Meet the Artists!
New Faces and Familiar Favorites coming soon in 2025-2026...

Adaiha MacAdam-Somer, Cello

Multi-instrumentalist Adaiha MacAdam-Somer is highly sought after as a teacher, chamber and orchestral musician across the United States. She splits her time and passion equally between cello, baroque cello, and all branches of the viola da gamba family. From her home base in Portland, Adaiha performs with a variety of ensembles including Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra,Gallery Concerts, Eugene Opera, The Oregon Bach Festival and various other chamber and vocal ensembles across the states. As an educator she maintains a studio of private students and is a regular guest instructor of workshops nationwide.


Miss MacAdam-Somer holds degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her principal teachers include Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Elisabeth Reed, Uri Vardi, and Laszlo Varga. Adaiha is forever grateful to Indre Viskontas and Adam Bristol for facilitating the acquisition of her bass viol, made by master luthier Francis Beaulieu.


Andrew McIntosh

Andrew McIntosh is a Grammy-nominated violinist, violist, baroque violinist, and composer who teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. As a baroque performer McIntosh is a member of Tesserae and Bach Collegium San Diego, has served as guest concertmaster for baroque operas with LA Opera and Opera UCLA, and recently served as both music director and concertmaster of Long Beach Opera's all-Handel pastiche production "The Feast", a collaboration with Martha Graham Dance Company. About a recent performance of the complete Rosary Sonatas of Heinrich Biber at the 92nd Street Y, the New York Times said "his playing had exceptional clarity and rhetorical verve". His recording of the sonatas for violin and fortepiano of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges with Steven Vanhauwaert was released in November 2023 on Olde Focus Records. As a chamber musician he is a member of Wild Up, the Formalist Quartet, and Wadada Leo Smith’s Red Koral Quartet. As a composer he was described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as “a composer preternaturally attuned to the landscapes and soundscapes of the West", and recent commissions include works for the LA Philharmonic, Calder Quartet, Yarn/Wire, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, and violinist Ilya Gringolts.


Instrument Info: J. Michael G. Fischer, 2022, after Jacob Stainer, 1679.


Jillon Stoppels Dupree

Jillon Stoppels Dupree has been described as “one of the country’s top baroque musicians; a superior soloist and top-ranked ensemble player, and a baroque star” (Seattle Times). She has performed with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco Bach Choir, San Francisco Choral Artists, and Early Music Seattle; her chamber music collaborations have included such artists as Rachell Ellen Wong, Julianne Baird, Ellen Hargis, Ingrid Matthews, Janet See, and Marion Verbruggen. 



Jillon received Fulbright and Beebe Fund grants for study abroad, and her teachers included Gustav Leonhardt, Kenneth Gilbert, Edward Parmentier and Lisa Goode Crawford. An honors graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and Masters recipient at the University of Michigan, Ms. Dupree has taught at both her alma maters, at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, and at the University of Washington; she has presented master classes at Stanford University and the University of Michigan. She received the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist award for contemporary harpsichord music, and her world-premiere recording of Philip Glass’s Concerto for Harpsichord was heralded as “Superb!” by the New York Times. She can be heard on the Meridian, Decca, Orange Mountain, Wildboar and Delos labels, and her solo Bach recording from Centaur Records has been described as “harpsichord musicianship at its best: expressive,  passionate and inspiring.” (American Record Guide).


Christine Beckman

Christine Wilkinson Beckman is a baroque violin specialist based in Olympia, WA.  She enjoys performing throughout her native Northwest with early music ensembles large and small and appears regularly with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and the Oregon Bach Festival.  She also appears frequently with Music at Epiphany, the Tacoma Bach Festival, and the Seattle Bach Festival.  Past ensembles include the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, where she served as principal second violin 2020-2024, Pacific MusicWorks, and Bach Collegium San Diego.  Christine began her studies on baroque violin with Ingrid Matthews, and she graduated in 2013 with an MA from the Historical Performance Practices program at Case Western Reserve University where she studied with Julie Andrijeski.  In addition to performing, Christine teaches Suzuki violin and viola to a busy studio of young musicians in Olympia.  When not performing, teaching, or running after her two energetic young children, Christine enjoys knitting, baking, reading about linguistics and the natural sciences, drinking tea with lots of milk and sugar, and listening to the rain with her family. 


Brandon Vance, Violin

Brandon Vance is an internationally acclaimed Scottish fiddler and violinist, celebrated for his artistry in both traditional and classical genres. He is the recipient of Scotland’s 2017 Royal National Mòd “Sutherland Cup” in Scottish Fiddle, and was the youngest to win the U.S. National Open Scottish Fiddling Championship in both 1999 and 2001. In 2021, he earned first prize at the Dan R. MacDonald Memorial Fiddle Competition in Charleston, South Carolina.



Mr. Vance has performed and taught internationally, appearing as guest lecturer at the University of Limerick’s Irish World Academy, guest artist for the 50th Anniversary of the Armagh Piper’s Club, and featured soloist at the Royal National Mòd in Fort William, Scotland.  He has also been featured soloist with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, performing his original composition, “Gael Storm” for fiddle and orchestra at Severance Hall in Cleveland, Ohio.

A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, he is second violinist of the Skyros Quartet and a founding member of Celtic ensemble Dréos and world-music group Alchymeia. He has also appeared with Pacific Musicworks, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Early Music Vancouver, and currently performs with the Seattle Bach Festival and Northwest Sinfonietta.


 Lindsey Strand-Polyak, viola and violin

A Pacific Northwest native, Lindsey Strand-Polyak lives hyphenated life to go along with her hyphenated name: divided between viola and violin; living in Whidbey Island, WA and Santa Monica, CA. In California, she serves as Artistic Director of Los Angeles Baroque, Adjunct Professor of Baroque Violin at Claremont Graduate University, and Director of the San Francisco Early Music Society Baroque Workshop. In Washington, she is Principal Violist for Seattle Baroque Orchestra, and has performed with Pacific MusicWorks, Byron Schenkman & Friends, the Salish Sea Early Music Festival, and the Whidbey Island Music Festival. She has appeared across the country in concert and festival appearances, including Musica Angelica, Baroque Music Montana, the Bach Collegium San Diego, the American Bach Soloists, the Baroque Festival Corona del Mar, the Oregon Bach Festival, and fringe concerts of the Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals. In the non-baroque world, she has recorded for numerous film and TV scores, and performed with artists across the musical spectrum from Anne Akiko Meyers to Stevie Wonder. She holds a PhD/MM in Musicology and Violin performance from UCLA. 

Viola made by an anonymous maker (England, mid-18th-century)
Violin by Richard Duke, Sr. London, July 10, 1776



Page Smith, violoncello

Page Smith is solo cellist of the Pacific Northwest Ballet and was principal cellist of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra for twenty-five years and the Auburn Symphony for ten years—ensembles with which she has frequently appeared as soloist. Page has also served as principal cellist of the Aspen Chamber Symphony and the New Jersey Symphony, and currently plays upon invitation with the Seattle Symphony and the Seattle Opera. She is one of this region’s most beloved and trusted chamber musicians, performing with the Orcas Island Chamber Music Series, Music of Remembrance, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Mostly Nordic and Second City chamber music series. Page especially enjoys playing the uniquely beautiful repertoire combining chorus and solo cello with St. Mark’s Compline Choir, Opus 7, Choral Arts Northwest, the St. Mark’s Cathedral Choir, Seattle Pro Musica, and the St. James Cathedral Choir.

Violoncello made by Robert Brewer Young (Sentaraille à Berdot, France, 2011), after a Sanctus Seraphin instrument (Venice, 1730).

Tamara Friedman, fortepiano 

Fortepianist Tamara Friedman, praised for the depth, wit, and humor of her performances (Seattle Times), attended the Oberlin Conservatory and received her master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music (NYC), studying with Lilian Kallir. She has collaborated with such artists as Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schroder, Max van Egmond, and Tanya Tomkins, and has been appearing with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock as Duo Amadeus for the last several decades. In the Pacific Northwest she has performed on the Seattle Camerata, Allegro Baroque and Beyond, Belle Arte, Early Music Guild, Gallery Concerts, and Mostly Nordic series and for the Governor’s Chamber Music Festival. Tamara has been the featured performer in early piano workshops for Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) and the Western Early Keyboard Association, and has lectured on Mozart for several regional and statewide music teacher associations in the Pacific Northwest. Tamara is co-curator of the Skagit Early Keyboard Music, where, together with George Bozarth, she welcomes performers, teachers, groups of students, and others interested in historic pianos. In the summers Tamara has been featured on the Kennebec Early Music Festival in Bath, Maine.  

Fortepiano by Nannette Streicher (Vienna, 1805)