Artists
Erica Miller was born to a musical family in Queens, New York, and began her musical education at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College at the age of three. She received her bachelor’s in violin performance from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, where she fell in love with Canada. After an active 12-year freelance career in Philadelphia, Miller and her husband returned to Canada where she plays regularly with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. She is the newly appointed concertmaster of the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra.
Paul Casey was born and raised in Ottawa and is an avid orchestral, chamber, and solo musician and pedagogue.
Paul is one of the newest additions to the National Arts Centre Orchestra viola section; as a soloist, Paul has performed with NACO as part of FanFair, the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, and has given recitals in Canada and the United States. He was the 2011 recipient of the NACO Bursary Competition’s Harold Crabtree Foundation Award.
Paul obtained a MMus and BMus from Indiana University and the University of Ottawa, respectively, and most recently studied at McGill University.
Paul is on faculty at the Leading Note Foundation’s OrKidstra Program and was string coach for the Ottawa Junior Youth Orchestra. He is also a member of the Silflay String Quartet with his wife, cellist Karen Kang, and violinists Leah Roseman and Mark Friedman.
Karen Kang is a Korean-Canadian cellist who has performed internationally as a soloist and as an avid chamber musician. She has performed and collaborated with some of the most distinguished musicians, including the Borromeo String Quartet, the Parker Quartet, Pinchas Zukerman, Natalia Gutman, Frans Helmerson, and Lynn Harrell. She is an alumnus of Ravinia-Steans Institute, the Banff Centre, and Internationale Sommerakademie Mozarteum Salzburg. In 2011, Kang resided in Hamburg, Germany, where she toured and performed as the cellist of the Saguaro Piano Trio. She now resides in Ottawa, where she performs regularly with the National Arts Centre Orchestra.
Anna Petersen joined the NAC Orchestra as Second Oboe and English Horn in 2013. She has performed orchestral and chamber concerts throughout Canada and the United States, and internationally in China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and throughout Europe.
Prior to joining the NAC Orchestra, she held positions as Principal Oboe of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and as a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. She has enjoyed guest appearances as Principal Oboe with the Pittsburgh, Detroit, Vancouver, and Wichita Symphony Orchestras, The Florida Orchestra, the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom she made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2013. She has also recently performed with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in Auckland, New Zealand.
In addition to her orchestral career, Anna is an active soloist and chamber musician. She has been a soloist with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, Symphoria, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra, the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, and the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, and has performed as a finalist in the Coleman Chamber Music Competition in Pasadena, California. Anna has been a featured performer at Ottawa Chamberfest, a fellow at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, a participant at the Masterclass Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and a performer at the Skaneateles and Bravo! Vail Valley Music festivals.
Also an experienced teacher, Anna is currently on faculty at the University of Ottawa and previously was the Adjunct Professor of Oboe at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music and SUNY Geneseo. She was a guest member of the Prairie Winds at Madeline Island Chamber Music in 2018, and during the summers of 2012 and 2015 she was a coach at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference in Bennington, Vermont.
Anna earned her Bachelor of Music Degree and Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. Her primary teachers include Richard Killmer and Suzanne Geoffrey.
In addition to her musical life, Anna is also an internationally certified yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance, having completed 300 hours of training in Bali, Indonesia.