Adrienne Biggs | Violin 1
Adrienne Biggs started violin lessons in Kansas at age 3 and had her professional stage debut in Santa Barbara at age 9, performing with her mother Salli Terri, the Grammy-noted singer and professor of music at UCLA and USC, her father the composer John Biggs, and sister Jennifer Walton now a professional studio violinist and musicians contractor in Los Angeles. The family toured professionally to nearly 30 countries, performing programs on classical and medieval instruments including violin, piano, harpsichord, viola da gamba, krumhorn, rauschpfeife, hurdy-gurdy, recorders and handbells. Adrienne attended the rigorous music camps at Interlochen and ISOMATA for multiple summers, and earned her BA in Violin Performance from Pepperdine University where her notable teachers included Yukiko Kamei, Roger Wagner, and Dimitri Leivici.
Since the 1990s, Adrienne has played in and recorded with a variety of Bay Area bands, and since 2009 has been the violin/fiddle player with Danny Click & The Hell Yeahs, a popular Americana band which through more than 500 shows has twice been voted Best Band in the San Francisco North Bay and has shared the stage with Carlos Santana (twice), JJ Cale, Jerry Harrison, Clarence Clemmons, Elvin Bishop, Angela Strehli, Tommy Castro, Billy Bob Thornton, and Shana Morrison at legendary venues including Slim’s, Great American Music Hall, Sweetwater, Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads, Freight & Salvage, 142 Throckmorton, the Mystic, and twice at the Sausalito Art and the Kate Wolf Music festivals. Click below for Adrienne's violin performance highlights.
Adrienne met Julie and Susanne in 2019 while playing in the string section of Sven and the Masterful Orchestra, an 18-piece jazz swing band. Inspired to keep playing music during COVID-19, she formed Trio Viva with Julie and Susanne in June, 2020.
Julie Mellon | Violin 2
Julie is a professional violinist and Suzuki teacher based in Marin County, California with teaching studios in Sausalito and in San Rafael at Dominican University. She started playing violin at age 4 in the Suzuki Method and continued on to receive her Bachelors of Music in Violin Performance at the University of Colorado and her Masters of Music in Violin Performance with an emphasis in Suzuki Pedagogy at the Hartt School of Music, where she studied with Linda Fiore. Jennifer John was her teacher at the University of Colorado and the Aspen Music Festival for two summers. Julie plays classical as the concertmaster of the Lucas Valley Chamber Orchestra, as well as rock, jazz and fiddle in the southern rock band Southern Comfort, often sharing guitar leads on electric fiddle.
She leads the string section of the 18-piece jazz swing band, Sven and the Masterful Orchestra, which is where she met Susanne and Adrienne.
Rotating Roster | Cello
Our current rotating roster of talented Marin-based cellists includes Heather Houseman Roach (of the popular Marin band, Beso Negro) and Amy Leung (Grand Teton Music Festial, University of Utah virtuoso series, New England Conservatory, Interlochen Arts Academy)