A founding member of the critically acclaimed Artaria String Quartet and a 2004 McKnight Fellow, violinist Nancy Oliveros has performed at renowned venues in New York, Boston, Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and throughout the United States and Europe. She has performed with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Juilliard, Guarneri and Cleveland Quartets, and since moving to Minnesota, with members of the Minnesota Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Co-founder of the Stringwood Summer Chamber Music Festival in Lanesboro, MN and the Artaria Chamber Music School in St. Paul, she was Artist/Teacher in Residence at the world-renowned Tanglewood Institute under the mentorship of Norman Fischer.
She is delighted to own and perform on a rare 1781 Neapolitan violin by Tomaso Eberle.

From 2007-2016, cellist Laura Sewell was a member of the esteemed Artaria String Quartet. In recent seasons, the quartet was appointed as one of Minnesota Public Radio’s ensembles-in-residence, was featured on Twin Cities Public Television’s “Minnesota Originals” series, and performed the complete Shostakovich quartet cycle to critical acclaim. Earlier in her career, Ms. Sewell was the founding cellist of the award-winning Lark Quartet. During her tenure in that ensemble the quartet served as the graduate string quartet-in-residence at the Juilliard School and had a teaching residency at San Diego State University. As a student she attended summer festivals at Aspen, Tanglewood, Interlochen, Meadowmount, and Aldeburgh. She also had the unique opportunity, at the age of 17, to spend half a year in London studying with the legendary cellist, Jacqueline duPre.
Ms. Sewell has performed concertos and appeared in solo recitals in New York and throughout the Midwest, including the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series on WFMT in Chicago. She has appeared on American Public Media’s “Saint Paul Sunday” and on “A Prairie Home Companion” on several occasions. Since 1993 she and renowned jazz pianist, Butch Thompson, have performed together as a duo and have recorded a critically acclaimed album. She has had solo cello works written for her by distinguished composers Paul Schoenfield, Stephen Paulus and Steve Heitzeg.

Mary Ellen Haupert spreads her musical abilities between her roles as Music Director for Roncalli Newman Parish and as a tenured Professor of Music at Viterbo University, both in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Her performing interests are almost exclusively in the realm of chamber music. In the four-hand world, her collaborations with Timothy Schorr have included appearances at Washington University in St. Louis, The University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, Winona State University, the Edinburgh Society of Musicians, and Wisconsin Public Radio’s Live from the Chazen. She enjoys an ongoing relationship with violinist Nancy Oliveros and the Artaria String Quartet. Their frequent duo and piano quintet collaborations have become a staple of Viterbo University’s One-of-a kind chamber music series (for which Haupert is both founder and artistic director), as well as performances at Hamline University’s Sundin Hall Chamber Series, the Schubert Club’s Courtroom Concert Series in St. Paul, MN, and Wisconsin Public Radio’s Live from the Chazen. She has recorded Louise Farrenc’s Sonata for Piano and Cello in B-flat Major, Op. 46 (comp. 1857-1858) and the Sonata for Piano and Violin in A Major, Op. 39 (comp. 1850-1855) with violinist Nancy Oliveros and cellist Kirsten Whitson in July, 2012, as well as Farrenc’s two piano trios, Opus 33 and 34 with Nancy Oliveros and cellist Laura Sewell.