Douglas Rioth is the former Principal Harp of the San Francisco Symphony, a position he held for nearly 41 years. A dedicated orchestral player and teacher, he served as Professor of Harp at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 2007-2022 and was the Harp Coach for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra from its founding in 1981 until his retirement in 2022. Prior appointments include Principal Harp of the Indianapolis Symphony (1975-1981). As a soloist, Mr. Rioth has performed with the San Francisco Symphony in works by Mozart, Ginastera, Debussy, Handel and Frank Martin, and he has appeared many times in their Chamber Music Series and in Wondrous Sounds of Christmas concerts.

Born in Marceline, Missouri in 1953, Mr. Rioth began piano studies at age 6 and harp studies at 15 at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Graduating with a duo major in harp and piano, Rioth continued his studies with Alice Chalifoux at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and enjoyed further studies at the Berkshire Music Center as a fellowship student. He continued his close association with Miss Chalifoux until her death in 2008. Almost every summer he attended the Salzedo School in Camden Maine, where Miss Chalifoux taught during the summer months.

He now splits his time between Rancho Mirage, California and Carrollton, Missouri. His partner, Kenneth Mikos, is a well known Deaf Educator, being the author of Signing Naturally, a widely used American Sign Language, Curriculum series.

Cassia Kite is an interdisciplinary artist who created Soundstitching, a multimedia project that transforms color from a hand-stitched image into a musical composition that can be interpreted by a musician and/or performance artist. Kite has collaboratively produced large-scale work for chamber ensemble and dancers using color-coded graphic scores derived from her hand-stitched tapestries. Kite’s work was premiered at the KANEKO in Omaha, Nebraska in July of 2017. She has been featured as an experimental composer and visual artist in music festivals, museums and universities. Kite has been awarded artist in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in 2018 and The Hambidge Creative Residency Program in 2019. She is the recipient of the Paul J. Smith Excellence in Fibers Award from the Fiber Art Network 2018, the Dixon Ticonderoga Award of Excellence from the Florida Art Education Association in 2019, Sarasota Art Educators Association Award from the Florida Art Education Association in 2021 and the Ringling College of Art and Design Award in 2022.

Kite was born in Auburn, Nebraska. She earned a B.F.A in painting and sculpture, and a B.S. in Art Education from Northwest Missouri State University in 2003. She completed her M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Florida in 2010. Currently, Kite is the Cross-Curricular Liaison and a Visual Art Instructor at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida and resides in Sarasota, FL. She will be leading the workshop participants in a special Soundstitching art class.

Patrice Lockhart, MD has honed expertise in several areas: music, medicine, mothering, philanthropy and yoga. Her current chapter is weaving all of these threads together. Patrice is a newly certified yoga teacher who plays in great halls around the world with the World Doctors Orchestra, works as a psychiatrist with organ transplant patients, and dotes on her several grandchildren.

Now a resident of Gorham, Maine, Patrice spent much of the earlier part of her life in music and the midwest having attended Wooster College and furthering her studies of the harp at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Alice Chalifoux. A long-time resident of Omaha, NE, she has performed with the Omaha and Oklahoma Symphonies and has maintained a community of harpists in her "studio" over the years. Desiring a career change, she went back to medical school in her mid-40s' (and 3 young kids) and attained her MD from the University of Nebraska-Omaha College of Medicine. She was selected to do her rotations at the Maine Medical Center and once she and her family made the move, it fulfilled a life-long dream of hers to live on the coast in Maine.

As a harpist for the World Doctors Orchestra, her most recent trip was to Costa Rica with the next adventure to Romania. Each trip serves to raise money for medical charity to aid the citizens of those countries. In addition to her international travels, she regularly visits her grandchildren in Colorado and Massachusetts. At this summer’s workshop, Patrice will be leading yoga practice for the workshop participants and the community of Brownville.