Our Artists

Thomas K Webber

Thomas K. Weber began violin lessons at the age of seven years. He studied privately with several teachers in the Chicago area, notably among these were Henri Hayza (a pupil of Sevick), and Paul Stassevitch (a student of Leopold Auer).

Music was always an important part of Tom’s life. His mother was a professional cellist. His great uncle Bohomir Kryl was a world renowned coronet soloist in the early part of the 20th century. The musical influence was obvious, and he decided to continue with music as a life long profession.

Tom chose the Eastman School of Music for his education. He majored in public music education, and minored in violin performance. He graduated in 1959 and began a teaching and playing career that continues to this day. Teaching experiences include public schools in Duluth, Minnesota; Tucson, Arizona; and Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Performing in orchestras has always been a priority and Tom has played in many, including as a charter member of the Eastman Philharmonia. Symphony orchestra include the Rochester Philharmonic, Duluth Symphony, Tucson Symphony, Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, Orchestra of Santa Fe, Santa Fe Symphony, Durango, Colorado Orchestra, Taos Symphony, and Hobbs Symphony. Tom has been Concertmaster of the Roswell Symphony Orchestra for 15 years.

Tom and his wife Charmaine live in Los Alamos, and have two grown children. Hobbies include hunting, fishing and spoiling the grandchildren.

Rebecca Carón

REBECCA CARÓN, Co-Artistic Director of Soundscapes, was born in Seattle, Washington, where she began her musical studies. Her primary teachers were Terry King and Charles Wendt at Grinnell College, Lev Aronson at SMU, and Joanna de Keyser at UNM. She received a Hill Burton Music Award, Presser Scholarship, and Meadows Artistic Merit Scholarship. She served as cellist for the Caron Quartet, Oncydium Chamber Baroque, Moveable Music, Music from Angel Fire, and Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. She currently performs with the San Juan Symphony. She has taught at New Mexico Highlands University and Armand Hammer United World College and Taos Arts Advisory Council, teaches with Taos Elementary Arts Visiting Artist Program and teaches out of her home studio. She lives in Valle Escondido with her husband David and cats Max and Ophelia. Ms. Carón gratefully performs on Cello #165, made for her in 2003 by her husband, David Carón.

Mark Jackson

Mark Jackson studied at The Boston Conservatory of Music. He has sung with many opera companies in the United States, and his career has taken him to several places in the world where he has given concerts and opera performances. He has sung with Taos Community Chorus, performed with the “Taos Chamber Music Group”, given many recitals at the Harwood Museum and sang in Andrea Clearfield’s “Transformed by Fire” sponsored by the Aldo Leopold Foundation. He teaches at the Taos Youth Music School and privately out of his “Taos Institute of Vocal Arts” studio. This is his second season singing The Schubertiade with Claire Detels.

Claire Detels

Claire Detels was born in Seattle and received her MA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington, including keyboard studies with Randolph Hokanson, Neil O’Doan, Carole Terry,Margaret Gries, and later withAlan Chow and jazz pianist Claudia Burson. She is now a retired Professor Emerita from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where she specialized in 19th-c. opera, feminist aesthetics, and piano music of womenand African-American composers. Since her move to Taos in 2014, she has served as pianist and AssistantDirector of the Taos Community Chorus (TCC), performed with the Taos Opera Institute,Taos Soundscapes, PianoTaos, the Taos Arts in Schools program; and has organized annual “Schubertiad” concerts and celebrationsof Black History Month and Women’s History month.

Detels is currently Music Director at El Pueblito Methodist Church of El Prado and Sangre de Cristo Lutheran Church of Taos.

Ari Le

Ari Le began playing the violin and viola while growing up in New York and continued to play in orchestras and chamber ensembles in Providence, Paris, Boston, and San Diego. He has studied violin with Hisako Resnick, Charles Sherba, Rictor Noren, and Calvin Wiersma. Ari serves as concertmaster of the Santa Fe Community Orchestra (SFCO) and has performed as a soloist with the SFCO, the Los Alamos Symphony Orchestra, and eSSO in Santa Fe. He works as a plasma physicist at Los Alamos National Lab.

Elizabeth Calvert

Elizabeth Calvert, Soprano, grew up in Essex Junction, Vermont and was a founding member of The Essex Children’s Choir under the direction of Constance Jackson Price, with whom she appeared on A Prairie Home Companion. She graduated from Middlebury College with a BA in Music in 1995 and studied voice with Carol Christensen and Beth Thompson Kaiser. In 2000 she premiered the role of “The Angel of Depression” in Vermont Opera Theater’s production of A Fleeting Animal: An Opera From Judevine. Since moving to New Mexico in 2002 she has performed with Theaterwork, Taos Opera Institute, St. James Episcopal Church Choir, and Taos Community Chorus (TCC), for which she has also served as President of the Board of Directors and as soprano soloist for Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass and Vaughan-Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and in the annual TCC Schubertiade.

Ferdi Serim

Ferdi Serim is a multi-instrumentalist (alto flute, wind synth and drums), composer and jazz educator who began teaching at the age of 11. His fifth grade teacher, Margot Ely, let him into her classroom one hour before school, and let him teach classmates to play his arrangements, including “Maria” from West Side Story, which had just come out. The methods he discovered then formed the basis for his work as a Jazz Artist in Education for the National Endowment for the Arts, which is when he met Dizzy Gillespie, who became his mentor.

Dizzy allowed Ferdi to take his big band arrangements to high schools throughout the Delaware Valley region, rehearsing for several months until students could play them well enough to play them with Dizzy in community concerts. During this time, Ferdi recruited many other jazz legends to participate in artist in residence activities including Frank Foster, Wild Bill Davis, Arnie Lawrence, Steve Nelson, Earl May, Gerald Veasley and Rachelle Farrell.

Since moving to New Mexico in 1999, Ferdi has applied creative lessons of improvisation to education and digital equity. Ferdi is author of four books on educational technology, and is working on his latest – “Playing the Changes – a guide for harnessing creativity in times of change to daily life. He has served three tours of duty at the New Mexico Public Education Department, most recently leading a datacasting pilot that connected him with the vibrant family of visiting artists in Taos who produced “La Tormenta de Taos” which is the foundation of a new project to increase community and family engagement – New Mexico FaCES.

Genevieve Leitner

With “elegant virtuosity”* guitarist Genevieve Leitner plays music from around the world and across time periods. She has performed in Chile, Germany, Mexico, Austria, Italy, Argentina and throughout the US. For six years, Genevieve lived in Santiago, Chile, where she delved into the music of Latin America, focusing on the composers and traditional rhythms from this region’s eclectic cultures. Her solo album, “Enamorada”, features Latin American dances and love songs.

In addition to her work as a soloist, Genevieve has a passion for collaborative music. She has performed guitar and sitar in ensembles with a wide range of instruments and singers. She has also collaborated in opera, theatre, dance and film music.

Genevieve has taught students of all ages in the United States, Mexico and Chile. Currently, she teaches guitar at Albuquerque Academy and directs the Albuquerque chapter of the Kithara Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to enriching the lives of young people worldwide through the classical guitar. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she studied with Gerald Klickstein. She performed in masterclasses for Manuel Barrueco, Roland Dyens, Scott Tenant, Antigoni Goni, Carlos Pérez, Jason Vieaux, and other distinguished guitarists. As a student, she won 1st prize in the following competitions: Greensboro Music Teachers Assoc. Young Artists Competition; Columbus State University Guitar Competition, junior div.; Deborah Beene Memorial Competition. Genevieve was born in Chimayó, New Mexico, to a musical and artistic family.

*Landshuter Zeitung, 2015

David Goldflies

David Goldflies currently travels between Taos, NM, and Panama City Beach, FL, to perform with various musical ensembles. Mr. Goldflies recorded and toured with the Allman Brothers Band (78-82), where he was given the name Rook (for Rookie) on the day he joined the band. Rook was also the bassist on the recording of the hit single, Black Betty (toured by the group Ram Jam). In 2004, Mr. Goldlfies took up double bass. Since then, he has performed for over fifteen years with the Panama City Symphony Orchestra where he currently serves as the principal bassist, as well as with the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra and the Downbeat Big Band (Fort Walton Beach, FL). Mr. Goldflies is excited to perform the Bolling Suite for Cello and Jazz Trio and looks forward to participating in Taos, NM’s creative musical arts scene.

Renée Hemsing

Violinist & violist Renée Hemsing is a passionate chamber musician with a particular devotion to both early music and music by living composers. She enjoys traveling to perform in diverse capacities throughout the US and abroad, most recently as guest principal baroque violist of the Handel + Haydn Society in Boston, and studied baroque viola at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute in Toronto and at International Baroque Masterclasses in Gaming, Austria.

As a violinist and founding member of Ajax Quartet, former graduate Quartet-in-Residence under Takacs Quartet, she enjoyed successes in tours and competitions, including recitals in the United Kingdom and in Finland, and won the silver medal at the Coltman National Chamber Music Competition. She is a native of New Mexico, where she earned her undergraduate degree in violin. Renée earned her masters degree in violin at the University of North Texas where she studied both baroque & modern violin. She is principal viola of Boulder Bach Ensemble, the violinist of Boulder Altitude Directive, and a doctoral candidate in violin performance at CU Boulder.