Meet and Hear the Artists

Violinist Cecilia Archuleta enjoys a varied career as a chamber musician, orchestral player, and soloist. Her elegant, vibrant virtuosity has brought numerous engagements with our region’s most esteemed ensembles. She has been privileged to count Camilla Wicks, Henryk Szeryg, and Jascha Heifetz among her mentors. Cecilia was concertmaster with Philharmonia Northwest and has played with the Northwest Sinfonietta, the Seattle Symphony, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra. She is currently a member of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and the Auburn Symphony. In chamber music (her greatest love), she has performed with the Philadelphia String Quartet on the Olympic Music Festival and the renowned Onyx Trio at Town Hall in Seattle. She is a member of the faculty of Icicle Creek Chamber Music Madness and the Midsummer Musical Retreat, where she coaches chamber ensembles. She has performed with Gallery Concerts, Intimate Baroque, the Anacortes Arts series, the Friday Harbor Chamber Music Festival, the Oswego Music Festival, and the Mainely Mozart Festival. As a soloist, Cecilia has been a guest of the Toluca Symphony, the Four Seasons, Octava, and Chaspen Chamber Orchestras, the Northwest Philharmonia, and the Cantare Ensemble. She has toured the Americas with the Orchestra de la Juventud and the Toluca Symphony. Highlights of her experience in Los Angeles include concerts for Princess Grace of Monaco with harpsichordist Igor Kipnis, a special recital for the President of Mexico, and a performance of the Bach Double Violin Concerto with Jack Benny!

Cellist Meg Brennand is known for her work on both modern and baroque cello. As the cellist with the critically acclaimed Onyx Chamber Players, she appeared throughout the Northwest and live on Classical KING-FM 98.1 with outstanding reviews for their complete cycles of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. In 2015, she performed the complete works of Beethoven for cello and piano with Onyx pianist David White. Meg is a long-time member of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra and has served on the faculties of Seattle Pacific University and the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond. She performs on baroque cello with Seattle Baroque Orchestra and Pacific MusicWorks and has played with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver, BC, and the Portland Baroque Orchestra. In 2013 she performed two of the six Bach Suites for solo cello on Gallery Concerts. An avid chamber musician, Meg has been the cellist in ensembles performing on the Auburn, Mostly Nordic, and Second City Chamber Music Series, the Jacobsen Series, Camerata Musica in Richland, the Whidbey Island Music Festival, and at the Bloedel Reserve. Meg is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music.  

Fortepianist Tamara Friedman, praised for the depth, wit, and humor of her performances (Seattle Times), attended the Oberlin Conservatory and received her master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music (NYC), studying with Lilian Kallir. She has collaborated with such artists as Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schroder, Max van Egmond, and Tanya Tomkins, and has been appearing with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock as Duo Amadeus for the last several decades. In the Pacific Northwest she has performed on the Seattle Camerata, Allegro Baroque and Beyond, Belle Arte, Early Music Guild, Gallery Concerts, and Mostly Nordic series and for the Governor’s Chamber Music Festival. Tamara has been the featured performer in early piano workshops for Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) and the Western Early Keyboard Association, and has lectured on Mozart for several regional and statewide music teacher associations in the Pacific Northwest. Tamara is co-curator of the Skagit Early Keyboard Music, where, together with George Bozarth, she welcomes performers, teachers, groups of students, and others interested in historic pianos. In the summers Tamara has been featured on the Kennebec Early Music Festival in Bath, Maine.  

Cellist Tanya Tomkins is equally at home on Baroque and modern instruments. She is renowned in particular for her interpretation of the Bach Cello Suites, having recorded them for the Avie label and performed them many times at venues such as New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Seattle Early Music Guild, Vancouver Early Music Society, and The Library of Congress. Tanya was one of the principal cellists in San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for many years and is currently co-Principal cellist in the Portland Baroque Orchestra. She has performed with both orchestras as soloist. On modern cello, she is a long-time participant at the Moab Music Festival in Utah, Music in the Vineyards in Napa, and a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. As an educator, Tanya has given master classes at Yale, Juilliard, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. With co-Director and life partner, the pianist, Eric Zivian, she is Artistic Director and co-Founder of Valley of the Moon Music Festival in Sonoma.