Faculty & Staff

Alejandro Encinas is a true citizen of the world. He was born in Peru, but his passion for music has taken him to Russia, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Argentina, Germany, Japan, France, and finally to the United States, where he has lived and worked in Mississippi and Oklahoma. At the beginning of his international career, he studied violin in Moscow and worked as a violinist with orchestras all over the world. But, it was in fact the viola that truly captured his heart and with which he earned a Master's Degree at the University of Southern Mississippi. He taught violin and viola at the Ponca City public schools in Oklahoma, supporting one of the most important string programs in the US. As Director of Education at the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, his goal is to work closely with the Jackson Public Schools, attract new audiences, and add his personal perspective to the education program with MSO.

To date, Alejandro's career as a professional musician includes his participation in many important festivals and institutions such as the International Tour, I Musici Estensi from Italy (Viola), the International Tour, Arpeggioni Chamber Orchestra from Austria (viola), and Tulsa Symphony Orchestra. He was the Assistant to the Concertmaster at the Symphony Orchestra at the Cité Université in Paris, France and at the Orquesta Filarmónica in Lima, Peru. He participated in the Mercosur Festival Juvenil de Orquesta in Argentina as a violin teacher, and the Universidad del Atlantico in Barranquilla, Colombia was a Professor of Violin and Viola. At the Filarmonica del Caribe, he worked as Teacher and Director of Education, in charge of children's concerts and pedagogical projects, while conducting conferences and teaching Music Appreciation (in Spanish). He also was the Artistic Director of the Asociacion Cultural Despertando Talentos in Lima, Peru, as well as Personnel and Recruiting Coordinator for the University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. In Russia, he was the Manager of the Chamber Orchestra of Astraxan, and the President of the Russian-Hispanic Community.

Thus, the Encinas family is branching out like the oak trees, "encinas" in Spanish, which as they grow spread their branches to provide air to breathe and shade to protect those who surround it. Just like the encina tree, Alejandro considers his role in life to share his talent for music with as many people as possible, especially children.

Musical training has been a part of Maria Camila's life since childhood. She graduated with a Master’s Degree from the School of Science and Arts at the University of Southern Mississippi, with an emphasis in Orchestral Conducting, where she studied with Dr. Ivan del Prado. Currently, she is part of the private conducting studio of Maestra Teresa Hernandez Vega. Ms. Patino also earned a Bachelor’s Degree from the School of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern Mississippi, with an emphasis in Music Performance in Viola, studying under Dr. Hsiaopei Lee. She also has taken masterclasses with Masumi Per Rostad, Mai Motobuchi, Craig Mumm, Karen Ritscher, John Kochanowski, among others.

Ms. Patino has had the opportunity to collaborate with well-known artists such as The Beach Boys, Transiberian Orchestra, Deborah Voight, Rene Fleming, Oh Jeremiah, and Ilmar Gavilan, among others. She was principal viola on several occasions during her time as a member of the Southern Miss Symphony Orchestra. Currently, she plays with the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and has previously performed with the Gulfcoast Symphony and the Meridian Symphony Orchestra for many years. Ms. Patino is also the co-founder of the Ruah String Trio and the founder of the Global Aqua Music program at Global Adaptive Aquatics in Atlanta, GA, designed to assist children with disabilities. Additionally, she established the Premier Orchestral International Composition Competition in 2023.

Born in Ibagué, Tolima, Colombia, Ms. Patino enjoys passing her love of music that began in her hometown at the age of 4 years old, on to the next generation, with her over 15 years of teaching experience. In 2016, she founded the strings program at Hinds County School District, and since then, she has taken on the roles of operations manager and strings teacher for the outreach programs of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra in public schools and has served as a conductor for the Mississippi Youth Symphony Orchestra for over six years. In addition to these roles, she runs her very own private violin studio, and serves as the director of the Premier Orchestral Institute. Ms. Patino's dedication to music education extends beyond her local community, as she also previously held the position of Festival and Operations Coordinator for the esteemed Heifetz International Summer Music Institute in Staunton, VA.

Borislava Iltcheva started playing the violin at age of 5. Ms. Iltcheva has a Bachelor’s degree from the Bulgarian National Academy and Master’s and Doctorate Degrees in violin performance form Louisiana State University. Her principal violin teachers include Alexander Iltchev, Evgenia Maria Popova, Kevork Mardirossian and Mauricio Fuks. Borislava holds prizes from several national and international competitions such as “Closter Shöntal” International Violin Competition, MTNA Chamber Music Competition, LSU Dean’s Concerto Competition, “Saverio Mercadante” International Competition and others. Borislava has an active schedule as a soloist and chamber musician. She has been featured as a soloist with the Louisiana Sinfonietta, Baton Rouge Symphony and Acadiana Symphony, Thessalonica Camerata, Chengdu Symphony Orchestra, among many others. She has performed recitals throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. Ms. Iltcheva is the Concertmaster of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra. Currently she is the assistant to Professor Mauricio Fuks at Indiana University.

Highlights from Ms. Iltcheva’s performances include a recital appearance in Carnegie Hall in New York in May, 2009 as well as a two-week European tour with recitals in Greece and Croatia. As a member of the Donatello String quartet, she was selected to participate in the Sandor Vegh International Competition. They were also selected to participate in the Coleman Chamber Music Competition in California and were accepted as a quartet in residence at the Banff International Music festival. The quartet performed their debut Carnegie Recital on May 16th, 2012.

Ms. Iltcheva was on the faculty at Southeastern Louisiana University as an Adjunct Faculty and Louisiana State University, teaching violin and viola. Borislava frequently teaches masterclasses around the world and is in residence in Southern France in the month of July. Recent highlights include concerts and masterclasses in Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, France and Turkey. In the fall, she will be performing Mozart concerto No. 4 and later in the season she will be performing Piazzola’s “Four Seasons” and “Vivaldi’s” Four Seasons” with orchestras in Europe and the United States. She will be returning to Carnegie Hall for a recital in 2018. She is honored to be included on the faculty of the Orford Music Academy for the summer of 2018.

Hailed by music critics as “a superb musician” with the “classical virtuosity of a Heifetz or Perlman,” the "suave café style of Florian Zabach” and the “jazzy insouciance of Stephane Grappelli,” Alejandro Drago has “crisscrossed the line between concerto virtuoso and jazz soloist.” His versatile musicianship has allowed him to be successful with many diverse styles and genres. His discography in France, USA and Argentina includes string quartets, concertos, avant-garde tangos for the EMI International label and a two-volume CD of works for solo violin distributed internationally by Naxos Music Library Japan and CD Tradition.

Alejandro Drago's life in music began in his native Argentina where, as a small child, he accompanied his mother, a professional tango dancer, to the venues where she performed. His mother introduced him to Antonio Agri, who spent over a decade as the lead violinist of Astor Piazzolla’s various ensembles. Thanks to Agri’s recommendation, young Alejandro was able to start his music training. He received a scholarship from the Russian government to study at the Moscow State Conservatory under Marina Yashvili, and obtained his Master of Fine Arts in Violin Performance and Pedagogy. In 2008 he received a Master’s Degree in Violin Performance and a D.M.A. in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Southern Mississippi.

As a soloist, Alejandro has performed in world-class concert halls such as the Great Hall at the Moscow Conservatory, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Hall, Teatro Colón de Buenos Aires, The Kennedy Center and the Kolarac Zal of Belgrade, with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and the Belarus State Academic Symphony, among many others. He has toured extensively in Russia, the United States, China, Austria, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Switzerland, Lithuania, Taiwan, Belarus, Italy, France, Spain, Brazil, Spain, ex-Yugoslavia (Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina), Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, Ecuador and Haiti.

As a conductor, Alejandro began his training with the CCBA Chamber Orchestra in Buenos Aires. Alejandro’s recognized expertise in the field of string studies has led him to coach regularly a number of youth and professional ensembles, including the Guayaquil Symphony Orchestra in Ecuador and the MERCOSUR Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has been a guest conductor with the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, Tandil Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of the Argentine Library of Congress and the MERCOSUR Academic Camerata, and conducted the Festival Orchestra of the Xth Tiberius Week Festival in Targu Mures, Romania. From 2005 to 2008 he was the Assistant Conductor of the Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and Chief Conductor of the Southern Mississippi Chamber Orchestra. Since 2008, he has appeared on a number of occasions as a guest conductor with the Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra, and recently has signed as the Artistic Director of this organization for three seasons until May 2019.

Alejandro's scholarly works have become important references in English language scholarly studies of Tango music. He maintains strong connections with the music of his homeland through his career as a performer, researcher, lecturer, composer and arranger. His symphonic and chamber arrangements of Argentine music have been performed extensively in Europe and Latin America, as well as in the United States by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. The critics wrote about Alejandro’s arrangements:

“His transcription [of Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons] retains the score’s inspired stream of melodies without neglecting the astringent harmonies and austere instrumentation of Piazzolla’s original chamber versions. Drago is a splendid musician. His languorous rendition of Invierno Porteño astutely combined sentimentality with Mozartean beauty. Drago’s bravura violin technique beguiled the listeners. His easy synthesis of aristocratic café suaveness and fiery zest were terrific.” (Entertainment News & Views).

“Drago's retooling for violin and string orchestra so deftly captures the rhythmic ingenuity, offbeat effects and astringent harmonic edge of the original quintet version that the bandoneon and electric guitar are hardly missed. Drago proved himself a wonderfully idiomatic exponent of his compatriot's tango music. His lean, focused tone drew out Piazzolla's atmospheric melancholy as well as the touch of sleazy languor while deftly skirting the schmaltz.” (The Miami Herald)

He conducts masterclasses, seminars, lectures and lecture-recitals extensively in Asia, Europe and the United States, invited by institutions of higher learning such as the Belarus National Academy of Music (Minsk), Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá), the East China Normal University (Shanghai), the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), the Emory University (Atlanta, GA), the University of Georgia (Athens, GA), Arizona State University (Phoenix, AZ) and the Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN), among others. He teaches and performs regularly in festivals in Latin America, the US and Europe. Also in demand as an adjudicator, he has been a member of the jury of the 2014 Alice & Eleonore Schoenfeld International String Competition (junior category) in Harbin, China; Chairman of the Jury at the 2015 “Harmony” International Competition of Slavic Music (string division) in Belgorod, Russia; member of the jury of the 2016 and 2017 editions of the Leopold Auer International Competition, in St. Petersburg, Russia; member of the jury at the 4th Hong Kong International Music Festival and President of the jury of the 2017 First International Viola Competition of Mississippi, in Jackson, Mississippi.

In July 2008, Alejandro joined the faculty at the University of North Dakota (UND) Department of Music as the Professor of Violin and Viola and Director of the UND Chamber Orchestra. Under his leadership, the UND Chamber Orchestra conducted two regional tours, and its first ever international trip in 2013, to Brazil, invited by the Festival Música nas Montanhas (Poços de Caldas, MG). He is also the creator of the UND Student String Quartet scholarship program, which put the strings division of UND Music firmly in the national map, with three international tours (Brazil, China, the Czech Republic) and the issuing in 2013 of the first CD by a student chamber ensemble at UND, featuring classical and modern works for string quartet.

Alejandro's many awards include a special prize in the Rodolfo Lipizer International Competition (Italy, 1992), third prize in the Petar Konjovich International Young Musicians Competition (Yugoslavia, 1993) and the first prize in the "New Talents in Classical Music" Competition (Buenos Aires, 1997). Highlights of past seasons include performances of Alban Berg's Violin Concerto with the University City Symphony Orchestra, Missouri, the performance of the complete solo violin cycles of L'Ecole Moderne op. 10 by Wieniawski and the Six Polyphonic Etudes by Ernst in one concert dedicated to Ruggiero Ricci's legacy, and the multiple performances of his own Violin Concerto in the US, Brazil, Belarus and the Republic of Moldova.

"Drago is a violinist of formidable gifts. Combining virtuoso dazzle with a tone that is dark and full, he can spin a melody in mesmerizing hues or play double or triple stops with seemingly effortless bravura." (Fort Lauderdale Connex, October 2013)

Hristo Hristov, assistant principal viola of Mississippi Symphony Orchestra since 2004 was born in Bulgaria. He holds a bachelor’s degree in viola performance from the State Music Academy in Bulgaria. While in his native country, Hristo was assistant principal viola of the State Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra in Varna, and the New Symphony Orchestra in Sofia. From 1994 to 1997, he was the assistant principal viola of the Theatre Lyric D’Europe, which has had more than 250 performances in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, and the Netherlands. In 2005, Hristo received a master of music in viola performance from Southeastern Louisiana University. During his graduate studies, he was involved with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and worked with the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra and the Jefferson Performing Arts Society Orchestra. From 2004 to 2014 Hristo was a member of the Missouri Symphony Society and performed as assistant principal viola with Missouri Symphony Orchestra for Summer Nights Festival-Columbia, MO.

Hristo is the founder and coordinator of the Jackson String Quartet which provides more than 450 services since 2007 in the area of Jackson, MS. Since 2013 Hristo is the founder and executive director of the organization Mississippi Children's Music Theater which involves more than hundreds of kids in its shows.

He is the founder of Orpheus String Studio, part of his company Orpheus Music which provides a program for string classes in several public and private schools in the area of Madison, MS.

American-Cuban, Taylis began her studies in Havana. By the age of 15, she was already a member of the prestigious chamber ensemble Ars Longa, which toured in Mexico and Colombia. In 1998 Ms. Fernandez recorded the CD “Eco de las Indias,” playing viola da gamba which won an important award in Europe. In the US, she has been a member of the Tulsa Symphony in Oklahoma, and the Fort Smith Symphony in Arkansas, and she was principal cellist of the University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra for three years. She was a member of the Mobile Symphony Orchestra for many years. Currently, she is an active member of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. Recently performed as soloist Beeethoven triple and Shoshtakovich cello Concerto #1. She holds her undergraduate and Master degree from the University of Southern MS. Fernandez is the cello teacher at Millsaps Conservatory and founder of the Mississippi Fine Arts String trio, as well as founder of the Celli Salon in MS.

Dr Marcos Machado is a Brazilian-American world-renowned performer and teacher. He is Professor of double bass at The University of Southern Mississippi, and is the founder and pedagogic director of the Festival Internacional Música no Pampa (FIMP Bagé) in Brazil, now in its tenth year.

Machado has earned both “teaching” and “performing” diplomas from the L’Institut International de Contrebasse de Paris under esteemed double bassist, François Rabbath. He has recorded two solo albums with Brazilian pianist Ney Fialkow, the latest being “Fantasy” (2018). As part of the Austin-based Conspirare Ensemble, he has toured and recorded the CD “Threshold of Night” which received two Grammy nominations, and “A Company of Voices - Conspirare in concert” which also received a Grammy nomination.

Machado has published two volumes of “Tao of Bass” starting a revolution in left-hand technique, which has been adopted as a required technique book by many universities.

Award winning violinist, Temperance Babcock, has been playing the violin since she was four. She began her formal studies under Jennifer Porterfield in her home town of Ardmore, Oklahoma. At age eleven, Temperance began studying under graduate students at the University of Oklahoma and by fourteen was accepted into the studio of the head violin professor, Felicia Moye. Felicia graduated from the Julliard School of Music and studied under world renowned teacher, Ivan Galamian. Moye also founded the Miami String Quartet.

At nineteen, Temperance began to take an interest in bluegrass fiddle which resulted in a move to Nashville, TN, in August of 2003 where she studied and performed with Grand Ole Opry fiddle players Hoot Hester, Kenny Sears and Carl Franklin. Temperance has recorded with members of Kentucky Thunder and has performed with Mac McAnally, Paul Overstreet, Casting Crowns, Dove Award winner, Christy Southerland, and jazz singer, Cassandra Wilson. Babcock has also opened for Ricky Skaggs, Sunny Sweeney, Jake Owens, Restless Heart and Sawyer Brown.

Temperance recently played in a televised tribute for the world renowned song writer, Ben Peters, where she performed with Charlie Pride and Grand Ole Opry performer Jimmy Fortune.

Temperance’s dynamic trio with MPB’s Grassroots host, Bill Ellison and Jeff Perkins has been featured on radio shows such as the Thacker Mountain Radio Show, the Sucarnochee Revue and MPB’s Mississippi Arts Hour. www.btjtrio.com

You will also see Babcock in the PBS children’s show, Lomax the Hound of Music, as a fiddling bear and cowgirl.

Of Peruvian and Cuban heritage, Isaac Encinas was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 2004. Coming from a musical family, he began studying the cello at the age of three. He first studied under his mother, Taylis Fernandez, a Cuban cellist, and later studied under the tutelage of Zlatomir Fung beginning in 2020.

Isaac has performed as a soloist with the Mississippi Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Premier Orchestral Institute. In 2021, he attended the Sphinx Performance Academy, where he studied with renowned cellist Karlos Rodriguez. He also participated in the Curtis Mentor Network Audition Program, where he was mentored by Curtis Institute of Music alumna Natalie Helm.

Isaac comes from a family of eight, including five sisters, four of whom are also musicians. In addition to his musical pursuits, he recently graduated from Mississippi College with a degree in Biology (Medical Sciences) and a minor in Biochemistry. He remains passionate about both music and science and continues to pursue excellence in performance, education, and service.