Yariv Aloni has received praise for conducting “impassioned, inspiring” and “magnificently right” interpretations of major orchestral and choral repertoire. Reviewers also describe him as “a musician of considerable insight and impeccable taste”.  Yariv Aloni studied conducting under the tutelage of the Hungarian conductor János Sándor, former music director of the Budapest State Opera, the Györ Philharmonic Orchestra and Opera Pecs. He also studied with conductors Helmuth Rilling and Gustav Meyer.
  He is the music director of the Galiano Ensemble of Victoria which he founded in 1999.
Since 1995 he is also the music director of the Victoria Chamber Orchestra. In 2010 he was appointed as susic director of the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra.  From 1999 to 2007 he was also the artistic director and conductor or the Courtenay Youth Music Centre in the Comox valley, British Columbia.  Yariv Aloni's guest appearances include the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, the West Coast Symphony in Vancouver, the Civic Orchestra of Victoria, The Victoria Choral Society and Prima Youth Choir.

Born on a kibbutz in Israel, Yariv Aloni began studying the violin at the age of eight and turned to the viola when he was sixteen. He studied viola with David Chen at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem, Daniel Benyamini, principal violist of the Israel Philharmonic and Michael Tree of the Guarneri String Quartet.  With an emphasis on chamber music, he also studied at the Jerusalem Music Centre with distinguished visiting faculty from around the world including the Isaac Stern, the Amadeus and the Guarneri String Quartets, and many others.

He was a finalist at the François Shapira competition in Tel-Aviv. His awards included the Israel Broadcasting Authority award for chamber music performance and numerous awards and annual scholarships from the American-Israel Cultural foundation. As the violist of both the Aviv and the Penderecki string quartets, he has performed in many concert halls around the world including Lincoln Centre in New York, the Louvre in Paris, Tonhalle in Zurich, and numerous concert halls in Canada, the United States, Germany, Italy, Holland, Mexico, France, Poland and many more. In 1985 he was invited to join Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zuckerman to play a gala concert at Carnegie Hall in New York.  He appears regularly with the Vetta Ensemble in Vancouver and performs in numerous chamber music festivals and recitals series.

 An avid and dedicated teacher, he is a faculty member at the University of Victoria, British Columbia where he is teaching chamber music and is a former faculty member of Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. He has given master classes at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Brandon University, University of Alberta in Edmonton, and Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Mr. Aloni recorded for the United, Marquise, Tritonus, and CBC labels as well as independent CD labels.

A native of New Brunswick, violinist Ann Elliott was a full scholarship student with Victor Yampolsky at Boston University where she won the Concerto Competition and was twice awarded the prize for most outstanding performer.  She was also the winner of the Canadian National Music Festival. Scholarships enabled her to pursue further studies in Europe with Nathan Milstein and Denes Zsigmondy.

She is a founding member of the Lafayette String Quartet, Artists-in-Residence since 1991 at the University of Victoria. The Lafayette String Quartet is regarded as one of North America’s finest ensembles. Garnering many prizes in its early years, the LSQ is one of the few quartets in the world to have maintained its original members. Like their mentors, violinist Rostislav Dubinsky, and the Cleveland Quartet, the members of the LSQ are devoted teachers and active, dynamic performers. They have recorded a number of CD's, their latest, “Death and the Maiden” (CBC) winning the most outstanding Classical Album at the Western Canadian Music Awards.

Ann is a regular guest of Music By the Sea, the Olympic Music Festival and the Eine Kleine Summer Music Festival. As advocates for strings in the public schools, she and her colleague Pamela Highbaugh Aloni, have created and co-teach the Strings Mentoring Program at UVic. 

Born in Montreal and raised in northern Alberta, Christi Meyers holds performance degrees from McGill, and the University of Western Ontario, where she studied with Gwen Thompson and Sonia Jelinkova. She has performed with many Canadian orchestras, including the Vancouver Symphony and Opera, Orchestra London, and the CBC Radio Orchestra. She joined the Victoria Symphony in the fall of 2001 as assistant Concertmaster and has been acting Concertmaster this past season. In 2006, she was featured soloist with the Victoria Symphony on their main stage “Classics” series.

Christi is on faculty at the University of Victoria. Her chamber music interests are diverse and she works with a variety of ensembles, including Early Music Vancouver, Festival Montréal Baroque, Vancouver New Music, Aventa, and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Müge has studied at the Istanbul State Conservatory, winning the “Best Young Musician” award, and in Switzerland with Nicolai Chumacenko, Sandra Goldberg and Ayla Erduran (a student of David Oistrakh and Zino Francescatti). A former member of the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, Müge won first prize at “the Violin Competition of the Turkish Cultural Ministry” and also first prize as best interpreter of Turkish composers. She spent the year 2000 in France, teaching at the Toulouse National Conservatory while studying with Burkhard Godhoff.    

In 2001, Müge came to Canada and became one of the founding members of the Hermes String Quartet in residence at the Victoria Conservatory of Music. In 2002, she won the first prize in the senior strings category in the British Columbia Fine Arts Festival. Müge is currently a member of the Victoria Symphony, serving this year as an assistant concertmaster, and teaches at the Victoria Conservatory of Music and Brentwood College.

She performs frequently with the Victoria Bach Ensemble and the Aventa Ensemble, and in the past year was a co-founder of the Emily Carr String Quartet.

Tori Lindsay has consistently distinguished herself onstage as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestral player. In September she joined the Victoria Symphony Orchestra as Principal Second Violin; other orchestral appearances include the Houston Symphony Orchestra and the Houston Opera and Ballet Orchestras.She has also been invited to act as guest Concertmaster with Symphony Nova Scotia. In the chamber orchestra setting, Ms. Lindsay has performed with the Galiano Ensemble, the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra and the Via Salzburg Chamber Orchestra in venues across North America. With a passion for chamber music, she has collaborated with such artists as the Gemini Quartet and the St. Lawrence String Quartet, with whom she performed the Mendelssohn Octet in a University of Toronto Faculty Artist's Concert.

In 2005 Tori graduated with honors from Rice University with a Masters degree in violin performance under the tutelage of Kathleen Winkler. Born in Grimsby, Ontario, Tori began violin at the age of 9 and continued her studies at the University of Toronto with David Zafer and Mayumi Seiler.

Sharon Stanis has a multi-faceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, and educator. A co-founder of the Lafayette String Quartet, she has toured extensively in North America and Europe. Sharon has appeared as soloist with the Victoria Symphony and the Palm Court Orchestra, and has served as concertmaster of the Victoria Symphony. At Basses Loaded IV, she performed the Bottesini Grand Duo with Gary Karr. A member of the Aventa Ensemble, Sharon is also a frequent guest artist on the Eine Kleine Summer Music Series. Sharon is currently an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Victoria, where she teaches violin and coaches chamber music.

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Sharon received her B.M. and M.M. from Indiana University where she coached with Rostislav Dubinsky, who was integral in the formation of the Lafayette String Quartet.

In addition to the seven compact discs recorded with the Lafayette Quartet, Sharon has recorded the Murray Adaskin Second Violin Sonata, the John Mills-Cockell Concerto of Deliverance, and the soundtrack of Criminal Acts by Tobin Stokes.

 A native of Calgary, Cory completed a Bachelor of Music Performance degree at McGill University, played in Les Jeunes Virtuoses de Montreal and was a winner in the Debut Young Concert Artists Series. He received a Master of Music degree from Rice University in Houston, Texas, before moving to Victoria in 1997 to join the Victoria Symphony. In April 2000 Cory joined the Trius String Quartet for a quartet-in-residence program at the Shaw Theatre Festival, performing bi-weekly concerts in addition to being heard in various plays and musicals during the 2000 and 2001 seasons. The Trius quartet also embarked on a Rocky Mountain Tour bringing music to many smaller towns in Alberta and BC.

 Cory played at the Charlottetown Festival in the 2002 season and has participated in festivals at the Banff Centre, Snowbird (Utah) and Meadowmount School of Music. In 2006, Cory was a co-founder of the Emily Carr String Quartet.

Joanna’s interests embrace a wide variety of repertoire and musical idiom. With the Eclipse Quartet of Los Angeles, she has given world premieres of quartets by such composers as, Zeena Parkins, Justin Haynes, David Jaffe, and Carla Kihlstedt and of recently created music for the dance piece Opium.

A co-founder in 1997 of the Loma Mar Quartet of New York, Joanna collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney. She has been principal viola with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and continues to perform with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, also of New York. As a soloist, she has performed recitals in Canada and the United States, and has commissioned works for the viola by Murray Adaskin, Al Hood and Justin Haynes. She has participated in a recording with jazz singer Claudia Acuña and in the Spoleto Festival, Olympic Music Festival, the Adam New Zealand Chamber Music Festival, and the Caramoor International Festival (with the Orchestra of St. Luke's), among others.

Originally from Seattle, Joanna Hood studied viola with Isadore Tinkleman and Abraham Skernick. A co-founder of the Lafayette String Quartet, she has been Artist-in-Residence at the University of Victoria since 1991 where she teaches viola and chamber music.

Originally from Texas, violist Kay Cochran pursued her studies in Montreal, Paris, Banff and Houston before joining the Victoria Symphony.   She holds a BMus degree from Rice University, as well as a MMus from McGill University. A founding member of the Galiano Ensemble, she has performed chamber music with the Odyssey String Quartet, with Continuum Consort and with Ten-String Music.

Kay has taught viola and chamber music at the University of Victoria, the Symphony Orchestra Academy of the Pacific, and at the University of Lethbridge Conservatory.  She also coaches students on orchestral excerpts and audition techniques.

In addition to playing in Canada and the United States, Kay has presented chamber music concerts in Paris, the former Soviet Union, and Seoul, South Korea.  In much of her work as a chamber musician, she has worked closely with composers to develop and premier new works.

Outside of music, Kay has long been a practitioner of Tai Chi, has studied Alexander Technique, and maintains an interest in languages, particularly French and Italian.

Victoria native, Mieka Kohut, was introduced to the viola by Yasuko Eastman.  She holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Victoria, B.C. and a Master of Music from Rice University in Houston, Texas in Music Performance.  Having toured the country as Principal Viola with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, she joined her sister to perform Mozart’s Symphonie Concertante with the Victoria Symphony in 2001.

She has attended the Music Academy of the West, the Banff Center for the Arts, the Orford Center for the Arts and the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute. Currently a member of the Victoria Symphony, Mieka teaches violin and viola at Daniel Lapp’s House of Music.

 Mieka is a founding member, (along with visual artist Donna Kelly and composer André Cormier), of Co-Lab, a trio of artists dedicated to the production of  an original art form that unites visual art and music. She performs as a member of the Aventa Ensemble, and is a co-founder of the Emily Carr String Quartet.

Praised for her “meltingly beautiful solos,” and for performances of “depth and insight”, cellist Pamela Highbaugh Aloni has performed as a chamber musician in North America and Europe. Pamela is a co-founding member of the Lafayette String Quartet which is now celebrating their 20th year of unchanging partnership.  The LSQ are Artists-in-Residence at the University of Victoria where Pamela teaches cello and chamber music courses. With the quartet she has recorded six compact discs for the Dorian, CBC and AdLar labels, has been heard on NPR’s St. Paul Sunday Morning, and can be regularly heard on CBC Radio Two.

In the summer, Ms. Highbaugh Aloni teaches at the Courtenay Youth Music School and Festival in Upper Vancouver Island. She has performed as soloist with the Victoria Chamber Orchestra and as a guest artist with various chamber groups including the Vetta Ensemble of Vancouver, the Victoria Summer Festival, Olympic Music Festival, Chamber Music San Juan, and the Victoria Symphony’s Summer Cathedral Series. She plays a George Craske Cello made in England, 1850.

Cellist Paula Kiffner earned music performance degrees from Ohio State University and Peabody Conservatory. While at Peabody she was principal cellist of the Annapolis Symphony and a member of the Washington Theatre Chamber Players, both under the artistic direction of Leon Fleisher. Her teachers were Harvey Shapiro, Laurence Lesser and Stephen Kates.  A former member of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Kiffner has also performed as guest principal cellist of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and appears frequently as a recitalist and concerto soloist throughout the Pacific Northwest. Her performances are heard on CBC Radio (Canada) and KING FM (Seattle).      

Ms. Kiffner works with youth orchestras in Canada and the US, and has served as guest artist and teacher at the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria. She is a faculty member of the Victoria Conservatory of Music, and the Nanaimo Conservatory.

Alasdair Money studied with James Hunter at the Victoria Conservatory of Music and went on to complete a Bachelor of Music degree at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where he studied with Lawrence Lesser. In 1995, Alasdair went to England to study in London with Raphael Wallfisch at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he received a post-graduate diploma in cello performance.
In Canada, Alasdair has worked with the Victoria, Vancouver Island and Vancouver Symphony orchestras. He has attended such festivals as Banff and Orford in Canada and the Dartington, Evian and Verbier music festivals in England and in Europe. He has completed a Master of Music degree in cello performance at the University of Victoria working with Pamela Highbaugh-Aloni and Paula Kiffner. He is also a co-founder of the Emily Carr String Quartet, Artists in Residence at Daniel Lapp’s House of Music.

Mary Rannie, Principal Double Bass of the Victoria Symphony and Bass Instructor at the University of Victoria, received her formal training at the University of Western Ontario with Dr. Jeffrey Stokes. She continued her studies in England with Robin McGee (1974-5), in Italy with Ezio Pederzani (1986) and in recent years in Victoria with Gary Karr.
Mary's twenty-eight-year tenure with the Victoria Symphony has featured her in solo performances of the Vanhal Double Bass concerto and of the modern theatrical duo concerto, The Ugly Duckling, for Soprano and Double Bass by Jon Deak. She has played summer festivals in Stratford, (Stratford Festival Ensemble), Banff (Canadian Chamber Orchestra), Victoria (J.J. Johannsen Festival of the Arts) and Mexico City (La Orquesta de La Mineria).

Mary plays a double bass made by Victoria's own James Ham, profiled in the May 1997 issue of Strad Magazine.