MAIN STREET CHAMBER PLAYERS

About the MAIN STREET CHAMBER PLAYERS

The Main Street Chamber Players is a mixed instrumental chamber ensemble whose collective experience spans more than 30 years and is comprised of members of Main Street Music Studios and various guest artists.  Concerts by MSCP have included performances at the John Kendall Recital Hall in Takoma Park, Maryland and The Lyceum in Alexandria, Virginia as well as a several other venues in the Northern Virginia area and in Washington, D.C. 

About the members

Hailed by critics for her “musical elegance and brilliant technique”, pianist Rosanne Conway is a native of Seattle, Washington, where she performed with the Seattle Symphony at the age of 16.  She holds degrees from the University of Washington and the University of Colorado and as winner of the Petri Award for Foreign Study, attended the Hochschüle fur Müsik und Theatre in Hannover, Germany and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.  In New York, she studied with Earl Wild at The Juilliard School.  Ms. Conway has appeared on many local and regional concert series including Anderson House, the Luxembourg Embassy, the State Department, and for the American Liszt Society Festival at the Kennedy Center.  Ms. Conway and Santiago Rodriguez have recorded Rachmaninoff’s four hand/two piano works for the Elan label.  Ms. Conway has also served on the faculties of Lewis and Clark College, the University of Maryland, and the National Cathedral School.  She is also a founding member of the Main Street Music Studios in Fairfax, Virginia as well as a member of the Main Street Chamber Players. 

Barbara Fitzgerald, double bassist, is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where she received her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees.  As winner of the school’s concerto competition, she performed the Pichl Concerto for Double Bass with the Juilliard Philharmonia. She has lived in various parts of the world where she has been in orchestras, given solo recitals and been soloist with orchestra in concerto performances, most recently performing the Koussevitzky Concerto with the Reston Community Orchestra in Reston, Virginia and with the Summer Strings Orchestra in Glen Burnie, Maryland.  She toured Eastern Europe with the McGill Chamber Orchestra from Montreal, Canada; was principal bass of the West Australia Symphony Orchestra in Perth, West Australia; has played in summer festivals in Europe and Mexico; has been a free-lance bassist in New York City, and is presently a free-lance bassist in Washington, D.C.   Just recently, Ms. Fitzgerald received the VASTA (Virginia State Chapter of ASTA) Outstanding String Teacher Award (awarded in November 2020).   Additionally, Ms. Fitzgerald is a founding member of the Main Street Music Studios and a member of the Main Street Chamber Players in Fairfax, Virginia. She currently serves on the faculty of the Peabody Bass Works at the Peabody Conservatory and is the director of “Basstravaganza”, a summer camp for bassists in Northern Virginia.

Violinist, Laura Kobayashi, performs as a member of the Kobayashi/Gray Duo, Main Street Chamber Players and Trio Peridot and is a founding member of the Main Street Music Studios where she maintains a large studio of students. Dr. Kobayashi actively performs throughout the United States and has also performed abroad in Wales, Thailand, South Africa, Norway, Argentina, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and Brazil and the islands of Trinidad, St. Lucia and Puerto Rico.  In addition, she has recorded two compact discs of music by women composers for the Albany Records label. She has also edited for publication a violin sonata by 19th Century French woman composer, Marie Grandval, for Hildegard Publishing Company. Dr. Kobayashi is also the recipient of two teaching awards: the 2012 VASTA (Virginia State Chapter of ASTA) Outstanding String Teacher Award and the 2002 “Excellence in Teaching” Award by the School of Music and College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University. Her past teaching positions include West Virginia University, the University of Georgia and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Prior to her teaching career, Dr. Kobayashi was a professional orchestral musician and played in the second violin section in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. Dr. Kobayashi studied violin with Dorothy DeLay, Andrew Jennings, Paul Kantor and Denes Zsigmondy. Her degrees are from The Juilliard School, Yale University and The University of Michigan.

Cellist, teacher and author Kenneth Law is a member of the Main Street Chamber Players, Trio Peridot and the Ritz Chamber Players. He has performed at the Arts Club of Washington (D.C.), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall, and the “Jazz at Lincoln Center” Concert Series. Overseas, he has performed in England, France, Scotland, Panama and Puerto Rico, and has collaborated with Earl Carlyss (Juilliard String Quartet), Michael Tree (Guarneri Quartet), and the Ying String Quartet. In March of 2006, Mr. Law was featured on the nationally televised NAACP Image Awards as a member of the Ritz Chamber Players. Mr. Law gave his first performance at the Piccolo Spoleto Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, as a member of the Converse Trio in the Spring of 2008; in the Summers of 2009 and 2010 returned as a member of Ensemble Argos and in the Spring of 2017 as a member of the Polaris Piano Trio.  In the Summer of 2011 he performed as a member of the Charleston Baroque, and as Director of Chamber Music and performer in the 2013 Colour of Music Festival, also in Charleston. Mr. Law currently maintains a large private studio in Fairfax, Virginia. His students have been accepted to the Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Peabody and Oberlin Conservatories and Indiana University (Bloomington). Mr. Law is the recipient of the Studio Teacher of the Year Award from both the South Carolina (2010) and Virginia (2017) chapters of the American String Teachers Association. Mr. Law received undergraduate and graduate degrees in performance from the Eastman School of Music and Cleveland Institute of Music, and a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Conservatory. He was also a chamber music fellow at The Juilliard School.

Harold Levin joined Main Street Music Studios as Artist-Teacher of Viola in 2019, after serving as Professor of Viola at Skidmore College. He previously held viola and conducting positions at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln), West Virginia, Bucknell, and Marywood Universities. His former students hold public school, college, and professional orchestra positions throughout the United States. An active performer, Dr. Levin has played viola with the orchestras of Louisville, Cincinnati, Omaha, Memphis, Long Island, Orlando, and Jacksonville, and has taught and performed in summer festivals including Cabrillo, Interlochen, Rutgers Summerfest, Bedford Springs, Bay View, Breckenridge, Lake Placid, and the Colorado Philharmonic.  Currently he teaches and performs each summer at The Blue Mountain Festival in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Dr. Levin holds degrees from Ball State University, the University of Cincinnati, and Rutgers University, where his teachers included Michael Tree, Donald McInnes, Raymond Stilwell, and Robert Slaughter.  In addition to his college work, he has led youth orchestras in Indiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Florida.  A commissioned, recorded, and published composer; his works have been performed throughout the U.S.

Kent McWilliams has enjoyed a successful performing career since his debut in Rachmaninov’s Piano Third Concerto with the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been an award winner at competitions of Porto (Portugal), the Regina Symphony and the Canadian National Competitive Festival of Music. Kent has also performed live recitals and concertos on the CBC in Canada and the ABC in Australia. Kent holds a Doctorate in Piano Performance from the University of Montreal where he studied with Marc Durand. He completed doctoral research in Poland with Professor Andrzej Jasinski while exploring the Polish folk elements in Chopin’s Mazurkas. Kent also earned an Artist Diploma under Oleg Maisenberg at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, Germany and completed Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees with Boris Lysenko at the University of Toronto. His first teacher was Maude McGuire, piano pedagogue in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. Kent was a professor of piano at St. Olaf College in Minnesota for 18 years prior to moving to Kent State University in 2019. He taught previously at Wilfrid Laurier University, Brock University, and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He began teaching at the Main Street Music Studios in Fairfax, Virgina in August, 2023. Dr. McWilliams has judged the national finals of the MTNA competition and the Canadian Music Competitions. He has also judged the Canadian Chopin Festival Competition as well as numerous regional competitions and MTNA auditions in 25 states and provinces. Kent has been an adjudicator for the Royal Conservatory of Music for over 25 years. Kent is also a very experienced clinician, having presented performance and pedagogy workshops to teachers at many national events. At the 2010 MTNA national convention, he presented the opening plenary session to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth.