Meet Our Team
Our tight-knit team designs and delivers musiConnects' education program, creates our concert season, and carries our mission into all aspects of their musical lives. Our part-time Resident Musicians ("RMs"), faculty, and administration are supported in this work by an eight-member Board of Directors comprised of community leaders and musiConnects parents.
Artistic Director
|
Elizabeth Cook (Artistic Director; Resident Musician, cello) joined musiConnects in 2021, teaching young cellists and performing with mC's faculty string quartet. Elizabeth grew up in North Carolina, where she studied cello at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with cellist Zvi Plesser. She went on to obtain degrees from Mannes College, SUNY Purchase, and The Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where she studied with renowned cellists such as Marcy Rosen, Brooks Whitehouse, Julia Lichten, and Michal Korman. Elizabeth has had the privilege of participating in masterclasses with artists such as Gary Hoffman, Peter Wiley, Paul Watkins, Zuil Bailley, Eighth Blackbird, The Orion String Quartet, David Finckel and Wu Han. In 2018 Elizabeth was awarded the Gloria Miner Fellowship at the 2018 Sitka International Cello Seminar, and performed as soloist with the Western Piedmont Wind Symphony in the “Music Beyond Borders” concert series which highlighted the stories of refugees. Elizabeth's passion for social change has driven her to serve in many different places all over the world, such as Sounds of Palestine, a music program for refugee youth in Bethlehem; and Children of Cambodia, a sponsorship program for orphans in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Elizabeth has spent a total of six years in Palestine and Israel where she both studied and taught cello to marginalized youth, including those living in refugee camps. In 2021, Elizabeth created and co-organized the first Palestinian Cello Choir, which gathered 30 cellists from all over Palestine to perform together in a concert tour.
|
Resident Musicians
|
Jubilee Chen (Resident Musician, violin) is a multi-genre violinist based in Boston, Massachusetts who cultivates the arts to restore the sacred and beautiful in urban contexts. Chamber music is her first love and in addition to musiConnects, she is on faculty with Boston Music Project and the Young Artists Chamber Music Intensive, and is a co-founder of the contemporary trio, nexbloom and string quartet, AMBAR. She has taught both locally and internationally to advocate for chamber music education as a model for nurturing student voice and communal care. In conjunction with music, Jubilee has a background in community development, and has worked in agencies dedicated to improving public policy and basic social rights. She is currently pursuing certification to develop a neighborhood Listening and Seed Project. She was a Fellow of Artistic and Social Change at the Longy School of Music where she earned her Master’s Degree with Paula Majerfeld.
|
|
Yeuk Sen Renee Chan (Resident Musician, viola/violin) Originally from Hong Kong, Yeuk Sen is a Boston-based violist and music educator. She is currently pursuing her Performance Diploma at Boston University with Professor Michelle LaCourse. She also holds a Master of Music degree in Viola Performance from Boston Conservatory at Berklee under the tutelage of Lila Brown. Chan has worked with well-known composers and arrangers such as Scott Wheeler, Ted Lo and Mark Lui. She also played in masterclasses with Randall Hodgkinson, Hsin-Yun Huang and Jennifer Frautschi. Recently, Chan was invited by Professor Gabriele Vanoni of Berklee College of Music to perform Arvo Pärt's works at the 2024 New York Encounter. Chan devotes herself to music education, she has been teaching violin and viola since 2015 to students of all ages and levels of accomplishment. She is also on faculty at Boston Music Project. Chan teaches using the Suzuki and Traditional methods, and is a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas. She was awarded several Outstanding Teaching Awards in Hong Kong. Chan believes that everything begins with the heart and it is her dream to be a positive influence for others, spreading joy through the love of music!
|
|
Rose Baker (Resident Musician, violin) is a teacher, performer, and arts administrator who is passionate about working with students to discover how music fits meaningfully into their lives. She enjoys working with private students of all ages and has also taught in classrooms with the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music. Rose is passionate about combining pedagogy and performance in the same spaces, which inspired her to co-found and serve as a Teaching Artist at Lines & Spaces, an organization that uses music to create inclusive, enriching community spaces through performances and an after-school program. She also performs regularly in the Seven Hills Chamber Music Festival; has given solo and chamber music recitals in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York; and has performed in masterclasses for Jennifer Koh, Jessica Bodner, Julia Glenn, and Sandy Yamamoto. In addition to teaching her own students, Rose enjoys supporting young musicians as an arts administrator as the Resident Director of the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival. Rose holds degrees in violin performance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Manhattan School of Music, where her primary teachers were Elizabeth Chang and Burton Kaplan.
|
Additional Faculty
|
Elizabeth Stefan (faculty, viola/violin) teaches young violinists at mC's Roslindale studio, after previously serving as Program Director (2016-20), longtime Resident Musician (2012-20), and founding violist with the Sumner Quartet. Previous teaching positions range from group classes with Making Music Matters, to private lessons, early childhood classes, and coaching chamber music at the Community Music Center of Boston. She received a META Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in the inaugural class of fellows, and presented her teams’ research on supporting Teaching Artists. As a performing violist, Elizabeth is a founding member of Phoenix, an innovative, Boston-based orchestral ensemble. Elizabeth holds degrees and certificates from the Eastman School of Music and New England Conservatory. She is currently the Director of Education and Partnerships at Rockport Music.
|
|
Maureen Heflinger (faculty, viola) joined musiConnects in 2022, teaching young violists/violinists and performing with mC's faculty string quartet. Maureen is a multifaceted performer and educator who feels equally at home premiering new works, leading an orchestra sectional, and getting in and out of a headstand. Maureen grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, where she studied piano and violin before finally settling on the viola. Despite living in an igloo and riding polar bears to school, Maureen managed to move to Boston, where she now enjoys a varied freelance career and performs regularly with the New Bedford and Atlantic Symphony Orchestras. An avid chamber musician, Maureen's performances have ranged from three seasons with the Nova Fellows, to premieres of chamber works written in Denali National Park as part of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. A recipient of a New England Conservatory Entrepreneurial Grant, her trio, The Nix Ensemble, championed two rare works of Paul Hindemith in Project Heckelmith, which featured Hindemith's Heckelphone Trio, and a reading of his wonderfully absurd play, Violamania. Maureen has been a prizewinner of the Philharmonic Society of Arlington Concerto Competition, and a National Finalist in the MTNA Soloist Competition. Recent performance highlights have included performing Paganini's La Campanella with viola orchestra as a faculty soloist at Idaho Viola Camp, and performing a livestream recital as a member of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra. Maureen teaches orchestra at Boston Latin School. In her spare time, she practices yoga and studies Brazilian Portuguese. Maureen studied with Marcus Thompson at the New England Conservatory of Music.
|
