BIOGRAPHIES
A native of Oklahoma City, cellist Wesley Hornpetrie now enjoys performing, collaborating, and teaching around the Midwest region. She is mostly active as a member of ensembles and collectives, including Girlnoise, Virago, and her new music cello quartet, Hole in the Floor. Additionally, Wesley is the director of Ann Arbor-based concert series, The Third Place Concert Series, a music series that presents local musicians in "third spaces."
Most recently, she has collaborated with composers including Bryce Dessner, Annika Socolofsky, Tanner Porter, and ensembles including Roomful of Teeth. Wesley has been featured on numerous music festivals, including New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music, the Midwest Composers Symposium, Novus New Music, Inc. and GrandStand Music Festival, among others. As an educator, she has worked with young cellists at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, Sewanee Summer Music Festival String Academy, and has been the mentor with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Civic Youth Ensembles. Wesley holds degrees from The University of Michigan and Oklahoma City University, studying with Anthony Elliott and Tomasz Zieba.
BethAnne Kunert is the founder and saxophonist of Virago. She has performed as a featured soloist with orchestras including the Music Academy of the West Festival Orchestra, Midland Symphony, Royal Oak Symphony, and the University of Michigan Philharmonic Orchestra. Enthusiastic about contemporary music, BethAnne has performed with Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings, the University of Michigan’s Contemporary Directions Ensemble, Creative Arts Orchestra, on New Music Detroit’s Strange Beautiful Music Festival, and has premiered several new works by composers including George Lewis, Michael Malis, Nina Shekhar, Karalyn Schubring and Harriet Steinke. BethAnne holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University. Her primary teachers have been Timothy McAllister and John Nichol. Aside from being a performer, BethAnne serves as the Associate Director of Development at Michigan State University’s College of Music.
Detroit-based violinist and violist Meg Rohrer (they/them) loves to explore newly composed music, improvisation, interdisciplinary projects, and traditional classical repertoire. In addition to being the violinist and violist of Virago, Rohrer is the violinist of Hub New Music, a touring quartet dedicated to commissioning and performing new chamber music repertoire. They also share violin and viola duties in the Kalkaska String Quartet. Rohrer is a member of the Lansing Symphony Orchestra and the Jackson Symphony Orchestra and has appeared as a soloist with the National Chinese Orchestra of Taiwan. A Suzuki-certified educator passionate about increasing accessibility of music education, Meg has trained with Mimi Zweig and Mark Mutter and has taught through the Sphinx Organization, Crescendo Detroit, the Crowden Music Center, and The People’s Music School in Chicago.
Meg earned their masters degree at the University of Michigan studying with Danielle Belen and Caroline Coade, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University where they studied with Blair Milton. When not performing or teaching, Meg can often be found baking sourdough bread.
Sofia Carbonara is a percussionist based in Detroit, Michigan. They perform with mixed-chamber ensemble Virago, collaborate with theater, dance, visual art, and poetry, and write and perform their own compositions.
Listening for Bells, Virago’s “bright, exuberant” debut EP in collaboration with composer Harriet Steinke, was released in January 2022. Virago’s EP in collaboration with composer Michael Malis, From Darkness We Awaken, was released in August 2022 on MADE NOW MUSIC.
Sofia’s most recent solo work, Flight, debuted at Tympanum and the Third Place [MusicFest] in August 2021. This 30 minute theatrical percussion piece interweaves their father discussing pleasure, culture, addiction, and a reoccurring dream of flying, with Sofia’s own music and actions. Flight has been adapted for short film with videographer Matt Lima, and was released in May 2022.
Sofia designs collaborative, interdisciplinary works with artists in their community. Sound, Paper and Process was co-created by Virago and Megan Heeres for the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in June 2022. Sofia co-directs ongoing site-specific micro-cinema with A.W.E. Society, The Infinite Detail of this Place and Time, which was featured on University Music Society’s Parable Path A2 Ypsi in March 2022. They worked with Angela Schöpke-Gonzales to design and present Texture, an interactive tactile installation investigating co-created embodied experience, in 2021. Sofia worked with directors Milo Miller and Zoha Bharwani in scoring sound for theatre, as well as developed works for sound and movement with Hannah Marcus.
As an administrator, Sofia serves as Institutional Giving Associate for ArtOps, where they serve small to medium sized arts nonprofits in Southeastern Michigan in grant-writing, reporting, and stewardship. With Virago they have co-facilitated free improvisation workshops for k-12 students.
Sofia received their Bachelor of Music in percussion from the University of Michigan. Other studies include: AAO Creative Music Intensive, Banff Workshop for Jazz and Creative Music, Trinity Laban Colab Immersion, Bowdoin International Music Festival, and study of yoga and Carnatic music in Mysore, India. You can reach Sofia at sofiacarbonara.com.