Our Leaders
Board of Directors
LAURENCE LEWIS | President
Laurence is a violinist and violist and has played with BARS since 2015. He grew up in Virginia and started playing violin at the age of 9 and viola as an adult. Laurence has degrees in civil engineering and urban planning and works as a transportation planner with Kittelson & Associates. Laurence lives in Oakland with his husband, Mark.
GENE NAKAJIMA | Vice President
Gene is a psychiatrist at the Center for Special Problems in San Francisco. He attended medical school at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Ignatius Gennusa at the Peabody Conservatory.
KEN SCHOON | Director
Ken (he/him) was raised in a musical family by professional bassoonists and studied cello with Anthony Elliott at the University of Michigan and Lee Fiser at the University of Cincinnati. He joined BARS in 2017 and shortly afterward met his husband George, who is also a member of BARS.
Ken holds a B.S. in Urban Studies from the University of Cincinnati and an M.Div. from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. He is an ordained minister and is completing his doctoral studies in the Anthropology of Religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where his research interests include pilgrimage, decolonial studies, and Asian American liberation theology.
JACK MADDEN | Director
Jack studied bass trombone performance at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied under James DeSano, former principal trombone of the Cleveland Orchestra. He has been a member of BARS since 2015, and is active in the Bay Area community music scene. By day, Jack works in marketing at a software company.
SAM INGELMAN | Director
MICHELLE RUTTIMAN | Director
Michelle Ruttimann studied at San Francisco State University finishing with a double major Bachelors degrees in Music and Psychology. She has played with many groups around the Bay Area including the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in San Francisco, Nava Dance, Golden Gate Symphony, the San Francisco Philharmonic, and the Civic Symphony. She involves herself in numerous community events through San Francisco State University including middle school and high school string festivals, competitions, and performances. Currently Michelle is living and working in Switzerland as an intern at a special education school and hopes to continue her studies as an occupational therapist while incorporating musical pedagogy into her work.
TED WYDER | Director
Ted grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he began playing cello while in middle school. He played in various orchestras over the years with only a brief break in graduate school. He has been a member of the BARS cello section since moving to San Francisco in 2013. Outside of music, Ted obtained a BA in Physics from Carleton College and then went on to earn a PhD in Astronomy at the University of Washington. After working as a research astronomer, he switched careers and now works as a data scientist for Google. He is also an avid runner and has previously served on the board of San Francisco Frontrunners. He currently lives in San Francisco with his partner Will.
HANS BRIGHTBILL | Director
Hans Brightbill Ph.D. is a research scientist at Genentech studying the molecular mechanisms underlying inflammatory disease. Hans joined BARS in 2008 and has served on the Board and as co-principal cello in the orchestra. Along with degrees in Biological Sciences (B.S., UC Irvine) and Immunology (Ph.D., UCLA), Hans earned a degree in cello performance (B.M.) and has continued to play throughout his life. In addition to BARS, Hans is principal cello of two other Bay Area community orchestras. In the past few years, Hans was the featured soloist for performances of Bloch’s Schelomo and in June toured Costa Rica with the Sonoma County Philharmonic performing the Elgar Cello Concerto. Hans lives in San Francisco with his husband Anthony.
Music Director Emerita
DAWN HARMS | Music Director Emerita
Dawn Harms’ very diverse career ranges from being a chamber musician, violin soloist, concertmaster, and conductor. Dawn is a member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Associate Concertmaster for the New Century Chamber Orchestra and Co-Concertmaster with the Oakland East Bay Symphony.
She also is the Music Director and conductor of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony. She also records regularly at Skywalker Ranch Studios on sound tracks for movies and video games.
Ms. Harms was chosen as a Fellow at the exclusive American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival. Her guest conducting engagements include appearances with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, the Livermore Amador Symphony, Symphony Parnassus, Fremont Symphony, Grass Valley Summer Music Festival, and with the San Francisco opera orchestra. She was also invited to conduct the extra shorts on the film ratatouille, which are found exclusively on the DVD.
Dawn has performed chamber music with Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg. Frederica Von Stade, Eugenia Zukerman and Lynn Harrell. She has premiered works with and by by Jake Heggie, and has been featured on many of his recordings. She won grand prize at the Fischoff chamber music competition as the first violins of the Harrington string quartet.
A strong advocate for Music education, she was music director and conductor of the Amarillo Youth Orchestra. She designs and performs her own family show throughout the United States, New Zealand, and Japan. Dawn has performed her one-woman family show with the Lincoln Symphony in Nebraska, the Oakland Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, and the Bear Valley Music Festival.
She conducts the prep dept string orchestra, at the San Francisco conservatory of music.
She also teaches at Stanford University.