With the new semester starting, CMCB welcomes new faculty to our school.
First, Thomas Kociela, is our new Chamber Orchestra Conductor. Thomas Kociela is currently Music Director of the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra and the Parkway Concert Orchestra (Norwood, MA). While in Chicago, Thomas was the Assistant Conductor at the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (CYSO). He also served as CYSO’s Pathways Neighborhood Ensembles Music Director, designing and implementing small ensemble and private lesson programs at underserved schools around Chicago. Thomas was an orchestral section coach and brass ensemble director at the University of Chicago.
New Early Childhood Faculty
Daniel Reifsteck
Originally from Chicago, Dan is a percussionist, composer, and educator based in Boston, Massachusetts that specializes in new music. He was recently selected as one of thirty percussionists to participate in the TROMP International Percussion Competition in the Netherlands this past November. In June 2018, he had the honor of performing at the New Music Gathering and was the first recipient of the Robert C. Duvall Percussionist Fellowship at the Blackbird Creative Lab. He’s also toured the US with his chamber quartet, Slipstream, as well as the Ambient Orchestra performing Evan Ziporyn’s arrangement of David Bowie’s Blackstar.
Skuli Thorsteinsson
Skuli Thorsteinsson is a guitarist and teacher and graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Performance and Jazz Composition. He performs and teaches regularly around the Boston area as a guitarist, and early childhood music classes including Little Notes and Music and Movement. He strongly believes in the power of music to help development in children and adults alike and as a way to bring people together to better our communities.
New Guitar Faculty
Brad Faucher
Brad Faucher is a musician, music teacher, short film producer, and live music producer living in Waltham, MA. Faucher has long been a first-call guitarist and vocalist on the Boston blues, jazz, and R&B scenes. You may have seen him playing guitar with Boston’s best including: Chicago Bob Nelson, Bird Taylor, Sweet Willie D, Nicole Nelson and Diane Blue. Notable local performances include the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and Tanglewood. Brad effortlessly blends blues, jazz, gospel, and R&B. You can currently see him perform with Session450, KONG, Roxbury’s Grant AME Male Gospel Chorus, or solo.
New Piano Faculty
Emma Luyendijk
Emma Luyendijk is originally from Cape Town South Africa, where she completed her undergraduate studies in Music, Psychology and Sociology. Emma is passionate about the social impact of music on communities and has written an award-winning research paper “Music and Conflict: Manipulating Evoked Responses”. Emma is the Community Engagement Coordinator for the Boston Artsong Society and when she is not teaching at CMCB, serves as staff pianist for the vocal department at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Anne Marie “Macky” Caldoza
Macky Caldoza is a Filipino pianist and educator. She began her piano studies at the age of 12 and aside from teaching, is currently pursuing a license as a Body Mapping Educator. She received her MM and GPD from the Longy School of Music as a student of Wayman Chin. She has also had the opportunity to learn from pianists such as Peter Serkin, Spencer Myer, Igor Levitt, and Victor Asuncion. Macky enjoys working with students of all ages and hopes to inspire creative thinking, efficient learning, and confidence in all that they pursue.
Paulius Pancekauskas
Paulius Pancekauskas is an Artist Diploma candidate in Piano Performance at Longy School of Music of Bard College, where he studies under Spencer Myer. He holds a M.M. from Longy and a B.M. from Lithuanian Music and Theatre Academy. His previous instructors include Shai Wosner, Aidas Puodžiukas, Diana Berulytė, and Daumantas Kirilauskas.
Paulius has achieved critical acclaim and various awards in several competitions and music events of national and international significance. He has won or placed in over ten piano and music competitions in Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and USA. He made his debut with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra in 2009 performing Edward Grieg’s Piano Concerto in g minor. After moving to the States in 2016, he was granted the Presidential Scholarship and Neil and Jane Pappalardo Scholarship at Longy. Currently Paulius is an active performer in Massachusetts pursuing his solo and teaching career.
New Strings Faculty
Paola Andrea Caballero
Paola Caballero has now chosen to return to Boston after spending more than a decade in Barcelona performing as a member of the Chamber Orquestra de Cadaques and the Orquestra Sinfonica deBarcelona y Nacional de Catalunya. She has performed with renowned soloists including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahnn, Janine Jansen, Isabelle Faust, Ray Chen, Martin Frost, Maria Joao Pires, Lang Lang, Angela Gheorgiu, Placido Domingo, Jonas Kaufmann and also worked under the baton of Giaandrea Noseda, Semyon Bychkov, Eliahu Inbal, Vasily Petrenko, and John Adams to name a few.
Sébastien Vladimir Ridoré
Sébastien Ridoré is a violist hailing from Stoneham, Massachusetts. He graduated from Gettysburg College’s Sunderman Conservatory with a focus in classical performance and jazz improvisation. In school, Sébastien performed with the Gettysburg College Symphony Orchestras and a jazz and hip-hop fusion band called Dispatch.
Kevin McLean Sullivan
Kevin Sullivan is a freelance bassist and composer with degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and the Eastman School of Music. His primary interests in performance lie in 20th and 21st century music and presenting the double bass as a potent voice in solo and chamber settings. As an instructor, he places as heavy an emphasis on students’ versatility and creativity as technical skill – the successful modern musician is capable of breaking from tradition and willing to do so.
New Winds, Brass, and Percussion Faculty
Emma Terrell
Emma graduated from Rice University in 2016. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Roy and Hazel Zeff Memorial Fellowship, funding a year of independent study to research the small, but growing, number of women percussionists in 7 different countries to understand the changes in cultural and socio-economic trends that have allowed them to come together. Emma has worked with Musicians Without Borders, El Sistema El Salvador, Sphinx, Gamelan Galak Tika, and Fundacion Danilo Perez. She is also an active performer outside the Western classical realm, specializing in steel pan and Balinese gamelan.
Karen Luttik
In the 4th grade, Karen fell in love with the chocolatey sound of the clarinet! She has served as Solo Clarinet for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for years and currently performs as clarinetist with the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra and Vermont Virtuosi. Karen’s musical studies took her to Manhattan School of Music, New York, the Royal Conservatory of Music in the Hague, the Sweelink Conservatory of Music in Amsterdam, Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston, and Boston University, where she received her DMA.
George Henry Jones
George is a versatile teacher and performer. A recent graduate with a Masters of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory, he has experience teaching and playing across the country. He has been involved in his communities wherever he has landed. He has taught at several high schools in San Francisco by directing ensembles and giving masterclasses. Beyond San Francisco, George has assisted classical, jazz and chamber ensemble classes since 2009 at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp in his hometown, Sitka, Alaska and was an intern brass instructor with the Youth Orchestras of Los Angeles. He is a proficient and adaptable player who has experience playing and collaborating in many settings. Focused on chamber music outreach, he has performed with a brass trio, brass quintet, and trombone quartet frequently in and around the San Francisco Bay Area and a trombone quartet, jazz band, and trombone choir all over Boston.
