Maria Beyens, from Seoul, South Korea, holds a Bachelor’s degree in violin performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music under the tutelage of Ivan Zenaty, and a Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University under the tutelage of Andres Cardenes. Previously, Maria attended Kyungwon University in South Korea and Windsor Young soloist program in England.
During her CIM years, Maria was a member of the Commodore Quartet which made it to the semi-finals at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. As a chamber musician, Maria has worked and performed with members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Tokyo, Brentano, Emerson, Takács, and Daedalus quartets and Albers Trio. Maria also performed for NPR’s radio show “Says You” and with her quartet received the James Lola Faust Chamber Music Scholarship from Mu Phi Epsilon in 2014. Maria has attended Banff Chamber Music Residency, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and National Repertory Orchestra for summer festivals.
After pursuing her Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Maria moved back to Cleveland. Maria plays with Firelands Symphony, Erie Philharmonic, Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Mansfield Symphony, Stars in the Classics and many other groups and organizations around the Cleveland area. In addition to music, she is also a professional chef and has worked with a James Beard awarded chef. Maria also enjoys playing piano and dancing.
One of Northeast Ohio’s most versatile violinists, Victor Beyens is currently the concertmaster of the Mansfield Symphony as well as assistant concertmaster of the Firelands Symphony and assistant principal second of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra. Victor is an active member and musical/pops arranger for Opus 216, an eclectic group of musicians who perform a variety of repertoire and genres in the Cleveland area. He also performs many house concerts and private events with M.U.S.i.C. (Musical Upcoming Stars in the Classics), with which he also serves as a board member. Victor has recently performed a variety of concerti as a soloist with the Mansfield Symphony, Chagrin Falls Studio Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. He has also performed in the violin sections of the Phoenix Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, Erie Philharmonic, and several others. While finishing school, he served as concertmaster (as well as principal second) of the National Repertory Orchestra and of the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. Victor has worked with Cleveland based new music ensemble Ars Futura to perform and record music by contemporary composers. Victor maintains a private studio where he oversees the violin upbringing of inner-city kids.
Victor’s ability to create and arrange repertoire of all genres, specifically pop and rock music, has led him to collaborations with members of Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Beach Boys, the Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as Andrea Boccelli, Eric Bergen, Connor Bogart O’Brien, Mark O’Connor, and many other local and national acts. His arrangements of works by Edith Piaf, Mark O’Connor, Queen, Bob Dylan, Stéphane Grappelli, Bernstein (West Side Story), Irving Berlin, The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and others, have been performed and enthusiastically received in several states.
Originally from France, Victor first moved to Phoenix to study with Dr. Katy McLin, and then relocated to Cleveland to further his studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the tutelage of David Updegraff and William Preucil. He plays on a fine violin from Chicago made by Carl Becker in 1949 and a W.E Hills and Sons English bow made in 1920. For more media and upcoming concert info please visit: instagram.com/victorbeyens
Lieneke Matte grew up in the Bronx and received her early training at the School of American Ballet where she was a child performer with the New York City Ballet. Ms. Matte then attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York City and would later go on to study dance at SUNY Purchase College. There she performed works by a number of influential choreographers such as George Balanchine, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, Nicolo Fonte, Lar Lubovitch and Nicholas Villeneuve. While at Purchase Lieneke also studied abroad, spending a semester at the Western Australian Academy of the Performing Arts. In 2013 she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BFA in dance from SUNY Purchase College, as well as receiving the President’s Award for the dance conservatory. Following graduation Ms.Matte joined Verb Ballets (now Ohio Contemporary Ballet). During her 10 years with the company she performed works by Adam Hougland, Anthony Krutzkamp, Heinz Poll, Richard Dickinson, Charles Anderson, Lauren Edson, Antonio Brown, Tommy-Waheed Evans, and Stephanie Martinez to name a few. Ms. Matte was also a dancer in the documentary, No Dominion: The Ian Horvath Story, created by PNB soloist Margaret Mullin. She has danced across the United States and abroad, having performed with Body EDT in Taiwan as well as ProDanza in Cuba.
Antonio Morillo is a first-generation Cuban American born in Coral Springs, Florida. He received his Associate of Arts in Dance Performance from Valencia College, and his BFA in Dance Performance from the University of South Florida. Antonio has performed with the Patel Conservatory’s Next Generation Ballet, Tampa City Ballet, Ohio Conservatory of Ballet, and Hudson Conservatory of Ballet. He has performed works by Tommie-Waheed Evans, José Limón, Alonzo King, Robert Moses, and Gerald Arpino. Antonio danced professionally with Ohio Contemporary Ballet for ten years. He has toured with Ohio Contemporary Ballet on two international tours. He was featured in Pointe Magazine in 2020 about how his college experience jump-started his dance career. In 2017, Antonio’s choreographic work was performed at the Martha Graham Dance Company’s studio for their Next@Graham showcase. Antonio has collaborated with Ohio Contemporary Ballet and rock guitarist Neil Zaza on a Halloween themed show called “One Dark Night.” This evening length work has been performed in Cleveland, Akron, and Detroit over the past five years. Antonio’s choreographic work has also been featured at the Akron Dance Festival and Cleveland Public Theatre.
Chris Neiner (b. 1994) is a composer, pianist, and entrepreneur in Cleveland, Ohio. His music has been praised for “zazzy colors, pleasant shocks, and melting cadences” (Cleveland Classical) and received recognition from the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, American Modern Ensemble, and Flute New Music Consortium. Recent commissions include “Time Machine Hyperboles” for NO EXIT New Music Ensemble, “Tales of Euclid Beach Park” for Stars in the Classics, “Spiral Suite” for Otterbein University, and “4 X 4” for the Ohio Music Teachers Association. Neiner is a founding musician and Associate Director of the Sunday Studio Series, chamber concerts in Cleveland’s historic Little Italy neighborhood. He is also the artist-in-residence for Solich Piano, the National Yamaha and Bösendorfer Piano Dealer of the Year.
The music of Chris Neiner has appeared on programs by the Grammy award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Minnesota Sinfonia, Boston New Music Initiative, Loadbang, Copper Street Brass Quintet, New Century Ensemble, North Coast Winds, Red Hedgehog Trio, Minnesota Symphonic Winds, Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies, Rocky Ridge Music Center, Sewanee Summer Music Festival, and more.
Neiner has also gained a reputation as a highly sought-out arranger and music editor, working with organizations such as Reimagining Opera for Kids, Vietnamese American Society for Creative Arts and Music (VASCAM), Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Jim Brickman and The Brickhouse Network, and It’s CeCe! TV.
Neiner completed a master’s degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Keith Fitch. He is an alumnus of the American Composers Orchestra’s EarShot Readings, Suncoast Composer Fellowship Program, OAcademy Gabriela Ortiz Composing Studio, Mostly Modern Festival, Impulse New Music Festival, New Music on the Point Festival, and RED NOTE New Music Festival.
Brendon Phelps, cello,strives to produce a unique sound that transcends the music that he is performing. His playing has been described by The Strad as having a “rich but clear sound, and beautiful shaping and leading.” His credits include Carnegie Hall, Princeton University, Casa de la Musica in Quito, Ecuador, and the International Mendelssohn Festival in Hamburg, Germany. Among other notable collaborations, he has performed the Mendelssohn Octet with the Shanghai Quartet at the Tilles Center in Brookville, New York.
Brendon’s concert experience can be described as profoundness of interpretation, yet inventive and is exemplified by composers that he loves to perform — Janacek, Debussy, Caroline Shaw and Giovanni Sollima — who all are united in how they showcase the cello as a moldable versatile instrument. He is motivated by the need to, in his words, “change the way the cello sounds.” Concert goers have expressed feeling “charmed, engaged and electrified” by “his presentation and communication.” In 2023 he founded Trio Noir with violinist Maude Cloutier, and pianist Alexandre Marr. The trio’s performances to date comprise, but are not limited to performing in Cleveland’s legendary Severance Hall, and for Akron’s Tuesday Musical Members series. Recent projects include transcribing and performing a program of Turkish music dating back to the Ottoman Empire as part of a collaboration with the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. He participated in a performance with the Ukrainian Music Project, a virtual orchestra of musicians from 21 countries around the world preserving Ukrainian classical and folk music. Phelps also has performed as part of an initiative to introduce music in prisons across the United States.
Chamber music was also the entry point into developing his teaching. He was a resident at Shenandoah Conservatory, and Shippensburg University where he coached chamber music and orchestra. He has taught and performed at the Interlochen Academy as a chamber music teaching fellow, and maintains an online cello studio, teaching a diverse group of students based across the United States, and in South Africa. A firm believer in outreach, he has frequently visited grade-schools to introduce young students to string instruments, present classical music in an engaging manner, and work with the school’s orchestra programs. He will be taking up the position of Cello Professor at downtown Akron’s premier school of music, the Akron Music Institute, in 2024.
He holds a BM from the University of Akron, and a MM from the Cleveland Institute of Music, with a double major in Suzuki pedagogy, and an Early Music Certificate from Case Western University. He went on to earn an AD from Montclair State as part of a string quartet fellowship with the Shanghai Quartet.
Justin Wisner is a lecturer of clarinet in the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Performing Arts. He is an educator and freelance clarinetist in Northeast Ohio. He is a current member of the Cleveland Wind Trio, actively performing around the Greater Cleveland area.
He has performed with many orchestras and organizations, including The Cleveland Orchestra, Youngstown Symphony, Firelands Symphony, CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and ChamberFest Cleveland..
Wisner has worked with conductors Franz Welser-Möst, JoAnn Falletta, Ludovic Morlot, Robert Spano, Richard Kaufman, David Effron and Tania Miller. His notable teachers include Afendi Yusuf, Franklin Cohen, Joaquin Valdepeñas, Mingzhe Wang and Tasha Warren-Yehuda..
He was an instrumental music teacher at Hayes Middle School in Grand Ledge, Michigan, and later taught at several music institutions in Toronto and Cleveland. He was the third-prize winner of the 2017 Henri Selmer International Solo Competition.