Conductor and composer Emmanuel Fratianni is a Santa Barbara resident who has led major ensembles worldwide such as the San Francisco Symphony, Boston Pops, National Symphony, Detroit, Houston, Baltimore Symphonies, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Spanish and Czech National Symphony Orchestras. An award-winning composer and arranger his music for interactive media has been performed by some of the finest orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
Emmanuel Fratianni is an Italian and US citizen, fluent in English, French and Italian. He is also an active guest lecturer in both American and European music institutions in the subjects of music composition for film and visual media as well as multimedia symphonic music direction.
Siegwart “Zig” Reichwald holds the Adams Chair of Music and Worship at Westmont College. Previously, he was the Charles E. Daniels Distinguished Professor of Music at Converse College, where he served as the conductor of the Converse Symphony for 18 years. Dr. Reichwald is the author of The Genesis of Felix Mendelssohn’s Paulus (Scarecrow Press 2001) and Mendelssohn and the Genesis of the Protestant A Cappella Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He also edited Mendelssohn in Performance (Indiana University Press, 2008), a collection of essays that, according to Choice, “does a superb job explaining the 19th-century sound environment of Felix Mendelssohn and his audiences,” and Nineteenth-Century Music Review suggests that it “should be on the shelf of every performer, scholar, and devotee of Mendelssohn’s music.” Dr. Reichwald is known as a pedagogue who has helped numerous students enter some of the finest graduate programs.
Mary Beth Rhodes-Woodruff grew up in Southern California and attended the New England Conservatory of Music and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in both chemistry and music. She then studied with Andres Cardenes, concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony at Carnegie Mellon University. Upon receiving her master’s degree, she began teaching at Biola University Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles and was Head of Chamber Music Studies, leading students on a chamber music concert tour of mainland China and soloed with the Biola Symphony Orchestra on a concert tour of Italy, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Since moving to Santa Barbara County, Ms. Woodruff founded Santa Barbara Strings where she is currently artistic director and conductor. She has performed with the Mainly Mozart Festival, the Pacific Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, was concertmaster of the Santa Maria Philharmonic.
Daniel Gee is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Westmont College, where he leads the College Choir and Chamber Singers in performances both locally and abroad. Equally active in choral and orchestral music, he also directs the Santa Barbara Youth Symphony and has held conducting positions with the Long Beach Symphony, Choral Arts Initiative, and Evergreen Baptist Church of San Gabriel Valley. As a composer, he has written commissioned works for ensembles in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, with his music published by Colla Voce Music. A Westmont alumnus and Monroe Scholar, Gee earned his Doctor of Musical Arts at USC Thornton School of Music, studying under renowned conductors and composers including Jo-Michael Scheibe, Cristian Grases, and Morten Lauridsen
