Paula Hochhalter, cellist, received a Bachelor's Degree in Music Performance from USC. There, she studied with Gabor Rejto and coached with Aaron Copland. She studied further at Yale Summer Quartet Program with the Tokyo String Quartet and Raphael Hillyer. Her quartet performed on the east coast and in Europe at the Munich Chamber Music Festival. 

She has worked with major recording artists over the past 35 years, including Andrea Bocelli, Barbara Streisand, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, and James Taylor. Hochhalter is in high demand as a studio musician for film scores, requested by John Williams, Danny Elfman, Marco Beltrami, Mark Isham, Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard, Henry Jackman, Benjamin Wallfish, David and Thomas Newman, Randy Kerber and Hans Zimmer, with whom she also toured in 2017 and performed at Coachella along with other venues.

She has been a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, The New West Symphony, and the Santa Barbara Symphony, and is now a member of the Malibu Coast String Quartet, with whom she has recorded extensively on original works by composer Maria Newman. She has been a performer at various festivals around the country, including the Mozart Festival in San Luis Obispo and the Strawberry Creek Festival in Malibu as well as the Music Academy in Santa Barbara.

She has also been a staple for many jazz musicians including Chick Corea and Don Ellis and in addition she was the featured performer on Nan Schwartz’s Grammy-nominated album and the song “Aun Tengo Ganas de Ti” sung by Javier Almaraz. Hochhalter believes that musical collaborations like these can span several genres and provide a new ‘take on things’ that is fresh and exciting. 

 LIZ MYERS

An internationally acclaimed composer and pianist for songs, tv shows, commercials and films who has won numerous awards including a Clio Award for the arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue created for United Airlines, Elizabeth (Liz) Myers has become an outspoken advocate for quality music in performance and composition. Together with her husband John Trivers, she formed Trivers Myers Music, a boutique music partnership founded in 1984 which has composed and produced award-winning music for hundreds of top tier clients from Apple Computer to Verizon.  Quoted in a recent Huffington Post blog article, she describes their style:

Like a silent movie has a pianist scoring the film, we do that from start to finish. With our music, we’re known as organic composers…because we actually play the instruments and tell the story.

Myers is a co-composer of the theme for the CBS Evening News, which ran nightly for over 20 years with Scott Pelley as the anchor. Additional notable credits include co-composer of the film score for Angels:Good or Evil? (History Channel), Benjamin Franklin (History Channel) Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Day Reagan was Shot (Paramount Films) and Birch Street Gym (Nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Short Film – Live Action Category.) She was one of the first female music conductors on Broadway, becoming the Musical Director for the show Grease at the Royale Theater in New York and is active composing and accompanying for ballet and dance companies, having performed and arranged the Brahms Intermezzo Opus 117 for Julia Gleich’s short ballet with the Brooklyn-based “Counterpointe” series in 2018.

As part of her songwriting partnership with John Trivers, her husband, Myers is a co-writer with Trivers and Eric Bloom on Blue Oyster Cult songs “After Dark” and “Sole Survivor.” She also co-wrote the classic rock hit “Shakin’” with Eddie Money, for which she has received numerous gold records.

Myers also teaches a course at UCLA Extension in the Entertainment Studies Department entitled: “Put Your Music to Work: Composition for Commercials.”