Meet the Band
Linda Atherton, cellist, is a graduate of Boston University, where she studied with Leslie Parnas. After graduating, Linda moved to Indianapolis where she became a founding member of the Lockerbie String Quartet and was also a substitute with the Indianapolis Symphony. Upon moving to Cleveland, she played with the Canton Symphony for several years, as well as with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, the Cleveland Ballet Orchestra, and the Cleveland Opera Orchestra.
Linda has been soloist with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Ohio Ballet, Trinity Chamber Orchestra, Euclid Symphony, and BlueWater Chamber Orchestra. She was a participant in the Blue Hill Kneisel Hall and Taos chamber music festivals, and is currently very active in the Cleveland chamber music scene as a member of ART Trio and the Cleveland Chamber Collective. Linda is a member of the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Blue Water Chamber Orchestra, Trinity Chamber Orchestra and plays for many musicals including the Broadway Series at Playhouse Square.
Lisa Boyko joined The Cleveland Orchestra in 1991, after serving as a member of the New Orleans Symphony, Toronto Symphony, and the Minnesota Orchestra. Born in Cleveland and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Ms. Boyko studied for two years in Vienna at the Musikgymnasium and the Hochschule für Musik. In 1985, she received a bachelor of music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), where she was a student of Robert Vernon.
Ms. Boyko has appeared as alumni soloist with the Cleveland Institute of Music Chamber Orchestra in the Cleveland premiere of Darius Milhaud’s Concertino d’été and continues to perform regularly in solo recitals and chamber music concerts. She is a founding member of the Cleveland Chamber Collective, which since 1992 has had the mission of bringing both new music and neglected works of the past to the public.
Ms. Boyko is a faculty member at CIM and Case Western Reserve University and has taught at the Encore School for Strings and the Masterworks Festival. She is active in local organizations that support and promote music and arts education, including the CIM Alumni Association, the Ohio Viola Society, and Inlet Dance Theatre. In her spare time, she is an avid traveler who also enjoys gardening, reading, and languages.
Ty Alan Emerson has been presenting music in Cleveland since 2000. Following two terms as president of the Cleveland Composers’ Guild, he is currently Director for the Cleveland Chamber Collective. He has been commissioned by the Collective, No Exit, and ASSEM3LY, with other notable performances by Zeitgeist, Quorum, Gary Louie, and The Peabody Wind Ensemble. His work has been featured at music festivals from Bowling Green, OH to Huddersfield, England. In addition to his work for the concert hall, Emerson has composed and arranged works for the stage including several shows with The Musical Theater Project in Cleveland, and a season with the Texas Shakespeare Festival. Notable awards include: MTNA/OMTA Composer of the Year, two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, and the ASCAP Morton Gould Award. His Prospero on the Beach was featured on a CD by ASSEM3LY, and is available through Albany Records. Most recently he was hired by Fader Music and Sound to help arrange the welcome trailer for the Cleveland International Film Festival No. 43.
Mary Kay Fink joined The Cleveland Orchestra as piccoloist in 1990 and has appeared as a soloist with the orchestra on numerous occasions. Formerly a member of the New Jersey Symphony, she has also performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony, and the Milwaukee Symphony. She is also active as a chamber musician, soloist and educator, giving flute and piccolo master classes at colleges and universities throughout the United States. In 1986, Fink won first prize in the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition and is currently on the board of the National Flute Association. She has performed with the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra in Japan, coached at the New World Symphony, and has performed/taught at the Kent-Blossom Music and Colorado College Music Festivals. She has been on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Baldwin-Wallace College, and is currently head of the flute department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She holds degrees from Oberlin and Juilliard; her former teachers include Robert Dick, Paula Robison, Robert Willoughby, and Julius Baker.
Kim Gomez has been a member of The Cleveland Orchestra since 1990. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Ms. Gomez grew up in a musical family; she studied at the Peabody Conservatory, then earned a Bachelor of Music degree and an Artist Diploma from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was a concerto competition winner. Her teachers have included David Cerone, Josef Gingold, Daniel Heifetz, Virginia Schneider, David Updegraff, Donald Weilerstein, and Mimi Zweig. Ms. Gomez has appeared on three occasions as a soloist with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra and has made solo appearances with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. Kim and her husband James have six children.
Dylan Moffitt, is often recognized for his versatility as a percussionist in the classical and world music genres. In 2009, Moffitt appeared as a soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra alongside renowned artists Alisa Weilerstein and Jamey Haddad in performances of Golijov’s, Azul for cello and orchestra. He currently serves as principal percussionist and frequent soloist with the Firelands Symphony where in 2013, founded his “Drumming with Dylan” educational outreach program. The program has since been recognized by the Cleveland Orchestra and was featured in the orchestra’s “At Home” residency this past summer season. Dylan performs regularly with the Wheeling Symphony, Pittsburgh Opera, Ohio Valley Symphony, Blossom Festival Band, Apollos Fire, the Cleveland Chamber Collective and has in past years appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra. Dylan specializes in various styles of world music, Brazilian percussion in particular. Following multiple trips to Brazil, Dylan began directing the Cleveland-based samba school, Samba Joia. In 2013, Moffitt joined the percussion faculty of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and has since joined the percussion faculty at Cuyahoga Community College. Dylan attended the Cleveland Institute of music for both his undergraduate and Master degrees. His principal teachers include Richard Weiner, Paul Yancich and Jamey Haddad.
Pianist/Composer Nicholas Underhill holds a Master of Music Degree in Piano from the New England Conservatory of Music. His teachers include Monica Jakuc, Konrad Wolff, Katja Andy, Edmund Battersby and Russell Sherman. He has performed solo recitals in Carnegie Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall and in Chicago on the Dame Myra Hess concert series. He is currently the pianist for the Cleveland Chamber Collective, of which he is a founding member, and the No Exit New Music Ensemble. He has performed concertos with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, the Lakeside Symphony and the San Jose Symphony Orchestra. Underhill has received critical acclaim from Donald Rosenberg for his solo piano album, "Light and Sirius", as well as from Bernard Holland, for his Piano Trio #1.
He has taught piano at Hiram College, Mt. Union College and Willougby school of Fine arts, as well as numerous schools in Boston and New York City. From 2006 to 2016 he taught composition and other music courses at Cleveland State University. Underhill studied composition at Hampshire College, Amherst College, and the New England Conservatory of Music. As a composer he has been commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra, the Gramercy Trio, and various members of the Cleveland Orchestra. He currently teaches privately and lives in Cleveland with his wife, Mary Kay Fink of the Cleveland Orchestra.