Max Treitler, cello
Max Treitler's musical life was shaped almost entirely by time spent in this area. Over the course of seven summers spent at Kneisel Hall, he was the grateful student of George Sopkin and Barbara Stein Mallow as well as receiving chamber music instruction from Seymour Lipkin and Artur Balsam. After a prolonged and painful series of years spent in the wilds of New York's freelance jungle, he finally saw wisdom, and returned to the Blue Hill Peninsula, where he now happily messes about in the areas of overlap between wine, food and music.
Sylvia Schwartz, violin
Fascinated and deeply inspired by the relationship between music, movement, and dance, violinist and Dalcrozian-in-training Sylvia Schwartz is a passionate chamber musician in both modern and historical performance practices. A native of Boston, MA, Sylvia performs currently with Guts Baroque Duo, L’Esprit Baroque, Los Angeles Baroque, and Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra. She has also played with UCLA Early Music Ensemble, Eudaimonia, A Purposeful Period Band, Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, Amherst Baroque Academy Opera & Festival Orchestras, the folk/baroque band Lizzie and the Flakjackets, and the prog/alt rock bands The Mood Swings and The Fixtures. As a chamber and orchestral musician she has performed across the United States and Europe, including Shostakovich Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the major halls of Boston. She has performed recitals extensively in the Boston area. She has also been a member of the Harvard Summer Chorus, Chorus pro Musica, and The Masterworks Chorale, and sees in her students as well as herself the great benefit singing has for string players.
Sylvia is equally passionate about bringing music to life as a performer and nurturing creative expression and empowerment in her music students. She uses a combination of Suzuki approaches, improvisation, Dalcroze-inspired eurythmics, and Alexander Technique-inspired movement awareness to simultaneously develop fluent musicality, joy in making music, a solid instrumental technique, and musicianship (including reading and theory). A former sufferer of tendonitis, she has a particular interest in addressing and preventing performance injuries, in both beginning and experienced players.
Sylvia earned a Master of Music in Violin Performance from the Longy School of Music, where she studied with Laura Bossert and coached extensively with Dana Maiben, Na’ama Lion, Vivian Montgomery, and Ryan Turner. She is also a certified Suzuki Violin Teacher through Book 3. Sylvia teaches privately, in person and online, and at the Vienna Music Institute. She has also taught at the Josiah Quincy Orchestra Program, Music 101, and the Winchester Community Music School, where she was also Administrative Director of the WCMS Summer Chamber Music Festival. She was thrilled to be Interim Orchestra Director in the fall semester of 2018 at Woodbridge High School, a Grammy Signature School, where teacher, students, and families alike enjoyed exploring baroque performance practice as part of the curriculum..
Raffael Scheck, Cello
Raffael Scheck comes from Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) and is Gibson Professor of modern European history at Colby College, where he has taught since 1994. Before becoming a historian, he studied cello for several semesters with Claude Starck at the conservatory of Zürich (Switzerland). He has specialized in baroque cello and performed with baroque groups in Maine, including the Colby Collegium, BOOM, Music's Quill, and St. Mary Schola. With theorbo player Timothy Burris, Scheck is member of the ensemble ScheckMate, which performs baroque music on period cello and theorbo as well as more recent music for modern cello and guitar. Scheck contributed many times to the Portland Early Music Festival and plays in the Colby Symphony Orchestra.
Daniel Pyle, harpsichord
Dr. Daniel S. Pyle directs the Acadia Choral Society and Harmonie Universelle, a Baroque ensemble that has recorded and toured in the US and Europe. In 2018, he conducted Handel’s Messiah for the Blue Hill Bach Festival. He has performed with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. He has served on the faculties of the University of Kansas, Louisiana State University, and Clayton State University where he taught organ, harpsichord, and music history. He also taught Master classes in Atlanta and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK. He is the organist and Music Director for St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor. Dr. Pyle has forty-five years of experience as a church musician in Episcopal, Lutheran, and Methodist congregations, and has been an instructor in church music at the Candler School of Theology. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Music from the University of Alabama and a Doctorate from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. He has also trained at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam and with Kenneth Gilbert at the Accademia Musical Chigiana.
Chris Nemeth, violin
Chris Nemeth began his formal study of the violin at the age of eight. His principal teachers have included Michael Neumann, Madeline Schatz, Andrew Dawes, Ruben Gonzalez, and David Taylor. Chris has performed with the Missouri Chamber Orchestra, the Monterey Music Festival Orchestra, the Montovani Orchestra, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, the New Philharmonic of Chicago, the Lyric Opera Center for Young Artists, and the Bangor Symphony Orchestra.In addition to playing the violin, Chris is a founding partner of HarborHouse Partners, a management consulting firm focused on maximizing the realized value of mid-market and early-stage companies across a broad range of industries. He recently relocated from Chicago to Sedgwick, ME with his wife (Tara), 2 girls (Marie, Vivienne), and their dog (Zola).
Timothy Burris
Timothy Burris has performed widely in Europe and the US, including appearances with world renowned early music specialists Derek Lee Ragin and Jennifer Lane. Together with the tenor Timothy Neill Johnson, he formed the duo Music’s Quill in 2000. Lute instructor at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Music in Antwerp from 1990-96, he is currently on the applied music faculties of the Portland Conservatory of Music and Colby College, where he directed CD recordings includes his transcription of the Bach Ciaccona for solo violin. Mr. Burris founded the Portland Early Music Festival in 2011 and in 2017 directed it for the sixth time. He holds a soloist’s diploma from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and a PhD from Duke University.
Charles Iner, theorbo
Charles Iner is a Boston-based lutenist, guitarist, educator, and basso continuo performer. He received an MM in Historical Performance at Boston University, where he was awarded a departmental award for outstanding excellence in 2020, and a BA in Music Performance from Benedictine College. Recent performances include collaborations with Capella Clausura, and SoHIP Boston. Charles maintains dual lives as performer and instructor in Boston and the surrounding area.
Phoebe Durand-McDonnell
Phoebe Durand-McDonnell grew up on Mount Desert Island on the coast of Maine, surrounded by serene forests and the sea. She began studying harp at age 10 with Liza Rey Butler, and later attended the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, where she studied with Franziska Huhn and Ann Hobson-Pilot. At age 17, Phoebe received a Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award Scholarship and was featured on the popular radio show From The Top.
Phoebe earned a Bachelor of Music at Oberlin Conservatory, majoring in harp with acclaimed soloist Yolanda Kondonassis. She was principal harpist at the Vancouver Orchestral Institute, National Music Festival, and Pierre Monteux School, and performed as principal in the Oberlin Choir, Oberlin Orchestra, and Oberlin Chamber Orchestra. While at Oberlin, Phoebe discovered a deep love for early music and historical harps. She attended Hudební Lahůdky in the Czech Republic to study baroque harp and improvisation with historical harpist Dr. Maria Cleary.
Phoebe received a 2019 Fulbright Research grant to study with Dr. Cleary at the Haute École de Musique Genève (HEM) in Geneva, Switzerland. Phoebe received her first MA in interprétation spécialisée, pratique des instruments historiques in 2021 from HEM, with intensive study on medieval and renaissance single- and double-rowed harps, Spanish arpa de dos ordenes, baroque arpa doppia, and the harpe organisée, or single-action pedal harp. In the fall of 2022, Phoebe began an MA in musicology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Phoebe is deeply grateful to live in the traditional and current homeland of the Wabanaki Nations.