Teachers
Robert Britton graduated as an Alexander Technique teacher in 1978. In addition to his private practice in San Francisco and Marin County, he has taught the Alexander Technique to musicians at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music since 1984. He served as chairman of the American Society for the Alexander Technique from 1997 to 1999. He has helped train Alexander Technique Teachers for 16 years, and teaches at the Alexander Educational Center in Berkeley. He regularly teaches in Berlin at the Ausbildungszentrum für F.M. Alexander-Technik Berlin, as well contributing to the well being of the international Alexander Technique Affiliated Societies, and the Annual Members Meeting of the Affiliated Societies. He is also a faculty member of the Bay Area Summer Opera Training Institute. Bob can be reached via his website.
Amy Likar, President and Trainer for Andover Educators, was one of the first people certified by Barbara Conable to teach Body Mapping. She is also an AmSAT certified Alexander Technique teacher having completed her training with Frank Ottiwell at the Alexander Training Institute of San Francisco. She has presented Body Mapping and Alexander Technique workshops at colleges and music schools throughout the United States and in Europe, including, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Juilliard School and the Army School of Music in addition to numerous conferences such as MTNA, Medical Problems of Performing Artists Symposium in Aspen, and the National Flute Association. As a professional flutist, Amy is a member of the Oakland East Bay Symphony and freelances with other groups in the Bay Area of California. She and Miles Graber released a solo CD in November of 2005 and released a live album with soprano Jenni Cook in October of 2006. Amy holds M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in flute performance from The Ohio State University and a B.M. in Music Education and Performance from Kent State University. Her flute teachers include Martha Aarons and Katherine Borst Jones.
Lea Pearson’s recent book, Body Mapping for Flutists: What Every Flute Teacher Needs to Know About the Body has received extensive praise from teachers and students alike and is now being translated into Chinese and Japanese. A recipient of the D.M.A. degree from The Ohio State University, she was a 1998 Fulbright Scholar at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where she studied with Liisa Ruoho. Formerly a performer with the South Bend Symphony, she holds a B.A. degree from Hampshire College and an M.A. from Stanford University. She has taught flute at Hillsdale, Heidelberg and Centre Colleges and at The Ohio State University. Her teachers have included Katherine Borst Jones, Frances Blaisdell and Doriot Anthony Dwyer. Lea is a certified Andover Educator.
Stacey Pelinka is a guild-certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner and a professional flutist. She teaches the Feldenkrais Method throughout the Bay Area, working regularly with musicians, artists, and people with chronic pain and disabilities. Stacey has presented Feldenkrais workshops at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the California College of the Arts, and the National Flute Association. Stacey enjoys exploring how Feldenkrais’ ideas enhance her own performance and that of her flute students. An avid chamber musician, she is a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and the Worn Chamber Ensemble, and frequently performs with sfSound and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. She also plays principal flute with San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program productions, and second flute with the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Berkeley Symphony, and the Midsummer Mozart Festival. Stacey attended Cornell University and the San Francisco Conservatory, where she studied with Timothy Day. She studied the Feldenkrais Method with Dennis Leri, one of Feldenkrais’ first American students. Stacey can be reached via her website.
Liisa Ruoho is known throughout Europe as a consummate performer as well as a brilliant teacher. She presents concerts throughout Europe almost monthly, and is a regular teacher at several master classes in Greece, Iceland and Finland. At the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland, Liisa is a Flute Professor, Director of the Wind Department, and Vice-Director of the Orchestral Instruments Department. Her Academy students receive 2 hours of private lessons every week, as well as weekly Body Mapping, pedagogy and performance classes. Formerly an assistant to Severino Gazzelloni in Italy, she studied with Gazzelloni and with Aurele Nicolet. Her personal study of the Alexander Technique revolutionized both her playing and teaching, and for over 40 years she has taught flutists how to use their original instrument – the body. She now presents workshops throughout Europe and is designing a joint Body Mapping course with the Sibelius Academy and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Liisa is a certified Andover Educator.
Janet See is one of today’s outstanding performers on baroque and classical flute. For over 25 years she has performed as a soloist, in chamber music and in orchestras throughout North America and Europe. In London, where she lived for 12 years, she played principal flute for Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s two orchestras and with those groups recorded the complete Mozart Operas and Beethoven Symphonies as well as numerous other discs. In North America she plays principal flute with Philharmonia Baroque under Nicholas McGegan and has recorded Vivaldi and Mozart Concertos with that orchestra. She also performs frequently with the Portland Baroque Orchestra and as guest soloist with various chamber music ensembles throughout the US and Canada. She has recorded on the Archive, EMI, Erato, Hyperion, and Harmonia Mundi labels, and with the latter a highly acclaimed recording of the complete Bach Flute Sonatas. She is an active and enthusiastic teacher of early flutes and also of interpreting the nuance and language of baroque and classical music on modern flute. She received her degree on the modern flute at Oberlin Conservatory, training with Robert Willoughby. Janet is a qualified teacher of the F.M. Alexander Technique, having trained in London with Walter Carrington. Ms See now lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington with her husband and 15 year old son.
Our collaborative pianist:
Miles Graber received his musical training at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Anne Hull, Phyllis Kreuter, Hugh Aitken, and Louise Behrend. He has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1971, where he has developed a wide reputation as an accompanist and collaborative pianist for instrumentalists and singers. He has performed with numerous solo artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Sarah Chang, Cho-Liang Lin, Camilla Wicks, and Axel Strauss. Mr. Graber currently performs frequently with violinists Christina Mok and Mariya Borozina, clarinettist Tom Rose, flutist Amy Likar, and the trio MusicAEterna. Miles and colleague Arkadi Serper comprise the two-piano team Scorpio Duo.
Mr. Graber has been associated with such ensembles as San Francisco Chamber Soloists, Midsummer Mozart, the Oakland-East Bay Symphony, the California Symphony, the Santa Rosa Symphony, Oakland Lyric Opera, Berkeley Opera, Opera San Jose, and the San Francisco Camerata. He has accompanied master classes by such artists as Midori, Joseph Silverstein, Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, Pamela Frank, Alexander Barantchik, James Galway, and Lynn Harrell. He has been a frequent performance accompanist and chamber player with members of the San Francisco Symphony, the San Jose Symphony, The Berkeley Symphony, the California Symphony, the Santa Rosa Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Oakland-East Bay Youth Orchestra, and the UC Berkeley Symphony. He is principal pianist for the Bay Area chapter of the National Association of Composers USA, an organization that sponsors and promotes performances of new works by contemporary composers. He is active as a teacher and chamber music coach, and he is on the faculties of the Crowden School in Berkeley and the San Domenico Conservatory in San Anselmo. In addition, he regularly coaches and accompanies students of the Young Musicians Program at UC Berkeley. He is currently a staff accompanist and chamber music coach in the Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Our collaborative harpsichordist:
Frances Conover Fitch has toured extensively in North America and Europe, and recorded for Swiss, German, Dutch, and French National Radio as well as for the BBC and NPR. Her ensemble, Concerto Castello, won critical acclaim as well an Honorable Mention in the Deutsche Schallplatten Preis of 1983.Widely sought-after as a particularly sensitive and inventive continuo player, she has worked with ensembles such as Spiritus Collective, Cantata Singers, Emmanuel Music, Aston Magna, Boston Cecilia, Handel and Haydn Society, Concerto Palatino, the Boston Camerata and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.
Ms. Fitch has presented solo recitals at the Smithsonian Institution, the American Church in Paris, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and has participated in major music festivals, including the Festival d’Art Lyrique/Aix-en-Provence, Pepsico Summerfare, Tanglewood, Boston Early Music Festival, Tage Alter Musik (Regensburg), the Castle Hill Festival and the Festival de Musica Antigua in Mexico City, where she also gave master classes at the National Conservatory. She has recordings on the EMI-Reflexe, Titanic, Harmonia Mundi, Koch International and Wild Boar labels, including her solo CD: “O Ye Tender Babes: English Virginal Music” (Wildboar) and a 2-CD release featuring the music of Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre entitled “Protégée of the Sun King”(Centaur).
Formerly on the faculty at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and at Wellesley College, she now teaches at Tufts University and at the Longy School of Music, where she is Chair of the Early Music Department and instructor in harpsichord, organ, chamber music, figured bass improvisation and bibliographic research. Ms. Fitch has degrees from Bard College and New England Conservatory, and did post-graduate work at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam, where she studied with Gustav Leonhardt and Veronika Hampe. Her playing has been praised as “delightful”, “perceptive”, “alluring”, “spirited”, “stylish” and “spectacular”, and noted for its “precision and delicacy of wit”.
