Violist and baroque violist, Dr. Dana Rokosny regularly performs with the Oregon Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival, Portland Opera Orchestra, Oregon Ballet Theater, Eugene Symphony Orchestra, and numerous ensembles throughout Oregon. She is also a tenured member of the Oregon Mozart Players.

Dana is a enthusiastic chamber musician and performs frequently with the Portland based Stumptown String Quartet. She is the Instructor of Viola at Lewis and Clark College and has maintained a thriving private studio for over fifteen years of all ages and levels. Additionally, Dana is the newly elected president of the Local 99 American Federation of Musicians (AFM). She performs on a 2004 Guy Rabut viola.

B.M., Ithaca College; M.M., Rice University; Professional Studies, Cleveland Institute of Music; D.M.A, University of Maryland College Park.

Cellist Heather Blackburn has been lauded for her “burnished tone” (The Oregonian) and for “her gorgeous tone and playing unerringly in tune” (Seattle Post Intelligencer). Heather was appointed to 4 one-year positions with the Oregon Symphony and has performed as guest principal cello for Portland Opera, Symphony Tacoma and Tulsa Symphony. She has given Oregon premieres of works by Joan Tower and Esa -Pekka Salonen, has been a featured soloist with Portland Symphonic Choir, and has performed and recorded with Pink Martini, Portland Cello Project, soul singer Ron Artis and indie band Other Lives. Heather currently teaches cello and chamber music at George Fox University and University of Portland. Heather was invited to perform a solo recital featuring music by Amy Beach as part of the “Women in Music” series at Chadron State College, NE in March. Upcoming concerts include a livestream with cellist Diane Chaplin of works by Giovanni Sollima, a recital in her home state of New York and a solo performance with the University of Portland Orchestra.

Performing in many genres, Kirt Peterson has been a freelance woodwind musician in Portland for almost 35 years, starting out performing in large and small jazz ensembles, Latin jazz ensembles and musical theater orchestras. Kirt performs regularly with the Oregon Symphony, and in 2016 and 2018, he was a featured soloist with the orchestra. Other local ensembles Kirt has performed with include Fear No Music, Third Angle New Music, Portland Chamber Orchestra, Pink Martini and the Young Composer’s Project.  When not busy performing or working in his career in maritime logistics, Kirt lives in Beaverton with his wife and two cats, helping tend to their 250 bush rose garden.

Dr. Stephen Lewis is pianist, composer, conductor, and music teacher living in Portland, Oregon. As a composer-pianist, Stephen performs traditional piano music with a composer’s urgent, expressive power, while bringing to avant-garde and experimental music a classical concert pianist’s devotion to beautiful sound. He searches for rawness and immediacy in his interpretations of Beethoven and Chopin, while winning over audiences with renditions of complex atonal works by composers like Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Ligeti. Whether from the present or the past, Stephen performs music that he believes has important and touching implications for today’s world. Even the most demanding music, he argues, is an opportunity for connection, edification, and meaningful experience. Stephen teaches piano, composition, and music theory students in his private studio. His students include children, teenagers, and adults. Stephen emphasizes the development of creativity and a healthy relationship with music and the piano while also encouraging his students to pursue the highest levels of excellence. Stephen received his D.M.A. in Contemporary Piano Performance from the University of California San Diego, where he also received a Ph.D. in Composition. Stephen is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Composition and Piano Performance).

Dr. Joel Bluestone is a Music Professor at Portland State University, where he has been the head of the percussion department since 1989. He is the Co-Founder/Percussionist with the Northwest premiere contemporary new music ensemble, Fear No Music. In 2016, after 25 years, he retired from performing with the group, but still remains on the board of directors. However, he continues to perform for YCP, which is dear to his heart.

Nicholas Emerson is a composer, producer, and guitarist from Portland, OR. He studied composition and music production at Portland State University with a BS in Sonic Arts & Music Production. He is very active in the local classical music scene helping to cultivate the incredible wealth of youth talent in the Pacific Northwest and is involved with organizations including Fear No Music Young Composers Project, Portland Youth Philharmonic, Northwest Children’s Theater & School and many others. Along with Hip Hop, Nicholas has experience composing chamber music, vocal music and recently premiered a concerto for guitar and orchestra with guitarist David Tutmark and the Tillikum Chamber Orchestra.

For his work with young composers, pianist and conductor Jeff Payne was awarded the 2022 Musical Hero Award by the Metropolitan Youth Symphony. He founded Fear No Music with percussionist Joel Bluestone in 1992, and has performed hundreds of concerts with the group across the United States. During his tenure as Artistic Director for the group he was responsible for presentation of twenty World Premiere or American Premiere performances of works by Pacific Northwest composers. In 1997 he founded the Young Composers Workshop, and continues as its Director, overseeing the development of aspiring young creative minds around the region. The 25tth anniversary of the Young Composers Project has been featured in articles in the Oregonian and Oregon Arts Watch.

Payne’s complete performance of Messiaen’s “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus” was named one of the Ten Best Concerts of the year by the Oregonian. Heralded by the Boston Globe as “a pianist of chameleon abilities,” Payne has performed on WGBH National Public Radio in Boston, KING radio in Seattle, All-Classical and KOPB radio in Portland, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Norton Gallery in Palm Beach, at the Seattle Spring Festival, at Eugene's Music Today Festival, the Ernest Bloch Festival, and the Oregon Bach Festival. He has performed as soloist with the Vancouver Symphony, and the Yaquina Chamber Symphony. Payne holds a law degree from Lewis & Clark Law School and is a Senior Assistant Attorney General with the Oregon Department of Justice.