Timothy Dilenschneider was appointed associate principal double bass of the Houston Symphony in January of 2019. Prior to joining the Houston Symphony, Dilenschneider was a member of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of music director Marin Alsop. During the summers, he is the double bass faculty for the Blackburn Music Academy in California and an active performer in prestigious music festivals including Festival Napa Valley, Arizona Music Fest, and Classical Tahoe where he is the recipient of an endowed chair. He is an alumnus of the New World Symphony and a 2014 graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music.

An avid lover of travel, Dilenschneider’s orchestral performances have taken him around the world. He has been invited to participate in international tours across Europe, Asia, and Africa with distinguished orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, and the Florida Orchestra. He has performed in some of the world’s most notable halls including Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw, Musikverein, Suntory Hall, Theatre des Champs-Élysées, National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and most recently Royal Albert Hall in London for the 2018 BBC Proms.

In addition to his orchestral work, Dilenschneider has performed in numerous recitals and chamber music programs including the Candlelight Chamber Series in Baltimore, Napa Valley Chamber Festival in California, and Marin Alsop’s New Music Festival. In 2018 he was invited on a chamber orchestra tour with musicians from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra to Marrakech, Morocco to perform in the desert of Agafay.

Dilenschneider is on faculty for the Blackburn Music Academy and his passion for music education has led him to work with students at the Peabody Institute of Music, Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestra, and Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. He has been featured in magazines such as the ISB Bass World and Next Level Bassist. He is also recorded on the Grammy Award winning CD “East Coast 2×4”.

Dilenschneider began playing the double bass at age 8 and studied with “Time for Three” bassist Ranaan Meyer, prior to his studies with Harold Robinson and Edgar Meyer at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Originally from Valencia, CA, Matthew Roitstein joined the Houston Symphony in 2014 as Associate Principal Flute, the first appointment made by Music Director Andrés Orozco-Estrada.   He served as Principal Flute of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2022 to 2024, and has previously held positions with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra and Sarasota Opera Orchestra.

Roitstein has performed as a concerto soloist with the Houston Symphony and as guest Principal Flute with Dallas, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. He has also performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Music festival appearances include Tanglewood, Music Academy of the West, Arizona Musicfest, Aspen, Sarasota, Britt, and Lakes Area Music Festivals. Roitstein can be heard on recordings with the Houston Symphony and New World Symphony, as well as on Gloria Estefan’s 2013 album, The Standards. In 2018 he recorded Studies in Nature, a trio for flute, viola, and harp by award-winning composer Karim Al-Zand, on an album of Al-Zand’s chamber music. This year, Roitstein is releasing his own debut album, featuring John Harbison’s Duo for Flute and Piano, and the premiere recordings of newly commissioned pieces by Amanda Harberg, Karim Al-Zand, and Matthew’s father, David Roitstein.

A passionate educator, Roitstein has been on the faculty of the Interlochen Arts Camp since 2018, and he has also taught at Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute and at Bard College. His orchestral path was shaped by a fellowship at the New World Symphony in Miami Beach under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, and graduate studies at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music under conductor Larry Rachleff. He received his Bachelor’s Degrees in both architecture and music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the 2007 winner of the MIT Symphony Concerto Competition. His primary flute teachers were Leone Buyse and Seta Der Hohannesian, and other significant influences include Mark Sparks, Elizabeth Rowe, Stephen Kujala, Gary Woodward, Pedro Eustache, and Matthew’s mother, Rosy Sackstein.

Matthew Roitstein is a Powell Artist and plays on a handmade 14K Powell flute.

Flutist Judy Dines is a very active performer in Houston and beyond. Locally, she is a frequent performer in the Greenbriar Consortium, a diverse chamber group made up of Houston Symphony members and other musicians in the Houston area. She was also a member and frequent soloist with the former Houston Chamber Symphony. Other local groups Dines has played with include Mukuru, Aperio and the St. Cecilia Society.

Outside of Houston, Dines is a member of the Ritz Chamber Players, a dynamic chamber ensemble which performs all around the country. She is also a member of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, which convenes every summer in beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Several times, most recently in August 2008, she performed at the National Flute Association Convention, a four-day extravaganza which celebrates the flute. In the orchestral world, Dines has performed selected weeks with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Washington, D.C., Dines attended Temple University in Philadelphia and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore before coming to Houston. She joined the Houston Symphony in 1992.

Kathryn Ladner joined the Houston Symphony in the fall of 2016. She moved to Houston from Nashville, Tennessee, where she played third flute and piccolo with the Nashville Symphony from 2012–2016. While in Nashville, Ladner also enjoyed playing with the Nashville Opera Orchestra and the Alias Chamber Ensemble, among other groups, and teaching flute lessons at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt and the W.O. Smith Music School.

Born and raised in Seattle, Ladner began playing flute in public schools at age 10. She holds a Bachelors of Music and Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music and a Masters of Music from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. While at Eastman, she studied flute with Bonita Boyd and took piccolo lessons with Anne Harrow. In 2010, she was the Piccolo Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, and she has also performed with the National Repertory Orchestra and the Pacific Music Festival. At the Shepherd School of Music Ladner studied with Leone Buyse, graduating in 2012.

Brian Del Signore is the Principal Percussionist of the Houston Symphony. Brian joined the Houston Symphony in 1986. Prior to the Houston Symphony appointment, he held a one-year position as principal percussionist of the Grand Rapids Symphony in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and performed with numerous other orchestras including the Pittsburgh Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra.

Born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Brian Del Signore earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1981, where he studied with the Pittsburgh Symphony percussionists. In 1984, Mr. Del Signore earned a Masters in Music from Temple University where he studied with Alan Abel of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He began piano lessons at age six and drums at age eleven. His first drum teacher in the late 1960’s was Lou Carto, pop star Bobby Vinton’s drummer and bandleader at that time.

Besides keeping a very busy schedule with Houston Symphony performances, Mr. Del Signore heads the percussion department at Houston Baptist University. Additionally, he has presented clinics and master classes at music schools around the USA including Baylor University, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Yale University, The Julliard School, Manhattan School of Music, New York University, Curtis Institute of Music, Temple University, Peabody Conservatory, Carnegie Mellon University, Cleveland Institute of Music, Texas A&M Commerce, Sam Houston State University, The Colburn School in Los Angeles, and San Francisco Conservatory. He also maintains a local education and outreach schedule, presenting percussion programs in elementary schools, and percussion clinics in high schools across the Houston area.

As a composer and soloist, Brian Del Signore premiered his Percussion Concerto with Houston Civic Symphony in 2018 and performed the Marimba Movement from that concerto with Houston Symphony in 2021.

Brian Del Signore endorses and is sponsored by manufacturers of high-quality percussion instruments. These companies: Remo Corporation, Sabian Cymbals, Pearl/Adams Percussion, ProMark Sticks (D’Addario), and Black Swamp Percussion, support Mr. Del Signore’s educational and outreach programs. For more information on these programs please visit www.briandelsignore.com.

Brian and his wife Leah have three grown children, Damian, Dominique, and Dione.