Four Strings Academy

Founder, Executive Director
Mrs. Mariana Green-Hill

Artistic Director
Ms. Naira Underwood

Board of Directors
Donnell Patterson, President
Diane Monroe
Epp Sonin
Kathy Kelly
Rashida Black

Advisory Board
Sonya White
Melvena Green, Ed.D

Sponsor a child and/or make donations!! We appreciate every effort made to support our youth. To show our appreciation we offer two complementary tickets to the Four Strings Gala Concert with a $150 gift.

	Faculty

The Faculty

The Artistic Director and Founder of Four Strings is Mariana Green-Hill. She and her faculty are dedicated to the art of teaching performance and practice techniques. All are experienced soloists, chamber and orchestral musicians. Our faculty members hold degrees from accredited institutions including: The Juilliard School, Mannes College of Music,The New England Conservatory and Boston Conservatory. Our faculty are well versed in teaching students from diverse backgrounds, and all levels of proficiency. Our Goal is to challenge and encourage students to work diligently to achieve short and long-term goals.

Mariana Green-Hill

Founder, Executive Director, Violin Professor

Violinist Mariana Green-Hill is the new Artistic Director of the Project STEP located in Boston, Massachusetts. This program provides comprehensive music education to students from the Black and Latino communities with the goal of giving these students an opportunity to compete and succeed in the world of classical music. Mrs. Green-Hill is also the Founder and Executive Director of Four Strings Academy, a four-week summer program located in Lexington Massachusetts . This program is founded on the conviction that with focused instruction, every student can develop his or her own voice on an instrument. Mariana Green-Hill is a Second Prize Winner of The Sphinx Competition. She has also won first place in the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Harry and Marion Dubbs Competitions. Ms. Green-Hill has been a featured guest soloist with the New Jersey, Memphis, Detroit, and Boston Symphony Orchestras and The Boston Pops. In addition to her solo performances, she is an experienced chamber and orchestral musician. The Amaryllis String Quartet, of which she was a member, was awarded First Prize in the prestigious Fischoff Chamber Music Competition (Jr. Division). Ms. Green-Hill has performed with YoYo Ma, Pamela Frank, Lynn Chang, Marcus Thomson, and members of the Houston and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. She was also a member of the Young Eight String Octet for six seasons. Currently she is first violinist with the Baldwin String Quartet.

As an orchestral musician, she serves as a co-concertmaster of the Harlem Symphony Orchestra and the Soulful Symphony, which performs in collaboration with the Baltimore Symphony. She is currently on the violin Faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music Pre- College Division, Project Step and the Lexington Music School. Ms Green-Hill enjoys performing in various non-classical genres of music. She has recorded with Joss Stone, world-renowned Grammy Award winning gospel artists Donnie McClurkin and Richard Smallwood and Grammy award winning artist Alicia Keys. Mrs. Green-Hill earned a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music Degree from the Juilliard School and a Professional Studies Diploma from the Mannes College of Music under the respective tutelage of Dean Stephen Clapp, Ann Setzer and Ida Kavafian.

Naira Underwood

Artistic Director, Violin Professor

Naira Underwood, a native of Pensacola, Fl began playing the violin at the age of three. Over the course of her studies and career, Naira has received recognition for her artistry and has been given several awards including winning the Doris Kahn Concerto Competition, a semi-finalist in the National Sphinx Competition, and the 2004 Artist Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts . As a soloist, she has been featured on NPR radio, WUWF Classic radio, and WEAR TV. As a chamber musician with the Ebony Strings Quartet, Naira strives to perform new innovative musical compositions written for the traditional string quartet and has premiered works by emerging young composers such as Christina Spinae. She has served as an Artist in Residence for the Sphinx Performance Academy, Queens Borough Community College, and The Noel Pointer School of Music. Ms. Underwood has served as the Artistic Director of the Four Strings Academy in Lexington, MA, and Artistic Director for the Noel Pointer School of Music. As a pedagogue and advocate for arts education, Ms. Underwood has instructed hundreds of students in Brooklyn, and throughout the New York Metropolitan area.

Ashley Vandiver

Director of Ear & Rhythmic Training, Violin Professor

Ashley Vandiver, violinist, has earned recognition for her artistry as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician. She has served as principal second of the UBS Verbier Orchestra under the direction of Maestro James Levine and has also performed with the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Chamber Orchestra, Fifth Tier New Music Ensemble, the Boston Philharmonic and in the first violin section of the Resident Orchestra of The Hague, where she served as an interim player. She is also a founding member of the unconducted chamber orchestra A Far Cry and is currently on the violin faculty at Wellesley College. Ms. Vandiver has collaborated with such esteemed artists as James Buswell, Norman Fischer, Patricia McCarty, Nathaniel Rosen, Nicholas Mann, Terry King and composer Michael Gandolfi. She made her professional solo debut with the Fort Bend Symphony in her native Texas at the age of 16, followed by a performance of the Brahms Double with the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Orchestra. A first-prize winner in the Juanita Miller Strings Competition and the Houston Young Artist Competition, she subsequently was featured on PBS television and as a recitalist at Rice University. Festival appearances include Angel Fire, Encore, Lyrica Fest, Texas Music Festival, and the Aria International Music Academy. Ms. Vandiver has performed in over thirty countries on five continents, including solo performances at the Midwest Clinic in Chicago and the International Bach Festival in Leipzig, Germany. She has been requested to perform for such notables as Prince Edward, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and ormer celebrated Texas Governor, Ann Richards, where she received the Yellow Rose of Texas Governor's Award for Musical Achievement. A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music with distinction in violin performance, she then went on to receive her Master of Music Degree from the Royal Conservatory in the Netherlands. Principal teachers include James Buswell, Vera Beths, Kennith Goldsmith and Laura Bossert. Ms. Vandiver has coached chamber music extensively with Paul Katz, Lucy Chapman, Pamela Frank, Anner Bylsma, and members of the St. Lawrence, Mendelssohn, Miami, St. Petersburg, and Julliard String Quartets.

Isabel Escalante

Violin

Ms. Escalante started her musical studies at El Conservatorio de Carabobo, Venezuela. In 2003, she was granted a full scholarship to continue her studies at the University of Southern Mississippi where she obtained her Bachelor's degree in music. Winner of the 2007 William T. Gower Competition, Isabel has won 3^rd place in the Emil Friedman Violin Competition, and was a semifinalists in the Sphinx Competition. She has been a member of numerous Gulf Coast's orchestras such as Mobile Symphony Orchestra, Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and Pensacola Symphony Orchestra. She is a member of the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra as well as a member of the Sphinx Symphony. For the last two years she has been on the substitute list of the New World Symphony. As music instructor, in 2009 Ms. Escalante was one of the founding teachers of the Baton Rouge Children's Charter School. The same year she attended the Institute of Musicianship and Public Service in Providence, Rhode Island. Ms. Escalante is pursuing a Graduate degree in Violin Performance at Longy School of Music.

Drew Ricciardi

Violin, Viola, Scales & Technique Professor

Violinist and Violist Drew Ricciardi has performed with festivals throughout the United States and Canada, including the Portland String Quartet Workshop, the Apple Hill Chamber Music Workshop, ScotiaFest, the Oxford Arts Center String Quartet Workshop with violinist, Ida Haendel, and the Emerging Quartets Program with the Muir Quartet. While living in Montreal, he performed a world premiere for solo viola and electro-acoustics by Leah Reid, entitled "Pressure", in McGill University's Pollack Hall. He was also a member of Ensemble Chorum, a diverse contemporary ensemble that performed in various halls, including La Chapelle Historique du Bon Pasteur and La Maison de la Culture du Plateau Mont Royal. Drew is currently based in Boston, where he is a member of the Winsor Music Quartet with oboist, Peggy Pearson and serves as faculty for the Mozart Academy of Music of Weston, Massachusetts. He studies regularly in New York City with Mela Tenenbaum and, in the fall, will begin his studies at the Boston Conservatory on full merit scholarship.

Jason Amos

Viola Professor

Jason Amos began his viola studies at age eleven through the public schools in his hometown of Southfield, MI. He has received honors in several competitions including 4th place in the 2007 Sphinx Competition and 1st place in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's 2006 Bradlin Scholarship Competition. Mr. has appeared as soloist with the Ann Arbor Symphony and has played principal viola for many orchestras throughout Michigan as well as the Aspen Sinfonia. Mr. Amos has served on the faculty at the Sphinx Performance Academy for three years. He has also served as faculty for the Sphinx Overture program through which he began a sustained violin program at Bryant Elementary in Flint, MI. Mr. Amos did his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan with Yizhak Schotten and is now pursuing a Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory with Martha Katz. He plays on a Celeste Farotto viola circa 1967 which is generously loaned through Shar Music's fine instrument collection.

Patrick Owen

Cellist

A native of Michigan, cellist Patrick Owen has performed in recitals and as soloist with orchestra in Europe, the United States and Japan. Recent engagements include a performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, a recital on WCRB's summer concert series in Boston's Hatchshell and a New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. Recent local engagements include performances at Jordan Hall with the Boston Chamber Music Society, in Duxbury, MA as part of the Duxbury Music Festival as well as work with the Boston Philharmonic and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Mr. Owen received his Bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music. While a student at Eastman, he spent one year of study in Paris at the Paris Conservatory. He received a Master's degree from the Juilliard School in 1999, and finished his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Boston University in 2007. Mr. Owen has been an honored participant at the summer music festivals of Aspen, Sarasota, Taos, Brevard and others. Currently Mr. Owen is on the Faculty of the South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA. His teachers include Pamela Frame, Alan Harris, Phillipe Muller, Harvey Shapiro and Andres Diaz.

Courtenay Vandiver

Prepartory Division Director, Cello Professor

Native Texan, Courtenay Vandiver has been praised for her "wonderful technique and creamy sound," (New Jersey Star Ledger) and dubbed an "expert player", (The Boston Globe). Ms. Vandiver is a founding member of "A Far Cry", Boston's conductorless chamber orchestra, and the Chatham String Trio. A Far Cry recently toured the West Coast and Vermont, and looks forward to their New England residencies at Yellow Barn's Young Artists Program and Kneisel Hall this summer. Also this summer, The Chatham String Trio served as Artists in Residence at LyricaFest. A passionate chamber musician, Ms. Vandiver has collaborated with the St. Petersburg and Jupiter String Quartets, the Young Eight, and international artists including Donald Weilerstein, Roger Tapping, Natasha Brofsky, Bonnie Hampton, and Susan Narucki. Festival appearances include Ravinia, Yellow Barn, Sarasota, Schleswig-Holstein, the Leipzig Bach Festival, and the New York String Orchestra Seminar. Ms. Vandiver currently performs with the critically acclaimed Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Lyric Opera, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. She holds teaching positions at Milton Academy and Project STEP while maintaining a private studio in Jamaica Plains, NY. Courtenay has also served on faculty at Yellow Barn's Young Artists Program, the Rocky Mountain Summer Conservatory, the Blue Lake Fine Art's Camp and served as a demonstrator for the 2007 Texas Music Educators Association Clinic, "Fun in Thumb Postion". Ms. Vandiver earned her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from New England Conservatory with Academic and Artistic Distinction while under the tutelage of Laurence Lesser and Paul Katz. During her studies, Ms. Vandiver founded the NEC Honors ensemble, the Brando Quartet, and won the Commencement Competition garnering a solo appearance in Jordan Hall. Former governor Ann Richards presented Ms. Vandiver with the Yellow Rose of Texas in recognition of outstanding artistic achievement. She has rocked for Jethro Tull through twenty-two US cities and continues to tour with them as cellist of the Calliandra String Quartet. In addition, she is currently recording for Eurythmics' frontman Dave Stewart. Locally she plays with Humanwine, a semifinalist in this year's 30th Annual WBCN Rock N' Roll Rumble, and with What Time is it, Mr. Fox?.

Jeremy Harman

Executive Assistant, Student Facilitator, Associate Cello Professor

Cellist Jeremy Harman grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where he spent equal time in both the classical music world and the local independent metal scene. A student of Carter Enyeart, he received his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Missouri - Kansas City Conservatory, and was an active member of Musica Nova, while spending his summers playing throughout the Midwest as a founding guitarist of "The James Dean Trio", a progressive metal band . Mr. Harman received his Master of Music degree in 2007 while studying with Terry King at the Longy School of Music. He again devoted much of his time to playing new music and student compositions. Mr. Harman is a two-time participant and former principal cellist of the Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles, having performed with Tony Bennett, John Williams, Bobby McFerrin, Quincy Jones, and Dave Liebman, among others. He has also been a participant at the Banff Centre for the Arts - International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music under the direction of Dave Douglas. In addition to freelancing in the Boston area, Jeremy maintains a private studio in Milton, MA and teaches strings at the Mission Hill School in Boston.

Russell Wilson

Scale Class Professor, Viola

Russell Wilson, violist, has distinguished himself as a versatile chamber, solo and orchestral musician. Mr. Wilson has appeared in collaboration with the Miami String Quartet, Eugenia Zukerman, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Melvin Chen and as a member of Lyrica Chamber Music and the Casavi String Quartet in Boston's Symphony Hall. A prizewinner in the Mosha Paranov Competition, he made his orchestral debut with the Hartt Symphony Orchestra playing Alan Shulman's Theme and Variations.

A semi-finalist in several competitions including the Primrose and Corpus Christi International Competitions, Russell recently won first prize in the Miami String Quartet Competition. An active performer, Wilson can be heard in such diverse ensembles as the Hartford, Vermont and Albany Symphonies, Kalistos Chamber Orchestra, Mercury Consort, and the West End String Quartet, Bravo Music Festival's 2007 quartet in residence. Festival appearances include Domaine Forget, LyricaFest, Las Vegas International, The Quartet Program, Killington, Mancini Institute and Spoleto Music Festivals.

A graduate of the Longy School of Music with distinction, he completed his Master's Degree at The Hartt School of Music as a member of their prestigious 20/20 Program. He can be heard on Tullen Sound Recordings available at lyricachambermusic.org, and on an upcoming recording to include the Shulman Variations produced by the Hartt School of Music. Mr. Wilson's teachers include Laura Bossert, Steven Larson and Andrzej Grabiec.

Roy Gonz�lez

Theory, History Professor

Costa Rican trombonist, Roy Gonz�lez has performed Tenor and Bass trombone with orchestras such as Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, and the National Symphonic Orchestra of Costa Rica. Roy has also toured Spain, Germany and Cyprus with the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra in 2006. As a performer of contemporary music, Roy performed Lindsey Jacob's Lucidity for solo trombone and electronics in the 2008 Louisiana/Texas Electronic Music Conference and the 2009 Concert Series of The Contemporary String Ensemble, New Orleans. Last year Roy premiered the work by Brazilian composer Ronaldo Cadeu After the Hurricane for Bass Trombone and Guitar as the first part of a series of commissions from an eclectic and young group of composers to expand the trombone repertory. A versatile player, Roy has performed in a number of Salsa, Calypso and Jazz bands, and currently he is the Music Director of a new Latin Ska project in the Boston Area..

During his Masters studies at Louisiana State University, where he was awarded the Louisiana Music Award and the Byron Lamb Scholarship for Low Brass, Roy was also the Graduate Teacher Assistant at the up-and-coming LSU trombone program that has been twice runner-up at the International Trombone Association's Trombone Choir competition.

From an early age Roy started teaching beginner trombone players at a Municipal School in his native Costa Rica, soon after was offered a Teaching Assistantship at the National Institute of Music of Costa Rica. Since then, he has maintained a private studio with trombone and theory students of all ages and levels. Roy gives master classes every summer at the National Institute of Music of Costa Rica.

Andrew Goodridge

Music History, Pianist

Andrew Goodridge, pianist, has performed with many leading artists, including Roman Totenberg, Arturo Delmoni, Scott Yoo, D'Anna Fortunato, Sophie Vilker, and members of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony Orchestra. As a continuo player, he has performed at Emmanuel Church in Boston under conductor Craig Smith, and for the Boston premiere of Handel's "Rodelinda" at Christ Church in Cambridge, MA. He is the official accompanist for Project STEP, an outreach program sponsored in part by the Boston Symphony. Mr. Goodridge accompanies regularly in the violin studio of Roman Totenberg and in many other prestigious studios. As a teen-ager, he spent three summers at Kneisel Hall, in Blue Hill, Maine where he studied with the legendary accompanist Artur Balsam. He received an undergraduate degree in English Literature from Harvard University, and a Masters Degree in Piano Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, as a student of Patricia Zander. Mr. Goodridge holds a Doctorate in Collaborative Piano (accompanying), at the New England Conservatory. As an active teacher, lecturer and writer, Mr. Goodridge currently teaches piano and coaches chamber music at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School and the Powers Music School. In addition, he has taught music history at the New England Conservatory. As an accompanist for the Piatigorsky Foundation, he has given presentations at retirement homes and schools throughout Boston and the U.S. Mr. Goodridge has written program notes on at least 75 pieces for the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, and the Kingston Chamber Music Festival at the University of Rhode Island. He has given mini-courses on chamber music appreciation for Elderhostel, in conjunction with the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and has lectured at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

Aristides Rivas on Sabbatical

Cello Professor, Ensemble Coordinator, Conductor

Cellist Aristides Rivas made his solo debut at age fourteen with the Los Llanos Chamber Orchestra in Guanare, Venezuela. The following day he became the associate principal cellist of the Los Llanos Symphony Orchestra by audition. His musical training began at age seven when he started to learn the cuatro, one of the most representative folk instruments in Venezuela. After learning basic harmony and diverse sense of rhythm through the cuatro, he was encouraged by his teacher to explore classical music. At age ten, Rivas joins the Barinas city wing of the internationally known Venezuelan National Youth Orchestra Program, a musical-social project created by the visionary Jose Antonio Abreu in the seventies. He was immediately attracted to the cello and since then he adopted both cello and classical music to his life long musical career. Rivas has performed, taught, and collaborated with a variety of groups and organizations. He is a member of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra since 2005. Rivas holds solo recitals and chamber music performances in classical, Latin Jazz, and folk Venezuelan music. He has performed several times with Paquito D???Rivera, one of the living legends in latin jazz, Grammy Award winner and the recipient of the 2005 National Medal for the Arts. Rivas teaches chamber music and gives cello lessons through several institutions in Boston. He performs and gives master classes in Venezuela and is on the faculty at the International Music Festival ???Presjovem??? in Spain. Rivas still plays the cuatro, nonetheless his cello repertoire includes many tunes from his native Venezuela???s folk music. Rivas' main teachers and mentors include Natasha Brofsky, Roberto Zambrano, Gary Hardie, Darrett Adkins and Mark Churchill. He has also played in master classes and had coachings with Joel Krosnik, Paul Katz, George Neikrug, John Sharp and William Molina, among others. In his experience as a cellist, he has performed in some of the most prestigious halls in the world, including the Teresa Carreno in Venezuela, Teatro Colon in Argentina, National Theatre in Spain, Caramoor Music Festival in New York, Carnegie Hall in New York, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Sapporo Concert Hall in Japan, and Symphony Hall in Boston.

Sharon Robinson-Byrd on Sabbatical

Chorale & Theatre Arts Director

Sharon Robinson-Byrd, is a graduate of Boston Conservatory of Music, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theater. Mrs. Robinson-Byrd toured throughout New England in performance and artist in residence programs with the Just Around the Corner Theater Company. She developed a passion for bringing the arts to educational programs and this passion led to the completion of a Masters Degree in Education- Creative Arts in Learning, from Lesley College. Mrs. Robinson-Byrd brought the Byrd's Nest- A Participatory Storytelling Theater Experience to summer camps and schools during the late 80's and throughout the early 90's. Her work also includes radio voice-overs. She was the voice of Diana Harris, ballistics specialist, in the media series Spenser for Hire. Mrs. Robinson-Byrd also performs as a solo and ensemble vocalist in area churches. She is currently an educator in the Boston Public Schools where she integrates creative arts through theater and music in her teaching curriculum.