Guest and Cal Poly Faculty Artists

John Buffett

Baritone John Buffett enjoys a versatile career lending his “warm tone and ringing top notes” (Salt Lake Tribune) to music from the early baroque through the 20th and 21st centuries. Recent solo engagements include Haydn’s “Lord Nelson Mass” with the Flagstaff Symphony, Bach’s “St. John Passion” and “St. Matthew Passion” with Musica Angelica, The American Festival Chorus, and the Oregon and Charlotte Bach festivals, Copland’s “Old American Songs” with the Pacific Symphony, and Handel’s Messiah with Seraphic Fire, the LA Master Chorale and the Long Beach Camerata.

Buffett has been a featured soloist with the Pacific Symphony, the Utah, San Antonio, Winston-Salem, and Syracuse Symphonies, The Mark Morris Dance Group, The Pacific Chorale, and the Rochester Philharmonic.  He has also been a featured performer with many leading Early Music Ensembles including: Apollo’s Fire, Ars Lyrica, Bach Collegium San Diego, The Boston Early Music Festival, Con Gioia, The Charlotte Bach Academy, The Oregon Bach Festival, Musica Angelica and Tesserae Baroque.  Also an accomplished Chamber musician, he regularly performs with some of America’s best choral ensembles like Seraphic Fire, The Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.  Additionally, he frequently records in LA studio sessions for Film/TV.

Solo appearances at the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center highlight other important performances.  Buffett, currently on voice faculty at CSU Long Beach’s Bob Cole Conservatory of Music, and for the Professional Choral Institute at the Aspen Music Festival, received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Eastman School of Music.

Kaitrin Cunningham

Soprano Kaitrin Cunningham hails from Spokane, Washington. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English literature and French from Seattle University. A love of language and music sparked a passion for opera which led her to study voice. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in music performance with a minor in Italian at Gonzaga University, where she sang the role of Venus in John Blow’s “Venus and Adonis,” and won the Gonzaga University Concerto Competition. She earned her Master of Music degree at the University of Arizona, where she performed Servilia in “La clemenza di Tito,” Erste Dame in “Die Zauberflöte” and won the Amelia Rieman Opera Competition.

Upon completion of her master’s degree, Cunningham moved to Europe. As part of La Musica Lirica in Novafeltria, Italy, she sang Bianca in “La rondine.” In the summer of 2014, she moved to Vienna, Austria, and made her Viennese debut in the role of Susanna in “Le nozze di Figaro” in 2015. As a featured soloist with Sound of Austria and Oper in der Krypta, and a member of the St. Stephen’s Vocal Ensemble, she performed Contessa in “Le nozze di Figaro,” Annina in “La traviata,” and was the soprano soloist in a number of classical and contemporary masses, including Britten’s “Missa Brevis,” Haydn’s “Missa in tempore belli,” Schubert’s “Mass in B-flat Major,” and Gottfried von Preyer’s “Dankmesse.”

As a member of the Grammy Award-winning Arnold Schoenberg Chor, she has performed concerts and operas throughout Europe and Asia, including L’opéra royal de Versailles, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf, and the Musiikkitalo in Helsinki. Over the course of eight seasons in the Theater an der Wien opera chorus, she premiered 14 new opera productions and performed numerous small solo roles, including Drittes Mädchen in Werner Egk’s “Peer Gynt” and Annette in Gottfried von Einem’s “Der Besuch der alten Dame.”

Cunningham has shared the stage with such renowned singers as Marlis Petersen, Gerald Finley and Michael Schade, and has worked with celebrated conductors and directors including René Jacobs, Cornelius Meister, Bertrand de Billy, Peter Konwitschny, Claus Guth and Keith Warner. She currently studies with Evelyn Schörkhuber and coaches with James Pearson.

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Alicia M. Doyle

Alicia M. Doyle began serving as chair of the Cal Poly Music Department in September 2022. She is a Professor of musicology who has served in several administrative roles including the National Board of Directors for the College Music Society (representing musicology), the president of the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the College Music Society and the president of the Pacific Southwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society. She is a popular pre-concert lecturer, having spoken to audiences of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, The Los Angeles Bach Festival and the El Paso Symphony.

Prior to her arrival at Cal Poly, Doyle was a faculty member in the College of the Arts at California State University, Long Beach for 19 years. During her time there she served in many roles including Professor of Music, Director of Graduate Studies, B.A. Advisor, and both Associate and Interim Director of the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music.

Specializing in medieval liturgical music, music history pedagogy, 20th-century Latin American popular and art music, and music appreciation, Doyle teaches courses in music history and music appreciation. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Music Performance (horn) from the University of Southern California where she studied with James Decker. She continued her horn performance studies while she earned her master’s degree in musicology from the University of California at Santa Barbara under the advising of William Prizer. Her thesis focused on Florentine carnival music from 1500-1510. Doyle’s Ph.D. was earned at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her dissertation, a study of a tenth-century Aquitanian liturgical chant and the intellectual exchange between Spain and France, was completed under the direction of Dr. Alejandro Planchart.

Doyle is an active scholar and her work in medieval music, music history pedagogy and music appreciation (and lampshades!) has been published widely.

Michael Jones

Michael Jones is a GRAMMY® Award-winning international soloist, chamber musician and clinician. Noted as singing “particularly beautifully” by the Chestnut Hill Local (Philadelphia), he has appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Choral Arts Philadelphia, Academy of Sacred Drama, Haverford University Choir and Orchestra, Disney’s All-American College Band and Peoria Area Civic Chorale, among others. Jones also regularly performs with some of the nation's finest choral ensembles, most notably with the Grammy® award-winning groups The Crossing and Conspirare, as well as Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Seraphic Fire, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, Apollo's Fire, Variant 6, ekmeles, Les Canards Chantants, Madison Choral Project, Music of the Baroque, William Ferris Chorale, Grant Park Opera Chorus, Constellation Men’s Ensemble, Bridge Ensemble, Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati, Alium Spiritum and Chorosynthesis. Jones studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music for his bachelor’s degree in jazz trumpet. While there, he was under the tutelage of David Adams, Kim Pensyl, Scott Belck, and Rick VanMatre. For his graduate degree, he attended Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music for a master’s degree in jazz trumpet, studying with Victor Goines, Donald Nally, Brad Mason, and Keven Keys.

Tim Keeler

Tim Keeler, counertenor, is music director of the San Francisco-based, GRAMMY® award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer. Performing nearly 100 concerts each year all over the world, Chanticleer has been a staple of the American choral sound for over 45 years. Prior to movin to San Francisco, Keler forged a career as an active conductor, singer, and educator in New York City. He has sung with New York Polyphony, The Clarion Choir, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, TENET, and Ekmeles. As an educator, he has directed the University of Maryland Men’s Chorus, served as director of choirs at the Special Music School High School in Manhattan, and was also the choral conductor for Juilliard's new Summer Performing Arts program. Keeler holds degrees in music from Princeton University, Cambridge University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Maryland.

Rebecca Myers

Rebecca Myers, soprano, is a soloist, vocal chamber singer, collaborator, recording artist and creator. She has gained a reputation for her “timbral clarity and flawless pitch,” “nimble coloratura” and “vulnerability and grace.” She has appeared on three GRAMMY®-award winning albums, most notably as a soloist on The Crossing’s “Born,” winner of the 2023 GRAMMY® award for best choral performance. In recent seasons Myers has appeared as a soloist with The New World Symphony, Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra, Seraphic Fire, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, TENET Vocal Artists and Lorelei Ensemble. Her 2023-24 season includes two international tours with The Crossing, and performances with Lyric Fest, Tempesta di Mare and the annual Enlightenment Festival with Seraphic Fire. She is proud to be the artistic director and a founding soprano for the cutting edge vocal chamber music ensemble, Variant 6.  

Alexandra Opsahl

Alexandra Opsahl studied recorder with Peter Holtslag and Daniel Bruggen at the Royal Academy of Music, and cornetto with Bruce Dickey at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. While still a student, she received first prize in the 2003 Moeck Solo Recorder competition, the 2001 and 2003 RAM Early Music Prize, and the 2003 Hilda Anderson Dean Award. Opsahl has performed with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Koopman, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Emmanuele Haim, Boston Early Music Festival, I Fagiolini, Capella Barocca di Mexico, Carmel Bach Festival, Piffaro, Apollo’s Fire, Portland Baroque Orchestra, and the Green Mountain Project. Opsahl performed in “Il Ritorno d’Ulisse” at the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Altenmusik in 2017, and filmed “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” with both Oslo Opera and Glyndebourne Opera. She recorded Vivaldi’s Concerto in C Minor, RV 441, with the Norwegian period orchestra Barokkanerne, and recently recorded the JD Berlin cornetto concerto with the Norwegian Baroque Orchestra. She is a founding member of both Tesserae and Dark Horse Consort.

Ian Pritchard

Ian Pritchard, harpsichordist, organist, and musicologist, is a specialist in early music and historical keyboard practices. As a continuo player he has performed with the Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Florilegium, with which he has toured in Europe and in South America. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with Monica Huggett, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Elizabeth Wallfisch and Rachel Podger, and has performed under Christopher Hogwood, Christophe Rousset, Emanuelle Haïm, Nicholas McGeegan, and Laurence Cummings. Pritchard has won prizes in the Broadwood Harpsichord Competition, London (first prize), the P. Bernardi Competition in Bologna, and in the Bruges Competition. Pritchrd began playing the harpsichord at the age of 13, beginning studies in his native Los Angeles with Susanne Shapiro. Earning his Bachelor’s degree in Music from the Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio, in 1999 (where he studied with Lisa Goode Crawford), he moved to Europe in 2000. From 2000-02 he studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London (where he studied with John Toll, Laurence Cummings, and James Johnstone), earning the prestigious DipRam award. In 2003-04 Pritchard was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy, where he studied with Liuwe Tamminga and Andrea Marcon, and conducted research on early Italian keyboard music. In 2018, Pritchard earned his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Southern California. As a musicologist, his interests include keyboard music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, improvisation, notation, compositional process, and performance practice. He is currently a full-time faculty member at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music, and in 2015 was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

Anna Washburn

Anna Washburn, violin, grew up in a vibrant musical community in Maine, and holds degrees from Boston University and the San Francisco Conservatory. She is a member of the chamber group AGAVE that is devoted to performing and recording music that has been excluded from the canon. AGAVE received a GRAMMY®award nomination in 2021 for its album “American Originals” with countertenor Reginald Mobley, and recently released another album “In Her Hands,” featuring works by women composers with soprano Michele Kennedy. Washburn also performs with Philharmonia Baroque, Bach Collegium San Diego, Cantata Collective, Oregon Bach Festival, Tesserae, and Live Oak Baroque Orchestra, and has worked with Opera companies Ars Minerva, Opera Neo and Long Beach Opera and the Mark Morris and Martha Graham Dance companies. This season she appears as soloist with Sonoma State Orchestra and Ukiah Symphony.

Aaron Westman

GRAMMY® award-nominated violinist and violist Aaron Westman was a “metal-head” growing up in Santa Rosa. He now plays the electric guitar of the 17th-century. Described as "expressive and virtuosic" (San Francisco Classical Voice) and a “brilliant virtuoso violinist” (Early Music America Magazine), he has performed since 2005 as a chamber, principal player or soloist with all of the major gut string ensembles in California, and toured extensively throughout the world. As a principal or chamber player, he works with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Ars Minerva, Bach Collegium San Diego, California Bach Society, El Mundo, Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Harmonia Stellarum Houston, Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Musica Angelica, and Opera Neo, and he has toured extensively with Orchester Wiener Akademie, including for four seasons with the actor John Malkovich. He also plays in both the Oregon and Carmel Bach Festival Orchestras, and has worked with Vox Luminis (Belgium) choir, and the Mark Morris and Martha Graham Dance Companies.

Westman co-directs the chamber ensemble AGAVE, whose 2021 album "American Originals" was a nominee for the 64th Annual GRAMMY® Awards and WCLV (Cleveland Classical Radio) chose it as their 2022 Album of the Year. AGAVE recently released a new album of music by 13 different women composers, from Barbara Strozzi to Margaret Bonds, called "AGAVE: In Her Hands." The group regularly performs and records with star singers including soprano Michele Kennedy and countertenor Reginald Mobley, with whom they have three albums. Gramophone Magazine calls "American Originals" "brilliant and knowing,” BBC Music Magazine says it’s “wonderfully cheeky.”

Westman is also associate director of the Live Oak Baroque Orchestra, and was the violist in the Sylvestris Quartet, which was a finalist for the American Prize, and in residence at Hawaii Performing Arts Festival.

He holds degrees from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and Wesleyan University. His principal teachers were Stanley Ritchie, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Geraldine Walther and Alan de Veritch. Westman has been on the performance faculty at Mills College (now part of Northeastern University), and in 2021, he joined the faculty of Sonoma State University. He directs the Santa Rosa Symphony’s Young People’s Chamber Orchestra, teaches in Italy each summer at the Music Adventure program, and has guest taught at Appalachian State, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and for three years at CalArts.

Leif Thomas Woodward

Leif Thomas Woodward, cello, is an alumnus of the USC Thornton School of Music where he was granted the Colburn Foundation Scholarship for studies in Early Music Performance and graduated Pi Kappa Lambda. In addition to holding a doctorate degree from the University of Southern California, he also holds a Master of Music degree and Bachelor of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Woodward works with groups such as Tesserae, Los Angeles Musica Angelica, Los Angeles Master Choral, Pacific Choral, Long Beach Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Bach Collegium San Diego, and Angeles Consort. He has appeared at the Carmel Bach Festival, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Corona Del Mar Baroque Music Festival, and on the chamber music series at the John Paul Getty Museum, Norton Simon Museum, “Sundays Live” at LACMA, Les Salons de Musiques, Redlands Chamber Music Society, Musica Angelica Chamber Music Series, and at Centrum’s Chamber Music Series in Port Townsend, Washington. In addition, he is an active soloist and section player in the Los Angeles studio-recording industry. He has worked on film, television, and video game soundtracks for composers John Williams, James Newton Howard, Bear McCreary, Christian Linke, Sebastien Najand, Alex Temple, Austin Wintory, and Tom Holkenborg. Woodward thoroughly enjoys working with young musicians. He is the instructor of violoncello performance and chamber music at Mount Saint Mary’s University and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Southern California, University of California Riverside, and the Colburn School of Music. He is also on faculty for orchestral and chamber music studies at Orange County School of the Arts and Poly Technic High School in Long Beach. He coaches the All Southern California High School Honor Orchestra, Orange County Youth Symphony, and adjudicates for competitions such as the Los Angeles Spotlight Awards, MTAC State Finals and Regionals, CMEA, and the Long Beach Mozart Festival. Recently, his former private cello student was appointed principal cellist of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra.

Paul Woodring

Paul Woodring specialized in organ performance at Cal State Northridge, studying under Sam Swartz and David Britton. He then studied organ and harpsichord in Vienna under Otto Bruckner and Elfriede Stadlmann. As an accompanist, Woodring has worked with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Los Angeles Opera Company among other well-known ensembles. Locally, he has worked with Opera San Luis Obispo, Festival Mozaic, Central Coast Children’s Choir, San Luis Obispo Master Chorale, Tolosa Strings and several musical theater organizations. He is currently staff accompanist, coach and university organist at Cal Poly. He is music director for Mt. Carmel Lutheran Church and San Luis Obispo United Methodist Church.