ARTISTIC DIRECTORS

Joana Genova, violin

Bulgarian-born violinist Joana Genova, co-artistic director of Taconic Music, has built a diverse career as a chamber and orchestral musician, soloist, recitalist, and teacher. Jim Lowe of The Rutland Herald has written of her, “Genova played with an infectious mix of passion and warmth, coupled with the requisite virtuosity.”

Joana performs at festivals and concert series with The Indianapolis Quartet, Vermont Symphony’s Jukebox Quartet, Taconic String Quartet, and as a guest musician, appearing at venues throughout United States and Europe, most recently in Italy and Bulgaria. 

Joana serves as Artist Associate at Williams College and Violin Instructor at Bennington College. Previously, she was Adjunct Professor and Coordinator of Chamber Music at Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music, and Assistant Professor of Violin and Director of String Activities at the University of Indianapolis.

Collaborations include The Shanghai Quartet, Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Horszowski Trio, Andrés Cárdenes, Carmit Zori, Nathaniel Rosen, Nathaniel Parke, Danwen Jiang, Austin Hartman, Renee Jolles, Michael Rudiakov, Tom Landschoot, Sophie Shao, Roberta Cooper, Jon Klibonoff, Ruth Laredo, Gili Melamed-Lev, Davide Cabassi, David Krakauer, Deborah Buck, Duo Jalal, Raman Ramakrishnan, Heather Braun, Willis Delony, Eugene Drucker, and Drew Petersen, among others. She has appeared live on GNAT-TV and CAT-TV in Vermont, WISH-TV Indianapolis, WQXR Albany, Vermont Public Radio, and WBAA and WICR in Indiana. Joana’s recordings include Chamber Music of Vittorio Giannini; Vision: Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries; Four Seasons x2: Piazzolla and Vivaldi; Reflections and Whimsies: Chamber Music for Strings and Voice by Frank Felice; Mark Ortwein: Stretching Boundaries; Robert Paterson’s String Quartets 1-3; Maxine Linehan’s This Time of Year, and Stephen Dankner: Four Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Willis Delony.

As a soloist, Joana has been featured with the Metropolitan, Rockaway, Danbury, and Berkshire symphonies, Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Harlem Chamber Players, Manchester Festival Orchestra, Yonkers Philharmonic, and under the baton of Raymond Leppard with the University of Indianapolis Gala Orchestra. She is principal second violinist of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as a guest concertmaster of the Carmel Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic and Viva Bach Festival. Joana has been member of Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Amsterdam Bach Consort, Brooklyn Philharmonic and New Haven Symphony.  

A graduate of the National School of Music and Dance “Dobrin Petkov” in Plovdiv, where she made her solo debut at age 12 with the Plovdiv Chamber Orchestra, Joana is a top prizewinner of Bulgaria’s “Svetoslav Obretenov” National Competition. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and her Master’s in Chamber Music at the Rotterdam Conservatory in The Netherlands. Her teachers include Boyanka Shopova, Alexander Spirov, Peter Brunt, Ilya Grubert, and Samuel Thaviu. Joana performs on a Johannes Cuypers violin made in The Hague in 1786.

Ariel Rudiakov, viola and conductor

Violist and conductor Ariel Rudiakov is co-founder and Artistic Director of Taconic Music. He currently serves on the faculty of Bennington College and enjoys a busy and diverse musical life. As violist, he has performed to critical acclaim throughout much of the U.S. and abroad.

In recent years Ariel has performed at the Kawai a Ledro Festival in Italy, Pikes Falls Chamber Music Festival in Vermont, and as guest violist of the Hyperion String Quartet, among others. He is a former member of the New York Piano Quartet and Equinox String Quartet, and a founding member and past president of SONYC (String Orchestra of New York City). Ariel was Artistic Director of the Manchester Music Festival from 2000 to 2016. Among his recordings are the complete string quartets by Camille Saint-Saëns and the piano quintet by Vittorio Giannini (MSR Classics), which Fanfare magazine described as “utterly superb.”  Composers Richard Lane, Philip Lasser and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson have dedicated solo and string orchestra works to him.

At the podium, Ari is Music Director and conductor of the Danbury Symphony Orchestra and Yonkers Philharmonic, and is Assistant conductor of the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, with whom he guest conducted this year.

Past resident and guest conducting positions have included the Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Metropolitan Symphony, Bergen, and Yonkers Philharmonics, Antara Ensemble, Manchester Chamber Orchestra, Harlem Chamber Players, Sage City Symphony, and recording sessions with Dance Theater of Harlem.

Ariel attended pre-college at the Manhattan School of Music and went on to receive Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at SUNY Purchase and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was a scholarship student at Yale University’s master’s program, where he studied viola with Jesse Levine and chamber music with members of the Tokyo String Quartet. Ari plays a viola made in 2000 by Geoffrey Ovington.

ADMINISTRATION

Jane Duda, Communications Director

New York City native Jane Duda spent her elementary and high school years in the historic community of Radburn, in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. She attended Bryn Mawr College, concentrating in studio art and Romance languages, and earned her B.F.A. in design with a minor in art history from William Paterson University, cum laude.

Jane began her career in advertising working for two Philadelphia-area ad agencies; she was later recruited by Deb Shops to become the 350-store chain’s advertising director. After a few years she made the leap into solo practice, married a Vermonter, and moved her practice north to the village of Wallingford, where she and her family have been happily ensconced in a series of eternal fixer-uppers ever since.

Over time, Jane found that her clients, who were typically startups or entrepreneurial businesses, often needed more than just a good designer. They needed help with their written communications, with strategy, and, often, with managing projects or events. With her advertising management background coupled with a design degree and extensive writing experience, Jane found herself becoming by turns a one-woman agency and an out-of-house marketing department, roles she continues to fill to this day, although many of her clients are now larger businesses and nonprofit organizations. When she’s not helping Taconic Music and a select roster of clients put their best communications foot forward, Jane is a prolific baker of cookies and other sweets.

Outside a yearlong hiatus in 2022–23, Jane has been the Communications Director for Taconic Music since 2017.