ROPA - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Officers Team
- Vice - President
- Vice - President of the Executive Board
- Ex Officio
- Home / about / Officers / Vice President
- Vice President of the Regional Orchestra Players' Association
Amanda Swain is Vice President of the Regional Orchestra Players' Association (ROPA). She previously served ROPA as Delegate (2015-2018) and Member-at-Large on the Executive Board (2017-2018). She is a proud member of Houston Professional Musicians' Association, Local 65-699.
Amanda is from Friendswood, Texas. In 2012, she became the Principal Bassoonist of the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra and Second Bassoonist of the Houston Ballet Orchestra. She received her BM at the University of Texas at Austin where she studied with Kristin Wolfe Jensen and her MM at Northwestern University where she studied with Christopher Millard. She was the Second Place winner in the 2012 Fernand Gillet-Hugo Fox Bassoon Competition. She was a founding member of the Chicago-based contemporary ensemble The City of Tomorrow, who won the Gold Medal in the Senior Wind Division of the Fischoff Competition in 2011. Other accomplishments include winning First Prize in the Meg Quigley Vivaldi Competition (2010), being a semi-finalist in the Heida Hermanns International Woodwind Competition (2007), and being selected as an alternate for the Gillet-Fox International Competition for Bassoon (2010). She has been a guest artist, teacher, and speaker at universities and conferences throughout the United States.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
- Member of the Officers Team
- Member - at - Large
Ann Rule is a Member-at-Large of ROPA, elected to the board in 2022.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
- Member of the Officers Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
- Member of the Officers Team
ROPA Member At Large Brandon LePage is also the Delegate for the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (where he serves as Principal Flute) and the Flint Symphony Orchestra (where he serves as Principal Flute). He is an Applied Instructor of Flute at Oakland University and is working towards his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Comfortable as an orchestral musician, soloist, and chamber musician, he is the founding member of the Chamber Artists of Southeast Michigan (CASM) through which he offers intimate live performances, scholarships, and educational opportunities to his hometown area of Downriver, MI. www.brandonlepage.com
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Officers Team
- Principal
Cory Tiffin is the principal clarinetist for the Las Vegas Philharmonic, having performed in this role with numerous orchestras around the country, including California Symphony, Modesto Symphony, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Elgin Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony, and New Hampshire Music Festival. Though he plays any and all clarinets, he especially enjoys the bass clarinet and performs regularly on that instrument as well, with recent performances including the Oakland Symphony, Grant Park Music Festival, and a Chicago tour stop with American Ballet Theatre. As a chamber artist and soloist, Tiffin has performed in recital with the Grammy Award-winning Chicago Chamber Musicians; the Grammy-nominated Lincoln Trio; collaborated with Chicago's leading new music ensemble, Fulcrum Point New Music Project; performed regularly with Access Contemporary Music's resident ensemble and the University of Chicago's New Music Ensemble; and worked with University of Nevada-Las Vegas' (UNLV) Nextet Ensemble. He founded and ran the eclectic Chicago-based Anaphora Ensemble for several years; is a founding member of the New York City-based baroque and contemporary chamber opera company, Operamission; and is continually featured on concert series and radio programs, including curating his own headline programs for Live From WFMT and New Music at the Green Mill. Tiffin has been invited to perform concertos with the Las Vegas Philharmonic and the Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra multiple times. Time Out New York called Tiffin a "clarinet maverick" and Lawrence Johnson of Chicago Classical Review wrote: "…Tiffin's understated virtuosity was the fulcrum of the performance - as it was all afternoon…" Before relocating to the Bay Area in 2020, he served on the faculties of DePaul University, Loyola University, UNLV, The Chicago High School for the Arts, and as as Affiliate Instructor at The University of Chicago. Tiffin is a member of the Executive Board of the Regional Orchestra Players Association (ROPA) and enjoys talking shop, organizing musicians, and generally making good trouble. Outside of music, he is the father of an exuberant 3.5-year-old boy and enjoys hiking and camping with friends and family.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Adjunct Officers Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Adjunct Officers Team
- Member of the Officers Team
- Secretary of the Executive Board
- Webmaster
- Electronic Media
- Home / about / Officers / Secretary
- Secretary Karen Sandene / Delegate Resources / Delegate Handbook
- Secretary of the Regional Orchestra Players' Association
Karen Sandene is Secretary of the Regional Orchestra Players' Association (ROPA), elected to the position in 2011 at the Portland, ME annual conference. Prior to being elected Secretary, Karen has served as a Member-at-Large, as well as being the ROPA delegate for the Omaha Symphony Orchestra; she is also currently a member of the Executive Board of AFM Local 463 (Lincoln, NE).
Karen serves as the 3rd Bassoon/Contrabassoonist for the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, and the 2nd Bassoonist for the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra. Karen has served on numerous orchestra committees and negotiating committees with both orchestras. Karen co-founded chamber music groups in the Lincoln area, the Third Chair Chamber Players and a contemporary music ensemble, The New Music Agency. She is also a founding member of Bassoons Across Nebraska (www.bassoonsacrossnebraska.org). Karen also performs in several other ensembles in the Omaha/Lincoln area.
Karen graduated from the University of Nebraska/Lincoln with a degrees in Bassoon Performance, teaching certification, and Masters of Education in Curriculum. Her principal bassoon/contrabassoon instruction has been with Gary Echols, George Sakakeeny, Albie Michlich, and Bradford Buckley.
While not performing orchestral music, Karen is an elementary instrumental music instructor for the Lincoln Public Schools.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Adjunct Officers Team
- Member of the Executive Board
- Member of the Officers Team
- Conductor Evaluation Bank Administrator
- Contact Conductor Evaluation Bank Administrator
Lisa Davis has been third horn for the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra since 1990. She has also performed with the Alabama Symphony, Tupelo Symphony, Meridian Symphony, Mobile Symphony, and other ensembles around Mississippi. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Lisa studied at Florida State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Music in French Horn Performance, and at the University of Mississippi, where she earned a Master of Music in French Horn Performance. Her teachers have included David Pandolfi, William Capps, Charles Snead, Eugene Wade, Bob Bonnevie and Richard Dolph. Lisa serves as the MSO's Regional Orchestra Players Association (ROPA) Delegate, as well as a Member at Large on the Executive Board. Lisa also holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Clinical Laboratory Science from the University of Mississippi Medical Center and is a Medical Lab Technologist at St Dominic Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. In her spare time, Lisa enjoys training for and running marathons, traveling, reading, and spending time with her husband, Mark and their two children, Kurt and Natalie.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
- Member of the Officers Team
- Member - at - Large
Marjorie Goldberg is a Member-at-Large of ROPA, elected to the position in 2022.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Adjunct Officers Team
- Social Media Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Legal Counsel
- Member of the Adjunct Officers Team
- Member of the Officers Team
- Ex Officio, Chair
Naomi Bensdorf Frisch has served on the board of the Regional Orchestra Players' Association since 2012. As a performer, she currently holds principal Oboe positions in the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra and the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra, and previously enjoyed a robust career as a freelance orchestral musician, soloist, and chamber music collaborator. Naomi also enjoys coaching woodwind chamber music for the award-winning Midwest Young Artists Conservatory. Recently, Ms. Bensdorf Frisch completed her Juris Doctorate, Magna cum Laude, at the Chicago-Kent College of Law and has been working as a worker/union side labor and employment lawyer since May of 2018. A native of Evanston, Illinois, Ms. Bensdorf Frisch received her Bachelor of Music Magna cum Laude from Northwestern University, and her Master of Music with Distinction from DePaul University. Naomi resides in Chicago with her husband, Aaron, daughter, Elise, and their two cats.
Job Titles:
- Historian
- Member of the Adjunct Officers Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Officers Team
- Treasurer of the Executive Board
- Ex - Officio
- Home / about / Officers / Treasurer
Rick Basehore, a Rochester, NY native, is an active freelance oboist in the DC metro area. His performing schedule includes orchestral concerts across the mid-Atlantic region from Norfolk, VA to New York City. He is currently the Principal Oboist of the Sarasota Opera and Allentown Symphony orchestras, and holds oboe and English Horn positions with the Annapolis, Harrisburg, and Maryland Symphony orchestras. Rick can be heard on recordings of the Eastman Bach Children's Choir, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and the Grammy-nominated professional choir, Seraphic Fire, including their recording of Bach's Cantata 84.
Rick moved to DC in 2008 to assume the duties of Co-Principal Oboist with "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band. He spent his four-year enlistment playing for 2 Presidents, various visiting foreign dignitaries, and tens of thousands of Americans on four separate tours across the country. Other previous positions include Principal Oboist of the Fairfax and Kentucky Symphony orchestras, Second Oboist of the Binghamton Philharmonic, and Third Oboist of the Virginia Symphony.
For 15 years, Rick travelled across the world, playing with music festivals in places such as Moscow, Jerusalem, Tallinn, Aspen, and Stuttgart. Between 1998 and 2002, Rick toured extensively across the United States with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. In December of 2000, when the world was awaiting its apocalyptic end, Rick wandered around historical sights across the Holy Land, in between rehearsing all nine Beethoven Symphonies on an Israeli kibbutz for an international music festival. A few weeks later, he spent two months playing with the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra in Yekaterinburg, Russia, as part of a cross-cultural residency program. It was here, during a sub-zero week in February, that Rick had his stage-speaking debut as the narrator in Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw - after the baritone engaged to perform the part was run off the stage during the first rehearsal by the conductor for being ill-prepared and insubordinate. In 2008, he was part of a new production of Porgy and Bess, featuring an all-American cast and orchestra at Paris's famed Opera Comìque.
Rick is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Cincinnati's College- Conservatory of Music. He also spent three years in the New World Symphony, America's only full- time training orchestra for professional musicians, led by Michael Tilson Thomas.
When he's not practicing, performing, teaching, making reeds, or driving to a job, he is probably catching a frisbee, preparing someone's taxes, or running PianoMart: the website his late uncle founded in 1997 to help people buying and selling pianos find each other online.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
- Member of the Officers Team
- Member - at - Large
Richard Kelly is a Member-at-Large of ROPA, elected to the position in 2022.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Officers Team
- Member - at - Large of ROPA, Elected to the Position in 2022
Sharon Jones in a Member-at-Large of ROPA, elected to the position in 2022.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Board
Job Titles:
- Member of the Officers Team
- President of the Executive Board
- Ex - Officio
- Home / about / Officers / President
Oboist Stephen Wade has performed throughout New England with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the Connecticut Opera Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony Pro Musica, the Monadnock Music Festival Orchestra, the Nashua Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Virtuosi, the Cape Ann Symphony, Orchestra New England, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, among many others. He has been the featured soloist in concerti by J.S. Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Vaughn Williams, Samuel Barber, and William Bolcom. In 2011 he premiered the Concerto for Oboe and Wind Ensemble by Thomas Briggs with the United States Coast Guard Band, in which he improvised large areas of the jazz-oriented solo part. He and violinist Katheryn Winterstein have recorded Bach's Concerto for Oboe, Violin and Strings, BWV 1060, with The Boston Virtuosi. Mr. Wade retired as Principal Oboe of the United States Coast Guard Band after a 30-year career in 2012, and is currently the Assistant Principal Oboe of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He is on the faculty at Westfield State University in Westfield, MA.