Best Wedding String Quartet in New Orleans

A member of the 5th House Ensemble, Sixto is a music and performing arts enthusiast. He is enjoying an active career as a performer, teacher, and composer, having concertized in Europe, the United States, and Mexico. Sixto Franco is passionate about chamber music and has had the honor to perform with Eighth Black Bird, International Chamber Artists, Symbiosis Ensemble in L.A., the Kaia String Quartet, the Chicago Chamber Music Festival, and the Chicago Chamber Orchestra. Sixto has appeared as a soloist with the Camerata Musicales in Spain, the Thornton Music School Chamber Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra of Salamanca, Spain. He has also served in the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, the Barcelona Symphony, Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the Elgin Symphony, and the Chicago Philharmonic. Sixto and his wife Rachel, an amazing lighting designer, enjoy taking their two-year-old daughter, Odessa, to music, theater, and dance shows all over Chicago!

Juan Horie is a Venezuelan/American cellist who was trained in Venezuela's acclaimed SISTEMA, studying modern cello in the Academia Latinoamericana de Violoncello with Maestros Leandro Bandres and William Molina Cestari. Following his passion for Ancient Music he entered the Latin American Academy of Ancient Music (ALMA) and studied baroque cello with Maestro Manuel Hernandez. While Juan was studying at IUDEM and Simon Bolivar Conservatory, he was a member of the Teresa Carreño Youth Symphony Orchestra, and Simón Bolívar Baroque Orchestra. His international engagements as member of the Teresa Carreño Youth Symphony Orchestra include playing at the Beethoven Fest in Bonn, Salzburg Festspiele, Teatro Alla Scala of Milan, Berlin Philharmonie, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, among other halls in Europe and Asia under the batons of renowned conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, and Christian Vasquez. In 2015 he won a chair in the cello section of the Teresa Carreno Symphony Orchestra, a professional orchestra constituted by a national selection of the third generation of musicians formed in Venezuela’s SISTEMA. In 2017 Juan was forced to emigrate from Venezuela to escape from the political/economical/social situation and moved to the United States. He now performing with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

Rachel Hsieh is a cellist with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and a founding member of the New Orleans-based Lott String Quartet. She is also a member of the Father Carter String Quartet at Loyola University.
 

Ms. Hsieh has worked with numerous movie, television and recording artists, including Tyler Perry, Edgar Meyer, PJ Morton and Idina Menzel.  She has also appeared in television shows such as “NCIS: New Orleans” and “On Becoming a God in Central Florida.”  She is a multi-year winner of Gambit Magazine’s Best Chamber Music Performance.

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She has participated in numerous festivals and projects, including the Castleton Festival Orchestra with Lorin Maazel, the YouTube Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in Mexico City, the AIMS Festival Orchestra in Graz, Austria, and the National Repertory Orchestra.

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Ms. Hsieh is originally from Flint, Michigan. She holds a bachelor’s degree in cello performance at the University of Michigan, where she studied with Erling Blöndal Bengtsson. She was the recipient of the Gregor Piatigorsky Scholarship at the Peabody Conservatory, where she earned a Master’s Degree and a Performance Diploma under the tutelage of Alan Stepansky, former Associate Principal Cellist of the New York Philharmonic.

Rebecca Edge has been performing with the Orlando Philharmonic since 2014. In 2023, she joins the Des Moines Metro Opera and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. She has also performed with Kalamazoo Symphony, Columbus Indiana Philharmonic, Illinois Symphony, Brevard Symphony, Hollywood Concert Orchestra as Assistant Principal 2nd Violin touring Japan in 2023, and was previously an associate member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

During her studies, she served as Principal 2nd of the Indiana University Orchestra, Round Top Texas Festival Orchestra 2018, Tanglewood Institute (2013-2015) and Concertmaster of FMEA All-State and OCPS All-County Orchestras. She has performed as soloist with various orchestras in central Florida. Rebecca has also played in various chamber ensembles in Miami Music Festival, Domaine Forget in Quebéc, Castleman Quartet Program, BRAVO International Chamber Workshop, and at Tanglewood coached by the Muir String Quartet.

She earned her BM at Indiana University attending with the Jacobs Premier Young Artist Award. Her primary teachers include Lev Gurevich, Rimma Bergeron Langlois, Jorja Fleezanis and Kevork Mardirossian. Rebecca is also a passionate teacher and maintains a private studio. Formerly she was on faculty at The People’s Music School, an El Sistema nonprofit providing excellent and comprehensive music education to Chicago students, and a 2022 OCPS All-County clinician for Middle and High School Orchestra.