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 faculty at Cleveland Institute of Music and 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.  The Resonance Project has been featured on Ideastream Public Media, as well as opened the Cultural Concert Series at the Cleveland Metropark Zoo.

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, Music from theWestern Reserve , the Historically-Informed Performance Practice Department at Case Western Reserve University, the Resonance Project, Rush Hour Concert Series at Fairmount Presbyterian.  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 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 as the 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.

ELLEN SAUER TANYERI is a flute and recorder player based in Cleveland. She grew up in a musical family in Michigan, where she remained for her undergraduate and master’s studies in flute performance at the University of Michigan. Ellen’s Baroque flute mentors have included Kathie Stewart and Sandra Miller. She enjoyed attending Oberlin BPI, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, and American Bach Soloists summer festival, and has also spent time in Europe taking lessons with Marten Root, Wilbert Hazelzet, and Marc Hantaï. Ellen earned a Historical Performance degree at The Juilliard School, where she has had the chance to play with many esteemed artists in the field including Jed Wentz, Rachel Podger, Masaaki Suzuki, and William Christie. Ellen is a member of Nuova Pratica, a chamber group composing and performing original works in Baroque styles. She is currently earning a PhD in musicology at Case Western Reserve University. Ellen also nurtures passions for writing and teaching, and enjoys sewing in the rare moments she finds herself with free time.

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.

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.

Brian Kay is a modern-day troubadour. He is the first Artistic Leadership Fellow of Apollo's Fire and in 2019, he won a Grammy Award for his work on their Songs of Orpheus recording. He has performed throughout the world at venues such as the National Concert Hall of Dublin, Belfast Castle (Ireland), Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center. His live radio appearances include NPR, Baltimore's WYPR, Baltimore's 98ROCK, Boston's WGBH, and Cleveland's WCLV. He has recorded with record labels Avie and Sono Luminus and has appeared on more than 10 album releases at the age of 33. He is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, arranger, traditional and historical music specialist, poet, painter, and avid proponent of meditation.

His recent projects include “Meditations”, an album of original songs in a modern style with a nostalgic flare, "Play, Music!" a one-man Shakespeare show which combines traditional music and theater (performed live at the Folger Theater in DC), and he was one of three Apollo's Fire musicians chosen to collaborate with the UKs Early Folk Band.

Brian was the first featured artist in EMAg’s column Early To Rise and was the first of three soloists to be featured in the Lute Society of America’s Emerging Artist Series. He is a core member of Twa Corbies and Apollo's Fire, and regularly performs with Hesperus, The Folger Consort, Early Music Access Project, Trio Sefardi and is a founding member of the early music improvisation group Divisio.

As a professor, Brian teaches 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 Maltz Center, 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, and prisons across the country.

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.