DR. DAVID WALLACE
Dr. David Wallace improvises solos like “Jimmy Page fronting Led Zeppelin” (New York Times). An award-winning composer and an internationally-performing multi-style musician, David chairs Berklee College of Music’s String Department. Previously, he enjoyed fourteen years as Juilliard professor, and seventeen years as New York Philharmonic Teaching Artist.
David’s Texas-style string band, The Doc Wallace Trio has performed with the same three members since 1999, and has released two acclaimed live albums (Live at the Living Room and Live at the Cornelia Street Café). His classical flute-viola-harp trio Hat Trick received a 2018 Grammy nod as their debut record, Garden of Joys and Sorrows, was one of nine records earning David Frost a Producer of the Year, Classical Grammy. Hat Trick followed this success with 2024’s acclaimed Big Sky. David also records and performs with klezmer world-fusion band, Yale Strom’s Broken Consort and The Chuck & David Show, an electric violin project with Chuck Bontrager.
A master teaching artist, David has performed, consulted, and authored curricula for dozens of performing arts institutions, including Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Tanglewood Music Festival. He was honored with the inaugural Robert Sherman Prize for Music Education and Community Outreach, and named a 2022-2024 Hermitage Fellow. Symphony Magazine declares his Berklee Press book Engaging the Concert Audience: A Musician’s Guide to Interactive Performance “an invaluable manual for all musicians, classical or otherwise.”
David earned his D.M.A. in Viola Performance from the Juilliard School, where he served as Teaching Assistant to the legendary Karen Tuttle. Learn and hear more at docwallacemusic.com
DR. CHUCK BONTRAGER
Dr. Chuck Bontrager is the very definition of the 21st-century musician: highly Classically trained, experienced in multiple performance styles, and fluent in several variations of his instrument—viola, violin, baritone viola (chin-cello), mandolin and mandola—and his electric violins. In addition to his Master’s degrees in acoustics and electrics, he received the first-ever Doctorate in electric violin performance in May of 2025. He has been part integral part of MWROC from the beginning 16 years ago.
Chuck currently serves as Concertmaster of the national touring company of Moulin Rouge! The Musical and has logged over 6,000 performances across more than 45 theatrical productions in Chicago and on Broadway. He has received performance invitations from every major symphony orchestra in the Chicago area, served as string captain with Chicago tribute giants Tributosaurus, and played rhythm and leads in heavy-prog stalwarts Nomadic Horizon and Vicarious TOOL Tribute.
While capable as a performer, arranger, and conductor, he is also a technologist and instructor dedicated to the advancement of his instrument and the education of new generations. He is the founder and proprietor of Orchestral Evolutions LLC., providing bowed strings, processing, and programming for film scores, theatrical companies, and touring productions of all styles and genres. He also curates the Creator’s Guide to Amplified Strings (CGAS), a YouTube channel (additional platform channels pending) promoting the vast sonic capabilities of modern string processing to composers, arrangers and orchestrators, talent agents, and studio bosses and band leaders.
Chuck teaches in the Multi-Styles Strings program at New Jersey City University, at Columbia College Chicago, and privately online. He is an experienced private lesson and group class teacher, chamber coach, band instructor, and clinician; his Bowed Metal demonstrations are a frequent addition to school curricula, most recently at the Merit School of Music in Chicago and the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
