With your help, we aim to raise $2,500 to support our subscription concert series, educational initiatives, and outreach programs that make chamber music accessible to audiences of all ages.
Your generosity helps us:
• Bring exceptional chamber music to our community
• Provide outreach programs that inspire young listeners
• Offer opportunities for families to experience live performance
• Keep this art form vibrant, relevant, and deeply rooted in our region
9:00 am: Coffee and baked goods
9:30: Relaxing movement (outdoors, weather permitting)
9:45: Technique class: focus on shifting (using the Sevcik method)
10:30: Large and small ensembles, coached session
Noon: Lunch by Agnès Maurer: each day a different ethnic theme
1:00 pm: Games or small group sessions with special focus
1:30: Chamber Music coached session
2:30: Chamber Music coached session
3:30: Sight reading sessions
4:30: Dismissal
Our Pig Roast Basket Has Everything You Need for a Picnic!
Includes:
Plus 4 each:
This would also make a wonderful gift for a friend, family member, college student, or bride and groom!
Lauded by the Washington Post for her “burnish tone,” cellist Dr. Ai-Lin Hsieh is a versatile musician with a repertoire that ranged from the timeless classics to the avant-garde. She is equally accomplished as a soloist, chamber and orchestra musician.
Dr. Hsieh began her early music training on both piano and cello. After receiving the Bachelor of Music degree in cello performance from Soochow University in her native Taiwan, she continued her study at the Eastman School of Music and earned a Master of Music degree. In 2000, she was admitted by the University of Maryland, College Park with Graduate Assistantship to pursue her doctoral study. Five years later, she was awarded Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Cello Performance. Her primary teachers include such prominent performers and pedagogues as Steven Doane, Evelyn Elsing and Kenneth Slowik. She also received her chamber music coaching from members of the Guarneri Quartet and the Ying Quartet.
Among the many solo and chamber performances she has given, noteworthy are her collaboration with the late Mistislav Rostropovitch in a cello octet performance in 1997 and her two-week tour in China performing as a member of the Pennsylvania Chamber Ensemble (now Gabriel Chamber Ensemble) in 2019. In addition to chamber music, she is currently the Assistant Principal Cellist of the York Symphony in Pennsylvania. Prior to this appointment, she performed with several orchestras in Asia and America. Their concerts have brought her to major cities including Los Angeles, New York, Taipei and Tokyo.
Aside from her deep interest in chamber performance, Dr. Hsieh has a passion for training a new generation of cellists. She was a cello instructor in the D.C. Youth Orchestra program and at Montgomery College in Maryland. She coached chamber music at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music. She also served as an adjunct faculty at Lebanon Valley College. Currently, she is an adjunct faculty teaching applied cello lessons at both Millersville and Messiah University, and runs a private cello studio in Hummelstown, PA.
John Walthausen has been heard across Europe, North and South America, and Asia as an organ and harpsichord soloist and ensemble artist. He holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, and the Schola Cantorum of Basel, Switzerland, and from 2015 to 2016 he served as Organist in Residence at Sapporo Concert Hall in Hokkaido, Japan, which released his debut album, De Fil en Aiguille. In 2012 he won first prize at the Pierre de Manchicourt International Organ Competition in Béthune, France, a competition devoted to North German music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Praised as “a brilliant young artist” in The Diapason, John appears regularly with groups throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, including Washington Bach Consort, Variant 6, the Philadelphia Bach Collegium, and Tempesta di Mare. He also serves as Director of Music at the First Presbyterian Church of Germantown and worked in 2024 as Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Organ Festival.
A Philadelphia native, Elena Kauffman maintains an active career as a performing and teaching artist. She is the cellist and manager of Blue Line Quartet, and she performs frequently with Fairmount String Quartet, Elysium String Quartet, and many other chamber ensembles in the Philadelphia area. She is the principal cellist and personnel manager of the Wayne Oratorio Society and Haverford-Bryn Mawr Chorale Orchestra, and she has performed with the Philadelphia Ballet Orchestra, Reading Symphony, Bay Atlantic Symphony, Riverside Symphonia, and West Jersey Chamber Orchestra.
Praised for her “customary acuity and beauty” (Broad Street Review), Elena has a passion for historical string instruments, and she performs regularly on baroque cello and viola da gamba. She has appeared on tour with Venice Baroque Orchestra, and she was the viola da gamba soloist in New York City Opera’s production of Los Elementos by Antonio Literes. She has participated in the American Bach Soloists Academy in San Francisco, the International Masterclasses Festival in Gaming, Austria, and Juilliard at Piccola Accademia in Montisi, Italy. Elena is a founding member of Filament, and has appeared as a guest with Tempesta di Mare, The Thirteen Chamber Choir Baroque Orchestra, Bach Collegium Philadelphia, Gamut Bach Ensemble, Crescendo Period Instrument Orchestra, Ex Umbris, and Elm City Consort. She has studied with Sarah Cunningham, Phoebe Carrai, and has performed in masterclass for Thomas Fritzsch and Paolo Pandolfo.
A dedicated educator, Elena maintains a private studio and is the Orchestra Operations Director and Lower Strings Specialist at Cornerstone Christian Academy in Southwest Philadelphia.
Elena is a graduate of Temple University, where she studied with Jeffrey Solow.
German-born recorder artist Rainer Beckmann performs with a large variety of early music ensembles in the Philadelphia Tri-State area. He is a founding member of La Bernardinia Baroque Ensemble and New World Recorders. As featured soloist and guest musician, he regularly appears with groups such as Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra Tempesta di Mare, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Brandywine Baroque, Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, Camerata Ama Deus, Piffaro: The Renaissance Band and Vox Renaissance Consort. With recorder ensembles Il Flauto Giocoso, Landini Consort, Ad Libitum, and others, he has extensively performed in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, Israel and Brazil. Rainer teaches at Amherst Early Music workshops, coaches the recorder players of Temple University’s Early Music Ensemble, and serves as the music director of the Philadelphia Recorder Society. He is a graduate of the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands where he studied recorder and historical performance practice with Heiko ter Schegget, Baldrick Deerenberg and Marion Verbruggen.
Chinese-American pianist Xun Pan received his early musical training from his grandmother and pianists-parents, Pan Yiming and Ying Shizhen. He continued his studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Syracuse University in New York, and earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Mr. Pan has won many international piano competitions and awards, beginning with first prize in the 1986 China National Piano Competition in Beijing, and the “Dr. Luis Sigall” International Piano Competition in Chile in 1987, the International Festival Piano Competition in Korea in 1990, the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition in New York in 1992, and the Artists International Competition in New York in 1993. A student of Theodore Lettvin, Mr. Pan has performed solo recitals worldwide from Carnegie Weill Hall to the Beijing National Center for Performing Arts. He has performed in Moscow, Santiago, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, London, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Taipei, Budapest, Salzburg, Sicily, New York, Seoul, Pyongyang, Biel, Bern, Brussels, Vina Del Mar, Washington DC, Lisbon, Toronto, Boston, San Jose, San Francisco, and many other cities in the world. He “…excites his audience with extraordinary power and masterful technique.” (The Star-Ledger)
A noted chamber musician, Mr. Pan is the pianist of the Newstead Trio and Trio Clavino. Their work has been broadcast live on radio and television, and they have released several highly acclaimed recordings. Trio Clavino toured seven cities in China with Fulbright Grants managed by US Embassy in Beijing in 2014, and again in 2016. Mr. Pan has been served as a judge in many competitions include “Frinna Awerbuch” International Piano Competition in New York, United States Music Open Competition in Oakland, CA, United States International Music competition in Stanford, CA, and Maria Clara Cullell International Piano Competition in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Dr. Pan is the Director of Keyboard Studies of The Tell School of Music at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, and is a visiting professor at many universities and conservatories in China, includes Central Conservatory of Music, China Conservatory of Music, Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory of Music, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, China Northwest University for Nationalities, Fuzhou University, Yantai University, Shandong University, Qinghai Normal University, and Wenzhou University. He taught and served as the Chairman of the Piano Department at Pennsylvania Academy of Music between 1996 and 2009.
Dr. Pan is one of the founding members and the Artistic Director of the Lancaster International Piano Festival in Pennsylvania, USA.
His next project is going to perform the entire 32 piano sonatas, 10 piano/violin sonatas, and 8 piano/cello works of Beethoven to celebrate his 250th anniversary of birth from fall of 2018.
Simon Maurer grew up in Switzerland and studied music at the Conservatory in Biel. He continued his studies in the U.S. with Geoffrey Michaels and Joyce Robbins. Maurer is an accomplished musician performing chamber music solo and orchestra concerts throughout the eastern United States, Europe and China. He currently plays violin, viola, Baroque violin.
A founding member of Gabriel Chamber Ensemble (GCE), he has performed with the ensemble for over 32 years and is the artistic director of the concert series in Schuylkill Haven. Other chamber music ensembles in which Maurer performs include the Ravel Trio, Trio Clavino, and the Pennsylvania Chamber Ensemble. He is also currently Assistant Concertmaster of the Pennsylvania Sinfonia, performs with Valley Vivaldi, Satori, and Allentown Symphony Orchestra.Maurer currently conducts a string Orchestra in residence at Albright College in Reading Pa, Sunday Sinfonia, a mixed group of Albright Students and Community members.
Maurer ventures in the practice of jazz and free style improvisation. He has been a featured soloist in Philadelphia area jazz clubs, has performed at “Jazzfest” in Schuylkill County. He has recorded numerous projects with folk singers and rock groups such as Maggi, Pierce and EJ and Zen for Primates.Maurer teaches violin, viola, cello and bass in Lancaster, and in his studio in New Ringgold.
Maurer lives on a converted 20-acre YMCA camp, where he built his own 2000 square foot concert hall and enjoys the outdoors. Tennis is the preferred exercise. He has three granddaughters and one grandson.
