Instrumental Team
Joseph Illick
2024 Conductor
We are honored to host Joseph Illick, the Composer in Residence and Musical Director Emeritus of the Fort Worth Opera, as our 2024 conductor. Over the past 50 years, Illick has held numerous prestigious conducting and leadership posts in opera and symphony. He is an active, internationally acclaimed pianist in solo and chamber music, and is an award-winning composer.
For ten years, Illick served as the Executive and Artistic Director of Performance Santa Fe. His experience includes serving as the Artistic Director of Greater Miami Opera, Lake George Opera Festival, Shreveport Opera, Voices of Change (Dallas), and Voices Intimae (Dallas). As a concert pianist, he won first prize in the Mid-Somerset Festival in Bath England and is active both as a piano soloist and in chamber music both in Europe and the United States. His compositional achievements include being the recipient of the Van Someron Award for composition of a song cycle. Over the course of his career he has composed numerous full length operas and symphonic works.
He and his wife Gina are committed to educational outreach and mentoring the next generation of musicians.
Eric Stephenson
Cello
An exceptionally versatile cellist, his style ranges from classical to jazz to rock and folk. He has performed with numerous orchestras like the IRIS Orchestra in Memphis, TN and the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, CO. Eric is also a regular substitute for the Cleveland Orchestra. Eric earned his Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees with Honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music and was a recipient of the Ellis A. Feiman Award in Cello while a student of Stephen Geber. As a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, he served as Assistant Principal Cello of the Aspen Festival Orchestra from 1999-2004. Composing and recording is a huge part of his life. In his spare time, he enjoys biking around Brooklyn and playing the tenor sax.
Kevin MacConnell
Double Bass and Bass Guitar
Bassist Kevin MacConnell’s impressive career has taken him from playing with orchestras on concert stages to Broadway shows, from numerous recording studios to the sets of television shows, from jazz festivals to great clubs. He has performed with such jazz legends as Mel Torme, Nancy Wilson, Billy Eckstine, Joe Williams and tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts and made national and international television appearances/performances. Highly respected on the jazz scene, Kevin is also a cross genre musician in bluegrass, classical and popular music.
Antonina Styczeń
Flute
A dynamic flutist and entrepreneur, Antonina Styczeń has appeared in unlikely spaces as a concerto soloist and created large-scale, crowd-sourced projects, with an emphasis on performances that include improvisation, electronics, and works by diverse and underrepresented composers. Ms. Styczeń is a First Prize and special prize winner for the Best Performance of a New Work at the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition, a two time Second Prize and William H. Grass Memorial Prize winner at The James Pappoutsakis Memorial Flute Competition winner, and Third Prize winner in the Mid-South Flute Society Young Artist Competition. Her debut album with flute repertoire written by Mieczyslaw Weinberg was nominated for the International Classical Music Award and the Prize of German Critics. Recently, Ms. Styczeń accepted the position of the Acting President of the San Diego Flute Guild. She is touring worldwide with popular Iranian singer Googoosh, while pursuing graduate studies at the University of Southern California.
Tam Tran
Violin
Tam Tran is an active soloist, chamber musician, and a regular performer at the White House as a violinist and Assistant Principal violist of "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra. Tam has performed chamber music with members of the Emerson String Quartet, Ani Kavafian, Colin Carr, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma. He performed on the "Axelrod" Antonio Stradivarius from the Smithsonian Collection in Washington, D.C. Tam has performed for the late Queen Elizabeth, performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Camp David, and has been featured on PBS, HBO, the Late Show with David Letterman, and on NPR's "Performance Today." Tam studied with Emanuel Vardi at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, Richard Young of the Vermeer String Quartet at Northern Illinois University, and Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson String Quartet at Stony Brook University. Tam enjoys learning different genres of World Music like French Gypsy Jazz, Brazilian Chôro, Argentinian Tangos, Italian Folk, Persian, Irish, Greek, and Klezmer music.
