Eric Halen joined the Houston symphony as Assistant Concertmaster in 1987, and now serves as Co-concertmaster. After earning his bachelor’s degree at Central Missouri State University, he received his master’s degree at the age of 20 from the University of Illinois, while studying with Sergiu Luca. At age 23, he became artist/teacher of violin at Texas Christian University. Mr. Halen has performed in solo and chamber music programs in the U.S. and abroad, including solo appearances with the St. Louis and Houston Symphonies.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Halen has collaborated with many pre-eminent artists including violinist Sergiu Luca, cellists Gary Hoffman and Lynn Harrell, and pianists Christoph Eschenbach and John Kimura Parker. Locally, Mr. Halen has made frequent guest appearances with DA CAMERA of Houston, and CONTEXT. As a member of the Houston Symphony Chamber Players, he has toured the U.S., Japan, and Europe. Critics have described Mr. Halen’s violin playing as “sterling”, and “tenderly expressive and dramatic”. A review in the Chicago Sun-Times of Mr. Halen’s performance of Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” states, “…as the final, sustained tone of Eric Halen’s violin faded to close… there was no doubt that the evening had offered the best kind of virtuosity.” Mr. Halen plays a violin made in 1616 by Antonio and Hieronymus Amati..

Praised by New York Newsday for “extraordinary musicianship…forceful, sophisticated and entirely in the spirit of the music,” American cellist Brinton Averil Smith’s performances have elicited rave reviews around the world, praising virtuosic performances and musical ideals rooted in the golden age of string playing. Smith’s debut recording of Miklós Rózsa’s Cello Concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on Koch Classics won widespread international critical acclaim, including the annual Gramophone Awards Issue which praised Smith as a “hugely eloquent, impassioned soloist,” and continued, “The sheer bravura of Smith’s reading is infectious.” His recording of Fauré’s Piano Trio and Après un Rêve with Gil Shaham was selected as one of BBC Music magazine’s best albums of the year and the American Record Guide praised their performance as “Stunningly beautiful”, continuing “I cannot imagine a better stylistic match for Shaham”

Mr. Smith has appeared regularly as a soloist with the Houston Symphony since joining the orchestra as principal cellist in 2005. Prior to this, he was the first musician chosen by Lorin Maazel to join the New York Philharmonic and the principal cellist of the San Diego and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras. Mr. Smith’s North American engagements have included performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Banff Centre for the Arts and with orchestras throughout the country. A passionate advocate of unjustly neglected repertoire, Mr. Smith recently gave the North American premiers of rediscovered works of Jean Sibelius and Alexander Zemlinsky. His performances have been broadcast on CBS’s Sunday Morning and on the radio throughout the U.S., including NPR’s Performance Today and Symphonycast.

An active chamber musician, Smith has collaborated with violinist Gil Shaham on numerous occasions including Carnegie Hall’s Gil Shaham and Friends series. He has also collaborated with cellists Yo-Yo Ma and Lynn Harrell, violinists Cho-Liang Lin, James Ehnes, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Sarah Chang, soprano Dawn Upshaw, pianist Jonathan Biss and members of the Beaux Arts Trio and the Guarneri, Emerson, Juilliard, Cleveland, and Berg quartets. Smith has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Society, the Sarasota Music Festival, the New York Philharmonic Chamber Series, the Killington Music Festival, El Paso Pro Musica, the Mainly Mozart Festival, the Brevard Music Festival and the Texas Music Festival and is an artistic director of the Restoration Chamber Music festival in Galveston. As a student, he was a prize winner in the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition and in several consecutive Juilliard concerto competitions and was invited to perform at the American Cello Congress. Mr. Smith is currently a member of the faculty at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and has given masterclasses throughout the United States, including at the Aspen Music Festival, the New World Symphony and the National Orchestral Institute.

The son of a mathematician and a pianist, Brinton Averil Smith was admitted to Arizona State University at age 10, where he took courses in mathematics and German and, at age 17, completed a B.A. in mathematics. He subsequently became a student of Eleonore Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California, where he was also a teaching assistant in the mathematics department, and completed work for an M.A. in mathematics at age 19. He then studied with the renowned cellist Zara Nelsova at The Juilliard School, where he received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, writing on the playing of Emanuel Feuermann. Mr. Smith resides in Houston with his wife, the pianist Evelyn Chen, and their daughter, Calista.

Evan Leslie is an arts educator, program producer, and cellist. He is the director of the University of Houston’s Community Arts Academy at the Katherine C. McGovern College of the Arts.

From 2013 – 2020 Evan was Artistic Producer of Lincoln Center’s New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, one the world’s largest repositories of performing arts manuscripts and archives. During his time at the “Lincoln Center Library,” Evan conceived and produced hundreds of music, theater, and dance educational programs and performances, working collaboratively with the Metropolitan Opera, the Juilliard School, The Public Theater, New York City Ballet, WNYC radio, The International Contemporary Ensemble, Sesame Workshop and many other cultural organizations. In addition to producing more traditional concerts and conversations, Evan specializes in unconventional, social-learning experiences, such as “Trivia Concerts,” “Sing Along Show and Tells,”​ social dance experiences, and educational faux-debates, like Shakespeare vs. Mozart or The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones. He is proud to have worked with a diverse spectrum of artists and scholars, from concert pianist Emanuel Ax to Grover the Muppet; from actor Alan Cumming to choreographer Pam Tanowitz; from composer/lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda to director/filmmaker Julie Taymor.

Before moving to New York, Evan managed community engagement projects and the Longhorn Music record label at the University of Texas, Butler School of Music. From 2008 – 2011 Evan was the Director of Education at Da Camera of Houston, where he established the Da Camera Young Artist Program.

As a cellist, Evan has performed with the New York Classical Players, New York Chamber Music Festival, The Grand Teton Music Festival, Da Camera of Houston, and in the cello sections of the Austin and Tulsa Symphony Orchestras. He was adjunct professor of cello at The University of St. Thomas from 2009 – 2013. He studied cello at Moores School of Music, and he received his master’s degree in cello from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he studied with Brinton Averil Smith.