Musicians
MaryBeth Schotting
Executive Director
& Violin Coach
Violinist, MaryBeth Schotting brings her extensive performing and teaching experience to life at Music With a Twist Summer String Festival. She believes in the value of motivating and inspiring students through summer camps, knowing these experiences can provide lifelong value for students.
Ms. Schotting currently teaches violin to youth at Duquesne University's City Music Center. She is also on the faculty of the Music Extension Program at Carnegie Mellon University where she has taught music minors and non-majors since 1998. Ms. Schotting was on the violin faculty of the String Preparatory Division at Carnegie Mellon University until 2023 and Director of the String Division from 2000-2016. Ms. Schotting also created the Summer String Workshop at CMU, a one week summer program for strings she ran for over twenty years that brought students from all over the greater Pittsburgh area. Many of Ms. Schotting’s students have received recognition and held principal positions in the youth symphonies of Pittsburgh and placed in different competitions.
Ms. Schotting is a tenured member of the Pittsburgh Opera and Pittsburgh Ballet Orchestras and Concertmaster of the Civic Light Opera. She has performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, and Wheeling Symphony, among others. She has performed at music festivals around the world including the Sunflower Music Festival, Breckenridge Music Festival, Colorado Music Festival, New Hampshire Music Festival, Spoleto Music Festival USA and Italy, and at music festivals in Austria and France.
Ms. Schotting has a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Yale University, and a Performance Residency Certificate from Carnegie Mellon University. She has played solo and chamber music recitals in New York City, South Carolina with Chamber Music Hilton Head, Tuesday Musical Club in Ohio and for the Steinway Society in PIttsburgh.
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Steven Greenman
Klezmer Music
& Musicianship
Described by the Washington Post as “particularly impressive” and “extraordinary” by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Steven Greenman is a consummate musical artist. He is a masterful violin soloist with symphony orchestras, a soulful performer of klezmer music, and a virtuoso performer of East European folk music. Steven’s influential recordings, klezmer compositions and dedicated masterclasses have been internationally acclaimed.
Steven is recognized as one of the finest practitioners of traditional klezmer violin music. International performances include Jewish Culture Festival (Poland), Internationales Klezmer Festival Fuerth (Germany), Harbin Summer Music Festival (China), University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (China), Klezmer Musica Festival (Italy), and Ashkenaz (Canada). He has performed with the Klezmatics, Kapelye, Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble, Khevrisa, Budowitz, Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band and Shtetl Band Amsterdam. At the forefront of the klezmer revival, Steven has established new klezmer ensembles: Khevrisa, Stempenyu’s Dream, Di Tsvey, the R2G Klezmer Trio, and the Steven Greenman Klezmer Ensemble. Steven’s thrilling collaboration with master pipa-player Gao Hong, The Braided Candle, explores a unique blending of traditional Jewish and Chinese folk music styles.
Steven is renowned for his recordings Khevrisa – European Klezmer Music, featured on the Smithsonian Folkways label, and his self-produced recordings of his original Jewish and klezmer compositions, Stempenyu’s Dream and Stempenyu’s Neshome.
Steven’s composed his virtuoso masterwork, Klezmer Concert Suite for Solo Violin and Orchestra in 2018 and was the violin soloist with the Muncie Symphony Orchestra for its premier performance.
As a concert violin soloist, Steven has performed with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, the Akron, Canton, Firelands and Muncie Symphonies, the National Repertory Orchestra, and the Energy Corridor of Houston Orchestra. Steven performed the music of violin virtuoso David Rubinoff as a violin soloist with the Joseph Rubin Orchestra (Rubinoff and His Violin Concert - 2018).
Steven is the director and founder of the Case Western Reserve University Klezmer Music Ensemble.
He has led klezmer music master classes at KlezKamp, KlezKanada, Yiddish Summer Weimar (Germany), Internationales Klezmer Festival Fuerth (Germany), KlezFest London (England) and Master Class de Musica Tradicional Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in addition to numerous universities and colleges.
Pierce Cook
Orchestra Conductor
& Sectional Coach
Pierce Cook is the proud director of orchestras at Mellon Middle School. Mellon’s orchestra program includes many opportunities for all students to get involved – a Cross-Aged Tutoring Program, a Cello Ensemble, a Chamber Orchestra, a Pops Orchestra, and student-formed and managed small ensembles. Mr. Cook also serves as the conductor for Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestras (TRYPO) Symphonette Orchestra and Tutti Strings, where he also serves as a Youth Chamber Coach (YC2) coach and Music Theory instructor for Tryposphere.
Additionally, as an educator, Mr. Cook has provided private lessons out of his home studio since 2005. Last spring, Mr. Cook had the honor of collaborating with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for their program “Beethoven In Your Neighborhood: The Library Project,” an interactive presentation of the 16 Beethoven String Quartets in 16 different Carnegie Libraries. As a performer, Mr. Cook serves as the bassist for Gary Racan and the Studio E Band, known nationally for their Warriors Rock concerts and performs with the Civic Light Opera Orchestra.
Christina Crowder
Accordian Player
Christina Crowder, Accordion, has been performing and researching Jewish music for thirty years, beginning in Budapest, Hungary in 1993 as a founding member of Di Naye Kapelye, and continuing with a Fulbright grant to Romania to document Jewish music in 1999, and since 2002 with an active research, teaching, and performing career in the US. She is Executive Director of the Klezmer Institute, which has been awarded three NEH Grants for Institute projects (2021-2025). Christina lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and performs with the Zamlers Trio. She also performs with Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentschen, the Dave Levitt Klezmer Trio and many others. She has been a guest instructor in klezmer accordion and ensemble performance in the US, Canada, and Europe, and was both musical director and performer in the 2019 Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the 2020 ART Portland productions of the Broadway play “Indecent.” With the Klezmer Institute, Christina edited the Levitt Legacy music folio, is curating a player folio of KMDMP music, and has led KMDMP artist residency programs in Arizona, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, France, and Belgium.
Gina Ketter
Viola Coach
Gina Ketter, viola, an active performer in the Pittsburgh area for more than 40 years, has a diverse musical background that ranges from baroque ensembles to contemporary music and rock & roll. She recently retired from teaching strings in the Mt. Lebanon School District after 30 years. She is a graduate of CMU where she received BFA and MFA degrees. Her teachers include Yitzak Schotten, a protégé of William Primrose, and Atar Arad, a former member of the Cleveland String Quartet.
Active in electronic string music, she was a founding member of the electrified string quartet EQ, and has performed and recorded with several rock and alternative musical groups. She currently performs pop rock on a 6 string electric 'Viper' violin for weddings and special events. Alternatively, after studying Arabic style violin performance at the Arabic Music Retreat held yearly at Mt. Holyoke College, she decided to create her own ‘east meets west’ ensemble. The King Fez band was created in 2013 performing original music blending middle eastern and western cultures. Other contemporary musical studies have included study at the Ecole D’Art de Fontainbleau in 2000 and 2001. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, NYC and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Ms. Ketter began studying baroque viola at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute in the late 1980s and shortly after joined the University of Pittsburgh’s Bach and the Baroque Ensemble. She currently is a member of the Pittsburgh Baroque Ensemble and frequently performs with Chatham Baroque and the Calvary Episcopal Church baroque concerts.
Jennifer Madge
Violin Coach
Jennifer Madge is an active and sought after violin teacher in the Pittsburgh area. Past positions include adjunct faculty of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, string coach of the Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra, Assistant Director of the Greater Pittsburgh Suzuki Institute, and masterclass clinician at the Summer String Workshop. Ms. Madge is the owner and Academy Director of The Pittsburgh Music Academy, Inc. and certified in the Suzuki method. Her students have held principal positions in all Pittsburgh area youth music programs and many have gone on to successful musical careers of their own.
In addition to teaching, Ms. Madge has an active performing career. She has performed with orchestras around the Pittsburgh area including the Civic Light Opera, Johnstown Symphony (Associate Concertmaster), the Westmoreland Symphony (Principal Second), the Erie Philharmonic, the Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and the Wheeling Symphony, as well as numerous summer festivals across the US. She is a tenured member of the Pittsburgh Opera and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Orchestra for more than 25 seasons, and has served as Acting Principal Second and Acting Assistant Concertmaster. Ms. Madge holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Duquesne University.