Faculty Members

Jeannette Isenberg

Violin Workshops, Intermezzo String Orchestra

Ms. Isenberg holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music and divides her time between teaching and performance. She has diverse musical talents: she plays violin with the Santa Rosa Symphony, classical chamber ensembles, jazz combos and country swing bands.

Ivy Zenobi

Chamber Ensembles & Violin Workshops

Ms. Zenobi received her Bachelor in Music from the University of Colorado at Boulder in violin performance and a Masters in viola performance from the University of Toronto, Canada. She has performed in the Aspen Music Festival and School & the Banff Center for the Arts. Ivy performs regularly with Santa Rosa Symphony as well as other Bay Area Orchestras and rock bands on both violin and viola. Ms. Zenobi became Suzuki Certified under the tutelage of Dr. William Starr and most recently was chosen to attend the Starling-Delay Violin Symposium held at The Juilliard School. Ivy has a private studio of over 35 students and teaches a strings ensemble (String Beans) at Sonoma Academy.
 

Karen Zimmerman

Prelude String Orchestra

Ms. Zimmernam holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music from the Juilliard School. While in New York, Karen played with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera along with appearing with various chamber ensembles throughout the city. She now plays with the Santa Rosa Symphony along with other local orchestras, has an active teaching schedule and is the Librarian for the Santa Rosa Symphony.

Robert Bowman

Jazz Ensemble, Jazz Theory & Improvisation

We are delighted to have Robert Bowman with us for another great year of Summer Music Academy, directing the Jazz Band and teaching Jazz Theory and Improvisation.
 
 

Pam Otsuka

Violin Workshops

Pam Otsuka graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in violin performance. Upon graduating, she performed in the Hidden Valley Opera Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, performing with Roy Malan. She has performed with Ukiah Symphony as Assistant Concertmaster, Symphony of the Redwoods as Principal Viola and Principal Second Violin, and the Sonoma County Philharmonic as Principal Viola and Acting Concertmaster. She has performed with many theater groups, including Transcendence Theater, Sixth Street Playhouse, Spreckles Theater and Raven Theater in Healdsburg.

She has been teaching  Beginning, Advanced and Junior High Orchestra classes at Rincon Valley Unified School District since 2014. She founded and has conducted the Windsor String Orchestra since 2013. She has been giving private lessons in the Sonoma County area since 2008. She has also taught with the Overture Project in Healdsburg, strings coach for Analy High School in Sebastopol, and strings clinician at the Santa Rosa Junior College.
 
 

Joyce Park

Cello Workshops, Kinderviolin

Joyce Park was born in Seoul, Korea and moved to Piedmont, CA at the age of 10. She is currently pursuing her Masters Degree in Cello Performance at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She received her Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance and Music Education at California State University, Sacramento where she was a student of Andrew Luchansky. At Sacramento State she was the winner of the 2014 concerto competition and performed as a soloist with the Symphony Orchestra as well as being an apprentice teacher in the String Project. For the past five years, she has been teaching privately in the Sacramento area and is also the private cello instructor at Norcal Music & Arts studio and at New World Music Academy. She is currently the cellist in the Mersonacta Quartet where she performs throughout California. Aside from cello, she is an active pianist and is currently the piano accompanist at the S.A. Church in Sunnyvale.

 
 

Chris Pimental

Guitar Workshops

In his work as a professional Musician since 1989, Chris Pimental has worked with many different acts in many different styles. He prides himself on his ability to play different styles convincingly on guitar or bass. Through all his musical wanderings however, his true love remains jazz guitar.

Chris has worked withi Michael Feinstein, Bobby Caldwell (What you won‘t do), R & B great Al Wilson (Show and Tell), Little Anthony (Tears on my Pillow), The Coasters, The Drifters, The Platters, The Mills Brothers, David Pack (Ambrosia), The Reycards, Timothy B. Schmidt (the Eagles), Patrick Simmons (Doobie Bros.) Rich Little, Ernie Watts, Mel Martin, Bennett Freidman, Mel Graves, Randy Vincent, Peter Welker, George Cables, John Stowell, Julian Lage, Sam Andrew (Big Brother and the Holding Co.) Linda Tillery, Tommy Tutone, Melvin Seals of JGB, (formerly the Jerry Garcia Band).

Chris has played in a number of bay area dance bands, such as Dick Bright Orchestra, Encore, Big City Review, City Lights, Full Motion, Black Market Jazz Orchestra, Rich Martini Orchestra, Chuck Wansley’s After Hours, Mustache Harbor, and Tainted Love.

Chris has also played in a growing list of Broadway musicals, including Mama Mia, The Full Monty, Wicked, Hairspray, The Color Purple, Annie, The Jersey Boys, Disney’s High School Musical, Grease, and Spamalot, Cats, the off Broadway San Francisco Production of Love Janis, and the Broadway Sacramento-Music Circus Presentation of Big River. I have also performed with the Marin Symphony and Sun Valley Summer Symphony performances of Pixar in Concert, and most recently the Sun Valley Summer Symphony Gala Concert featuring, Audra McDonald.

Lennie Moore

Video Game Music Ensemble

For decades Lennie Moore has been a proven force as an accomplished composer, arranger and orchestrator of music for videogames, commercials, film, and television. His credits include Outcast: Second Contact, artist music packs for DOTA2: The International 2016 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Fighter Within, Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Kinect Disneyland Adventures, Halo Combat Evolved 10th Anniversary, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, The Walking Dead Motion Comic, Watchmen Motion Comic, MTG: Duels of the Planeswalkers, Dirty Harry, Dragonshard, and War of the Ring.

Lennie has also developed and taught Composition as an adjunct professor for USC, UCLA Extension, and currently at the Technology and Applied Composition program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Marco d'Ambrosio

Film Music Ensemble

Marco d’Ambrosio loves shaping music and sound, especially the kind that enhances the visual arts. Making music that is evocative, enlightening, and entertaining is a natural result of Marco’s creative expression.

Marco’s musical baptism began shortly after moving from Italy to Boston, when at age nine he began playing trumpet. “It really all began in Italy,” he reminisces, “when my father would take me to festivals in Florence. “He would put me on his shoulders so I could watch the bands march by.” “I remember falling in love with the trumpet, mostly because it was so shiny! It wasn’t until we emigrated to the United States that I had a chance to start playing in elementary school.” An insatiable appetite for all genres (my first two albums purchased simultaneously were Maurice Andre Plays Baroque Trumpet Concertos and Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic) his musical awareness was later captivated by film music, particularly the classic collaborations of Fellini and Nino Rota and the scores of Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrman and Maurice Jarre among others. This quickly led him to composition, with a special interest in combining acoustic and electronic textures, which he pursued while a student of music and engineering at the Hartt School of Music and University of Hartford.

Marco has never been unduly influenced by cultural and stylistic constrictions. He is equally adept at playing and creating pieces that reflect classical, jazz, modern and ethnic influences, and he thrives on blurring the lines between each. In some of his recent scores you can hear various ethnic instruments such as the didgeridoo, doumbek and bodhrán drums, melodica, Indian flutes, Waterphone and Theremin along with beats or highly stylized synthetic textures. Many of his compositions also reflect a romantic orchestral lyricism that can no doubt be traced to his summers performing/studying at the University of Siena and touring throughout Europe with the Puccini and International Festival Opera Orchestras.

An East Coast transplant, Marco has made a musical niche for himself in a studio in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a composer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist, he has scored numerous award-winning films, documentaries and theatre projects including the anime hit Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, Fist of the Blue Sky, Haiku Tunnel (Sundance 2001), the Emmy winning documentary Blink, Double Dare, and Red Diaper Babyfor the Sundance Channel. Other scores of Marco’s have been on projects released by 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Classics, Lucasfilm Ltd., PDI/Dreamworks, Pixar, Columbia TriStar HBO, and ION TV.

In 2005, he was awarded the prestigious film scoring fellowship from the Sundance Institute, and in 2009 he was selected to participate in the BMI Conducting Workshop in Hollywood. You can hear some of his later scores in The Rape of Europa, for which he received an Insight Award for Excellence from the National Association of Film and Digital Media Artists, Ready, Set, Bag!, We Live in Public(co-scored with Ben Decter), winner of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, and Atomic Mom, winner of a Gold Medal at the Park City Film Music Festival. Marco is also responsible for creating much of the dynamic sound and music heard in the iconic THX trailers.

Marco has also enjoyed a stint co-arranging and performing with Bob Weir (The Grateful Dead) More recently, he was also the studio orchestra conductor for the ABC TV series Off the Map and Intelligence, working on great stages in LA, like Capitol and Warner Bros. He has also been a regular house conductor at Skywalker, working on larger scores for video game projects for Microsoft Studios and Sony along with baton duty for other composers on their film projects.

When he’s not locked up in his mad sonic laboratory, Marco recharges his creative flow working the land at Valle Verde, the Sonoma County ranch he shares with his wife Terri, son Armando and their dog Diva.
 

Andrew Emer

Andrew Emer studied string bass with Peter Rofe (Los Angeles Philharmonic) and Charlie Haden (John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman) and received a Masters of Arts degree from New York University (NYU) 2000. As a string bassist, Andrew has performed, toured & recorded with: Branford Marsalis, Bob Weir (Grateful dead) Lee Konitz, Stefon Harris, Roy Hargrove, Ben Vereen, Donald Byrd, Billy Higgins, Slide Hampton, Buddy Collett, Gabriel McNear (No Doubt, Green Day) and the multi-platinum selling artist – Black Slate. Andrew has taught college clinics and workshops at the National conservatory of Sydney, Australia, The Brussells Conservatory, Antwerp, Belgium, Biblioteca Nacional of Bilbao, Spain, Melbourne University, The California Jazz Conservatory, and Sonoma State University.  

Morgan Cochneuer

Morgan Cochneuer is a multi-instrumentalist and music teacher who lives in Petaluma, CA. His main instruments are fiddle and guitar, but he also plays and teaches piano, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, bass, vocals, percussion and jug! He graduated from Sonoma State University in 1998 with a B.A. in Jazz Guitar, after which he studied and performed with mandolinist Kenny Hall, a well-known and deeply respected Old-Time musician. Morgan has also shared the stage with musicians such as Jim Kweskin, Maria Muldaur, John Sebastian, Dan Hicks, Geoff Muldaur and David Grisman.  He currently teaches private lessons at his home studio and works in schools with youth string orchestra programs. He loves entertaining children with traditional music at libraries and concerts, leading sing-a-longs, preserving musical traditions and helping families experience the joy of music-making. Morgan is the author of a recently published children's book titled "The ABC's of Jug Band Music" 

Lauren Haile

Lauren Haile first moved to Sonoma County to earn her bachelor's in music at SSU in 2003 and has been here ever since! She teaches piano and voice at Music To My Ears in Cotati where she has over 30 private students. She has accompanied and musically directed shows at Cinnabar, Spreckels, The Raven, The Glaser Center and 6th Street Playhouse. You can also find her coaching and accompanying the choirs at Casa Grande High School. On Sundays, she and her husband, Paul, lead the music at SOMA Church Community. Lauren has been a part of the local indie music scene since 2006 where she played alongside her husband in the instrumental rock band Not To Reason Why. More recently, she plays and sings in her band Trebuchet with her husband and two other SSU music alums. She has loved singing under the direction of Bob Worth in Circa 1600 as an alto/second soprano for the last 10 years.

Chris Newton

Multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer, arranger, producer, music teacher Chris Newton has been playing music in the Bay Area for the last twelve years with upcoming performances in solo and collaborative projects.
He received his AA in Music from Santa Rosa Junior College and his bachelor of Jazz Guitar Performance from Sonoma State University. Upon completion, he began teaching music in elementary schools in Sonoma County. He is as passionate about performing as he is about sharing and teaching music to the next generation. 

Konstantins Jemeljanovs

Brass

Konstantins’s unique sound and creative expression are a celebration of his musical imagination, innovative talent and educational background. Konstantins is “a true inspiration, playing on the highest of levels” and I am “honored to not only have worked with him but to also know him.” (Ambrose Akinmusire)

From Riga, Latvia, Konstantins earned his reputation at a young age, touring with Moscow City Ballet, Liepai City Orchestra and many more. To take his playing to the next level, Konstantins attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts; and after graduating Cum Laude with a degree in Jazz Performance, he went on to study with renowned jazz educator Dr. David Baker at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Konstantins then continued his education in music, receiving his Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Konstantins has had the honor to have studied and worked with Arturo Sandoval, Ambrose Akinmusire, Vince Mendoza, Bob Mintzer, and Alan Pasqua. Dr. JB Dyas, of the Thelonious Monk Institute commented, “Konstantins is one of the most talented trumpet players I’ve worked with.” He has also enjoyed playing with Randy Brecker, Bill Holman big band, Clare Fischer big band, James Morrison Raimonds Pauls, Jill Sobule, Battle of the Big Bands, Los Angeles Mambo All-Stars big band, renowned Georgian composer Giya Kancheli and many more. His work with Karlis Lacis and Aija
Andrejeva on the album, Meza was nominated for a Golden Microphone for Best Concert and  Theatrical Performance.

Konstantins is currently working on his album, touring, and teaching. He resides in Sonoma, CA with his family.

Darina Drapkins

Kindermusicianship

Darina Drapkin is a life-long singer and musician. Having studied classical piano, guitar, flute, percussion, ukulele, and most recently violin, she feels at home with a wide variety of styles and genres of music, both as a teacher and performer. Currently, Darina teaches 1st to 5th grade music at Sunridge Charter in Sebastopol, and performs with the Sonoma County women’s Balkan choir “Gradina."  Darina has studied classical piano for 17 years, and Balkan voice with Lily Storm of Kitka, for over a decade. She is well versed in the Kodaly method of music education.