CONCERT MUSICIANS:

JOCELYN VORENBERG, Violinist

Jocelyn Vorenberg joined the Richmond Symphony in the fall of 2003, having previously served as concert mistress of the Frederick Orchestra of Maryland. In spring of 2010, she completed her Doctorate of Musical Arts at The Catholic University of America.

In previous years, Dr. Vorenberg performed with the National Symphony, Washington Opera and Chorus Orchestras, Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and the Virginia Chamber Orchestra. Festival appearances include Aspen, Tanglewood (two year fellowship participant), Music at Angel Fire, and the Eilon Violin Mastercourse in Israel. As a violinist of the Hestia Quartet, she was invited to play for the Vice President in 2001, where they received rave reviews in the Washington Post. This success led to a series of concerts presented by Dr. Vorenberg at the Vice President's residence.

She has taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, The Cleveland Institute of Music Preparatory Program, and The Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina. Presently, she teaches privately in Richmond, Virginia.

Dr. Vorenberg studied at Interlochen Arts Academy, Rice University and The Cleveland Institute of Music, where her principal teachers included Julia Bushkova, Kenneth Goldsmith, Linda Cerone, Stephen Rose, and William Preucil, respectively. In the summer of 2006, Dr. Vorenberg was invited to perform a recital tour of Sydney, Melbourne and regional New South Wales, Australia, which included a premier and recording of a new work commissioned for the tour. Following this tour, Dr. Vorenberg was invited as a guest artist to Columbia, South America, where she coached and mentored the talented young musicians of the Filarmonica Joven de Colombia to become professional orchestra musicians. In addition to her musical career, she recently completed her teacher training degree at the Alexander Technique Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. She looks forward to helping musicians and non-musicians get rid of unnecessary tension and learn to move again with freedom and ease.

Jocelyn and her husband, Andy, are experiencing the joys, and surprises, of raising toddler twins!

AMANDA EICH, Clarinetist

Originally from Arlington Heights, IL, Amanda Eich is currently a member of the United States Navy Band in Washington, D.C. She holds a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Science with honors in water resources engineering from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Music with an Arts Leadership Program Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. Her teachers include Kenneth Grant, J. David Harris and John Bruce Yeh.

Eich was a two-time fellow at the Marrowstone Music Festival in Bellingham, Washington, and a semi-finalist for the New World Symphony 2016-2017 season. She has also performed in the Madeline Island Music Camp and the Aurora Chamber Music Festival in Trollhättan, Sweden, where she took part in a masterclass series with Yehuda Gilad.

She has performed with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Genessee Symphony Orchestra, Wheaton Municipal Band and as a guest artist in schools around the Rochester, New York area. As an intern for Cordancia Chamber Orchestra, Eich performed lesser-known works around upstate New York, and helped to lead an effort in coordinating such projects as the newly- founded Young Performers Concerto Competition.

In her free time, she enjoys reading, skiing and sharing pictures of her dogs.

Originally from Arlington Heights, IL, Amanda Eich is currently a member of the United States Navy Band in Washington, D.C. She holds a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Science with honors in water resources engineering from the University of Illinois, and a Master of Music with an Arts Leadership Program Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. Her teachers include Kenneth Grant, J. David Harris and John Bruce Yeh.

Eich was a two-time fellow at the Marrowstone Music Festival in Bellingham, Washington, and a semi-finalist for the New World Symphony 2016-2017 season. She has also performed in the Madeline Island Music Camp and the Aurora Chamber Music Festival in Trollhättan, Sweden, where she took part in a masterclass series with Yehuda Gilad.

She has performed with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, Genessee Symphony Orchestra, Wheaton Municipal Band and as a guest artist in schools around the Rochester, New York area. As an intern for Cordancia Chamber Orchestra, Eich performed lesser-known works around upstate New York, and helped to lead an effort in coordinating such projects as the newly- founded Young Performers Concerto Competition.

In her free time, she enjoys reading, skiing and sharing pictures of her dogs.

MICHELLE HUANG, Pianist

A native of Taiwan, pianist Michelle Huang has performed and taught extensively throughout the U.S. as well as abroad in the Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, and Taiwan. She has appeared as soloist and guest artist in numerous recitals and has given lectures, workshops, and master classes. As a chamber musician, Michelle Huang has collaborated frequently with vocalists and instrumentalists as well as various chamber groups, such as the Mary L’Engle Ensemble and the River City Trio. She has performed with the Jacksonville Symphony and Richmond Symphony musicians as well as colleagues from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2015, she completed a week long concert tour with Rochester based clarinetist Julie Detwiler, in which the duo traveled to Nazareth College, SUNY Potsdam, University of Mississippi, and West Liberty University to perform and teach master classes. Most recently, she has received a grant to commission ten paintings by two recent graduates of Virginia Commonwealth University art students. These paintings were presented along side with the complete performance of Mussorgsky’s piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition during her concert tour in 2018-2019.

Michelle Huang holds a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Master of Music in Piano Performance from the University of Tennessee and Doctor of Music in Piano Performance from Florida State University. Her principle teachers include Barbara Rowan, David Northington, and Read Gainsford. As an educator, Huang has held teaching positions at both Walter States Community College and Lincoln Memorial University. She has most recently served as Assistant Professor of Piano at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2012, she launched a Concert Series at Edward Waters College in which high caliber performing artists performed concerts as well as conducting master classes, workshops, and lectures for the continuing enrichment and exposure of classical music to both the school and the community. As a strong advocate of mind and body connection and overall musicians’ health, Huang has conducted numerous performance anxiety workshops in various universities as well as music conferences to help musicians understand and cope with anxiety related to performing. During the summer, she had been on the piano faculty of Florida State University Piano Institute and East/West International Piano Festival in China. She is currently a piano faculty member at the Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to teaching in the collegiate setting, Dr. Huang also maintains a private studio, where she works with talented pre-college students. She is a nationally certified teacher of MTNA. She is an active member of the Richmond Music Teachers Association (RMTA) and Virginia Music Teachers Association (VMTA) and has served as the first Vice President of Programming and the President for RMTA. She is a frequent adjudicator for local and state competitions, including Federation State and Regional Competitions, FSMTA and GMTA State Competitions, PMTA Concerto Competition, PMTA Sonata Contest, and Outstanding Young Artist Scholarship Competition, and VMTA District Auditions. Many of her students have won top awards and successfully pursued studies and career in music.

JAMES TAYLOR, Tenor

American tenor James Taylor has a long list of accolades, including “a rich, focused tenor”, “sings magnificently”, “great beauty as well as dramatic power”, “richly musical”, and “superb”.  At home in opera as well as the concert and recital stages, he has appeared with numerous opera houses and symphony orchestras including the New York City Opera National Company, San Francisco Opera, Western Opera Theatre, Theater Augsburg, Gottigen Handel Festspiele, Nederlandse ReisOper, Central City Opera, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Anchorage Opera, Virginia Opera, and Connecticut Grand Opera, the Arkansas Symphony, the Alabama Symphony, the Chattanooga Symphony, The Duke Chorale, and the National Chorale.  Mr. Taylor has also given recitals in the US, Europe, and Asia, including a recital tour of the Netherlands and Malaysia.

In 2009, Mr. Taylor made the switch from baritone to tenor.  Since, he has performed as Manrico in Il Trovatore, Don Jose in Carmen, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Cavaradossi in Tosca, Florestan in Fidelio, the title role in Lohengrin, Siegmund in Die Walküre, Parsifal in Parsifal, and Canio in I Pagliacci. As a concert soloist, he has performed Bach’s Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria, and Saint-Saens Christmas Oratorio.  An avid recitalist, he has presented Liederabends in Richmond, Charlottesville, Norfolk, Birmingham, New York, Boston, and Washington, DC.  In 2020 he will present a Liederabend of Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte and Wagner’s Wesendonk Lieder in Albuquerque, Charlottesville, and Richmond, concerts of Verdi and Puccini with soprano Jacqueline Quirk, and Brahms’ Die Schone Magelone, in a new singable English translation by the late composer, Glen Roven.

Mr. Taylor’s interests lie in the slightly heavier, specifically German Romantic, repertoire and in roles with distinct dramatic character.

Mr. Taylor appeared as a baritone in thirty six operatic roles including Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Marcello in La Boheme, Germont in La Traviata, Posa in Don Carlo, Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus, Danilo in The Merry Widow, Escamillo in Carmen, Figaro and the Count in Le nozze di Figaro, Dandini in La Cenerentola, Mercutio in Romeo et Juliette, and Sharpless in Madama Butterfly.  He made his Alice Tully Hall debut as Claudio in Berlioz’ Beatrice et Benedict in the New York premiere of the work, and was chosen as a member of the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, where he performed Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus for the company at Villa Montalvo and on tour with Western Opera Theatre.

Mr. Taylor has won and or placed in several vocal competitions:  winner of the Metropolitan Opera District Auditions for Connecticut, Finalist in the Eastern Regional Metropolitan Opera Auditions, winner of the Connecticut Opera Theatre Amici Competition, as well as being a semi finalist in the International Belvedere/Hans Gabor Competition, the Dutch International Vocal Competition, and the International Johannes Brahms competition.  Mr. Taylor was invited to participate in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1997.

A talented and sought after educator, he has served as Director of Opera at the University of Alabama and Drake University, and has been on the teaching faculty of the University of Virginia. His students currently perform internationally with opera companies such as the Semperoper, Glyndebourne, the Opera Comique, the Danish Opera, Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, and Landestheater Niederbayern, as well as US houses New York ity Opera, Utah Opera, Virginia Opera, and Central City Opera.. His Musical Theatre Students have performed on Broadway, on National Tours of Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera, and with various regional theatres.He has sent his collegiate graduates to prestigious graduate programs as Juilliard, Yale, Manhattan School of Music, Mannes School of Music, New England Conservatory, the Royal College of Music, and the Jacobs School at Indiana.  His high school students have gone on to Yale, Cincinnati College Conservatory, and Guild Hall in London.

Mr. Taylor holds degrees from Birmingham Southern College and Yale University, and resides in Bon Air, Virginia, with his wife Sheridan, and their two daughters Virginia and Meg.