Ms. Horn previously served as President of the Board of Trustees for the S.T.A.R. Foundation of Monterey County and as Artistic Director for Chamber Music Monterey Bay. She founded and was the Music Director of the Chamber Players of Youth Music Monterey County for over a decade.

As a musician, Erica has been performing and teaching music since 1980. She received a Bachelors of Music Degree in Clarinet Performance from California State University at Fullerton. While there, as a student of Kalman Bloch, then principal clarinet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, she had the honor of playing next to him on many occasions. Ms. Horn later studied with Yehuda Gilad at the Colbern School in Los Angeles, Bil Jackson at the Aspen Music Festival, and Anthony Gigliotti of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Ms. Horn performed with the Pacific Symphony, San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, San Diego Civic Light Opera, Long Beach Ballet, and the Long Beach Municipal Band, among many others. Since moving to paradise, she can be seen and heard locally with Ensemble Monterey Chamber Orchestra, I Cantori Di Carmel, and Espressivo in Santa Cruz.

When not practicing, she is most often found in a swimming pool or cooking.

Georgia A. Hughes is the longtime editorial director at New World Library, an independent publisher known for impactful nonfiction titles such as The Power of Now. For over 26 years, Georgia has acquired and edited books in the areas of spirituality, personal growth, sustainable business, health and well-being, relationships, animals, and women’s issues. She also oversees the editorial department, managing both in-house staff and freelance editors.

Georgia is deeply committed to publishing books that help readers transform their lives and the world around them, and she champions projects that reflect diversity, inclusion, and purpose-driven storytelling. Acquisitions include Hagitude by Sharon Blackie, The Eloquence of Silence by Thomas Moore, Bones & Honey by Danielle Dulsky, Writing That Gets Noticed by Estelle Erasmus, Say It Out Loud by Vasavi Kumar, Growing Big Dreams by Robert Moss, Talking on Eggshells by Sam Horn, Let It Be Easy by Susie Moore, The Language Your Body Speaks by Ellen Meredith, and Permission Granted by Regina Louise.

Before joining New World Library, Georgia worked at HarperCollins, Prima Publishing, as a freelance editor, and as a bookseller.

Outside of her editorial life, Georgia is an amateur bassoonist who has performed with community orchestras, bands, and chamber groups throughout the Bay Area and Monterey County.

Dr. Leslie Foote is a physician specializing in Family Medicine with a practice in Salinas, California.

A lifelong amateur musician, Dr. Foote performs locally with the MPC Concert Band and the Monterey Flute Ensemble.

She enjoys gardening and traveling. She is a regular attendee of the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in Oregon.

Peter has been on the Ensemble Monterey Board of Directors for 5 years and served as co-Executive Director in 2020-21. He is a well-known Bay Area oboist and bona fide member of the “Freeway Philharmonic,” having driven to play in most of the orchestras from Mendocino to Modesto over the past 35 years. 

He has been Principal Oboe with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra for 20 years, the San Francisco Opera Center Orchestra for 30 years (including 7 opera tours to the East Coast), and Ensemble Monterey Chamber Orchestra for 18 years. He also served as Principal Oboe in West Bay Opera for 30 years, Acting Principal Oboe for the Reno Philharmonic, substitute Principal for the San Francisco Opera’s performances of Rake’s Progress, Madama Butterfly, and Daughter of the Regiment, and 3rd oboe for Wagner’s Ring cycles. 

Locally, he often plays with the Monterey and Santa Cruz symphonies and the Carmel Bach Festival (on both Baroque and modern double reeds). In addition, he has been a featured soloist with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and Ensemble Monterey, as well as a guest artist with the Stanford University Woodwind Quintet and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. 

He received his Bachelor of Music degree in Performance from San Francisco State University. His teachers have included Mark Lifschey, John Mack, and Ellie and Ray Duste. Before becoming a full-time musician, Peter worked at Kidder Peabody and obtained a Series 7 broker’s license. 

During his free time, Peter can be found in his oboe cave making oboe reeds and arranging double reed quartets, reading about World War II history and the Kennedy assassination, and browsing in old record shops.

Debbie has played oboe/English horn with Ensemble Monterey for 20 years, and served as co-executive director in 2020, along with Peter Lemberg. She also plays with orchestras Espressivo, Monterey Bay Pops, I Cantori di Carmel, and several other choral groups around the Monterey and the San Francisco Bay areas.

She studied oboe with Louis Rosenblatt (former English horn in the Philadelphia Orchestra) and at Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Wisconsin. She taught oboe (and English – the language, not the horn) for two years in Japan, played Principal Oboe in several university orchestras, the Paradise and Chico symphony orchestras, and the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra. With advanced degrees in applied linguistics (M.A from UCLA, Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, a Certificate in Japanese from Cornell University), Debbie has taught at several universities, including Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Villanova University, Chico and San Jose State University, Naval Postgraduate School, Czech Tech University in Prague, and at a junior college in Kobe, Japan.

She moved from her hometown outside of Philadelphia to Chico 25 years ago, and then to Monterey to manage the Persian-Farsi curriculum development project contracted at Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS). She was most recently a full-time consultant in the Language Policy and Leadership Office of the California Department of Education in Sacramento.

In her free time, Debbie likes to (can you guess?) learn languages and organize people’s houses. She also volunteers at the Sunset Center in Carmel and is a house manager for the Carmel Bach Festival.