ARTISTIC DIRECTORS

Joana Genova, violin

Bulgarian-born violinist Joana Genova has built a diverse career as a chamber and orchestral musician, soloist, and pedagogue. She is co-artistic director of Taconic Music in Manchester, Vermont and currently teaches as Adjunct Professor at Montclair State University, Artist Associate at Williams College and Violin Instructor at Bennington College.  Joana is the second violinist of the critically acclaimed The Indianapolis Quartet, concertizes with Williams and Taconic Chamber Players, and appears as a frequent guest at festivals and concert series. She served as Assistant Professor and Director of string activities at the University of Indianapolis from 2017 to 2022.
She has performed internationally in Bulgaria, Holland, Germany, Italy, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and has enjoyed collaborations with the Shanghai Quartet, Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, Horszowski Trio, Enso Quartet, Toby Appel, Andrés Cárdenes, Carmit Zori, Nathaniel Rosen, Nathaniel Parke, Michael Haber, Danwen Jiang, Austin Hartman, Renee Jolles, Michael Rudiakov, Tom Landschoot, Sophie Shao, Jon Klibonoff, Ruth Laredo, Davide Cabassi, David Krakauer, Deborah Buck, Hannah Holman, Drew Petersen, Gili Melamed-Lev, and Willis Delony, among others.

Her recordings include Chamber Music of Vittorio Giannini (MSR Classics), Vision: Music of the 20th and 21st Centuries (Eroica Classical Recordings) and Four Seasons x2: Piazzolla and Vivaldi (Manchester Music Festival), Reflections and Whimsies: Chamber Music for Strings and Voice by Frank Felice and Robert Paterson’s String Quartets 1-3. She has appeared live on GNAT-TV and CAT-TV in Vermont, Wish TV Indianapolis, WQXR Albany, Vermont Public Radio-Live, WBAA and WICR in Indiana. Joana and pianist Willis Delony recorded the complete violin sonatas of Stephen Dankner which was released in 2024.

As soloist, Joana has been featured with the Metropolitan, Rockaway, Danbury, and Berkshire symphonies, Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Harlem Chamber Players, Manchester Festival Orchestra, Yonkers Philharmonic, and under the baton of Raymond Leppard with the University of Indianapolis Gala Orchestra.  Joana has been principal second violin of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra in Massachusetts since 2007 and was a member of Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Brooklyn Philharmonic and New Haven Symphony. She has appeared as a guest concertmaster of Carmel Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic and Viva Bach Festival.

Joana made her solo debut at age 12 with the Plovdiv Chamber Orchestra and is a top prizewinner of the Svetoslav Obretenov National Competition in Bulgaria. She earned her bachelor’s degree at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and her master’s in chamber music at the Rotterdam Conservatory. Her teachers include Boyanka Shopova, Alexander Spirov, Peter Brunt, Ilya Grubert, and Samuel Thaviu. Joana performs on a Johannes Cuypers violin made in The Hague in 1786.

Ariel Rudiakov, viola and conductor

Violist and conductor Ariel Rudiakov is co-founder and artistic director of Taconic Music; Music director and conductor of the Danbury Symphony Orchestra and Yonkers Philharmonic, and Assistant conductor of Greenwich Symphony Orchestra.
Ariel attended pre-college at Manhattan School of Music and went on to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees at SUNY Purchase and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a scholarship student at Yale’s master’s program, where he studied performance with Jessie Levine and chamber music with members of the Tokyo String Quartet. He enjoys a diverse musical life, performing to critical acclaim throughout the U.S. and abroad with many fine musicians and ensembles, including the Shanghai, Jupiter and Indianapolis Quartets, current and former members of the Tokyo, Juilliard and Guarneri quartets, pianists Ruth Laredo, David Deveau, Michael Brown, Andre Michel Schub, and Drew Peterson, among many others. He is a former member of the New York Piano Quartet and Equinox String Quartet, and a founding member and president of SONYC (String Orchestra of New York City).

Ariel Rudiakov was Artistic Director of the Manchester Music Festival from 2000 to 2016 and adjunct faculty at the University of Indianapolis, where he conducted the chamber orchestra and coached chamber music. from 2017 to 2022. Among his recordings are the complete string quartets by Camille Saint-Saëns and the piano quintet by Vittorio Giannini (MSR Classics), which Fanfare Magazine described as “utterly superb”.  Composers Richard Lane, Philip Lasser, and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson have dedicated works to Ariel, who is active in commissioning and recording new music. At the podium, he has collaborated with noted musicians Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Michael Rudiakov, Bernard Greenhouse, David Deveau, Christopher O’Reilly, and others. Resident and guest conducting positions have included the Adelphi Chamber Orchestra, Metropolitan Symphony, Bergen, and Yonkers Philharmonics, Antara Ensemble, Manchester Chamber Orchestra, Harlem Chamber Players, Sage City Symphony and recording sessions with Dance Theater of Harlem.

Ariel plays a viola made by Geoffrey Ovington in 2000.

ADMINISTRATION

Jane Duda, Communications Director

New York City native Jane Duda spent her elementary and high school years in the small Bergen County, New Jersey community of Radburn. She attended Bryn Mawr College, concentrating in studio art and Romance languages, and earned her B.F.A. in design with a minor in art history from William Paterson University, cum laude.

Jane began her career in advertising working for two Philadelphia-area ad agencies; she was later recruited by Deb Shops to become the 350-store chain’s advertising director. After a few years she made the leap into solo practice, married a Vermonter, and moved her practice north to the village of Wallingford, where she and her family have been happily ensconced in a series of eternal fixer-uppers ever since.

Over time, Jane found that her clients, who were typically startups or entrepreneurial businesses, often needed more than just a good designer. They needed help with their written communications, with strategy, and, often, with managing projects or events. With her advertising management background coupled with a design degree and extensive writing experience, Jane found herself becoming by turns a one-woman agency and an out-of-house marketing department, roles she continues to fill to this day, although many of her clients are now larger businesses and nonprofit organizations. When she’s not helping Taconic Music and a select roster of clients put their best communications foot forward, Jane is a prolific baker of cookies and other sweets.

Outside a yearlong hiatus in 2022–23, Jane has been the Communications Director for Taconic Music since 2017.