Faculty

Executive Director, Paola Caballero has now chosen to return to Boston after spending more than a decade in Barcelona performing with the Chamber Orquestra de Cadaques and the Orquestra Sinfonica de Barcelona y Nacional de Catalunya, (OBC). She has performed with renowned soloists including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, 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 composer John Adams. Paola has also recorded, toured and performed in Europe finest concert halls.

Ms. Caballero’s extensive and diversified performing career includes her love for contemporary music. During her studies in London, United Kingdom, Paola founded the Esperanto Trio giving their first public performance at St. James Church Piccadilly, London. The trio soon thereafter performed in a live B.B.C. broadcast at the Barbican Centre as part of the New Music Festival  hosted by the B.B.C. Symphony. Even after moving to Barcelona Ms. Caballero continued on this path and was also member of the ‘highly acclaimed contemporary group ‘BCN 216’. She also co-founded the Barcelona Arts Quartet, a group dedicated to performing new music concerts under the sponsorship of SGAE, “Sociedad General de Autores y Editores”. Paola has also toured and performed alongside Madeleine Peyroux, Anthony and the Johnsons, Bjork, Joni Mitchell, Father John Misty at venues including Sonar Electronic Music Festival, Primavera Sound and the Jazz Festival at the Palau de la Musica Catalana.

Ms. Caballero is very happy to be back in Boston and can now be seen performing frequently with the Grammy award winning Boston Modern Modern Orchestra Project, Odyssey Opera, and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. She has also collaborated with the Boston Ballet and the Bach, Beethoven Brahms Society.

As an educator, Paola divides her time between the Lexington Chamber Music Center and Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra and has recently been  appointed Music Director of the Symphonia at Phillips Exeter Academy. She has also served on faculty for the past seven seasons at Point CounterPoint chamber music festival which she is very much looking forward to returning to  this summer and is also now also joining the faculty at Lyra Music Festival this coming July.

Studies include Postgraduate Diploma from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as well as both Masters and Bachelor degrees from the New England Conservatory in Boston. Professors include David Takeno, Jack Glickmann, Masuko Ushioda, Eric Rosenblith, Lucy Chapman and has also worked with Lorand Fenyves and Erika Raum at the Royal Conservatory, the institution that sponsored the use of a 1686 Nicolo Amati instrument. Ms. Caballero has attended festivals all over North America including the Tanglewood Young Artists Program, Santa Barbara Music Academy of the West, and has led the  festival orchestra at the Banff Centre for the Arts under the baton of Krzysztof Penderecki. While in Europe she has also led various opera festival orchestras both in Montepulciano and Orvieto, Italy.

Ms. Caballero is currently performing on a Bergonzi,1792, from the generosity of the Maggini-Stiftung Foundation.

LCMC Founder, Randy Hiller is a freelance violinist/violist and an avid chamber musician. Mr. Hiller earned degrees from Harvard and MIT and taught Finance at Harvard Business School and Northeastern before deciding to pursue his passion for chamber music full-time. He plays regularly with Emmanuel Music and the Lexington Symphony. Randy has served as Past President of Project STEP, an organization that provides professional music training to minority students. He also served as a Director of Music at Point CounterPoint, a summer music camp in Vermont, and on the faculty of Apple Hill, a chamber music camp in Nelson, NH.

Brian Clague has toured throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan. In recital, he has appeared as violinist and pianist at the Warsaw Mozart Festival and the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg. He is active as a recording artist for national Public Broadcasting Service productions at WGBH studios in Boston as well as for film, major record labels, and commercial projects. He also has worked as a choral conductor.

Mr. Clague has served as concertmaster for many Boston-area orchestras and choral societies, including Boston Chamber Ensemble,Bel Canto Opera, Symphony Pro Musica, Civic Symphony of Boston, Brookline Symphony and MIT Summer Philharmonic. As an orchestral player, he has appeared throughout New England with the Boston Philharmonic, Boston Academy of Music, New Hampshire Symphony, Granite State Symphony, Portland Symphony and Indian Hill Arts. Mr. Clague’s teachers include Kato Havas in London, and George Neikrug in Boston. BM Montana State, University of New Mexico.

Rebecca Rusack Hawkins. Playing chamber music has been a life-long interest for Rebecca. Growing up in a musical family, she played her first duos, trios and quartets with her father and sister and studied further at Greenwood Music Camp in the summers. She attended the preparatory divisions at Manhattan School of Music, Hartt School of Music and Boston University, and began playing professionally in her early teens. In college she performed in many chamber orchestras and ensembles, including at the Aspen Music Festival in summers.

Rebecca attended Yale, where in addition to her undergraduate studies, she was a violinist with the New Haven Symphony and principal player with the Connecticut Chamber Orchestra. She studied violin with Paul Kantor, an outstanding pedagogue whose insightful methods, delivered with patience, humor, encouragement and warmth, provided the inspiration for Rebecca’s approach to teaching.

Following college, practicality trumped passion and Rebecca received a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School and spent six years as a corporate attorney. Throughout her legal career, she treasured chamber music get-togethers with friends and would play as often as possible. Eventually, she left the practice of law, raised three boys with her husband Richard, and returned to teaching and performing violin and viola.

In Boston, Rebecca was associate concertmaster of the New England Philharmonic for many years and has also served as concertmaster of other area orchestras. In England, she was a principal player with the the Surrey Mozart Players and Kew Sinfonia. She now performs on baroque violin with A Joyful Noyse, an early music group based in Lexington, and is a member of Lexington Symphony. She visits over thirty elementary schools each year with Lexington Symphony’s educational outreach quartet, teaching children about the instruments of the orchestra. Rebecca has a private studio of violin and viola students and continues to enjoy chamber music evenings with friends.

A cello student of Robert Ripley and Benjamin Zander, Pip Moss graduated from Harvard College in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music. He also attended graduate classes in conducting at BU and NEC. In 1969 he began a 35-year career as a middle school music teacher, all but one year of which was spent in the Lincoln Ma school system. He also conducted the Lincoln-Sudbury Civic Orchestra for 27 years until 2011, and he is currently the Senior Choir director at the Acton Congregational Church, a post he has held since 1977. Pip lives in Lincoln with his wife Jane and their cat Sam. Besides being an avid chamber music player, he also enjoys sailing his 28-foot sloop on Buzzards Bay and building model airplanes.

Peter Sulski was a member of the London Symphony Orchestra for seven years. While in England he served on the faculty of the Royal College of Music and Trinity College of Music and Drama, as well as being Artistic Director of Chapel Royal Concerts, which he founded in 1993. For seven years he gave the annual Viola Masterclass, along with many solo recitals and chamber music concerts at the Dartington International Summer School. He gave his Carnegie Hall debut in 1999, and his first London South Bank appearance in 2001.

After a brief stint in the Middle East as Head of Strings of the National Palestinian Conservatory, Bicommunal Coordinator for chamber music for the Cyprus Fulbright Commission and Principal Violist of the Cyprus Chamber orchestra, Peter returned in 2002 with his wife Anita to his native Worcester. He is currently on the faculty as teacher of violin/viola/chamber music at Clark University and College of the Holy Cross. He is a member of QX and Mistral. Peter is also Artistic Director of the Thayer Festival in Lancaster, Massachusetts, and records for Centaur Records.

Amelia Hollander Ames plays Principal Viola with the Vista Philharmonic and is a member of BMOP, Odyssey Opera, the Semiosis Quartet, Craft Ensemble, and the RAHA Duo, a viola-piano duo with Elaine Rombola Aveni. RAHA will release their album, Swirl, in July 2024, on New Focus Recordings, with debut recordings of music by Mathew Aucoin, Marti Epstein, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Curtis Hughes, Emily Koh, and Evan Ziporyn.

Amelia has performed at international festivals including the Israel Festival, Keshet Eilon, Kneisel Hall, Prussia Cove, Schleswig-Holstein, Singapore Arts Festival, Vancouver Jewish Music Festival, Verbier, as well as at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and New England Conservatory, Amelia studied viola with Martha Katz, Karen Ritscher, George Taylor, and Lisa Whitfield; and improvisation with Dominique Eade, Joe Maneri, John McNeil, Joe Morris and Hankus Netsky. She lives in Arlington, MA with her husband Christopher and two sons.