Player Biographies

---

As a member of the Opus 76 Quartet, Keith performs over 50 concerts a year, and has recently recorded all eighteen Beethoven String Quartets, two Quartets by living composers David Izzard and Mike Moreland, as well as a Quartet by Franz Josef Haydn. Recordings of the "Six Quartets Dedicated to Haydn" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, will take place in 2020. 

Outside of the Quartet, Keith has recorded Mozart Violin Concertos 3 & 4 and works by Johann Sebastian Bach for solo violin (available on iTunes). Concerto performances with orchestra for the 2021 violin concertos by Paganini and Beethoven. Keith has won positions at a number of orchestras. He is currently Concertmaster of the Kansas City Civic Orchestra and the Kinnor Philharmonic Orchestra.

Keith also presents a recital series annually, consisting of 5 performances. This year’s series will feature all 10 of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin & piano. Recent series have featured works by Clara & Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. A recent performance was reviewed in K.C. Arts Beat as “full of romantic passion..played with intensity..conveyed with authority.. [Brahms’s 3rd Sonata was] lovingly played, a sense of nostalgia and heartache convincingly portrayed.. an exciting and convincing performance.” 

Keith is a former soccer player, who represented Western Samoa in the 2010 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers. He played five matches for the country (scoring two goals) before retiring to focus on the violin. He has coached soccer in the UK and the USA. 

Founding the Opus 76 Quartet in 2017,  he joined The Friends of the Opus 76 Quartet Foundation's administration as Executive Director in 2021. 

He is the main host of the Opus 76 Quartet's "Keeping Score" podcast, and makes Art & Culture documentaries for obliviology.com. He has written for a number of publications including The Strad, The Catholic Herald, Adamah Media and The Shawnee Mission Post. 

Keith lives in the United States of America in Kansas City, teaches a small number of students privately, and coaches The Opus 76 Sunrise Quartet - one of the Foundation's free mentoring initiatives for talented young high school musicians from the local area. 

He started playing the violin with Alison Apley aged 3 and is an alumni of the Purcell School of Music (UK), the Royal Academy of Music and CU Boulder (USA - 2021) where he will graduate with a certificate in Arts Administration. Violin coaches included the late Erik Huston, Remus Azoitei and Karoly Schranz.

A former and founding member of the Hampden String Quartet, with whom she won the Sir john Barbirolli Prize for Chamber Music at the Royal Academy of Music, Ashley Stanfield is a founding member and violist of the Opus 76 Quartet. 

Ashley performs regularly with the Kansas City and Des Moines Symphonies. She also serves as Principal Violist of the Kinnor Philharmonic and plays in the Saint Joseph Symphony. She has appeared as a guest artist with the Bach Aria Soloists, Spire Ensemble and the KC Baroque Consortium. In 2019, Ashley will appear as a soloist with the Kansas City Civic Orchestra, playing Mozart's "Sinfonia Concertante". 

Outside of classical music, Ashley has enjoyed performing with several rock/pop bands including Michael Buble, Belle and Sebastian, Hanson and Johnny Mathis.

A native of Kansas City, Ashley Stanfield has been teaching and performing locally for over ten years. She is an Alumni of both the Interlochen and Idyllwild Arts Academies and holds a Bachelors Degree in Viola performance as well as a Teaching Licentiate from the Royal Academy of Music, London, where she was a student of London Symphony Orchestra Principal Violist, Paul Silverthorne. Other teachers include  Miami String Quartet violist, Scott Lee and Christine Grossman, former Principal Violist of the Kansas City Symphony.

As a part of her studies at the Academy, Ashley also worked with many prominent conductors including Trevor Pinnock, Leif Segerstam, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Tadaaki Otaka, and Sir Colin Davis, with whom she recorded Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Beethoven's Symphony No.9. With the U.K. based Hampden String Quartet, she performed regularly at the Oxford Proms and the Prom's at St. Jude's concert series. 

Ashley enjoys teaching and has extensive  experience at the beginner through to collegiate level. She currently teaches group violin (elementary level) in the Kansas City Missouri School district via the KC Harmony Project program and formerly served as a teaching artist on the faculty at Drake University. Many of her private students are members of the Kansas City Youth Symphony and the Kansas All-State and District Orchestras. She lives in Prairie village with her husband and son and their faithful Labrador, Miley.