Project Build - Peer Masterclass Series
Meet The Team
Maya Fields
viola
American born, British-Israeli violist Maya Fields is currently pursuing her Master's Degree in Viola Performance at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music as a recipient of the Graduate Incentive Award, a full tuition scholarship, where she studies with Catharine Lees and Denisse Rodriguez-Rivera. Prior to her current studies at the College-Conservatory of Music, she graduated from the Eastman School of Music, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Viola Performance, where she studied with George Taylor. Additionally, Ms. Fields earned a minor in Russian language from the University of Rochester.
As an orchestral violist, she has held principal viola positions in several orchestras - the Cleveland Institute of Music's Preparatory String Orchestra, Cleveland Heights High School's Symphony Orchestra, Interlochen Arts Camp's Intermediate and World Youth Symphony Orchestras, the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, where she was a recipient of the Mark Jackobs endowed chair award, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, Eastman School of Music's Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras, the Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's Philharmonia Orchestra. She has had the honor of working with renowned conductors such as JoAnn Falletta, James Feddeck, Giancarlo Guerrero, Louis Langree, Jahja Ling, Brett Mitchell, Osmo Vanska, Franz Welser-Most, and David Zinman.
Ms. Fields also holds a number of honors and awards. She is the first prize recipient of the 2011 state of Ohio's Viola Society Competition, a winner of Cleveland Heights High School's 2014 Concerto Competition, and has appeared as a guest artist on Interlochen's Public Radio as well as Cleveland Ohio's WCLV Ideastream. In June, 2019, on behalf of the Cleveland Orchestra, she had the honor of accepting an invitation to perform as a featured guest artist as part of the Cleveland Orchestra's Gourmet Matinee Series at the Blossom Music Center.
She has attended the Interlochen Arts Camp, where she was a recipient of the Emerson Scholarship, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the AIMS Festival, where she was an orchestral fellowship recipient, and the Chautauqua Festival, where she was a two time orchestral fellow.
Liana Branscome
violin
Liana Branscome is the first prize winner of the Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota Competition (2015), Boca Raton Symphonia Concerto Competition (2014), the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition (2014) and second prize winner of the New World Symphony Young Artist Competition (2014). She has appeared as soloist with the Vidin Philharmonia, Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony, the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra and the Treasure Coast Youth Symphony. She has also performed as soloist at the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island and the International Institute for Conductors in Vidin, Bulgaria. Recent engagements include a recital tour of Portugal, Spain and London with pianist Bernardo Santos and a tour of South Florida with pianist Lewis Warren Jr.
Liana is pursuing her Masters of Music in violin performance at University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music where she studies under Glenn Dicterow. She received her Bachelors of Music at the New England Conservatory under the instruction of Paul Biss and Lucy Chapman. Her primary pre-college teachers include David & Linda Cerone. She has attended the Heifetz International Music Institute, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Chautauqua Institute. She is a teaching assistant at the University of Southern California in non-major violin and has presented masterclasses and recitals at numerous schools in South Florida.
While at the New England Conservatory, Liana also received a minor in creative writing and served as the editor of New England Conservatory’s academic journal 'Hear, Here!' and student newspaper, 'The Penguin.'
Elizabeth Stewart
violin
American violinist Elizabeth Stewart has been featured as a soloist with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (USA) as well as the Sibelius Academy Kapubändi (Finland). Elizabeth is also an avid chamber musician and has performed with various ensembles in venues such as Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, NY, the historic Agora Theatre in Cleveland, OH, and the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center in New York, NY.
Since 2018 she has been a member of the Erinys Quartet based in Helsinki, Finland. In July 2020 the Erinys Quartet was featured as part of the Mimir Chamber Music Festival’s Emerging Artist Program. Ms. Stewart has also traveled to Cuba with the Heilerin Quartet (Cleveland, OH) as part of Vermont Mozart Festival’s 2018 “La Ruta de Mozart” series to celebrate Mozart’s string quartets in Havana. She has studied chamber music with members of the Cleveland and Cavani Quartets.
As an orchestral musician, Elizabeth has played with groups such as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Helsinki Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Stewart has also performed with the National Repertory Orchestra and attended Colorado College Summer Music Festival, Foulger International Music Festival, and ARIA Summer Music Academy. Especially passionate about contemporary music, Elizabeth plays with NYKY Ensemble, dedicated to promoting new music in Finland. There she has worked with members of Ensemble Intercontemporain and performed notable works such as Dérive 2 by Pierre Boulez and Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum.
Elizabeth holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and is currently pursuing a Master of Music at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland. Her major teachers include Päivyt Meller, Joan Kwuon, David Updegraff, and Virginia Wensel.
In her spare time, Elizabeth is passionate about hiking, playing board games with friends, and enjoying a hot cup of coffee on a foggy day
Yu-Ting Huang
viola
Born in Taipei, Taiwan, violist Yu-Ting Huang is an active chamber and orchestral musician. She has performed across three continents, giving performances in the United States, Europe, and Taiwan with groups such as the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, Taipei Symphony Chamber Orchestra, as well as University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s Concert and Philharmonic Orchestras as principal violist. She is a founding member of the Immaculata Chamber Music Series.
Yu-Ting has attended music festivals such as Prague Summer Nights, Summit Music Festival, and the Formosa Chamber Music Festival. She has played in masterclasses for Roberto Diaz, Michael Klotz, Caroline Coade, Yitzhak Schotten, Louise Lansdown, and Che-Yen Chen.
Yu-Ting received her Bachelor’s, Performer’s Certificate, and Master's degrees from Taipei’s National University of Arts, Bowling Green State University, and University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Yi-Wen Chao, Matthew Daline, and Catharine Lees. She is currently pursuing her Artist Diploma at University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where she studies with Jan Grüning.
Daniel Aretskin
violin
Daniel Aretskin is a violinist, composer, and filmmaker, from Orange County, CA who has been playing the violin since he was a child. Over the years he has studied with well known teachers in LA and Orange County such as Ann Thatcher, Prof. Alice Schoenfeld (of USC) and most recently Prof. Alex Treger (former concert master of the LA Phil). After being accepted with scholarships to prestigious colleges and universities across the country to pursue a BM degree in violin performance, he is now studying with Professor Oleh Krysa at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. Additionally, he taught violin lessons as a substitute violin teacher at the Westminster Arts Academy. Beyond this Daniel is also a member of the MTAC Young Composers Guild. His compositions have received various accolades including but not limited to honorable mentions in the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Awards (finalist), the American Composers Forum, NextNotes High School Composition Awards as well as wins in the MTAC Orange County Composer’s Competition and the 2015 Composers Today MTAC State Competition.
Raina Arnett
violin
Raina Arnett began playing violin at age 4, convincing her mom to let her start lessons after spending months parading around her house with two chopsticks pretending to play them as a violin. Originally from State College, Pennsylvania, she holds BM degrees in Violin Performance and Music Theory with high distinction from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and is currently pursuing her MM in Violin Performance at the Juilliard School under Lewis Kaplan. Her other important teachers and mentors include Renee Jolles, Muneko Otani, Charles Castleman, and Laura Bossert.
At Eastman, Raina appeared as a principal and concertmaster of the Eastman Opera Orchestra, Musica Nova Ensemble, and OSSIA New Music. As an ensemble musician, she has performed under the baton of world-class conductors such as Yannick Nezet-Seguin, JoAnn Falletta, Brad Lubman, and David Zinman. Passionate about contemporary music, Raina has collaborated with many composers including Kaija Saariaho, Charles Wuorinen, and George Lewis. She has also performed at festivals such as June in Buffalo, Creative Dialogues XI Helsinki, the Castleman Quartet Program, LyricaFest Boston, and Bowdoin International Music Festival.
An avid chamber musician, Raina was a winner of the Honors Chamber Music competition at Eastman. She has also won several other competitions including the Ann Keller Concerto Competition and the Williamsport Young Artists Competition.
A passionate educator, Raina is the violin teacher for Zeta Charter Network, a school system which aims to whittle away at the quality gap between the education lower-income children receive as compared to their higher income peers. Through Zeta's violin program, Raina's students have had the opportunity to engage in the classroom with professional musicians from the New York Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York City Ballet Orchestra, and the Juilliard School. Other than violin, Raina loves running, yoga (her new quarantine hobby), chocolate, playing with cute dogs, and the way the air smells right after it rains.
Noémie Chemali
viola
French-Lebanese-American violist Noémie Chemali graduated from the Artist Diploma program at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University in May 2020 where she studied with Becca Albers and Hsin-Yun Huang. During her time at the McDuffie Center for Strings, she has performed alongside faculty members of the Cavani and Ehnes String Quartets. In 2019, she also performed in “A Night of Georgia Music,” a tour the American South with violinist Robert McDuffie, guitarist Mike Mills of the band R.E.M., and pianist Chuck Leavell of the Allman Brothers Band/Rolling Stones.
Noémie is also an alumni of McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, where she received her Bachelor’s degree. Noémie has spent her summers at music festivals such as The Music Academy of the West, Sarasota Music Festival, Orford Musique, The Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance (LAMP), Scotia Festival of Music, Manhattan in the Mountains, and Green Mountain music festivals.
Passionate about diversifying musical audiences, she co-founded the Hildegard Project, which aims to bring music written by women composers to women’s shelters in the greater Montreal area and was invited to speak about her work at the Classical Evolution/Revolution Conference in Santa Barbara, CA. Most recently, she founded Music@Daybreak, an interdisciplinary performance and research project which features performances at homeless shelters in collaboration with the Socicology department at Mercer University. She is excited to move to New York City in the fall to begin her Master’s degree in Viola Performance at the Juilliard School under the guidance of Carol Rodland.