Passeri* trio features violist/violinist Elizabeth Reid
and cellist Michael Close along with flutist Lisa Carlson.
Elizabeth Reid studied viola performance at the University of Western Ontario and the Glenn Gould School
(RCM) in Toronto. Her teachers included Betty-Jean Hagen, Ralph Aldrich, Lorand Fenyves, and Rennie
Regehr. She has performed across Canada and the United States as a soloist and chamber musician, including
the Arts and Letters Club in Toronto, Hertz Hall in Berkeley, the Mozart Festival in Thunder Bay, and the
Southern Illinois Chamber Music Society. Ms. Reid has also played principal viola in the Scarborough
Philharmonic Orchestra, the Southern Illinois Symphony Orchestra, the Banff Opera Orchestra, and the
National Orchestral Institute. She has a strong interest in contemporary music and ha been involved in many
premieres of solo and chamber works in Canada and the United States. In Vermont Elizabeth has played with
Counterpoint, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestra, the Hanover
Chamber Orchestra, the Burlington Chamber Orchestra, Arioso, and Capital City Concerts. Formerly a faculty
member at the Monteverdi School in Montpelier, she now teaches violin and viola at home in Northfield.
Michael Close is currently the principal cellist with the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra in addition to several other
orchestral and chamber ensembles. He will be featured in the March 2011 MCO concerts as both soloist in
Tchaikowsky’s “Andante Cantabile” and composer in his”Tango 1″ for string orchestra, An active composer,
he has been a composer–mentor with the Vermont Midi Project since 2004. He graduated from Bennington
College in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in music composition and a master of arts in education. He teaches
cello at Monteverdi Music School as well as the Vermont String School, in addition to general music at
Moretown Elementary. Michael is also an avid bagpiper and a member of the Catamount Pipe Band.
Passeri has scheduled a television recording session March 4, 2011, for ORCA Media’s “Studio
Sessions” program. Be on the lookout for both the television program, likely to air in the
spring, and subsequent audio and video clips on this web site as well as YouTube sometime
either later this spring or early this summer.
*”Passeri” is Latin for “songbird.”
