Viola
Julia Bullard
Violist Julia Bullard enjoys a diverse career as a performer, pedagogue, and Alexander Technique teacher. She is the violist of Trio 826, whose first album, Mosaic, was released on the Blue Griffin label in 2016. She has performed as a guest with ensembles including the Bogotá Chamber Orchestra, Aspen String Trio, and the Maia Quartet. A dedicated pedagogue, Dr. Bullard received the Iowa String Teachers Association’s Leopold LaFosse Studio Teacher of the Year award in 2011. She has presented master classes across the US and abroad, and has been artist-faculty at several summer music festivals including Cedar Valley Chamber Music, Wintergreen Music Festival and Academy, and Madeline Island Music Festival.
Dr. Bullard received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Temple University in Philadelphia, and the DMA degree from the University of Georgia. Her principal teachers included violists Joseph dePasquale, Emanuel Vardi, Sidney Curtiss, and Mark Cedel, and violinist Levon Ambartsumian. From 2000-2022, she served as viola professor at the University of Northern Iowa, and 10 years was also the Associate Director for Graduate Studies in the UNI School of Music. In August 2022, Dr. Bullard joined the faculty of Kennesaw State University, where she currently serves as Assistant Director of the Bailey School of Music and Professor of Music, teaching viola and Alexander Technique.
Double Bass
Hunter Capoccioni
A native of Waterloo, Iowa, Hunter Capoccioni is the Founder and Artistic Director of Cedar Valley Chamber Music. He is a gradaute of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music (BM ’01, MM ’03) and received his doctorate from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2015.
Hunter has held positions in orchestras in the United States and Europe. He served as Principal Bass of the Norrlands Opera Orchestra in Umeå, Sweden (2003-2005), and Associate Principal Bass in Norwegian Opera Orchestra in Oslo, Norway (2005-2006). Returning to Iowa to teach at the University of Northern Iowa (2008-2014) Dr. Capoccioni has held positions as Principal Double Bass of the WCF Symphony and was a regualr substitute player with the Des Moines Symphony.
Today, Hunter lives in Houston, Texas where he currently works as the Assistant Director of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative. He spent seven years prior to this posiiton at the Chamber Music Manager at the Shepherd School of Music. He is a regular subsitite musician with the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Ballet orchestras.
Cello
Max Geissler
Cellist Max Geissler is a highly sought-after chamber collaborator, educator, and performer. He currently serves as the Cellist and Co-Artistic Director of the new music ensemble Latitude 49, and joined the faculty at East Tennessee State University in the fall of 2023 as Assistant Professor of Cello. Max holds doctoral and master’s degrees from Rice University working as Desmond Hoebig’s teaching assistant, as well as a bachelor’s degree from his studies with Richard Aaron at the University of Michigan.
Passionately expanding the breadth and scope of the standard repertoire, Max has participated in dozens of commissions and premieres, giving voice to an array of works ranging from inspiring student compositions all the way to collaborations with Pulitzer-prize winning composers. Working with Latitude 49, Max has recorded for New Amsterdam Records and has been showcased as a featured performer at the Bowling Green New Music Festival, Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music, Constellation Chicago, and Princeton Sound Kitchen.As an enthusiastic educator, Max is an in-demand masterclass clinician, having given classes at schools such as SUNY Fredonia.
Max is a lively advocate of the chamber music literature and takes any opportunity he can to excitedly share it with audiences. He has performed alongside and collaborated with artists such as Jon Kimura Parker, Clive Greensmith, Lynn Harrell, Cho-Liang Lin, Martin Beaver, Margaret Batjer, Brian Connelly, Desmond Hoebig, and James Dunham. Max is currently the Artistic Director for Kalmia Garden Music and Arts, as well as a regular performer at the Geneva Music Festival. In addition to these festivals, Max has appeared as a Young Artist at La Jolla SummerFest, and performed as a part of the Taipei Music Academy and Festival in Taiwan.
Violin
Hannah Howland Jacobs
Hannah Howland Jacobs is a violinist and teacher based in the Iowa City area. She received her BM in violin performance from the University of Minnesota, where she studied with Mark Bjork, and MM in violin performance from the University of Northern Iowa, where she studied with Dr. Ross Winter and Dr. Julia Bullard (viola). Having grown up studying violin at the UNI Suzuki School, she is a strong advocate for the Suzuki Method, and has studied Suzuki pedagogy with Mark Bjork, Joanne Melvin, and Martha Shackford. Currently, Hannah holds faculty positions at the UNI Suzuki School in Cedar Falls and the Preucil School of Music in Iowa City where she teaches violin and viola, leads group classes, and coaches chamber ensembles. She maintains an active schedule performing with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, the Southeast Iowa Symphony, and freelancing throughout eastern Iowa with various other ensembles and theatre productions. While perhaps most at home in the classical music genre, Hannah has a great love of the versatility of string instruments and enjoys exploring and collaborating on projects within other genres. She and her husband, Austin, violinist, guitarist, and orchestra teacher in the Iowa City Community School District, enjoy working on musical projects together, and recently recorded and released an album with their folk trio band, “From Afar.”
Piano
Peter Miyamoto
Peter Miyamoto has enjoyed a brilliant international career, performing to great acclaim in recital and as soloist in Canada, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Switzerland, China, and Japan, and in major US cities such as Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. In 1990, Miyamoto was named the first Gilmore Young Artist. He won numerous other competitions, including the American Pianist Association National Fellowship Competition, the D’Angelo Competition, the San Francisco Symphony Competition and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Competition.
Currently Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair of Piano at the University of Missouri, Peter Miyamoto formerly taught at Michigan State University, and the California Institute of the Arts and has presented masterclasses worldwide. From 2003-2015 he served as head of the piano faculty at the New York Summer Music Festival and more recently served on the piano faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music’s Young Artist Summer Program and the Curtis Mentor Network Program in Philadelphia.
Miyamoto’s six solo CDs, available on the Blue-Griffin label, have received excellent reviews in periodicals such as Gramophone, International Record Review, Fanfare, and American Record Guide and were recognized by the American Prize. A CD of six commissioned duos for violin and piano produced by GRAMMY winner Judith Sherman was released by Albany records.
Flute
Hannah Porter Occeña
Hailed by the New York Times as possessing “rich tone and deft technique,” Hannah Porter Occeña is Assistant Professor of Flute at the University of Northern Iowa and Principal Flutist of the Topeka Symphony Orchestra (Topeka, KS).
As a chamber musician and collaborator, Dr. Occeña has worked to bring works by living composers to life. She is a commissioning member of the Flute New Music Consortium and has co-premiered works by Zhou Long (Confluence, 2015) and Carter Pann (Giantess, 2018). She has also privately commissioned and premiered several new works, most recently Shenandoah Variations for flute and orchestra by Joseph Kern in March 2019.
A dedicated scholar, Dr. Occeña has recently presented at the National Flute Association conventions in Orlando and Salt Lake City as well as the Rochester Flute Fair. She has collaborated on new editions of the Sonata in B minor by Amanda Maier and the Sonata op. 94 by Sergei Prokofiev and serves on the National Flute Association Special Publications Committee.
Violin
Theo Ramsey
Boston-based violinist Theo Ramsey enjoys a varied career as an orchestral violinist, chamber musician, and teacher. They perform frequently with such ensembles as Brooklyn-based orchestral collective The Knights, new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, and the Boston Lyric Opera. Theo is a member of the first violin section of the New Bedford Symphony and is violinist and violist of Ensemble Dal Niente.
Originally from Cedar Falls, IA, Theo began playing the violin at the UNI Suzuki School. They hold degrees from Northwestern University and the Cleveland Institute of Music, where their primary teachers were Blair Milton and David Updegraff. Theo was co-concertmaster of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and spent two years as a Fellow and frequent concertmaster of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, FL.
Violin
Katie Wolfe
Violinist Katie Wolfe leads an intriguing career mix as a soloist, recording artist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, and adjudicator. Originally from Minnesota, she joined the string faculty of The University of Iowa in 2004 as Associate Professor of Violin. Prior to teaching in Iowa, Wolfe taught violin, viola, and chamber music at Oklahoma State University. She also served as Associate Concertmaster of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic.
Wolfe is a founding member of the Matisse Piano Trio, formed in 2004 with fellow University of Iowa faculty pianist Ksenia Nosikova and cellist Anthony Arnone. The trio is as committed to teaching as well as performing, and they have given masterclasses and performances at universities and other concert venues in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Hawaii.
Along with pianist and composer Ketty Nez from Boston University, Wolfe has been involved in the creation and performance of many newer works for violin and piano. The Wolfe/Nez Duo performs works written especially for them, in addition to other works written in the past 20 years and other masterpieces of 20th-century literature. Their adventuresome programs have been presented at the University of Iowa, Boston University, and the Eastman School of Music. Upcoming performances include appearances at the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Rhode Island.
