Our Camp Teaching Artists
Sara Maria Blanton
Sara Maria Blanton is the founder and executive director of The Raleigh Music Collective as well as the executive director of the CODA Strings Camp. She graduated from Christopher Newport University (CNU) where she received her Bachelors of Music with a double concentration in violin performance and music education and a minor in leadership. She studied under Yun Zhang, the associate concert master of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra. While at CNU, she served for three yeas as the concert master in the CNU University Orchestra. She also played first violin for the CNU quartet and the CNU string ensemble. Her senior year at CNU, she won the CNU Concerto Competition and performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor with the CNU orchestra. She performs with The Raleigh Symphony, Durham Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, DITA Orchestra, and has recorded with artists such as Jess Ray, Mission House and Ryan of Sleeping at Last. Mrs. Blanton has been teaching private violin, viola, and cello lessons for over six years. She is a certified as a Bornoff Level I instructor.
Debbie Lyle
Debbie Lyle is the Executive Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of String Education (FASE Inc.) and the conductor of the Upper School Orchestras at St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville, VA. She has conducted school orchestras in grades five through twelve and directed regional youth orchestras for over 30 years. She was a violin and pedagogy student of Dr. George Bornoff, the founder of FASE, and over the last thirty-five years, has helped to realize Bornoff’s mission and vision. She is the author of The Bornoff Approach - A Primer, and teaches all levels of the Bornoff String Workshops for educators in the United States and abroad. Debbie has been a clinician and presented student ensembles in performance for over 25 colleges and string conferences. She attended the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford where she studied violin with Renato Bonacini and Raphael Bronstein and classroom pedagogy with Dr. Richard Rusack. As a young conductor in Minnesota in the 1990’s, she founded the strings program at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School. She continued her conducting studies with Jere Lanz, director of the Rochester Symphony and faculty for the Orchestra Institute of America.
Alexa Johnson
Alexa Rose Johnson is a performer, and a violin and viola teacher. She began the violin at her elementary school in New Hampshire at the age of nine. She participated in youth orchestras at the New England Conservatory as part of their Preparatory Program, as well as studied with various teachers there. She received her undergraduate degree in Music from Syracuse University, and her Masters in Violin Performance from the University of Houston. She has studied with Dr. Kirsten Yon, Dr. Peter Rovit, Antoine van Dongen, Jenny Stirling, the late Mimi Bravar, and Michelle Cronin. Before moving to the Raleigh area in 2019, she performed and taught in Houston, TX for seven years. Her teaching experience includes the Coda program (part of Houston Youth Symphony), which is an El Sistema based program that focuses on group lessons and orchestra. She also taught for the Melody program through Houston Youth Symphony, which offered free private lessons to elementary students who otherwise would not have had the opportunity. She has taught private violin and viola lessons to students of all ages since 2012.
Jacob Hermsen
Jacob Hermsen – holds postgraduate and undergraduate degrees in Viola Solo and Orchestra Performance from the Conservatory of Amsterdam, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and the Musik Hochschule ‘Carl Maria von Weber’ Dresden where he studied with Nobuko Imai (Vermeer Quartet), Vladimir Bukac (Talich Quartet), and Michael Gieler (Principal Violist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam). For more than 10 years, Jacob has been professionally engaged with orchestras and opera houses in The Netherlands, Germany, and Austria. He plays regularly with the North Carolina Symphony, Opera Carolina, Carolina Ballet, Carolina Philharmonic, and the Mallarmé Chamber Players. Jacob is a passionate chamber musician and co-founder of Vida Strings: a string quartet combining Music & Medicine through concerts, research, and workshops. He performed at festivals such as the ‘Grachtenfestival’ in Amsterdam, the ‘Palais Sommer Festival’ in Dresden, 'Music Academy of Villecroze' in Paris, 'Franco- Czech Academy of Music' in Telč, and NC State's 'Flourish Mental Health Festival'. Concert tours brought him to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic, France, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, and the USA. When he is not busy performing, Jacob is also a viola teaching artist with Kidznotes and the founder of NC Strings Studio.
Paige Capes
Paige graduated from the DePauw University School of Music and the studio of Eric Edberg with a Bachelor of Music and Business. Her concentration was cello performance, where she studied solo, orchestral, and chamber music repertoire. She also studied with Robert Jesselson at the SC Governors School of the Arts and Pamela Frame at Interlochen Arts Camp. Her work in the Arts has taken her to the SC Governors School for the Arts, the Atlanta Symphony, Royal Festival Hall in London, and Opera Carolina in Charlotte. Locally Paige has played improvisationally and recorded cello with singer-songwriters such Taylor Leonhardt, Jess Ray, Jonathan and Amanda Noel, Christa Wells, ALL TRIBES Music, and Jill Paquette. She also enjoys playing throughout the Triangle for weddings, private events and churches. As much as she loves her musical work, Paige’s greatest work in partnership with her husband Adam is being mom to four kids who also love music and playing a range of instruments. Paige and Adam met in a piano practice room at DePauw while connecting over Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.