Elisabeth Steves (Director) double bassist, won a downbeat Magazine Outstanding Performance Award for recording the Koussevitzky Concerto with orchestra in 1982. After majoring in double bass, as well as continuing early-music studies on the gamba, at Northwestern University (where she served as the office assistant for the International Society of Bassists, producing the first ISB calendar), she defected from classical playing and kept a full schedule of rock performances for about 15 years. As a sideline, she was a partner in a sizable sound and staging company, assisted in the growth phase of a large backline company, and started and ran a high-end custom road case company for an additional 10 years. On returning to Houston, she opted for a part-time day job to facilitate her young son in school, rather than be gone every night playing, so she undertook luthiery training, with mentoring from the finest double bass makers and restorers in the business. Elisabeth has changed the transmission in a Porsche, jammed with twigs for drum sticks in India, birthed an 11-lb baby at home, and roofed a house, but as she says, “it ain’t Mozart”, and is happiest practicing bass technique – early and modern – and ridiculously adores family life with her husband (bassist Paul Ellison) and son Isaac.