Up Close and Personal

Board of Directors

  • Michael Girouard, President
  • Katharine Terrie, Vice President
  • Michael Claflin, Treasurer
  • Shep Holcombe, Secretary
  • Jane Higgins
  • Betsy Holcombe
  • Robert Lanchester
  • Ed Roberts
  • Marcia Roosevelt

Administrative Staff

Ronnie Bauch

Artistic Director

A founding violinist member of the North Country Chamber Players, Ronnie served as its Artistic Director from 1984 until 2002. As a longtime member of the Grammy® Award winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, he served several terms as an Artistic Director and also served as the Managing Director from 2002 to 2008, during which time he led a major organizational turn-around and received the first Orpheus Leadership Award. As a violinist, he has toured throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia with Orpheus and other groups. Mr. Bauch has appeared as a soloist with Orpheus, the American Symphony, the Long Island Philharmonic, the American Composer’s Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic, and has performed on hundreds of national and international radio and TV broadcasts and recordings with Orpheus and other ensembles. As the primary architect of the Orpheus Institute, a virtual conservatory-without-walls curriculum for training 21st century musicians, he designed groundbreaking experiential programs for the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, Indiana University, the Paris Conservatory and Interlochen Arts Academy.  As the creator of the Orpheus Process® demonstration, Mr. Bauch has been a featured speaker at Stanford, Columbia and Hitotsubashi (Tokyo) Universities, the Universities of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, California at Berkeley, NYU, and Baruch College. In May 2000, Slate Magazine featured Ronnie in a weeklong series chronicling the life of a touring orchestra musician.

Don Palma

Program Director

For several decades, Donald Palma has been recognized as one of America’s pre-eminent double bassists, conductors and educators. A native New Yorker, Don attended the Juilliard School and, at the age of nineteen, joined Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony.  As a member of the newly formed new music ensemble, Speculum Musicae, he went on to win the Naumburg Competition and secure management with Young Concert Artists. A founding member of both the North Country Chamber Players and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Don has toured the globe and recorded over fifty compact discs for Deutsche Grammophon, including the Grammy Award winning Stravinsky CD, Shadow Dances. Don has also been a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and played Principal Bass in the National Arts Centre Orchestra under Trevor Pinnock. As a performer devoted to contemporary music he has played and conducted dozens of premieres and recordings of important works. Elliott Carter’s Figment III, Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronism No.11, Charles Wuorinen’s Spin-Off and Robert Ceely’s Harlequin are among the many works composed for him. He has conducted three critically acclaimed CDs of American music with the Odense Symphony in Denmark and recently he conducted Ives Symphony No.2 and Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the Xalapa Symphony in Mexico. Mr. Palma currently serves as the Music Director of the Symphony by the Sea, on the north shore of Boston, and serves on the faculties of the Yale School of Music and the New England Conservatory, where he directs the NEC Chamber Orchestra.

Ah Ling Neu

Managing Director

Violist Ah Ling Neu’s performing career has spanned several continents, including the U.S., Europe, Australia and Asia.  An avid chamber musician, she is currently a member of the Cassatt String Quartet, was a member of the Ridge String Quartet for three seasons, and a resident performer at the Marlboro Music Festival for four summers. In addition to touring with Musicians from Marlboro on several occasions, Ah ling was also a member of the New York Philomusica for 20 years.  A member of the North Country Chamber Players, since 2009, and the Brooklyn Library Chamber Players, she has participated in music festivals around the globe, including the Bridgehampton Festival, the White Mountain Music Festival, Manchester Music Festival and International Musician’s Seminar in Cornwall, England. Born in Japan of Chinese parents, Neu started viola in the San Francisco public school system at the age of 13.  She continued her studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Gennady Kleyman, and with Nobuko Imai at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague.  While she was finishing her studies at SFCM she served as an acting member of the San Francisco Symphony for three seasons.  Neu performs frequently with several orchestras in the NYC area and is currently on the faculty of  Williams College, and Columbia University.