Organ

Brenda Day is a graduate of Westminster Choir College, where she majored in church music.  She spent much of her career as Minister of Music and Organist at the First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen, NJ, where she served for 39 years.  She retired in 2022, and is enjoying subbing for area churches as well as well as accompanying for area choirs.  Ms. Day is also the accompanist for the Bernards School District.

Violin

Lindsey Jones is a professional violinist, conductor and educator living in New York City. She is currently a PhD candidate in Musicology at Rutgers University. Her research considers music historiography projects by women in the mid-20th century. Lindsey graduated magna cum laude from the University of South Florida with a M.M. in Violin Performance with a concentration in Instrumental Conducting, and summa cum laude from Western Connecticut State University with a B.M in Violin Performance. goes here

Cello

Scottish-American cellist Hannah MacLeod completed her Artist Diploma from Rutgers University in 2024. Prior to attending Rutgers, she received her M.M from the Longy School of Music, and her B.M. from New York University, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude and also completed a minor in Linguistics. 

While at NYU, she taught with the El-Sistema inspired nucleo UpBeat NYC, which led to her earning a teaching fellowship with Longy’s El Sistema Side-By-Side orchestra. Since moving to New Jersey, she has taught at Young Mozart Music Academy, in addition to running her own private studio.

Double Bass

Bassist Tom Forletti’s passion for music was first formed in his grandmother’s kitchen, where Italian opera and Karajan’s Beethoven cycle were perennial. He first began with piano lessons but quickly developed a preference for playing bass in the Three Village Central School District orchestra on the North Shore of Long Island where he grew up.  However, it wasn’t until Forletti attended Kinhaven Music School in the hills of Southern Vermont that music and orchestral playing began to take on a deeper significance. At Kinhaven he studied with bassists Logan Coale and Troy Rinker. Forletti then attended SUNY Purchase and the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with New York Philharmonic principal bass Timothy Cobb.

After receiving his Masters of Music from Manhattan School of Music, Forletti has pursued a career in freelance performing and teaching in the New Jersey and New York City areas. He is on faculty at Kinhaven Music School and the New Jersey Symphony Youth Orchestra as a bass teacher and coach. His performing schedule includes a variety of orchestral and chamber music engagements including with the Modus Operandi Orchestra, Tri-Cities Opera, Orchestra Lumos, the New Jersey Festival Orchestra, the Greenwich Chamber Players, and as a frequent substitute player with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

Violin

Mexican-born violinist, Emiliano Moreno, started his music studies at the age of 10 at the Music Workshop for Children of the Universidad de Guadalajara. In 2016 he started violin classes with Dr. Vladimir Milchtein. He graduated from Universidad de Guadalajara’s Bachelor of Music performing program in Summer 2023 and started studying the Master of Music degree in performance at Manson Gross School of Arts of Rutgers University in Fall 2023. 

Since 2011, he has played in different orchestras, making his debut as part of the SEJ Youth Orchestra in 2012, of which he was concertmaster from Spring 2014 to Fall 2019. During 2015 and 2016, he worked in the Zapopan Youth Orchestra and won auditions to be part of the Higinio Ruvalcaba Chamber Orchestra in 2018. He played in the Chamber Orchestra’s 2018, 2019, and 2021 seasons, performing with artists such as Nicolas Giordano, Alla Milchtein, Konstantin Zioumbilov and Ramon Lemus, and playing at 49th Festival Cervantino. He also performed as a soloist with the orchestra Vivaldi’s 4 Violin Concerto in B Minor in Guadalajara, Mexico in September 2021. More of his performances have been with Camerata de Zapopan and Colima Philharmonic Orchestra, as a guest musician. In the United Stated, he has collaborated with the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra and the Livingston Theater Company.

In addition, he has attended several masterclasses with various violinists, including Kazimierz Olechowski (2016), Christoph Callies (2019), Nicolas Giordano (2019), Maxim Vengerov (2021), Igor Malinovsky (2022) and Cuauthemoc Rivera (2022).

He has worked on new projects of academic staff and composition students from the Universidad de Guadalajara too, like the Nufé Experimental Orchestra and the composer Luis Pano recording “Miniatura para Violín”.  Besides, during his master studies, he has worked at the Rutgers Recording Studio and the University Outreach Program to teach violin in New Brunswick public schools’ music classes.

Soprano

Yasmine Swanson, soprano, is from Cranbury, New Jersey and holds a Master’s degree from Westminster Choir College in Voice Performance and Pedagogy. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations and German Studies from Tufts University in 2015. Previous operatic roles include Beth March in Mark Adamo’s Little Women with Opera in the Ozarks, Sister Constance in Westminster Opera Theatre’s production of Dialogues of the Carmelites, as well as Papagena and 2nd Spirit in the CoOPERAtive Program’s production of The Magic Flute. Yasmine was a semi-finalist in the 2021 Annapolis Opera Vocal Competition, as well as a semi-finalist in the 2020 Shreveport Opera Mary Jacobs Smith Singer of the Year competition. In 2015, she placed first in Tufts University’s Tishler Competition in Music Performance. In 2022, Yasmine was a finalist in the Edvard Grieg Society of Minnesota’s Edvard Grieg Competition, in which she offered songs in Norwegian and Swedish. She also traveled to Israel in 2022 as a participant in the IVAI Summer Opera Tel Aviv program. Yasmine currently sings as a soprano section leader with St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Freehold.