Rhonda Schwartz , band director at Transit Middle School in the Williamsville CSD, offers a Chamber Music Club that is available to 5th through 8th grade students. Focusing on flexibility of instrumentation, the program allows students to form their own chamber music groups. Musical independence and collaboration, basics of intonation, and beginning and ending pieces without a conductor provide these students with a good foundation for continuing chamber music at a higher level. Rhonda will be presenting a 5th grade chamber group from the Chamber Music Club at the workshop.

Kevin Rocktaschel is also a band director at Transit Middle School in the Williamsville CSD as well as director of the Jazz Band at Williamsville East High School. Kevin exposes high school students to chamber music that they would not ordinarily be able to perform at their own schools by combining students from different schools in the Williamsville district to obtain the instrumentation needed to perform these wonderful pieces. Kevin will be presenting a group comprised of students from Williamsville East High School and Transit Middle School to perform Gounod’s “Petite Suite” at the workshop.

Eileen Yu is the band director at Franklin Middle School and teaches woodwinds at Kenmore West High School in the Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda UFSD. She is also the woodwind coach for the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra, and produced a CD of chamber music last year as the flutist for the Aulos Duo. Eileen works with high-end students from different school districts to form chamber music groups that offer these students an enrichment experience that they cannot always find in their own high schools. She will be presenting Trio 87, who will perform the Poulenc “Trio” for oboe, bassoon, and piano. The performers, principal players from the greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra, are Jennifer Christen, oboist, a junior at Frontier High School; Lauren Yu, bassoonist, a sophomore at Williamsville East High School; and Christopher Ziemba, pianist, a senior at Williamsville East High School. These students, veterans of state-wide performing groups, also attended the NYSSSA School of Orchestral Studies this past summer, where they performed the Poulenc “Trio” at a reception for the Philadelphia Orchestra.