Connecticut native Kathleen Nester has been a member of Orchestra Lumos since 1994. She is also Assistant Principal Flute and Solo Piccolo for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Kathleen has performed with many of the top ensembles in and around NYC, including the New York Philharmonic, the New York City Opera, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She also performs with the IRIS Orchestra with Maestro Michael Stern, and has played at the Bravo! Vail, Mostly Mozart, Lincoln Center, and Oklahoma Mozart Festivals. She has been featured in concertos on flute, piccolo, and recorder with orchestras in the US, and abroad. She has recorded with such artists as Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, Kathleen Battle and jazz singer/trumpeter Bria Skonberg.

An advocate of new music, she has premiered new works for flute and chamber ensemble as a member of “Musicians’ Accord.” Kathleen has been the flutist for many Broadway productions, most recently An American in Paris, Evita, Sunset Boulevard and Roundabout Theater’s 2016 production of She Loves Me, the first Broadway show to be live-streamed. She has recorded for Pickwick, Decca, Mode, Musical Heritage Society, and Sony Classical, and can also be heard on movie soundtracks such as Julie and Julia, Tower Heist, The Last Mimsy and The Greatest Showman.

She is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and is a member of the flute faculty at New York University. Kathleen also plays Baroque flute and is an avid knitter and bird watcher.

Eva Conti , French hornist, is currently in her 8th season as a member of Orchestra Lumos. She is also in her 20th season as Principal horn with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. She is a regular member of the Boca Symphonia and Berkshire Opera Orchestras. She has held the position of principal horn with the New Israeli Opera, Israel Camerata and the Haifa Symphony. Eva has performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, New Jersey Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Palm Beach Opera, The Radio City Orchestra, Aspen Quintet and in numerous Broadway shows. She has toured several times in the US, Canada and Europe as a member of the Barbra Streisand Orchestra and is on the CD and DVD of the 2006 US tour and the recently released back to Brooklyn tour of 2013.

Ms. Conti holds a Master’s of Music Degree in French Horn from the Manhattan School of Music and a Bachelor’s Degree in Classical Guitar and in Biology from the University of Rhode Island.

Eva is also an accomplished flamenco dancer and has been a soloist, featured dancer and musical arranger with the Alborada Spanish Dance Theater for 10 seasons. She has been a dance soloist with numerous orchestras and chamber groups including the Stamford Symphony in 2016.

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, Orchestra Lumos 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.