WHO WE ARE
Halcyon is an artist collective based in Midcoast Maine. We are musicians, artists, filmmakers, animators, advocates, and storytellers who strive to share our love of music in ways that foster connection, community, vibrancy, joy, warmth and accessibility. Our programs are built on partnerships with local community organizations and folks from all walks of life. We collaborate with scientists, artists, students, actors, composers, poets, and educators. Our performances invite audiences to feel, celebrate, reflect, and respond collectively to the world around them.
Halcyon is an artist collective based in Midcoast Maine. We are musicians, artists, filmmakers, animators, advocates, and storytellers who strive to share our love of music in ways that foster connection, community, vibrancy, joy, warmth and accessibility. Our programs are built on partnerships with local community organizations and folks from all walks of life. We collaborate with scientists, artists, students, actors, composers, poets, and educators. Our performances invite audiences to feel, celebrate, reflect, and respond collectively to the world around them.
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SOPHIE DAVIS violin & artistic director
Sophie is a violinist, climate change artist, and the Artistic Director of Halcyon. Having grown up in Maine, she received degrees in violin performance and environmental studies from Oberlin College and Conservatory. Playing and sharing music are integral to Sophie’s creative and professional practice. She has participated in the Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Program, as a soloist with Oberlin’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, and with her sister on NPR’s From the Top. She has performed at the Kennedy Center, Chicago’s Symphony Hall, the Monte Music Festival in India, and with the Jordan National Orchestra (JOrchestra) in Amman, Jordan. In 2017-18, Sophie was awarded a Fulbright Grant to the South Pacific island nation of Samoa where she researched how music and the arts raise awareness of climate change. As a violinist, stop-motion animator, and core member of Halcyon, Sophie collaborates frequently with musicians, artists, activists, and scientists. Her creative practice combines the honesty of science and statistical fact with the emotions of film and music. Recent projects have led her to pursue coursework in stop-motion animation; research the internal documents of the Exxon Corporation; build a contact microphone to record the sounds of ice-out; and record humpback whale song aboard a tall ship in the Lesser Antilles. She is a 2024 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow. |
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JOSIE DAVIS violin & artistic advisor Josie received her undergraduate degrees in violin and sociology at Oberlin College and Conservatory where she was a student of David Bowlin, and her Ed.M from Harvard University. She has performed in a wide-range of venues from Carnegie Hall to the Monte Music Festival in India and has appeared with her sister on NPR’s From the Top. She actively explores ways to share classical music in new contexts and has performed chamber music with Emanuel Ax in a taco shop, played solo Bach for Chris Thile, and shared music on a mountaintop in India. Her teaching has brought her to Panama, India and Community MusicWorks in Rhode Island where she completed a two-year Fellowship. In past summers, she has studied at the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar, Bowdoin International Music Festival and Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. As a violinist, educator and arts administrator, Josie is interested in how the arts can be used as a form of cultural empowerment to build bridges and strengthen communities. In addition to her work with Halcyon, Josie is the Executive Director of Bay Chamber Concerts and Music School. |
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COLIN WHEATLEY viola Colin has been teaching violin and viola to students of all ages for 15 years. He is currently the Orchestra Director for Waterville Public Schools, and also teaches at Bay Chamber and with Pineland Suzuki School. Originally from Bellingham Washington, Colin earned his BM in Viola Performance at Oberlin Conservatory studying with Peter Slowik, his MM in Viola Performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music where he was a student of Atar Arad, and his graduate degree in teaching from Oberlin Conservatory. An avid chamber musician, Colin plays with Halcyon and has performed for members of the Emerson, Pacifica, Cleveland, and Takas quartets and for Yo Yo Ma. He has collaborated with Stevie Wonder, Robert Spano, Menahem Pressler, and Jeremy Denk. Colin's teaching is influenced by his work with Mimi Zweig at the Indiana University String Academy, Suzuki Teacher training, and the many musical and pedagogical mentors that have shaped his approach to sharing music with young people. When not performing and teaching, Colin enjoys spending time outdoors, running marathons, beekeeping, cooking, and traveling. |
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LUKE FATORA violinist & creative director Luke is a musician and experimental filmmaker based in Rockland, Maine. With degrees in violin performance from the Oberlin and San Francisco Conservatories of Music, Luke became captivated by the interplay between imagery and sound while experimenting with sound design as a student in San Francisco. Since then, he has been combining music with imagery to create multimedia performances that strive to make abstract experiences more tangible. He has performed in contexts that include fiddling for square dances, improvising with dancers and DJs, and performing contemporary and traditional classical music in the World Financial Center and Carnegie Hall. Luke served as the Music Director for the Summit Community Orchestra in Colorado and was a 2017-2019 Musician Fellow at Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island. Luke has worked as a projectionist and technical coordinator for the Camden International Film Festival and his most recent creative projects have been screened at the Maine International Film Festival and in collaborative performances with Halcyon throughout Maine. Luke is a certified drone pilot. For more information about Luke’s work, visit lukefatora.com. |
COLLABORATORS
NATHAN DAVIS composer Nathan is a composer, artist, technologist, and public servant who lives in Rockland. Much of his work draws inspiration from natural and physical processes, but, like Halcyon, he is also driven by an increasingly urgent sense of public responsibility. In that spirit, he has proposed a collaboration: he will compose a work for the Halcyon String Quartet and officiant. The officiant's spoken text will be constructed from words contributed by Halcyon's supporters. It will be a work specific to place, time, and people: Maine, now, and all of you. |
JU-YOUNG LEE cello Korean American cellist, Ju-Young Lee enjoys an international career as a chamber musician, soloist, and versatile recording artist. A graduate of the Juilliard School, he trained under David Soyer and Joel Krosnick, and studied with Felix Wang as a Myra Jackson Blair Scholar at the Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University. He has collaborated on Jazz, Rock, and Country music albums and also performs internationally with the Emmy-Award winning Damien Escobar and his quartet, including performances at the 2013 Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball honoring Barack Obama. Mr. Lee resides in Providence, Rhode Island, while actively touring the United States and internationally with The Core Ensemble and Warp Trio. |
JILL PELTO artist Jill is an artist and scientist whose work focuses on communicating human-environment connections. She incorporates scientific research and data into watercolor paintings to create visual narratives about climate change. She has B.A. degrees in Studio Art and Earth and Climate Sciences. Her M.S. focused on studying the stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in a warming world. Jill’s work has inspired online features in Smithsonian, PBS News Hour, and National Geographic. She recently created a custom data-art painting for the cover of TIME Magazine in July 2020. Her data art is also being used in K-12 curriculum programs across the U.S. and Canada. |
JULIA BOUWSMA poet Julia lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, small-town librarian and Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate (2021-2026). Bouwsma is the author of two poetry collections, Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both of which received the Maine Literary Award for Poetry Book. She currently serves as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME and teaches in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington. |
DAVID TROUP actor David is a graduate of the SUNY Purchase acting program and a lifetime member of the Actors Studio in NYC. Originally from New York, he lives in Maine where he has performed in or directed many of the Everyman Repertory Theatre’s productions, including performing the roles of Rothko in Red, Ui in Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Mack the Knife in their recent production of Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. |
AARON WOLFF cello Aaron is a New York City-based cellist and performer active in solo, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary capacities. He received a B.A. in comparative literature and B.M. in cello performance from Oberlin College & Conservatory. He then completed Master’s degree at Juilliard, where he was a Kovner Fellow under Joel Krosnick, and an Artist Diploma under Tim Eddy and Fred Sherry. Aaron has found creative outlets in acting – most notably in a lead role in the Coen brothers’ film A Serious Man – and in arranging and writing about music: he has provided string arrangements for Comedy Central’s Broad City and covered New York’s new music scene for the online journal I Care If You Listen. |
COLLABORATING ORGANIZATIONS & HOSTS
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