ARTISTIC DIRECTORS

Joana Genova, violin

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

Joana is co-artistic director of Taconic Music, second violinist of The Indianapolis Quartet, a member of Taconic Chamber Players, and appears as a frequent guest at festivals and concert series, performing extensively throughout United States and internationally in Italy,  Bulgaria, Holland, Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

 Joana has been Artist Associate at Williams College since 2007, and in the fall of 2022 became Adjunct Professor and Coordinator of Chamber Music at Montclair State University, and Instructor at Bennington College. From 2017 to 2022, she was Assistant Professor of Violin and Director of String Activities at the University of Indianapolis.

Her 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.  Her 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 since 2007 and has appeared as a guest concertmaster of the Carmel Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and Louisiana Philharmonic. In the fall of 2024 Joana was concertmaster and soloist of Viva Bach Festival in Peterborough, New Hampshire. 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, and is on the faculty of Bennington College as viola instructor. He is Music Director and Conductor of the Danbury Symphony Orchestra and Yonkers Philharmonic, and Assistant Conductor of the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra (CT).

Ari enjoys an active and diverse musical life, performing to critical acclaim throughout the U.S. and abroad; most recently, chamber music for the 2024 Pikes Falls Festival (VT). 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). Ari was Artistic Director of the Manchester Music Festival (VT) 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 works to Ari, who is active in commissioning and recording new music.

At the podium, Ari’s 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. From 2017 to 2022, he was conductor of the University of Indianapolis (UIndy) Chamber Orchestra, and chamber music coach. He attended pre-college at Manhattan School of Music and went on to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees at SUNY Purchase Conservatory and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ari was a scholarship student at Yale University’s master’s program, where he studied viola with Jessie Levine and chamber music with members of the Tokyo String Quartet. He 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.