Mason Strings Camp

Professor June Huang serves as director of strings at Mason’s School of Music and holds a Masters of Arts in Violin Performance from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she was a member of the Young Artist String Quartet. She earned a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and attended the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as an undergraduate. Professor Huang studied at the Meadowmount School of Music, Aspen Music Festival, Banff Centre for the Arts, and Kneisel Hall. Her primary teachers include Jens Ellerman, Stephen Clapp, Ronald Copes, and Marilyn McDonald.

An active performer in the Washington, D.C. area, she has performed with the National Philharmonic, Harrisburg Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Wolf Trap Orchestra, Washington Ballet Orchestra, and Amadeus Orchestra. She is a frequent chamber music collaborator and has appeared in concerts with the Staunton Music Festival, Red Lodge Music Festival, Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia, and Virginia Virtuosi. A specialist on the baroque violin, Ms. Huang plays and records with Opera Lafayette, Four Nations, REBEL Baroque Orchestra and Mannheim Rocket. Leadership positions have included concertmaster of the Washington Bach Consort and the National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra.

Professor Huang is a passionate teacher and has a strong interest in furthering the field of violin pedagogy. She is a guest clinician at many camps, schools, workshops, and clinics. A teacher certified by the Suzuki Association of the Americas and a recipient of a research grant from the Levine School of Music, she visited Matsumoto and studied violin pedagogy with Dr. Suzuki.

Professor Huang founded and directed the String Camp/Strings Plus at Levine Music in Washington, D.C. for 26 years.

Praised for her versatility and creativity, American violist Renate Falkner leads an active career as an educator, recitalist, and orchestral and chamber musician, performing across the U.S. and abroad. Equally at home on both modern and baroque viola, she performs regularly with groups such as the Baltimore Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, and Artis-Naples, and is a former member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. As a baroque violist, she has performed with Boston Baroque, Tafelmusik, the Yale Collegium Players, and Baltimore’s Pro Musica Rara.

A frequent chamber music collaborator, Dr. Falkner is Artistic Director of the Charm City Chamber Players, an ensemble designed to highlight original repertoire and transcriptions featuring the rich, dark sound of multiple violas and cellos. Having a keen interest in chamber music featuring the viola in more prominent roles, she has been a guest artist with the Fontenay Chamber Players and also frequently collaborates with colleagues in trios for flute, viola and harp or guitar. She has shared the stage alongside such artists as violinist Erick Friedman, violist Jesse Levine, harpists Rita Costanzi and Kayo Ishimaru, oboist Joe Robinson, flutists Sergio Pallottelli and Rhonda Cassano, and guitarist Jose Lezcano. She has been heard in venues as diverse as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Library, in orchestras at Carnegie Hall and Boston’s Jordan Hall, as well as forums such as the American Harp Society and the National Association of Composers, U.S.A. Summer appearances abroad have included the Verbier Festival, Switzerland, the Spoleto Festival, Italy, and a faculty appointment at the Carvalho Festival of Music in Fortaleza, Brazil. She also performs annually at the Bellingham Festival of Music in Washington. She has recorded for the Chandos, Nimbus, and Rezound music labels. An accomplished educator, Dr. Falkner received her undergraduate training at the Oberlin College and Conservatory, earning degrees in both viola and Ancient Greek, studying with Roland Vamos. She completed her graduate studies at the Yale School of Music as a scholarship student and assistant to the late violist Jesse Levine, and holds a doctorate from the Florida State University, under the direction of Pamela Ryan. Her treatise examining York Bowen’s viola music in the context of the English Musical Renaissance was the first to focus entirely on the composer’s compositions for viola.

Dr. Falkner is an active board member of the American Viola Society, where she is currently Chair of the 2020 AVS Orchestral Excerpt Competition and Seminar. After nearly a decade at the University of North Florida’s School of Music, she and her husband, cellist Steven Thomas, recently relocated to Baltimore. She joins the faculty at the George Mason University School of Music as an Adjunct Professor of Viola and also coaches chamber music through the Peabody Institute’s Preparatory Program.