Maggie McKenna
Violin I

Maggie McKenna is the Executive Director of the St. Lawrence County Arts Council. She is a community engagement professional who has worked in nonprofit arts and community organizations for the past five years. 

Maggie holds a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance and Mathematics from SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music and an Masters in Business Administration from Clarkson University. She has served as the executive director of the Potsdam Chamber of Commerce and in other program management roles at the Potsdam Public Library and Traditional Arts of Upstate NY. Maggie has also held roles in sales, marketing, and technical support. She is an enthusiastic planner and communicator and an online marketing whiz. She has served on the board of the Village of Potsdam and the Potsdam Food Co-op. She has been a regular member of the first violin section in the Orchestra of Northern New York since her undergraduate years at Crane, and she performs popular cover songs with her husband on guitar.

Maggie lives in Potsdam with her husband, Matt, their two young children, Charlotte and Penny, her mother-in-law, Sherri, and their chihuahua, Tristan. She enjoys teaching and playing violin, tending her indoor plant jungle, participating in community events, and sharing meals with friends and family.

Jennifer Kessler
Violin II

Jennifer Kessler is a Lecturer of Music Education at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. Jennifer received the Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance from the Crane School of Music and the Master of Arts degree in Elementary Education from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. At Crane, she currently teaches foundations courses in Music Education and is a supervisor for the General Music Practicum.

Before coming to Crane, Jennifer’s professional career included teaching in Williamsburg, VA for 5 years as the first teacher/director for a new elementary strings program. While in this position, she maintained a private violin studio, was a member of the Williamsburg Youth Orchestra Board of Directors and worked as a free-lance violinist around the Hampton Roads/Tidewater area. After relocating to New York State, she directed the 5th grade strings program for the Warwick Valley Central School District in Orange County and then worked in Potsdam, directing the strings program for grades 5-12. Her career also includes teaching 4 years of General Music to grades PK-6. Her writing has been published in the American Strings Teacher Association (ASTA) journal.

Erin Brooks
Viola

Erin M. Brooks is an Associate Professor of Music History at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. Erin is a musicologist specializing in multimedia genres such as opera, incidental music, and film music. Her research focuses on musics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with interests in transnational reception history, memory, gesture, the voice, embodiment, and gender. She earned her Ph.D. in Musicology from Washington University in St. Louis, where her dissertation analyzed relationships between French actress Sarah Bernhardt and fin-de-siécle musical culture.

Erin has published articles on the operas of Camille Saint-Saeëns and the relationship between theater music and early film; she is currently completing works on memory and performance in Tosca and stage music and trauma during World War I. She has presented her research at conferences on Saint-Saëns (Centro Luigi Boccherini, Lucca), The Music of War (British Library, London), and Music and Antiquity (Massenet Festival, Saint-Étienne), as well as national and regional meetings of the American Musicological Society and the North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music.\

Erin graduated with a B.A. in music, summa cum laude, from the University of Arkansas and continues to perform on the viola and viola da gamba. Prior to joining the Crane School faculty in 2016, she taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, The Colburn School (Los Angeles), and UCLA. She has also worked with precollege and continuing studies programs at several institutions. Erin has taught courses on a wide variety of topics, including music history surveys, music appreciation, and musics of the world, as well as seminars on opera, music and games, and music and gender.

Robert K. Docker
Cello

Robert K. Docker is an Associate Professor of Music Education at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam where he teaches orchestra methods courses and supervises student teachers.  He previously held positions at the University of Arkansas, Penn State University, and UNC-Greensboro. Prior to his college teaching career, he spent a decade as an orchestra director in North Carolina and Virginia.

Robert earned a Ph.D. in music education and sociology from Penn State University where he held a University Fellowship, and holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in music education from UNC-Greensboro. He studied cello with Stephen Ballou, Kim Cook and Elizabeth Anderson.

In addition to his work with the Carriage House Quartet, he also performs as a cellist with the Orchestra of Northern New York and as a violinist with the St. Lawrence Symphony. Previously he served as principal cellist with the Altoona Symphony (PA), the Fayetteville Opera Company (AR) and the Broach Theatre Company (NC) and has performed professionally with the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra and the Lynchburg Symphony Orchestra (VA).  He is active as a chamber musician, previously serving as cellist for the Ashland String Quartet and Butler Trio. As a soloist he has performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe.  He has a passion for modern musics and folk musics, traditional fiddle and guitar music and folk art.  He lives in a grand old Victorian home with a lovely carriage house in Norwood NY with his wife and a cat named Esmé.