Masterclass Series

Violinist Rachel Lee Priday (PRY-day) is a passionate and inquisitive explorer in all her musical ventures, in search of contemporary relevance when performing the standard violin repertoire, and in discovering and commissioning new works. Her wide-ranging repertoire and eclectic programming reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives.

Rachel Lee Priday has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, including the Chicago, Saint Louis, Houston, Seattle, and National Symphony Orchestras, the Boston Pops, and the Berlin Staatskapelle. Recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues including the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Musée du Louvre, Verbier Festival, Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series in Chicago, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany, and tours of South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Committed to new music, and making enriching community and global connections, Rachel takes a multidisciplinary approach to performing that lends itself to new commissions organically merging poetry, dance, drama, stimulating visuals and music. Recent seasons have seen a new Violin Sonata commissioned from Pulitzer Prize Finalist Christopher Cerrone and the premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s “The Orphic Moment” in an innovative staging that mixed poetry, drama, visuals, and music. Rachel has collaborated several times with Ballet San Jose, and was lead performer in “Tchaikovsky: None But The Lonely Heart” during a week-long theatrical concert with Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Her work as soloist with the Asia America New Music Institute promoted new music relationships and cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining new music premieres and educational outreach in the US, China, Korea and Vietnam.

Rachel began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York to study with iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay, and continued her studies at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division with Itzhak Perlman. Rachel holds a B.A. degree in English from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried. Since Fall 2019, she serves as Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Washington School of Music.

Recent and upcoming concerto engagements include the Pacific Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, and Bangor Symphony. Since making her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997, she has performed with numerous orchestras across the country, such as the symphony orchestras of Colorado, Alabama, Knoxville, Rockford, and New York Youth Symphony. In Europe and in Asia, she has appeared at the Moritzburg Festival in Germany and with orchestras in Graz, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where she performed with the KBS Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Russian State Symphony Orchestra on tour.

Rachel has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, and The Strad. Her concerts have been broadcast on major media outlets in the U.S., Germany, Korea, South Africa, and Brazil, including a televised concert in Rio de Janeiro, numerous radio appearances on 98.7 WFMT Chicago radio, and American Public Media’s Performance Today. She been featured on the Disney Channel, “Fiddling for the Future” and “American Masters” on PBS, and the Grammy Awards.

Praised by the Chicago Tribune for her “irresistible panache,” Rachel Lee Priday enthralls audiences with her riveting stage presence and “rich, mellifluous sound.” The Baltimore Sun wrote, “It’s not just her technique, although clearly there’s nothing she can’t do on the fingerboard or with her bow. What’s most impressive is that she is an artist who can make the music sing… And though her tone is voluptuous and sexy where it counts, she concluded the ‘Intermezzo’ with such charm that her listeners responded with a collective chuckle of approval as she finished.”

She performs on a Nicolo Gagliano violin (Naples, 1760), double-purfled with fleurs-de-lis, named Alejandro.

Melia Watras has been hailed by Gramophone as “an artist of commanding and poetic personality” and by The Strad as “staggeringly virtuosic.” As a violist/composer/collaborative artist, she has sustained a distinguished career as a creator and facilitator of new music and art.

In the 2025-26 season, highlights include performances of world premieres: works written for Watras by composers Mary Kouyoumdjian and Ha-Yang Kim, as well as her new solo viola piece to be performed by Anthony Devroye in Paris. A new album of her compositions is slated to be recorded for Planet M Records.

Watras’s much-lauded work as a recording artist spans nearly three decades. Her latest album, of her composition The almond tree duos, was recognized by Bandcamp Daily as being among the best contemporary Classical music of the month. Berlin-based music magazine 15 Questions called the duos “pure, poignant, powerful in their immediacy.” The WholeNote notes that her recording Play/Write “unfolds an exquisite world in which beauty and dreams flirt with sorrow.” String Masks, a collection of her own compositions including the titular work which utilizes Harry Partch instruments, was praised for “not only the virtuoso’s sensitive playing, but also her innovative and daring spirit,” by the Journal of the American Viola Society. Textura hailed her compositional debut album, Firefly Songs, for “distilling rich life experiences into strikingly original musical form.” Schumann Resonances was described by the American Record Guide as “a rare balance of emotional strength and technical delicacy,” with The Strad writing of 26 “a beautiful celebration of 21st century viola music.” Ispirare made numerous Best of 2015 lists, including the Chicago Reader’s (“Watras knocked the wind out of me with the dramatically dark beauty of this recording”). A Seattle Times Critics’ Pick for Short Stories, the newspaper marveled at her “velocity that seems beyond the reach of human fingers.” Strings praised her “stunning virtuosic talent” in her debut solo CD, Viola Solo, and declared her second release, Prestidigitation, “astounding and both challenging and addictive to listen to.”

Watras’s compositions have been performed in the US cities of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Bloomington (IN), and countries including Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, and Wales. She has been commissioned by the American Viola Society, the Avalon String Quartet, violinists Tekla Cunningham, Mark Fewer, Rachel Lee Priday and Michael Jinsoo Lim, violists Anthony Devroye and Rose Wollman, cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, pianist Cristina Valdés, accordionist Jeanne Velonis, with works performed by violist Atar Arad, singer Galia Arad, pianist Winston Choi, Harry Partch Instrumentarium Director Charles Corey, violinists Manuel Guillén and Yura Lee, vocalist Carrie Henneman Shaw, percussionist Bonnie Whiting and the ensemble Frequency. Her music has been heard on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and can be found on the albums The almond tree duos; Kinetic; Partita Party; Play/Write; String Masks; 3 Songs for Bellows, Buttons and Keys; Firefly Songs; Schumann Resonances and 26. Watras’s adaptation of John Corigliano’s Fancy on a Bach Air for viola, which she recorded for her Viola Solo album, is published by G. Schirmer, Inc.

For twenty years, Watras concertized worldwide and recorded extensively as violist of the renowned Corigliano Quartet, which she co-founded. The quartet appears on 13 albums, including their recording on the Naxos label, which was honored as one of the Ten Best Classical Recordings of the Year by The New Yorker.

Melia Watras studied with Distinguished Professor Atar Arad at Indiana University, earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and the prestigious Performer’s Certificate. While at Indiana, Watras began her teaching career as Arad’s Associate Instructor, later becoming a member of the faculty as a Visiting Lecturer. She went on to study chamber music at the Juilliard School while serving as a teaching assistant to the Juilliard String Quartet.

Watras is currently Professor of Viola at the University of Washington, where she holds the Ruth Sutton Waters Endowed Professorship. In 2024, the American Viola Society presented Watras with the Maurice W. Riley Award, for her distinguished contributions to the viola as a performer, composer, teacher and leader. She has penned articles for the Journal of the American Viola Society, The Strad (online), Strings and the Juilliard Journal.

Cellist Alistair MacRae is the Cordelia Wikarski-Miedel Artist in Residence at University of Puget Sound School of Music and the cellist of the Puget Sound Piano Trio. He has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral principal throughout North America and in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East. He serves as principal cello for both the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Tacoma; performs with his wife, soprano Allison Pohl, in the voice and cello duo Soprello; and is a member of the Artist Faculty at the Brevard Music Center.

His playing has been praised for its “rich sound and lyrical phrasing” (Palm Beach Daily News) and his performances have been featured in radio broadcasts across the United States on WQXR, WWFM, WDAV, WCQS, KING FM, and Vermont Public Radio. As a chamber musician and recitalist, he has performed in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel and Weill Halls; at Palm Beach’s Kravis Center for the Performing Arts; in New York City chamber music venues such as BargeMusic, Merkin Hall, the 92nd St Y, and Miller Theatre at Columbia University; at numerous colleges and universities; and on concert series throughout the United States. He has appeared on several series presented by Carnegie Hall; as a member of groups such as the Richardson Chamber Players, Berkshire Bach Ensemble, and Fountain Ensemble; and at festivals such as the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival, Monadnock Music, and Music Festival of the Hamptons.

A diversity of musical experiences enriches his performances and musical life.  He has appeared as a concerto soloist with the Asheville Symphony, Princeton Symphony, Northwest Sinfonietta, Rainier Symphony, Bombay Chamber Orchestra, and at the Brevard Music Center.  His past projects include recordings of chamber music by Kodaly, Telemann, and Laurie Altman; music for The Discovery Channel; and ensemble albums of music by Mozart and Scott Joplin. His eclectic collaborations have found him on stage with Paul Taylor Dance Company, the Westminster Choir, tap dancer Savion Glover, jazz bassist Ben Wolfe, the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, and the rock band Scorpions.

A passionate advocate for new music, Mr. MacRae has commissioned and premiered new works for both solo cello and chamber ensembles, collaborating closely with composers. He has given premiere performances of 21st-century pieces at Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard Universities; and has performed his own compositions and arrangements in the United States and Canada.

In his role on the University of Puget Sound School of Music faculty, he teaches and mentors students in cello and chamber music. Formerly, he also served on the faculties of Princeton University, The College of New Jersey, and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College – CUNY. Since 2009, he has spent his summers performing and teaching at the Brevard Music Center.

Will Langlie Miletich joined the Seattle Symphony bass section in the 2019/2020 season. Born and raised in Seattle, he was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music at age 16 as the Milton Levy Fellow, studying with Harold Robinson and Edgar Meyer. In Seattle, Langlie Miletich also studied double bass with Todd Gowers of Seattle Pacific University and was a student of Seattle Symphony Principal Bassist Jordan Anderson. He enjoyed a number of Seattle Symphony community programs while growing up, selected to perform a concerto with the Symphony in the Young Artists Competition in 2013, as well as being a participant of the Symphony’s Merriman-Ross Family Young Composers Workshop. Still an active composer, he will perform the world premiere of his own string trio, Bully Mammoth, in the Seattle Symphony’s 2025/2026 season Chamber Series. An avid chamber musician, he has performed at festivals such as Marlboro, ChamberFest Cleveland and Music in the Vineyards in Napa, California. Langlie Miletich has been a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and has attended Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute and the Domaine Forget International Music Academy in Quebec, Canada.

Bridget Pei has been a member of the Seattle Symphony flute section since the 2023/2024 season. Hailing from Los Angeles, Pei finished her graduate studies at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music with Leone Buyse in 2023 and received her Bachelor of Music degree at Northwestern University with John Thorne. While in college, Pei was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and performed as Principal Flute with the Dubuque Symphony. Since then, she has performed with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Pacific Symphony Orchestra and was a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. An avid chamber musician, Pei has collaborated and performed with members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and North Carolina Symphony as part of the Hidden Valley Festival of Winds II in 2022. When not playing flute, Pei likes to spend her time cooking or planning her next multi-day backpacking trip.

Logan Esterling is an active performing artist and teacher who currently holds the English Horn/Utility Oboe position with Symphony Tacoma and the Yakima Symphony, as well as the Principal Oboe position with the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra and the Bellevue Symphony.

He performs regularly with orchestras throughout the Pacific Northwest, including the Seattle Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Northwest Sinfonietta, North Corner Chamber Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony, and Lake Washington Symphony. Outside of his orchestral jobs and freelancing career, Mr. Esterling has performed with accomplished artists such as Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, Evanescence, The Who, Lindsey Stirling, and “Weird Al” Yankovic.

He is also involved in the Seattle recording scene and has recorded music for the video game Destiny 2, the DreamWorks short Bird Karma, and prominent modern composers such as Christopher Tyler Nickel.

In his private teaching studio, Logan Esterling has led many students to succeed in local and state auditions. He writes, “I am passionate about enabling students to achieve the definition of success most important to them.”

Additionally, Mr. Esterling serves on the faculty of the Marrowstone Summer Music Festival and the DigiPen Institute of Technology.

Mr. Esterling earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Washington, where he studied with Mary Lynch, Principal Oboe of the Seattle Symphony.

Benjamin Lulich has been the Principal Clarinet of the Seattle Symphony since the 2014/2015 season. He has held positions in Orange County’s Pacific Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Colorado Music Festival and Festival Mozaic, and has performed frequently with The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Pasadena Symphony, IRIS Orchestra and many other ensembles.

Additionally, Lulich is Principal Clarinet of the Sunriver Music Festival and has performed with the Hollywood Studio Orchestra on numerous films and records albums, including Water for Elephants, The Tourist, Monsters University, Godzilla and the Oscar-winning score for Life of Pi. In 2013, he performed as Principal Clarinet for Yamaha’s 125th Anniversary Concert, which featured Elton John and many other performers, and was broadcast live online to the world.

Also interested in chamber music and new music, Lulich has been a guest artist for concerts throughout the United States and abroad. Lulich was a member of the Second Instrumental Unit, a contemporary music ensemble based in New York City, where he took part in a concert honoring Milton Babbitt at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. As a recitalist and soloist, he has performed at the International ClarinetFest and was featured as a soloist with Pacific Symphony and Sunriver Music Festival on several occasions. On New Year’s Eve 2013, he performed with Jeff Tyzik, Ko-ichiro Yamamoto and the Seattle Symphony in Tyzik’s Jelly Roll Morton Suite.

The recipient of many awards and prizes, Lulich studied at Interlochen Arts Academy, Cleveland Institute of Music, Yale School of Music, Pacific Music Festival and Music Academy of the West, and his teachers include Richard Hawkins, Franklin Cohen, David Shifrin, Fred Ormand and Laura DeLuca. He has been adjunct faculty at California State University Fullerton and has given masterclasses and coachings throughout Southern California and beyond.

At the age of seven, Rodger Burnett got hooked on classical music when his father brought home a recording of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony from the local Reno, Nevada grocery store. His father, an amateur violinist, always had classical and big band music on the home stereo.

After four years of piano lessons, Rodger leapt at the chance to play a brass instrument in the seventh grade. His hopes of playing trombone were dashed when Rodger’s clever Junior High band director (who needed French horns in the band) convinced him that his arms were too short. After one year of study, he was asked to join the University of Nevada Orchestra, where his father also played. Rodger soloed for the first time with the Reno Philharmonic while in the eighth grade, and began working in the house orchestras of the Sahara Tahoe and Harrahs Reno Casinos throughout his high school years.

During the years of his undergraduate studies at Illinois State University, he also played principal horn in the Peoria Symphony, studied privately in Chicago, and attended the Aspen, Claremont, and New College Music Festivals. The opportunity to be a graduate student of Christopher Leuba at the University of Washington brought Rodger to Seattle in 1976. He has also studied with Julie Landsman and David Krehbiel. In 1980 and 1981, he played in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. After his return to Seattle, Rodger has been playing regularly with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera, where he is possibly the only horn player in the world to have performed all four of the Wagner tuba parts in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Rodger was principal horn of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra. He is principal horn and personnel manager of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, and has played regularly with the Fifth Avenue and Paramount Theater Orchestras since 1982. He has played on the soundtracks for more than twenty motion pictures.

Rodger has appeared as soloist with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra and the Auburn Symphony. He was a finalist in the Heldenleben International Horn Competition. As a chamber musician, he has performed with the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival, the Methow Music Festival, the Orcas Chamber Music Festival, the Belle Arte Concerts, the Jacobsen Series at University of Puget Sound, and Chamber Music Society of Seattle.

Currently he is on faculty at University of Puget Sound and Seattle Pacific University, and maintains an active teaching studio in Seattle. As a member of the Northwoods Quintet, Rodger has performed in educational programs in more than 300 schools across the state of Washington.

An avid cyclist, he rode cross-country from Los Angeles to Orlando in support of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. He is an intrepid traveler, sea kayaker and nature photographer.

David Gordon, whose playing has been described as “spectacular” by the Chicago Tribune, has been Principal Trumpet of the Seattle Symphony since 2002. He is also Principal Trumpet of Seattle Opera and has been Principal Trumpet of Chicago’s Grant Park Symphony Orchestra since 2000.

Prior to his appointment in Seattle, he was Principal Trumpet of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. As a guest artist, he has performed, recorded and toured as Principal Trumpet of the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and has performed as Principal Trumpet of The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra and Savannah Symphony Orchestra, and has held the position of Principal Trumpet with the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Napa Valley Festival Orchestra, Jupiter Symphony and Prometheus Chamber Orchestra.

As soloist, Gordon has appeared with the Seattle Symphony, Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, Charleston Symphony Orchestra (with which he performed as soloist every season of his tenure), Seattle Chamber Music Society, National Repertory Orchestra and Lake George Chamber Orchestra, among others. As a chamber musician, he has performed with the Canadian Brass, Empire Brass, Seattle Chamber Music Society, London Symphony Brass, Seattle Chamber Players, Music of Remembrance and many others. He has toured extensively in Europe, North America, South America and Asia, and has performed in such prestigious festivals as Tanglewood, Lucerne and Schleswig-Holstein. A committed educator, Gordon is a faculty member at the University of Washington as well as regularly presenting master classes and coaching musicians nationwide.

Originally hailing from Narragansett, Rhode Island, Gordon was educated at Columbia University, from which he holds a degree in philosophy, and The Juilliard School. He won the New York Times Company National Merit Scholarship and the William C. Byrd Memorial Scholarship.

Dr. David Krosschell is an accomplished bass trombonist, tenor trombonist, and music educator based in the Seattle area. Well versed in classical, jazz, and commercial styles, he has performed with the Yakima Symphony, Federal Way Symphony, Rat City Brass, Seattle Wind Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, the North Carolina Opera Company, Fayetteville Symphony, Opera Carolina, Fort Worth Symphony & Opera, Illinois Symphony, Peoria Symphony, Dallas Jazz Orchestra, and Grand Rapids Symphony.

David holds a doctoral degree in music performance from Northwestern University, where he studied with Charles Vernon, Michael Mulcahy, Randy Hawes, and Ed Kleinhammer. His primary field of research involved gauging the influence of George Roberts on both the concurrent and subsequent generations of bass trombonists. David earned a master’s degree in trombone performance from the University of North Texas, where he studied with Dennis Bubert and Dr. Vern Kagarice, and where he held membership in the One O’clock Lab Band and North Texas Wind Symphony. He received his bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University in both music education and music performance while studying with Dr. Steve Wolfinbarger.