Violinist Timothy Summers is a member of the first violin section of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and has performed on violin, viola, and occasionally mandolin with the orchestra at venues across the world.
He is co-founder of the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, of which he has been co-director for more than 25 years, and he served as second violinist of the Orpheus String Quartet. He currently teaches violin on the faculty of the Universität der Künste (UdK) Berlin, and has taught violin, orchestral playing, improvisation, and chamber music worldwide.
As co-director of the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival with cellist Raphael Bell, Mr. Summers has presented hundreds of concerts focusing on the evolving relationship between European and American music, integrating literature, technology, and improvisation, and assembling star performers from all over the world for weeks of in-depth collaboration.
Additionally, he has performed as a chamber musician at festivals across the United States and Europe, and has performed extensively as an improviser with electronics. This year he will be Artistic Director of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s Musikwoche Hitzacker, designing a program connecting Bach’s algorithmic compositions with the work of Leibniz.
He was also a longtime participant in the Emmanuel Music cycle of Bach Cantatas in Boston, led by Craig Smith and John Harbison.
Mr. Summers is artistic director of the MCO’s ‘Future Presence’ VR project with sound artist Henrik Oppermann. These digital installations, which explore the power of polyphony and musical collaboration in spatial media, have appeared to critical acclaim at venues across the world, bringing rich musical meaning to the cutting edge of spatial computing technology. Current exhibitions bring unsurpassed sound quality and completeness to works of Mozart, Ives, Mendelssohn, Wagner, and Bach, combined with rich contextual material. He is co-founder of Reflekt.music, which makes immersive audio recordings for spatial computing environments.
Mr. Summers spent 2005-2006 as artist-in-residence at the Danish Institute of Electroacoustic Music in Århus, funded by a grant from the Fulbright Commission, and worked in collaboration with improvisation artist Steven Nachmanovitch on improvisation and digital music projects.
He holds an A.B. from Harvard University in English and American Literature and an M.M. in Violin Performance from the Juilliard School. Mr. Summers was a student of Ronald Copes and Robert Mann at the Juilliard School, Mark Rush at the University of Virginia, James Buswell at New England Conservatory, and Robert Levin at Harvard University.

Praised for his versatility, Gregory Sauer performs in many different musical arenas. He has appeared in recital at the Old First Concert Series in San Francisco, Vanderbilt University, Rice University, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, and the Brightmusic Concert Series in Oklahoma City, among many others throughout the U.S. Mr Sauer has performed concertos with orchestras such as the Houston Symphony, the Quad City Symphony, the Columbus (GA) Symphony, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and the Missoula Symphony, among many others. As a member of Trio Solis, he performed in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall.

Greg has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, MSR Classics and Mark Records. Sauer holds the positions of principal cello of the Tallahassee Symphony and assistant principal of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra. He served nine seasons as principal cellist of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra.

A committed teacher and mentor, Greg was appointed to the music faculty at Florida State University in 2006. He taught eleven years at the University of Oklahoma, and was named Presidential Professor in 2005. Other teaching positions have been a visiting professorship at the University of California at Los Angeles, and at summer programs such as the Texas Music Festival, the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, the Duxbury Music Festival, and the Foulger International Music Festival.

Pianist Thomas Sauer is highly sought after as soloist and chamber musician in a wide range of repertoire. Recent appearances include Carnegie Hall, St. John’s College, Oxford, and the Chamber Music Societies of Lincoln Center, Boston, and Philadelphia. With his long-time duo partner Colin Carr, Mr. Sauer has appeared at the Wigmore Hall (London), the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), and Da Camera (Houston). He has performed with members of the Juilliard String Quartet at the Library of Congress and given numerous concerts with the Brentano String Quartet.

Mr. Sauer’s varied discography includes recordings of Beethoven and Haydn piano sonatas (MSR Classics); solo music by Thomas Adès, Stephen Hartke, and Hans Abramahsen (Azica Records); with Colin Carr, the complete cello and piano works of Mendelssohn (Cello Classics) and Beethoven (MSR Classics); music of Hindemith with violist Misha Amory (Musical Heritage Society); music of Britten and Schnittke with cellist Wilhelmina Smith (Arabesque); music of Ross Lee Finney with violinist Miranda Cuckson (Centaur Records); and music of James Matheson (Yarlung Records).

Mr. Sauer has performed at many of the leading festivals in the United States and abroad, including Marlboro, Caramoor, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Northwest, and Taos, as well as Lake District Summer Music (England), Agassiz (Canada), Festival des Consonances (France), and Esbjerg International Chamber Music Festival (Denmark). A faculty member of Mannes and Vassar Colleges, Mr. Sauer was the founder and director of the Mannes Beethoven Institute, a highly regarded summer program that ran for fifteen seasons.