founding member of the new music group Locrian Chamber Players and Ragdale Ensemble, she frequently performs with Serenata Santa Fe.

Diva has recorded film scores, CDs with pop stars including Sting and John Legend, appeared on Letterman and SNL, backing up Diana Krall, Willie Nelson, Lena Horne, and Lucianno Pavarotti among others.

Diva has been a member of the Bard Music Festival for twenty-eight seasons and has been featured on NPR’s “Performance Today”.

As a teacher she has given master classes and coached at Manhattan School of Music, Mannes School of Music, Montclair State (NJ), and at Carnegie Mellon University. She was a faculty member at the Apple Hill Music Center for ten years. She has recorded her own CD titled “Good Friends”.

Since the pandemic, Diva has created/participated in video performances with American Symphony, American Ballet Theater, Locrian Chamber Players, American Composers Orchestra, Queens Symphony, and Serenata of Santa Fe.

Experience the Intimate Harmony of Chamber Music

COVID-19 Update

Support Us

Musical Postcard Project

Elemental Acts

Pairings

Vistas

Contact Us

Get the latest updates

Lucian Avalon

Oboe

Kathleen McIntosh

Harpsichord

Phoenix Avalon

Violin

Mike Kelley

Viola

Max Zeugner

Double Bass

Kathlene Ritch

Soprano

Joanna Jenner

Violin

Emily Cole

Violin

Elise Kuder

Violin

Diva Goodfriend-Koven

Flute & Piccolo