Co-Artistic Director

Applauded in London by the Sunday Times for performances of "great panache," pianist Gregory Martin has been featured throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan, including performances at Carnegie Recital Hall; collaborations with members of the Chicago, Detroit, and Indianapolis Symphonies, the New York Philharmonic, and the Dresden Staatskapelle; and the premieres of unpublished compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi. He is an active composer, co-artistic director of the Ronen Chamber Ensemble (Indianapolis), and Head of Academics and Piano at Music Across the Pond (UK). He has lectured at the University of Berlin, the Grieg Academy, and Oxford University, and is assistant professor at the University of Indianapolis.

Co-Artistic Director

Jennifer Christen, a Buffalo, NY native is the Principal Oboist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. She has performed as Guest Principal Oboe with the Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Baltimore and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras and as Guest English Horn with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Christen studied at the Juilliard School with John Mack, Nathan Hughes and Elaine Douvas. Before her time in Indianapolis, Ms. Christen spent a year in Miami Beach with the New World Symphony under Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.

She has also spent several summers with the Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, where she met her husband. As a former adjunct faculty at the University of Indianapolis, she has had the pleasure of working with students at the Verbier Music Camp, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and with students in various youth ensembles around Indianapolis. She enjoys traveling, good coffee, exploring local food, running, and creating memories with her husband and two little boys. She has an identical twin sister who plays the flute.

Co-Artistic Director

Alistair Howlett currently serves as Assistant Principal and Second Flute with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Prior to this, he held the positions of Principal Flute with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and Utility Flute with the Opera Australia Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. 

Howlett holds a Bachelor of Music from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and a Master’s in Performance from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich, where he studied under Professor András Adorján.

In addition to his orchestral work, Howlett is the co-artistic director of the Ronen Chamber Ensemble, which performs throughout the Indianapolis area.

An experienced educator, Howlett currently teaches at Butler University. He has held teaching positions at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, DePauw and Anderson Universities. 

Outside of music, Howlett supports Liverpool FC and the Buffalo Bills, enjoys playing tennis, and spending quality time with his family.

Composer

Rob Funkhouser is a composer and performer who follows his fascination with sound and love of making music into territory that comes off the page and into the communities around him. His practice weaves varied strands of exploration, including composition, solo performance, instrument building, education, and community music making into a canvas for musical and social exploration.

In recent years, Funkhouser has focused on writing chamber music and incorporating his own invented musical instruments into larger classical works; since 2024, he has premiered four orchestra works that use these creations, including the Gravity Harp and the Glass Organ. Parallel to this, Funkhouser has pursued large-scale installation work. The two largest projects of recent years are Sound Field, a 48 channel sound system that fully articulates to fit any space, and Frank N Steam, an interactive hot dog cart that generates music from cooking and audience interaction. Recent supporters and commissioners of his work include the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Ronen Chamber Ensemble, the Creative Risk Fund, and the Power Plant Grant Program, among others.

Guest Musician

Melissa Deal joined the Indianapolis Symphony in 2020. She has previously performed with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh, Houston and Atlanta Symphonies. Festival experiences include Verbier Festival, Spoleto Festival, Aspen Music Festival and National Repertory Orchestra. A memorable career highlight is performing as a soloist with the Orquésta Sinfónica Nacíonal de Cuba in Havana, sponsored by the Nachito Herrera Foundation.

Melissa is a passionate chamber musician and educator. She led educational outreach programs for the Cleveland Chamber Society and the Strings Music Festival. Melissa holds degrees from Cleveland Institute of Music and Rice University. Her influential teachers include Kathleen Winkler, Sally O’Reilly and Mary West. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking and running with her dog, Jasper.

Guest Musician

Known for his “beautiful control, tremendous energy and thoughtful musicality" (Violinist) and “tone projected miraculously” (Strings), violist Zhanbo Zheng was the first Chinese to win the Primrose International Viola Competition. He has also taken top prizes in other major competitions, including the Irving M. Klein International String Competition and the Washington International Competition for Strings. He was also a recipient of the Emerging Artist Award from the Saint Botolph Club Foundation.

An avid chamber musician, Zheng has collaborated with distinguished artists, such as Midori, Jonathan Biss, Anthony McGill, Gary Hoffman. He has been invited to perform at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society as a guest artist, and his music festival appearances include Marlboro Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Verbier Music Festival Academy, Krzyżowa-Music Festival, Caramoor Evnin Rising Stars, and Cleveland ChamberFest. With his extensive touring experience, including the national tours with Musicians from Marlboro, Ravinia Steans Music Institute Spring Tour, and A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra, Zheng has performed in leading venues such as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, and Kaufman Music Center.

As a soloist, Zheng has performed with orchestras such as the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, China Broadcasting Performing Arts Orchestra, and EOS Repertoire Orchestra of CCOM. In 2014, sent by the Ministry of Culture, he was selected for an exchange activity between China and Germany, hosted by China Education Association for International Exchange. He has also participated in the recording project “My Concert Hall — The Classical Music Appreciation,” which was proposed by Li Lanqing, the former Premier of the State Council of China.

Zheng earned his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Kim Kashkashian, Miriam Fried, and Dominique Eade. He was a recipient of NEC’s prestigious Presidential Scholarship and graduated with top Academic Honors. He also holds an Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School, where he was mentored by Paul Neubauer. In 2024, Zheng joined the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra as Associate Principal Viola.