2021 Women Composers Festival in Hartford Ensemble-in-Residence, the Craft Ensemble is devoted to championing music by women composers. The group’s repertoire includes music by Purcell and Beethoven, as well as by living composers such as Elliot Cole, Jessie Montgomery, Paul Moravec, and Osnat Netzer. We relish discovering rarely performed gems, such as the quartet works of Imogen Holst and Elizabeth Maconchy. In 2017 the Craft Ensemble gave the US premier of Oscar-winning film composer Gabriel Yared's luscious "Camille Claudel" String Sextets.

The ensemble has been featured at many New England series and venues, including Boston Philharmonic’s Community Outreach Series, the 350th Anniversary Celebration for Salem’s House of Seven Gables, the Wilson Series in Newburyport, Nashua Public Library AND Indian Hill Music’s “Bach’s Lunch” Series (it’s too good a pun not to use twice, apparently), Trinity College in Hartford, and Salem Classical.

The Crafties came together to play Schubert's great C-major Cello Quintet in an Interpretations Masterclass with Ben Zander in early 2016. Since then, we have performed all over New England, as trio, string- and clarinet-quartet, piano- and cello-quintet, and string sextet. The Craft Ensemble comprises a core string quartet of Colleen Brannen and Amy Sims on violin, violist Amelia Hollander Ames, and Velleda Miragias on cello. We are all busy freelancers in the Boston area, with engagements at A Far Cry, Evan Ziporyn’s “Ambient Orchestra,” Boston Baroque, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Philharmonic, Handel & Haydn Society, Odyssey Opera, Orchestra of Indian Hill, the Portland Symphony, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic, as well as frequent "away" projects.

We hope you will join us on our musical adventures. Chamber music feeds our souls, and there's nothing we love more than sharing it with each other, and with you!