Alayna McNeil has completed her first year of a Master of Music degree at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music, where she studies with Linda Wang. Alayna received her Bachelor of Music from the University of Lethbridge, where she studied with Peter Visentin. She was honoured to receive the Faculty of Fine Arts Gold Medal upon graduating in 2024. Alayna is the winner of the 2022 Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra’s RBC Foundation Young Artist Competition, and she was a featured guest soloist with the orchestra in 2023. In 2019 Alayna won the Rose Bowl award for the Most Artistic and Outstanding Performer in the Lethbridge Music Festival.

Alayna is passionate about all aspects of music. An avid performer of chamber and orchestral music, Alayna has enjoyed collaborating and performing with musicians in Canada, the US, and the UK. Alayna is an active performer with the Lethbridge Con Brio trio. In Denver, Alayna has been co-concertmaster of the Lamont Symphony Orchestra for the past six months, and she also played as concertmaster of Bow Art chamber orchestra ensemble during the winter months of the year. Alayna currently plays with a string quartet and a string trio in Denver, and she enjoys working as a teaching assistant for aural skills and music arranging.

Alayna was honoured to be the featured performer in the final concert of the 2022 Centric Music Fest. In 2024, she performed a Centric pop-up concert with the Con Brio Trio, as well as a Centric fundraiser event with Alina Khvatova and Christine Bootland. Alayna is delighted to be returning to Centric again this year and to be performing with the resident quartet!

Christine is an active extra performer in various chamber ensembles and with the Lethbridge, Red Deer and Regina Symphonies as well as the Symphony of the Kootenays and the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.

She has toured Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia as a member of the Armadillo String Quartet of Canada and was first prize winner in the CIBC National Chamber Music Festival Competition with the JEB string quartet. Christine has adjudicated all over Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan and her students have won numerous awards at all levels but for her, she gets immense joy from doing educational outreach performance programs wherever she is. Christine was on the faculty at Medicine Hat College from 2001-2021 as cello instructor, ensemble coach, Academy Instructor and conductor and program coordinator for both the Community and Junior Orchestras. In 2010 she was pleased to be invited to become a cello instructor at the University of Lethbridge Conservatory of Music three days a week. Her favorite thing to do in her down time is to read, experiment in her garden and go for walks.