Musical Director

Stephen A. Eva

Stephen A. Eva is a native Clevelander and graduate of Shaker Heights High School.  Mr. Eva, an accomplished trumpet player in his youth, attended The National Music Camp at Interlochen where he sustained nerve damage to his lip from overplaying.  His attention quickly turned to his true love, conducting.  Mr. Eva graduated from Grove City College with degrees in Economics and Philosophy where he organized and directed the first Jazz Ensemble.

For the past 25 years, Mr. Eva has been the conductor and driving force of the Hermit Club Symphony Orchestra (Cleveland’s premier performing arts club.)  Through the Hermit Club Orchestra, he has produced dozens of shows and conducted numerous large-scale symphonic works, concertos, chamber music, Musical Theater, choral and pops concerts.

As the founder of the Chagrin Falls Studio Orchestra, Steve Eva has joined forces with CVLT Don Edelman to produce four successful musical show featuring the full orchestra on stage including Guys and Dolls, Man of LaMancha, From Broadway with Love and Spotlight on Broadway.  Together with CVLT, Steve has established the Chagrin Christmas Wassail concert tradition now in its fourth season.  For each of four seasons, Mr. Eva has produced a Valentine’s show featuring world-class concert pianists including Sandra Shapiro, Anzehlika Fuks, and Dmitri Levkovich. In addition, he joined forces with local opera company founder Andrea Anelli to produce the first-ever concert version of the musical Camelot.  He is passionate about promoting the concert experience and live performing Arts.

He lives with his wife Marilyn in neighboring Auburn Township and is a dedicated father of 5 children.

Concertmaster

Michael Ferri, Violin

Michael Ferri was born in Treviglio, Italy in 1995.  He began his violin studies at age three in Madison, Wisconsin, and graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Artists Program in 2013 under the tutelage of Paul Kantor and Jaime Laredo.  Mr. Ferri is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Music Degree in Violin Performance with Paul Kantor at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University.  Additionally, he attended the Aspen Music Festival and School for four summers, Encore Chamber Music in Cleveland, and the Robert Mann String Quartet Institute with The Kamila Quartet.

Mr. Ferri performed Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as a result of winning the 2011 Duquesne Young Artist National Concerto Competition and has had multiple concerto engagements with the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra at Severance Hall.  In the fall of 2011, he performed on NPR’s celebrated series From the Top.

Mr. Ferri is a recipient of the Itzhak Perlman Endowed Scholarship in Violin, and the Paul Kantor and Larry Rachleff Prize to Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.  He is a past recipient of From the Top’s Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award, and the Starling Foundation Scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival and School.

Recently, Mr. Ferri took first prize in the 2016 Mika Hasler Young Artist Competition, and the 2016 Shepherd School of Music Concerto Competition.  Subsequently, he performed  Bela Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto with Larry Rachleff and the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra in February of 2017.  Additionally, Mr. Ferri was invited to take part in Da Camera of Houston’s production of A Proust Sonata, an interdisciplinary concert-theater work conceived and directed by Sarah Rothenberg.  There he collaborated with a Tony Award-winning design team to coordinate readings from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time to a rendition of Gabriel Faure’s First Violin Sonata performed with Ms. Rothenberg for the opening season of the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University. 

Mr. Ferri plays on a violin by Giuseppe Pedrazzini, Cremona, 1900 on generous loan from Florian Leonhard Fine Violins.