Lauded by Cleveland Classical as "an excellent soloist, a compelling performer who is equally comfortable handling long strings of notes... and singing through emotive melodies with her instrument,” Dr. Qin Ying Tan currently serves as harpsichord faculty at Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music. As co-artistic director of The Resonance Project Cleveland and CLE Concierto, Dr. Tan has helped lead a highly successful inaugural season, marked by sold-out premium seating and critical acclaim for its bold programming, intimate performances, and unwavering commitment to musical excellence. Together with pianist Irwin Shung, they have brought fresh energy to Cleveland’s classical music scene by fostering cross-cultural collaborations and reimagining the concert experience for 21st-century audiences.

Dr. Tan has appeared in concerts in Singapore, Shanghai, Germany, France, and has performed extensively across the United States of America.  This season sees engagements with Hudson Historical Society and Library, City Music, the Historically-Informed Performance Practice Department at Case Western Reserve University, and the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival.  In addition to her commitment to early repertoire, Tan regularly presents new music to her audiences and has premiered several pieces, most notably Cenk Ergun's sound installation piece, "Fomare" at the Cleveland Museum of Art and “Are You You” by Michi Wiancko with City Music.   As a pedagogue, Dr. Tan’s students have successfully gained admission into graduate programs in Michigan and Boston.  Dr. Tan continues to cultivate an interest in historically-informed performance at the pre-college and college level in her role as a board member of the Northeast Ohio MTNA and harpsichord faculty at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory.  Her passion for sharing historical music has also led her to lead dynamic workshops on baroque dance and historical keyboards in Southeast Asia where accessibility to period music is rare.  When not at work, Ying loves exploring and hiking around beautiful Cleveland with her family. She welcomes conversations about culture, history or how music can be a vehicle for social change and a tool to bring communities together.

Papa Assane M’Baye was born and raised in Dakar, Senegal. He came from a family with a strong tradition of singing and dancing, and learned his musical skills from his extended family. At a young age, he began performing with his family at celebrations and events, and eventually at Le Ballet National du Senegal. His family also performed in Europe.

He came to the US in 2000 as part of a group performing Mandinke epics called the Ballet Afrique Noire, which included dancers and musicians from Senegal, Mali and Guinea. During his stay, he was offered a contract in Baltimore, and then was offered a position at The KanKouran West African Dance Company, a well established company based in Washington, DC where his former teacher was Musical Director. Assane performed with the troupe, and later became its Musical Director. He continues to participate in their annual drum and dance conference during the Labor Day weekend. Assane is now based in Cleveland, where he teaches at Karamu School in Cleveland and Shore Cultural Center in Euclid. In addition to his teaching, he performs on evenings and weekends in Cleveland and cities across the Midwest and East Coast. He came to Cleveland from the East coast because of the opportunity to teach in schools. He has also put together an ensemble called TamTam Magic, which features West African artists working with African American performers. This ensemble, made up of five dancers and four drummers, has performed at festivals, holiday celebrations, weddings, parties, and parades. In 2011, it entered into a contract (along with other local artists) with the Cleveland Zoo to perform at its Africa exhibit throughout the summer. 

Assane continues to return annually to Senegal in the winter months to develop his skills in traditional food, culture and dance.

Praised for her “full-bodied, rich, and warm tone” (Cleveland.com), violinist and educator Ann Yu draws endless inspiration from exploring multiple genres and musical styles in the historical and modern musical traditions, leading her to unique and groundbreaking projects with Apollo’s Fire, the Poiema Trio, the Caroga Arts Collective, Project: Music Heals Us, CLE Concierto, and the Resonance Master Series. Ann earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Jaime Laredo, Jan Sloman, and William Preucil, and was the 1st prize winner of the 26th Annual Darius Milhaud Competition and Concerto Competition and the recipient of the Fortnightly Musical Club Award. Her training also includes prestigious programs such as Thy Masterclass, Kneisel Hall, the Perlman Music Program, the New York String Orchestra Seminar, the National Youth Orchestra-USA, and the Credo Festival, where she later served on faculty for four summers. As a soloist, she has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, the CIM Orchestra, and the National Repertory Orchestra. In Cleveland, Ann performs regularly with Apollo’s Fire, Forest City Strings (Candlelight Concerts), and in local chamber music settings. She teaches privately and through the Cleveland Orchestra’s Crescendo Program at the Cleveland School of the Arts and Campus International School. She also enjoys jamming with local bluegrass, old-time, blues, tango, and swing jazz musicians. In her free time, Ann loves sight reading chamber music, hiking in the national park, and dancing lindy hop and blues.

Brian Kay is a modern-day troubadour. He is the Artistic Director of the early music meets early theater group THEATRO, and is currently overseeing their international recording of music from the plays of William Shakespeare. He won a GRAMMY® Award for his work on Apollo's Fire's Songs of Orpheus recording with tenor Karim Sulayman. He works as a musician and recording artist for the Netflix music lab and is a featured soloist on the soundtrack of their original series The Witcher. He has performed throughout the world at venues such as the National Concert Hall of Dublin, Belfast Castle (Ireland), Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Folger Theater. His live radio appearances include NPR, Baltimore's WYPR, Baltimore's 98ROCK, Boston's WGBH, and Cleveland's WCLV. He has recorded with labels Avie and Sono Luminus and has appeared on releases which include original, early music, folk, traditional sephardic, chamber and orchestral. He is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, arranger, and a traditional and historical music specialist.

Brian is a founding member of THEATRO and Twa Corbies, and regularly performs with Hesperus, The Folger Consort, Early Music Access Project, and Trio Sefardi.

Brian is on the faculty as teacher of historical plucked instruments at Cleveland Institute of Music and Case Western Reserve University. He has lectured on music and history at Yale University, The Peabody Conservatory, Johns Hopkins University, The Folger Theater, The Kennedy Center, and Baldwin-Wallace College. He was Artist in Residence at the Cushman School in Miami and has done outreach for elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, and prisons across the country.

Costa Rican Baroque violinist and scholar Guillermo Salas-Suárez performs with several period ensembles in North America, including the Lyra, Atlanta and North Carolina Baroque Orchestras, Apollo’s Fire, The Newberry Consort, Sound Salon, Lumedia Mu  sicWorks, Bach Collegium Fort Wayne, etc. He has also served as guest concertmaster with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Bourbon Baroque, and the American Baroque Opera Co. Guillermo holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Historical Performance from Case Western Reserve University, where he studied with Dr. Julie Andrijeski. Guillermo’s chamber music appetite spans from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, which he explores with The Early Interval, up to the Classical and early Romantic repertoire for string quartet and clarinet with Wit’s Folly, which he co-founded. He has collaborated and trained with Malcolm Bilson, Paolo Pandolfo, Jaap ten Linden, Barthold Kuijken, Bruce Dickey, and the late Jeanne Lamon at the early music festivals in Boston, Bloomington, Amherst, Bach Oregon, Urbino (Italy), Daroca (Spain), Saintes (France), and the Stuttgart Bachwoche (Germany).

As a scholar of Spanish and colonial music, he has presented his research in conferences at Boston, Indiana, Oregon Universities, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His upcoming book The Tender Echo, a commented English translation of the Spanish violin treatises from the 18th century, is currently under publishing contract with Indiana University Press. As an educator, Guillermo is committed to the advancement of historical performance practice in Latin America. He served on the faculty of the Festival de Musica de Santa Catarina (Brazil), and has conducted masterclasses and workshops at the Academia de Música Antigua de Medellín (Colombia), Escuela Nacional de Música (Honduras), Universidad Nacional, Instituto Nacional de Música (Costa Rica), etc. He also serves in Early Music America’s IDEA Task Force, dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion in early music throughout the Americas.

Guillermo started music lessons at age nine in his native Costa Rica, where he studied with Lidia Blanco, Mercedes Moreno, and José Aurelio Castillo. He furthered his studies in the US and Bulgaria with Dr. Borislava Iltcheva, Aleksandr Iltchev, Espen Lilleslåtten, and Dr. Lin He. He shared the stage with conductors and soloists Manfred Honeck, Robert Spano, Yefim Bronfman, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Midori, Lang Lang, and Renée Fleming at the Aspen Music Festival, Severance Hall, Benaroya Hall, Sala São Paulo (Brazil), and the National Theatres of Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, and Honduras. He performed with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional and Orquesta Sinfónica de Heredia (Costa Rica).

He plays on an instrument by Jason Viseltear and bows by Michelle Speller, H.F. Grabenstein, Pieter Affourtit, and James Dodd II. Outside of music, Guillermo is a voracious reader, a language learner, and a yogi. He lives with his husband in Columbus, Ohio.

Andrew Hatfield graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Historical Performance where he studied with Julie Andrijeski.  Andrew has presented on performers' agency in university ensemble auditions at the 2019 Oxford Conducting Institute Conducting Studies Conference, performed at the 2018 Musicking Conference at University of Oregon, and presented on historical tunings and temperaments at Marywood University in 2021. As a performer, Andrew earned his M.M.in violin performance from Michigan State University, where he served as concertmaster of the MSU Concert and Opera Orchestras, a member of the new music ensemble Musique21, and concertmaster for many theatre productions, including the premier of Dr. Fox and the Impossible Cure for Death in 2019. Andrew also performed regularly with the Midland, Traverse, and Southwest Michigan symphony orchestras and served as violinist and violist at the 2019 College Light Opera Company and Highfield Philharmonic in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

René Schiffer was born in the northern part of the Dukedom of Brabant, in Bach’s era part of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. He studied in Amsterdam with Anner Bijlsma, then specialized in historical performance with Jaap ter Linden. In Oberlin, he studied the viola da gamba with Catherina Meints, to whom he dedicated his Concerto for Two Viols (under the name Katharina von Mainz).  Master Schiffer performed with groups like La Petite Bande, Ensemble Gare de Lyon, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre, the Netherlands Bach Society, occasionally with Concerto Armonico, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. He has been principal cellist for Apollo’s Fire since its foundation in 1992. He has played recitals and solo performances with orchestras in Budapest, Paris, Versailles, Utrecht, Brôme (there’s nothing wrong with playing Uccellini in Brome), Chautauqua, Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Grandchamp. On two occasions he asked the way to Carnegie Hall, but did not have the good fortune to get the answer Practice!  Schiffer has taught at Case Western, Cleveland Institute of Music, at Oberlin, and as guest at several colleges over the United States, including Duke, Dartmouth, and Penn State. He has given talks about music in Toledo and in Cleveland for Apollo’s Fire’s subscription series. So far, Schiffer has mastered the cello, the historical cello, the bass viol, the (French) bass violin, the violoncello piccolo in at least three different tunings, and the G-violone, that’s a violone while wearing a thong with a G string. I think he shares a Grammy Award with Apollo’s Fire’s musicians and the incomparable Karim Hunt, correction, Sulayman.  He is also very good at declaiming and driving really long distances.  As composer Schiffer, sometimes under names like René Antoine Duchiffre, Renato Marini, Captain Hummus and Johann Sebastian Offenschiffer, can be heard on Apollo’s Fire’s Vivaldi & Friends CD, where his Tango Concerto is featured. A video of the tango of that concerto can also be enjoyed on Youtube. His Clorinda Sonata and his Jewish Rhapsodies (Ovos, Kaddish and Olenu) also feature on that channel. Among works that are awaiting recording are his Variations on themes from Ortiz’ Tratado, two Abel arrangements for 5-string cello and his Christmas Medley. He wrote two “Bach suites”: the 7th suite in D, BMW 1013 (in the 1990s) and the more recent Kronstadter Partita, BMW 17465, a fairly late work. Schiffer just purchased a historical bow from Stephen Marvin. With his angel Marie Rowley, he resides in Chagrin Falls.

Brennen Taggart is a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and composer hailing from Lexington, Kentucky. After spending the first two years of his undergraduate degree with Sidney King at the University of Louisville. He is transferring to the Cleveland Institute of Music to study double bass performance and composition. Taggart imbues every note with a fusion of passion, spirit, and divine inspiration.

Brennen Taggart has been making music since age 5 and started pursuing the double bass at age 10. Growing up in Kentucky, Brennen was exposed to many diverse musical influences like Bluegrass, Gospel Blues, Hindustani, Synthwave, and Folk music. He has recently premiered several original solo pieces for the double bass, including his piece for wind band; “Time” and his piece for full orchestra “Glass”.

Taggart has toured Europe with America’s National Youth Orchestra, playing Mahler's 5th Symphony, and is an award-winning soloist.