Matthew Olson has studied and taught violin since age 3. At 18 he was concertmaster of the Kansas City Ballet Orchestra, the youngest ever and is currently a studio recordings musician in Seattle. Jeanette Wickell played 10 seasons with the Whatcom Symphony. In 2012 she obtained her Masters in Violin with Walter Schwede and Grant Donnellan at Western Washington Univ., where she is now an instructo
r. Studying with Walter Schwede, Whitney Wynn finished a double major in Environmental Studies and Violin at WWU in 2014. Lisa Humphrey has a Masters in Viola from the Indiana U. School of Music, studying with Alan deVeritch, and others. As an undergraduate at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticutt, she won both the Paranov Concerto and Chamber Music competitions and sat in with the internationally renowned Emerson and Leontovitch String Quartets. She has played several seasons with the Whatcom Symphony and Bellingham Music Festival and teaches at WWU, while maintaining a large private studio of more than 50 violin and viola students. Cellist Ray Kamada is a PhD Meteorologist with over 70 research publications, mostly in turbulent boundary layer physics. As a youth he studied for 10 years with Cesare Pascarella of the Roth String Quartet. At 16 he joined the Pasadena Symphony and was principal or co-principal cellist of the All-Southern Calif., All-Calif., and All-Western States High School Orchestras, as well as the UCLA and UC Davis Symphonies. He founded the Davis Community Orchestra and while a research professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, he played with the Ribera String Quartet and Monterey Bay Symphony, while serving on the Board of Chamber Music Monterey and Monterey's History and Arts Commission.
