Eliot Bailen has an active career as an artistic director, cellist, composer and teacher. Strings Magazine writes, “At Merkin Hall ‘cellist Eliot Bailen displayed a warm focused tone, concentrated expressiveness and admirable technical command always at the service of the music.” Founder and Artistic Director of the Sherman Chamber Ensemble, now in its 36th year, whose performances the New York Times has described as “the Platonic ideal of a chamber music concert,” Mr. Bailen is also Founder and Artistic Director of Chamber Music at Rodeph Sholom in New York and Artistic Director of the New York Chamber Ensemble. Principal cello of the New Jersey Festival Orchestra, New York Chamber Ensemble, Orchestra New England, Teatro Grattacielo and the New Choral Society, Mr. Bailen also performs regularly with the Saratoga Chamber Players, Cape May Music Festival, Sebago-Long Lake Chamber Music Festival as well as with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, New York City Opera and Ballet, American Symphony, Stamford Symphony and New Jersey Symphony. Heard frequently in numerous Broadway shows, in 2015 he was the solo cellist for Allegiance. Among Mr. Bailen’s commissions are an Octet, a Double Concerto for Flute and Cello, Perhaps a Butterfly and the Saratoga Sextet.  His musical, The Tiny Mustache, has recently received a third grant for further development from the Omer Foundation.

Mr. Bailen has also received over thirty-five commissions for his “Song to Symphony” for schools (subject of a NY Times feature article Sept. 2006 and winner of a Yale Alumni Grant). In 2002, he received the Norman Vincent Peale Award for Positive Thinking.

Mr. Bailen received his Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) from Yale University and an M.B.A. from NYU. He is on the cello and chamber music faculty at Columbia University and Teachers College.

Kevin Bailey is the Minister of Music at First Presbyterian Church, Stamford, where he is organist and choir director, and has rebooted the handbell choir. He is a graduate of Augustana College (IL) and Indiana University, and is an alum of Westminster Choir College’s summer conducting institute. He has achieved the Associate level of certification in the American Guild of Organists, and he is a member of the Greater Bridgeport and Fairfield West chapters. His principal teachers for organ have been Tom Robin Harris and Christopher Young, and he studied church music and improvisation with Marilyn Keiser. He has accompanied and conducted choirs at Anderson University (IN) and served as choir director and organist at several churches in Indiana before moving to Milwaukee in 2003, where he was Director of Worship and Music at Fox Point Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, for fifteen years.

Outside of music ministry, Mr. Bailey has been active as an accompanist, continuo performer, and singer in a variety of ensembles and choruses. He toured twice with the Bel Canto Chorus of Wisconsin as a soloist. During the 2020 pandemic, he participated in an online concert with over forty organists from around the world, who performed the entire organ catalog of J.S. Bach in a 3-day concert. He lives in Stamford with his family.