Featured Instrumentalists

Jacob Fowler

New Orleans-based cellist Jacob Fowler is the Founding Director of the Surf and Sounds Chamber Music Series (Outer Banks, North Carolina), and frequently performs with the Houston and San Antonio Symphonies and Louisiana Philharmonic. He is also a Festival Artist at the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in New Orleans, where he has performed with members of the Manhattan Chamber Players, Dover and Escher Quartets and the Lysander Trio. Mr. Fowler is a former tenured member of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and former Principal Cellist of the Shen Yun Performing Arts Orchestra, with which he travelled throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Along with these appointments, he was an adjunct cello professor at Virginia Wesleyan College, the Fei Tian Academy and Fei Tian College. Mr. Fowler has also toured throughout China as a Principal Cellist of the Manhattan Symphonie. In March of 2019, Mr. Fowler was a featured artist at the SXSW Festival performing in the HBO/Games of Thrones and American Red Cross production Bleed for the Throne, which received national coverage. Mr. Fowler can also be heard on the 2019 soundtrack recording of the Alley Theater production Constellations.

In Virginia, Mr. Fowler was a regular performer with the Norfolk Chamber Consort and the Hampton Roads Chamber Players, and was a founding member of the New Commonwealth String Quartet. He performs regularly at Bargemusic in Brooklyn and has been a Festival Artist at the Festival de Febrero in Ajijic, Mexico. In November of 2014, Mr. Fowler collaborated with Todd Rosenlieb Dance Company to perform the Suite for Solo Cello by Gaspar Cassadó with choreography by Ricardo Melendez, which opened with great success and was hailed by M.D. Ridge of Norfolk's WHRO as "the pièce de résistance. [Mr. Fowler] sang sweetly...and the result was spectacular."

Marjorie M. Garnier is a Native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti and a graduate of Loyola University in Music Performance (B.A). She is a Violin Instructor for the Young Artist Academy of the GNOYO program and has started several String programs in New Orleans (Behrmann Elementary School in Algiers and The Ellis Marsalis Center in the lower 9th ward). In Haiti she was the Music Director and Conductor for Ecole Vision Nouvelle and the Academic Curriculum Director for Holy Trinity School of Music. Ms Garnier has been with the Loyola Music Preparatory program since 2010.

Marjorie Garnier

Steve Allen was born in Shreveport, and started performing in front of audiences while still in elementary school. He subsequently lived in Memphis, toured the states with a show band from Jackson, relocated to Los Angeles, where he often worked in various fairly big time show biz situations. He moved with his family to New Orleans in 1998, was displaced to Shreveport while rebuilding after Katrina and moved back in 2007. He has a few sideline vocations through the years, but fundamentally has been working professionally in widely varied musical settings his entire life. He is happy to call New Orleans home.

Steve Allen

Olin G. Parker is a longtime church member who plays violin and viola at St. Andrew's. He is the son and grandson of musicians and studied viola performance at Hofstra University under Thomas Stevens.

Olin Parker

Sarah Montès, cellist and St Andrew’s Bell Choir member, is a life-long musician who counts her lucky stars to have grown up in a musical family and who had the opportunity to study music throughout her life. Outside of her full-time work as the Executive Director and Assistant Dean of Advising in the Newcomb-Tulane College at Tulane she keeps busy as a mother of two and wife to conductor Jean Montès. She also is an enthusiastic volunteer with the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras and with various music relief projects

in Haiti. She relishes any opportunity to bring more music to St. Andrew’s and would like to thank Robert “Bob” and Mary Perkins as well as the late Reverend Canon Charles William “Bill” Zigenfussand for their tireless dedication to music in our community over the years.

Sarah Montès

Mark Trotter first picked up a trumpet in 5th grade. After three weeks, he switched to the Horn and never looked back. In high school, Mark studied with Carolyn Wahl and had the honor of performing with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States under the baton of Charles Dutoit in Carnegie Hall. For the last three years, he has studied at Northwestern University with Gail Williams and Jon Boen, playing with the Northwestern University Symphonic Orchestra on their 2018 China Tour. The past two summers, Mark has attended the Aspen Summer Music Festival, working with John Zirbel. This year, Mark is thrilled to join the Louisiana Philharmonic as their 4th Horn while finishing his Bachelor’s Degree at Northwestern. In his free time, Mark enjoys working out, strategy games, and any good book.

Mark Trotter

Megan Dwyer is a recovering bassoonist, avid home cook, and plant lover. She studied music education at Loyola University New Orleans and now plays anything from polka to brass band music around the wonderful city of New Orleans on her saxophone.