Featured Artists

Cellist Florent Renard-Payen was born in Paris to a family of professional musicians; his parents were both harpists. He studied in France with Annie Cochet and Michel Strauss and in 1988 was a top prizewinner at the U.F.A.M International Cello Competition. At twenty, he moved to Boston to pursue five years of graduate study with Andres Diaz, culminating in a Master's degree and the Pi Kappa Lambda award for musical achievement from Boston University in 1996. He completed his musical studies in 2004, earning a Doctor of Musical Arts in Cello Performance from the Eastman School of Music. Florent is currently teaching cello at Colgate University and chamber music at Hamilton College. Furthermore, he has held master classes at the University of Alaska, Northwestern State University, Mansfield University, University of Central Arkansas, and the University of South Florida. A champion of music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Florent is the founder of the Tarab Cello Ensemble, a guest performer of the Society for New Music in Syracuse, NY, and a member of Open Gate, a newly formed chamber group dedicated to both new and "old" music. He has commissioned and premiered solo cello works by Dan Trueman, Aaron Travers, Todd Coleman, Gregory Mertl, and Garrett Byrnes. Florent has recorded chamber works by David Liptak and Dan Trueman on Bridge records label.

For 26 years, Alycia Scott has studied movement from the microscopic tensions in bacteria and the vast curves of the desert, to the interchanges between people at a street corner. Originally trained in modern dance by renegade choreographer and dancer Mia Micheals, she has also studied with Kent Lindemer (of Pilobolus), Siaka and Julie Dosso (West African Dance), and Marion Anderson (Martha Graham technique). After dancing with Peace Child in Miami and touring with the company to Russia, Alycia formed the dance collective Emerge, danced with vocce (acrobatic experimental movement), and the Valley Dance Ensemble (led by former Martha Graham dancer Marion Anderson). She has taught dance and improvisation at Utah State University, for the Valley Dance Ensemble, and in schools throughout Chicago. She has her Masters in Arts Administration from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been curating exhibitions and projects for the last ten years. As a dancer, curator, and explorer, Alycia is driven to capture the magic in everyday and ritual happenings, and to articulate the awe of these witnessed occurrences in spirit and movement.




Laura Sittig has been a cellist for fourteen years, having studied theory and performance at the Community Education Division of Eastman School of Music during her high school years. She was also a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and participated in its tour in France in 2001. In 2002 Laura was chosen to receive the cello she now owns through a donor of the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. She attended Colgate University in Hamilton, NY for an undergraduate degree in neuroscience, remaining an active member of the chamber music program and studying cello with Florent Renard-Payen during these four years. At Colgate Laura had several opportunities to perform in master classes, including a class with cellist Lynn Harrell. Another formative period of time, both educationally and musically, was the months she lived in Venice, Italy to study art and archaeology with a Colgate group. Now living in Chicago as a student in the doctoral neuroscience program of Northwestern University, she is enthusiastic about performing in potentially new and diverse groups in an effort to apply a diverse educational background to widening musical prospects in the future.

Peter Slavin is a composer, pianist and organist who has lived and worked for most of the past 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, having received his B.M. in composition in 1990 from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Elinor Armer, David Conte and Conrad Susa. He has won awards and critical acclaim for his piano playing, and has worked professionally since his teens as an accompanist for instrumentalists, vocalists, and dance; a pianist and organist in chamber ensembles and orchestras; a church organist and choir director; and a teacher. His compositions, including numerous songs, choral works, chamber music, solo piano pieces, and electroacoustic compositions, have been widely performed and enthusiastically received in the Bay Area and in his home state of Texas. Slavin earned his doctorate in composition from UC Berkeley in 2004, submitting as his dissertation an hour-long opera on the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, entitled L'epreuve de la Pucelle. His primary teachers at Berkeley were Jorge Liderman and Andrew Imbrie; he also studied composition with Cindy Cox and Edwin Dugger and computer music with David Wessel. He currently serves as Director of Music at Immanuel United Church of Christ in Evergreen Park, IL, and lives in Chicago with his wife, composer and pianist April Mok.

Canadian soprano Bryna Tallman hails from London, Ontario, and specializes in operatic roles for soubrette and art song. Ms. Tallman has completed a BMus at the University of Ontario, and is currently working on her MM in Vocal Performance at North Park University. She has also studied Musical Theatre at Sheridan College. Principal teachers included Annie Picard, Susan Eichhorn and Mary Lou Fallis. Ms. Tallman recently sang the role of Monica in NPU's production of Menotti's The Medium. She has also performed portions of Mozart's Don Giovanni (Zerlina) and La Nozze di Figaro (Barbarina), Puccini's La Rondine (Lisette), and Strauss' Arabella (Zdenka) in staged operatic revues. Additionally, Ms. Tallman has participated in full productions of Candide, Cabaret, and Blood Brothers, and was the featured soprano for Mozart's Vesperae solennes de confessore. In the near future she will be performing 'La ci darem' from Don Giovanni at the presidential inauguration ceremony at North Park University. She is very excited to delve into contemporary music and looks forward to future performances with the Fire Wire Ensemble.