Youth/Teen Chamber Music Coach
Woodwind orchestral Coach

Hailed by the New York Times as “outstanding clarinetist,” Pascal Archer leads an active career as a chamber musician, orchestral player, teacher and founder of the Exponential Ensemble.  He is currently Principal Clarinet of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic and a former member of the New World Symphony.  He has collaborated with the JACK and St. Lawrence String Quartets, Adaskin String Trio, NY Wind Soloists and toured with Musicians from Marlboro.  He has been invited to perform at renowned festivals such as Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, UBS Verbier Orchestra, Spoleto USA and the Sun Valley Summer Symphony under acclaimed conductors such as James Levine, Charles Dutoit and Michael Tilson Thomas. Mr. Archer is on faculty at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division, the Hunter College (CUNY), Fordham University and the New York Summer Music Festival.  For more info, visit www.pascalarcher.com

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Youth/Teen Chamber Music Coach
Summer Chamber Music Coach
Adult Intensive Weekend Coach
Woodwind orchestral Coach

Flutist Lisa Arkis enjoys a varied career encompassing orchestral playing, chamber music, solo performances, and teaching. Orchestras she has performed with include the New Jersey Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Princeton Camerata, Greenwich Symphony, Fairfield Symphony, New Haven Symphony, Berkshire Bach Society at Tanglewood and Hudson Valley Philharmonic. She has participated in numerous summer festivals including Tanglewood, Colorado Music Festival, Loon Lake Live!, Washington Square Park Festival and as a featured soloist with the New York Bach Ensemble.

A founding member of the chamber group Serio Divertimenti, Lisa also performs in a duo with her husband, cellist Peter Prosser.  She has also recorded with the Bright Leaf Trio on the Sonic Muse label, toured Japan and North America, was guest principal flutist with the Bermuda Bach Festival, and performs regularly on the Music at St. Mary’s chamber music series in New York.

Ms. Arkis’ Broadway credits include Peter Pan, Secret Garden, Miss Saigon, Flower Drum Song and Dance of the Vampires and she has also played with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular both in New York and on tour. 

A graduate of the Aaron Copland School of Music, Lisa was a student of the late Thomas Nyfenger. Other teachers include Harold Bennett, Trudy Kane, Keith Underwood and Bernard Goldberg. 

An adjunct faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music Precollege division from 2001-2004, Lisa has also taught at Brooklyn College and the Dalton School, and maintains private teaching studios in New York and Connecticut.

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Claire Chan, violin

Youth/Teen Chamber Music Coach

Summer Chamber Music Coach

Claire Chan, born in Detroit, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown University, where she earned musical honors and a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience. Changing course, she continued her studies on the violin at The Juilliard School. As a scholarship student of Joseph Fuchs, she completed both her master's and doctoral degrees. She taught at the Juilliard School as an assistant to both Professor Fuchs and the Juilliard String Quartet and later served on the faculty in Beijing at the Central Conservatory and the Capital Normal University. Currently, she teaches at Third Street Music School Settlement and at the Chamber Music Center of New York. She performs at Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and with the Harlem Chamber Players Quartet. As an avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with several award-winning groups such as the Essex Quartet, the Beijing Quartet and Chamber Players. She also performed as a member of New York City Opera, the Kneisel Trio, the Jade String Trio, and with such varied artists as Sam Smith, 50 Cent, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Tony Bennet, Hall and Oats, Andrea Bocelli and Placido Domingo. She can be heard on labels of RCA Victor, Centaur, Convivium, Annsam, ESS.A.Y, and Death of Classical.

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Youth/Teen Chamber Music Coach

Lisa Ralia Heffter, violist and composer, received her Master’s   degree from The Juilliard School, won the award for orchestral   excellence at Tanglewood, toured Europe with France’s award   winning Manfred String Quartet, then returned to New York City   to compose, landing a premier of her first impressionist quartet at Weill Recital Hall reviewed as “astonishingly beautiful” by the NY Times.                         

Eventually Heffter struck a balance between composing and performing. She founded The Bordeaux String Quartet playing public NYC concerts sponsored by Rudin Management, toured with the Elysium String Quartet, and accepted an invitation to spend a year in Beijing, where she coached and played solo  and chamber concerts, and became principal violist for the Beijing Chamber Ensemble. While in China, Heffter also visited elementary schools to teach K-4th graders western songs. (“pure joy!”)    

Finally settling back in NYC, Heffter is now a freelance musician. She composes and performs with ArtsAhimsa Chamber players in NYC and Lenox, MA., she coaches for The Chamber Music Center, and teaches strings and composition at The Calhoun School.                       

Heffter also plays viola in the Manhattan Symphony and DCINY orchestras which perform at Carnegie Hall and David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. This past year, Heffter was chosen to perform solo viola for DCINY, playing Takach's  Epitaph for Chorus and Solo Viola at Lincoln Center. 

As an award winning composer, Heffter writes her own instrumental and vocal music, and operatic and theatrical musicals. She also creates musical arrangements of other composer’s music for classical groups. 

Heffter’s original compositions have been recorded and produced by Sound Associates and Global Multi-Media Music, which can be found on her website at lisaheffter.com.

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Chamber Orchestras Conductor
Youth/Teen Chamber Music Coach
Summer Chamber Music Coach
Adult Intensive Weekend Coach

Sibylle Johner, conductor and cellist, has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe (often as a member of the Damocles Trio). The Swiss Landbote wrote, “whenever her eloquent cello spoke, one would suddenly pay attention, and immediately it became clear that a true artist was at work on this instrument.” Ms. Johner taught and performed at the Summer Chamber Music Institute at Ohio Wesleyan University. She taught at Third Street from 1994-2014 and served as chairperson of the string department from 2000-2006. From 2005-2014, she conducted the Third Street Philharmonia orchestra. In 2012 she joined the faculty of the Brooklyn Waldorf School as conductor and director of the music program. Currently she also teaches cello at Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale. 

For the past 27 years, Ms. Johner has taught students from the ages of 3 to 80 in every kind of setting: group classes, chamber music, string orchestra, symphonic orchestra, and one-on-one lessons. She works with a flexible approach tailored to the needs and abilities of each student or group. She believes students and teachers embark on a journey of learning together where both benefit and enjoy the music along the way.

Ms. Johner has studied music in Germany and Switzerland, at Drake and Rutgers Universities, and at The Juilliard School, where she was awarded a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Among Ms. Johner’s teachers have been Rudolf Baumberger, Bernard Greenhouse, Stefan Kartman, Harvey Shapiro, and Jeffrey Milarsky.

Two critically-acclaimed recordings are available on Claves Records: Turina’s complete piano trios and quartet and “Trios Brasileiros.” A recording of Linda Dusman’s “Diverging Flints” was released in 2012 and Ms. Johner can also be heard in the Naxos recording “MONTSALVATGE, X.: Complete Violin and Piano Works/ Piano Trio.”

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Founder and Artistic Director
Youth/Teen Chamber Music Coach
Summer Chamber Music Coach
Adult Intensive Weekend Coach

CMC Founder, Artistic Director, and pianist Mary Jo Pagano is a passionate advocate of the power of chamber music in every musician’s life. As former Director of the Barbara E. Field Chamber Music Program at Third Street Music School Settlement, she has guided hundreds of young musicians through the joyful experience of playing music with others. Many of those students have gone on to have professional careers in chamber music as members of groups such as the Pacifica Quartet, the Flux Quartet, the Horszkowski Trio and the Providence Quartet.

An active chamber musician herself, Dr. Pagano has been a member of the Esterhazy Trio, Polaris Ensemble and LES chamber ensemble. She has performed with Serio Divertimenti and she toured the U.S. with the Royale Trio, under the auspices of Columbia Management. Mary Jo performs chamber music with many of the fantastic musicians living in New York City.

Dr. Pagano can be seen as a performer of chamber music with members of the Ying Quartet on the Educational Series “Exploring a World of Music.” This twelve-part series also features her as the spokesperson for Western Classical music. This series is shown in college classrooms and PBS stations throughout the United States.

Dr. Pagano received her Doctorate of Musical Arts at Manhattan School of Music as a scholarship student of Leon Fleisher. She earned her Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music as a student of Constance Keene. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Arizona State University, where she studied with James Ruccolo and Eugene Pridonoff. She has performed in master classes for such great artists as John Browning, Menachem Pressler, and Andre Watts.

She has served on the faculty of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, Third Street Music School Settlement, Harbor Conservatory, Kinhaven Music School, Summer Trios, Columbia High School Program, Sonatina School and The New York Youth Symphony Chamber Music Program.  She has given masterclasses at California State University at Long Beach, University of Southern California, Bloomingdale School of Music, Third Street Music School Settlement, Steinway Hall and Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania.

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Youth/Teen Chamber Music Coach
Summer Chamber Music Coach

Formerly the cellist of the Royale Trio and winner of the Manogue International and National Arts Club competitions, Peter Prosser has had a multifaceted career that has taken him throughout North America as well as South America and Europe. A graduate of the University of Alabama and the Manhattan School of Music he’s worked as a soloist, chamber musician, teacher, record producer and conductor. Highlights include recording the Saint-Saens, Lalo and Dvorak concerti for Alabama Public Television, the Haydn D major Concerto for Kentucky Educational Television, producing CDs for the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, making his Broadway conducting debut in 2003 with the production of Gypsy starring Bernadette Peters, and conducting the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra at the Centennial Gala for the Philadelphia Orchestra. He’s also conducted on the American Mosaic series at Concordia College, at the Alabama Summer Music Center, and served as the associate conductor for the National Tour of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods starring Cleo Laine, as assistant conductor for the Broadway revival of La Cage Aux Folles and the 2008 revival of Gypsy with Patti Lupone and was most recently an assistant conductor and principal cellist for the 2009 revival of West Side Story and principal cello for Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway.

Other forays into pop culture have found him working with Willie Nelson, Chris Botti, with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, appearing as solo cellist with Shirley Bassey at Carnegie Hall, at Town Hall with the late Nancy LaMott, and with Bernadette Peters at Avery Fisher Hall. Other recordings include contemporary solo cello works by Robert Dix and Joseph Levin, blues with Eric Clapton and B.B.King,, and a Christmas album, Animal’s Christmas with Art Garfunkel and Amy Grant. Radio and television appearances include The Listening Room and Young Artist Showcase on WQXR (New York), Around New York on WNYC, West Coast Weekend on KQED (San Francisco), The Today show  with Bernadette Peters, The View and Good Morning America with Patti LuPone, the Today show (weekend edition) with Eartha Kitt, Saturday Night Live, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Having joined the faculty of the Mannes College of Music in 1991, he has also been a performance associate at Hunter College, has served as adjunct faculty at City College and has taught at the Aspen Music Festival and the Meadowmount School of Music. A founding member of the chamber group Serio Divertimenti he also performs in a duo with his wife, the flutist Lisa Arkis.  His teachers include David Cowley, Bernard Greenhouse, Alan Harris and William Pleeth. Peter is also inordinately fond of eating breakfast out.

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