Violin

Eric Pritchard has been serving as First Violinist of the Ciompi Quartet of Duke University since 1995. His previous appointments as First Violinist of the Alexander and Oxford String Quartets included positions at City University of New York, San Francisco State University, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Miami University. A native of Durham, New Hampshire, he studied at the New England Conservatory, the Indiana University School of Music and the Juilliard School where he received a Master of Music in 1985. His principal teachers were Josef Gingold, Ivan Galamian, Eric Rosenblith and Giorgio Ciompi.

Pritchard was awarded First Prizes at the London International String Quartet Competition and at the Coleman and Fischoff national chamber music competitions. He was also the winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Award in violin in 1981.

Violin

Hsiao-mei Ku has won merit as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher in the US and her native China. She performed widely in China where she gave her first live performance on National TV when she was 11 years old, and later won the Government Award of Best Performance.

At Indiana University in this country, she received her Master of Music degree with distinction, and was awarded the Performer’s Certificate by the School of Music, where she studied and worked with Franco Gulli, Rostislav Dubinsky, Gary Hoffman and Janos Starker.

Conductor

Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant is the Chair of the Music Department and Professor of the Practice of Music at Duke University. She directs the Duke University Wind Symphony and serves as the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Durham Medical Orchestra (dmomusic.org). Verena is also the Associate Artistic Director of the Mid EUROPE festival and the Executive Director of the World Youth Wind Orchestra Project and the World Adult Wind Orchestra Project. 

Originally from Eberschwang, Austria, Verena began piano lessons at the age of six and later expanded her studies to include the church organ, flute, and bassoon. She made her conducting debut at 16, followed by a three-year fundamental conducting course under Johann Mösenbichler. Verena pursued symphony orchestra conducting with Ingo Ingensand at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz, Upper Austria, earning her bachelor’s degree with distinction in 2005. She completed her Master of Music in 2007 at Michigan State University under Kevin Sedatole, and in May 2009, she graduated with a DMA in Wind Ensemble Conducting from The University of Texas at Austin, where she studied with Jerry Junkin.

Her transcriptions of John Corigliano’s Grammy-winning work Mr. Tambourine Man for Wind Ensemble and Amplified Soprano, published by G. Schirmer, and Eric Whitacre’s Sing Gently and Goodnight Moon, published by Hal Leonard, have been highly praised by the composers and performed widely.