Meet the Taconic Chamber Players

Heather Braun-Bakken, violin

Heather Braun-Bakken performs as first violinist of the prize-winning Arneis Quartet and as a member of the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music and Taconic Music Chamber Players. Heather began teaching violin and chamber music at the Boston University School of Music in 2014 and joined the Saint Anselm College faculty in 2016. She has performed throughout the United States, Canada, China, and Italy, including venues such as the Beijing Modern Music Festival, Cabot Theater, Concord Free Library, Frederick Collection, Music on Main (Vancouver), Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, University of Indianapolis, and Williams College.

Heather has performed as a soloist with various orchestras in Boston, Milwaukee, Washington DC, Danbury, CT and Manchester, VT. She has performed as visiting concertmaster for the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra and as a guest artist with the Greenwich Chamber Players. Other chamber music and solo collaborations include performances with Tony Arnold, Randall Hodgkinson, Marc Johnson, Robert Levin, St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Shanghai Quartet.
Heather earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music and completed her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Boston University, studying with Peter Zazofsky. While a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow, she received the Jules C. Reiner Violin Prize; other awards received include the Zulalian Foundation Award (BU), the John Lad Prize (Stanford University) and Silver Medal at the ICMEC Competition. Heather is on the faculty at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Taconic Music Chamber Intensive and Danbury Chamber Music Intensive. She has also taught at Point Counterpoint, Duxbury Music Festival, Manchester Music Festival, and Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. Her recordings include chamber music by John Wallace, as a violinist soloist and member of the orchestra for Bach Cantatas with soprano Kendra Colton, and on Elena Ruehr’s latest album, Icarus, released in the spring of 2022 and featured on NPR and BBC Proms.

Joana Genova, violin

Bulgarian-born violinist Joana Genova has built a diverse career as a chamber and orchestral musician, soloist, and pedagogue. She is co-artistic director of Taconic Music in Manchester, Vermont- a non-for-profit organization which provides year-round chamber music concerts and educational programs. Joana has been Artist Associate at Williams College since 2007 and served as Assistant Professor at The University of Indianapolis from 2017 to 2022. In the fall of 2022, she became Adjunct Professor and coordinator of chamber music at Montclair State University, and Violin and Viola Instructor at Bennington College.
Joana is the second violinist of The Indianapolis Quartet, member of Taconic Chamber Players, and appears as a frequent guest at festivals and concert series. She has performed extensively on the East Coast, Arizona, Colorado and Louisiana, and internationally in Bulgaria, Holland, Germany, Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.She has appeared live on GNAT-TV and CAT-TV in Vermont, Wish TV Indianapolis, WQXR Albany, Vermont Public Radio-Live, WBAA and WICR in Indiana.

Her recordings include Chamber Music of Vittorio Giannini (MSR Classics), Vision: Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries (Eroica Classical Recordings) and Four Seasons x2: Piazzolla and Vivaldi (Manchester Music Festival), Reflections and Whimsies: Chamber Music for Strings and Voice by Frank Felice, Robert Paterson’s String Quartets 1-3 and Maxine Linehan’s This Time of Year. In 2022 Joana and pianist Willis Delony recorded the complete violin sonatas of Stephen Dankner which will be released in 2024.

As 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. Joana is principal second violinist of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra in Williamstown, Massachusetts and in 2023-24 season serves as guest concertmaster of Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

Matthew Gold, Percussion

Percussionist Matthew Gold is a performer, ensemble director, and educator committed to exploring new sounds and presenting innovative and adventurous programs featuring new voices. He is a member of the acclaimed New York-based contemporary music group Talea Ensemble, with whom he appears across the U.S. and at international festivals, and of the pioneering Talujon percussion group. Matthew is an Artist in Residence in Percussion and Contemporary Music Performance at Williams College, where he directs the Williams Percussion Ensemble and is the Artistic Director of the annual I/O Festival of New Music. He serves on the faculty of the Composers Conference and Contemporary Performance Institute at Brandeis University and is an Artist in Residence at the Walden School’s Creative Musicians Retreat.

Matthew has been a featured artist on recent festivals including Time:Spans 2019, Le Festival Les Musiques in Marseille, and Festival Musiques Démesurées in Clermont-Ferrand, and has appeared with the New York Philharmonic on its “Philharmonic 360” program at the Park Avenue Armory. He performs regularly with, among others, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the New York City Ballet, and the Albany Symphony.
 

Ariel Rudiakov, viola

Conductor and violist Ariel Rudiakov is Music Director and conductor of the Yonkers Philharmonic, co-founder and co-artistic director of Taconic Music in Manchester, Vermont, Music Director and conductor of the Danbury (Conn.) Symphony Orchestra, and Assistant conductor of the Greenwich (Conn.) Symphony Orchestra. In the spring term of 2024, he will join the faculty at Bennington College as adjunct viola instructor.

Ari enjoys a diverse musical life, performing to critical acclaim throughout the U.S. and abroad; most recently, chamber music for the 2023 Pikes Falls Chamber Music Festival and in 2022, the Kawai a Ledro Festival in Italy. He is a former member of the New York Piano Quartet and Equinox String Quartet, a founding member and past president of SONYC (String Orchestra of New York City), and, from 2000 to 2066, was Artistic Director of Vermont’s Manchester Music Festival.

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, his 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.

Ari attended pre-college at Manhattan School of Music and went on to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees at SUNY Purchase and University of Illinois at 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 and viola made in 2000 by Geoffrey Ovington.

Liam Veuve, cello

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Liam Veuve began playing the cello at the age of six at the School for Strings in New York City.  Liam has performed in wide array of settings, including orchestral and chamber music in Carnegie Hall, a solo performance in Avery Fisher Hall, and tours across North and South America and Europe.  He was selected as a fellow of the Louis Moreau Institute, which held its first two seasons in New Orleans in 2015 and 2016. He has performed as a guest artist in the Manchester Music Festival Ensemble, the Canyonlands New Music Ensemble, the North Jersey Chamber Music Society, among others, and serves as cello faculty at the United Nations International School. 

Liam is a founding member of the Puck Quartet, which in Spring 2014 performed the world premiere of a new work for string quartet entitled "Ascension" by Jason Eckardt.  The Puck Quartet recently was selected to participate in the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar, and invited to perform in their International Showcase at Bing Concert Hall in Palo Alto, CA. He has held the principal cello position in the Purchase Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, and YOA Orchestra of the Americas, a touring orchestral festival whose mission is to bring classical music to underexposed areas and communities as a catalyst for social change.  In the summer of 2012, he was selected to travel throughout Chile for four weeks, performing in halls such as the beautiful Teatro del Lago in Fruitillar.  In addition to his performing activities, Dedicated to music education and outreach, Liam has held a faculty position at the the Mahanaim School in Huntington NY, and an Assistant Faculty/Chamber Music Coach position at the Manhattan in the Mountains Festival in Hunter, NY.  He completed Suzuki teacher training with Dr. Melissa Kraut at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and is a certified Suzuki instructor. Liam holds a BA from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, with a concentration in music, language and philosophy.  He received his MM in cello performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying under the tutelage of Richard Weiss and Merry Peckham. Most recently, he completed a post-graduate Artist Diploma at SUNY Purchase, studying with Julia Lichten. His principal teachers have been Astrid Schween and Katharine Brainard.