About the ACP

Atlanta Chamber Players

PO Box 20013 • Atlanta, GA 30325
404-594-3445
www.atlantachamberplayers.com


President-------------------------------Jonathan Wortham

President-elect---------------------------Jacqui Caffey

Immediate Past President------------------Trey Wood

Vice President-----------------------------Sue Morgan

Vice President-----------------------------Nick Shreiber

Vice President-----------------------------Jim Throckmorton

Vice President/Treasurer-------------------Shelby Nelson

Secretary----------------------------------Vanya Foote

Artistic Director--------------------------Elizabeth Pridgen

Executive Director-------------------------Vanya Foote

Artistic Director Emeritus-----------------Paula Peace


BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Jacqui Caffey · Virginia Respess Fairchild · Sally George · Hunter Groton · Nancy Harrison · Bob Irvin · Ann Marie McPhail · Sue Morgan · Paula Peace · Ed Potter · Nick Shreiber · Jim Throckmorton · Mark Williamson · Trey Wood · Jonathan Wortham

Learn more about the members of our Board here.

 

Atlanta Chamber PlayersThe Atlanta Chamber Players, a mixed ensemble of strings, winds and piano, were founded by Paula Peace in 1976 and will celebrate their 47th Anniversary Season in 2022-2023. The ensemble has earned a national reputation as a pioneer among chamber groups and is widely respected among arts organizations in the Southeast.

The ACP’s broad repertoire includes traditional masterpieces (Beethoven, Brahms) as well as contemporary classics (Crumb, Messiaen). ACP also has a long-standing commitment to performing the music of living American composers.

Staff Leadership

 

Elizabeth Pridgen, Artistic Director
Elizabeth Pridgen

Pianist Elizabeth Pridgen has distinguished herself as a soloist and chamber musician. Named Artistic Director of the Atlanta Chamber Players in 2014, she has led the group in performances of both new and standard chamber works to critical acclaim. Ms. Pridgen made her major orchestral debut with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Spano and recently released three albums including the Chausson Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet with Andrés Cárdenes and the Vega String Quartet and albums with violinists Robert McDuffie and Anne Akiko Meyers.

An advocate of new music, Ms. Pridgen has participated in the commissioning of works by noted composers such as Adam Schoenberg and Michael Gandolfi and supports underserved composers through her leadership of the Rapido! National Composition Contest.

Ms. Pridgen has toured extensively throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe and performs regularly at festivals including the Rome Chamber Music Festival in Rome, Italy, the Aspen Music Festival, the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival, the Madison Chamber Music Festival and the Kon-Tiki Chamber Music Festival in Oslo, Norway. An avid chamber performer, she is a member of the Cortona Trio and Georgian Chamber Players.

Ms. Pridgen served as a Distinguished Artist and Piano Chair at the McDuffie Center for Strings and held the G. Leslie Fabian Piano Chair at the Townsend School of Music at Mercer University. She received her Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School where she studied with Joseph Kalichstein and earned her bachelor's degree at the Peabody Conservatory of Music as a student of Ann Schein.

 

Vanya Foote, Executive Director

Vanya is the Executive Director of the Atlanta Chamber Players where she leads all aspects of operations, fundraising and marketing. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre from Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, PA) and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre Management from Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL)

Throughout her career, Vanya has held senior roles as the Company Manager at both The Weston Theatre Company (Weston, VT) & Virginia Opera (Norfolk, VA), and the Assistant General Manager at McCarter Theatre Center (Princeton, NJ). From these experiences, she has grown to specialize in operations management, finance & nonprofit accounting, grant writing, event planning, contract negotiations, and artist hospitality.

Vanya is currently President of the Smyrna Arts Council, Board Member of the Smyrna Education Foundation, a citizen member of the City of Smyrna Arts & Culture Task Force and was a member of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s 2018 Arts Leaders of Metro Atlanta class.

 

Paula Peace, Artistic Director Emeritus
Paula Peace

Paula is the founder of the Atlanta Chamber Players and served as the group's Artistic Director for all but a few months of its first 38 seasons. For the group she produced concerts and performed in more than 250 cities; produced, edited, and performed on all six ACP recordings and CDs; produced and performed more than 100 regional and world premieres in Atlanta; and designed and performed hundreds of concert programs, educational lectures and master classes throughout the South.

As soloist, Paula has appeared with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, DeKalb Symphony, and the Lanier Symphony. In demand as a collaborative pianist, she performed with top prize winner Amy Porter at the Kobe International Flute Competition in Japan, and in the brass world has performed with Charles Vernon, Stephen Burns, Eric Ruske, Scott Hartmann, Michael Mulcahy and her husband Michael Moore. She has performed with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman with the Chamber Music Society of Emory.

Paula received her BMus from Florida State University in the studio of Leonidas Lipovetsky, and her MMus from State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied piano with Martin Canin and did extensive chamber music coaching with Gilbert Kalish, Samuel Baron, Bernard Greenhouse, Timothy Eddy, Alvin Brehm and David Glazer. Other significant teachers include Virginia Hutchings, Menahem Pressler, and Leonard Shure. Summer performances include the Aspen Music Festival and Institutde Hautes Etudes Musicales in Crans, Switzerland. Paula has served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Chamber Music at Georgia State University and was an Artist in Residence at Kennesaw State University.

Public Broadcasting Atlanta selected Paula Peace as Lexus Leader of the Arts in 2004. In 2015, she received the Phoenix Award from Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed for her decades of service to the community, and in 2016 she was a recipient of the Governor's Awards for the Arts and Humanities, recognizing her contributions to music and to communities statewide.

About the Atlanta Chamber Players

About the ACPFounded in 1976 by pianist Paula Peace and flutist Melanie Cramer, the ACP has spent nearly 50 years performing critically acclaimed concerts in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe, and Mexico and reached millions worldwide through live international radio broadcasts. Led for its first 38 season by legendary founder Paula Peace, the ACP began its 39th season in 2014 with an outstanding successor as Artistic Director, Elizabeth Pridgen.

The mission of the ACP is to contribute to the future of chamber music by providing a world-class mixed ensemble chamber music experience to a broad audience crossing demographics, through the performance of traditional and modern chamber music repertoire and the commissioning of new works by the group.

To promote new chamber compositions in the Southeast, the Antinori Foundation and the ACP launched “Rapido! A 14-day Composition Contest”
in 2009. Rapido! expanded to 29 states in 2010 by adding the New England and Midwest regions. 2012 has seen Rapido! expand to all 50 US states by adding new partner ensembles in the Southwest and West Coast, promoting up to 500 entries by composers of all ages and resulting in premiere performances in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco, as well as Atlanta. Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra joined the Rapido team in 2012 by adding an ASO orchestral commission to the prize.

The ACP’s broad repertoire includes traditional masterpieces (Beethoven, Brahms) as well as contemporary classics (Crumb, Messiaen). ACP also has a long-standing commitment to performing the music of living American composers. The ensemble has premiered more than 90 works to Atlanta audiences, including world premieres commissioned from composers such as Michael Gandolfi, David Amram, Anne LeBaron, two works from Pulitzer-Prizewinner John Harbison, and a 2014 commission from Adam Schoenberg.

ACP recordings have consistently earned accolades, from performances of compelling contemporary works on Conversations — “… intense and exciting, yet subtle and well-shaped …” (American Record Guide) — to famous-and-rare salon works on Soirée Sweets — “… elegant … full, deep lyricism … real chamber music …” (Gainesville Times).

The ensemble appears in numerous artistic, educational, and outreach concerts each season, as well as touring residencies and television and radio broadcasts. As Affiliate Artists at Georgia State University’s School of Music
1990–2006, ACP presented concerts, lectures and master classes. The group was in residence at Kennesaw State University from 1996–2003 and was the Candler Ensemble in Residence at Emory University from 1982–1987. In 1979, ACP was among the first ensembles nationally to participate in Chamber
Music America’s prestigious Paul Residency Program.

In 2014, the ACP won the American Prize for Chamber Music Performance.

ACP Landmarks

  • In 2019, ACP returned to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for two distinct performances.
  • Founding Artistic Director Paula Peace retired in 2014 and was succeeded by pianist Elizabeth Pridgen.
  • ACP won the 2014 American Prize in Chamber Music Performance.ACP was selected from a nationwide pool of applicants. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit, competitions unique in scope and structure, designed to recognize and reward the best performing artists, ensembles and composers in the United States based on submitted recordings.
  • ACP premiered Rapido!® A 14-Day Composition Contest in 2009 with the vision and support of The Antinori Foundation; the Fall 2009 Competition Concert was chosen as a “Top 10 Classical Music Performance of 2009.” Rapido’s second cycle in 2010-2011 expanded to 29 states by adding partner ensembles in New England (Boston Musica Viva) and Midwest (Chicago’s Fifth House Ensemble.) More than 250 composers submitted entries, leading to First Prize Commission winner John Elmquist’s Junk Shot being premiered
    in Atlanta, Boston and Chicago during Fall 2011.
  • Summer 2012 featured ACP in four performances at the International Chamber Music Festival of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Included was a world premiere of Michael Kurth's Alallal for all seven players.
  • The 35th Anniversary Season included national concerts in New York's Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Boston's Jordan Hall for acclaimed performances of Arthur Foote and John Harbison, plus the 2010 ACP Commission Canzona Nova: A Fractured Fairy Tale, by Michael Gandolfi.
  • ACP & MayorDuring the group’s milestone 30th Anniversary Season in 2006 – 2006, ACP was named “Best of 2005 in Classical Music” by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and awarded the Phoenix Award by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin for the group’s “active commitment to the performing arts and contributions to enhance the city’s artistic reputation.”
  • Capping the 30th Anniversary celebration was a June 2006 European concert tour to Paris, Rome and Lausanne, where the group presented premiere performances of Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Harbison’s Songs America Loves to Sing, commissioned by the ACP and recorded in fall 2006 at the Dozier Center for the Performing Arts.
  • The ACP was twice featured on NPR’s Performance Today during live international broadcasts from Spivey Hall during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Their celebrated performance of Beethoven’s Clarinet Trio is included on NPR’s history-making CD, Spirit of ‘96.
  • In 1998 the ACP recorded a series of eight hour-long live radio programs, which have been broadcast throughout Georgia’s 14-station Peach State Public Radio Network. ACP’s concerts also are frequently broadcast on WABE 90.1 FM Radio’s Atlanta Music Scene, as well as on NPR’s Performance Today.
  • LausanneDuring ACP’s Silver Anniversary Season, marking 25 years of artistic excellence, the ensemble released two new CD recordings. Footeprints celebrates American composer Arthur Foote: “… they play with great generosity, technically well-balanced and crisp, but with color and warmth …” (Creative Loafing); “… it’s highly recommended – Grade A!” (Atlanta Journal Constitution). The second major release, Sacred Theory of the Earth, showcases music by American composer Anne LeBaron: “The ACP handle this terribly difficult music with technical savvy, and with the musical personality and aplomb to pull it off.” (Creative Loafing)
  • Songs America Loves to Sing, the group’s fifth CD, was released in April 2007 on MSR Classics and features Mozart, Dello Joio and Bunch, in addition to the Harbison premiere. International and national critics acclaim the CD as “… a delight from start to finish …” (BBC Music Magazine, December 2008) and say, “This is a highly gratifying recording, offering variety and splendid playing.” (American Record Guide Review, January/February 2008)
  • The ensemble has been featured three times on the prestigious Signature Series at Atlanta’s Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, and its members have appeared as soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra.
ACP Touring History

Euro Tour ParisThe Atlanta Chamber Players have toured extensively, including a Summer 2012 tour to the International Chamber Music Festival of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a 35th Anniversary Northeast Tour, a 25th Anniversary Season international tour in France, a 2006 European Concert Tour to Paris, Lausanne and Rome, and nationally from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, and from Camden, Maine to Key West, Florida. We have played in more than 200 cities to date, concertizing in significant music capitals, as well as presenting numerous residencies throughout the region on the Southern Arts Federation Touring Program.

International

  • San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
  • Paris, France (American Cathedral)
  • Orléans, France (Salle de l’Institut)
  • Nuits St. Georges, France (Clos de Vougeot Château)

National

  • New York, NY (Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall)
  • Boston, MA (Jordan Hall, Charles River Concert Series)
  • Washington, DC (National Gallery of Art, Phillips Collection)
  • Cincinnati, OH (Cincinnati Composers Guild)
  • Los Angeles, CA (Claremont Colleges)

Regional

  • Charleston, SC (Spoleto Festival)
  • Anniston, AL (Alabama Shakespeare Festival)
  • Roanoke Chamber Music Society (VA)
  • Tampa Symphony (FL)
  • Memphis Chamber Music Society (TN)
  • Savannah Symphony (GA)
  • Huntsville Chamber Music Society (AL)
  • Gainesville ProMusica Concert Series (GA)
  • The Cloister, Glynn County Mozart Society (Sea Island, GA)
  • A.R.T. Station (Tifton, GA)
  • Owensboro (KY)
  • Wilmington, Charlotte (NC)
  • Montgomery, Mobile (AL)
  • New Orleans, Lafayette (LA)
  • Jackson, Biloxi, Hattiesburg (MS)
  • Daytona Beach, Pensacola, Lakeland, Melbourne, Lake Wales (FL)
  • Columbus, Macon, Albany, Statesboro, Augusta & Brunswick (GA)

Universities & Colleges: Concerts & Residencies

  • Artists in Residence: Georgia State University (1991-2006),
  • Artists in Residence: Kennesaw State University (1996-2003)
  • Reinhardt University (Waleska, GA)
  • Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN)
  • University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY)
  • Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL)
  • Auburn University (Auburn, AL)
  • Ole Miss (Oxford, MS)
  • Clemson University (Clemson, SC)
  • University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL)
  • Tuskeegee Institute (Tuskeegee, AL)
  • University of Georgia (Athens, GA)
  • Berry College & Shorter College (Rome, GA)
Where You Can See the ACP

The ACP performs in a variety of venues, enabling the group to reach a wide range of audiences.

  • Abraham Baldwin Agrricultulral College (Tifton, GA)
  • The Ahavath Achim Synagogue
  • Falany Performing Arts Center (Waleska, GA)
  • First Presbyterian Church
  • The New American Shakespeare Tavern
  • Peachtree Road United Methodist Church
  • St. Paul’s Church (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico)
Photo Gallery
shakespeare tavern playingshakespeare tavern playing 2 Ahavath Achim Synagogueshakespeare tavern 3 shakespeare tavern 4Euro Tour Paula PeaceEuro Tour LynnEuro Tour Paris Ritchie CelloArdan Clarinet Euro Tour LausanneSoiree Atlanta Chamber Players 34th Season musicians