The Castro Valley Orchestra Association’s board of directors is made up of committed volunteers who come from diverse arts and business backgrounds in the community, and whose mission is to bring great music to the community. In our bylaws, our specific objectives are:
- (a) to entertain and enrich the community;
- (b) to provide greater educational opportunities for the playing and enjoyment of music, and to foster musical growth for individuals and for the community;
- (c) to provide the means to bring together music players;
- (d) to promote the love and appreciation of classical, chamber and orchestral music through education and performance;
- (e) to provide opportunities for public performances, and
- (f) to provide music scholarships to local musicians.
Some are musicians who participate in the orchestra as players, and others are residents and leaders the community.
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Genevieve Pastor-Cohen, President Pro Tem
Genevieve joined the CVOA Board in 2016, served as secretary in 2018 and became its President Pro Tem in 2022. She is a native San Franciscan and attended the public schools where she began piano lessons and continued with flute in middle school throughout high school, Lowell High. Musically, she is a classical flutist and performs in bay area symphonic orchestras and, previously, in pit orchestras and chamber music ensembles. Professionally, she retired after serving thirty years in the emergency management field. She served as emergency manager with the City of Richmond Fire Department. She served in this capacity with the City of Oakland, Livermore-Pleasanton Fire, the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, for a consulting firm in which she was co-owner and senior vice president, and the State of California’s Office of Emergency Services. Genevieve graduated from San Francisco State earning her BA in Liberal Arts, earned her Masters in Emergency Services Administration at Cal State University-Long Beach, is a Lifetime Certified Emergency Manager through the International Association of Emergency Managers, and is a Certified Business Continuity Planner (ret.) through the Business Continuity Institute. She served as president of the Alameda County Emergency Managers Association (2012-2017) where she was a member since 1996. Genevieve and husband (Josh Cohen) both continue to be active volunteers with their local synagogue, Temple Israel in Alameda, where she served as president (2015-2018) overseeing and managing the business side of the organization.
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Grace Gassoway, Secretary
Music has been part of my life since I was four years old, when I began studying the accordion before transitioning to the piano. As a young musician, I received numerous national awards and competition honors, experiences that fostered a deep appreciation for the power of music. Although my journey has taken me in many different directions and across the globe, my passion for music has never changed. I continue to share that passion by teaching piano to children, encouraging confidence, creativity, discipline, and a lifelong enjoyment of music.
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R. Daniel Lee, Treasurer Pro Tem
R was recently elected to the board of the Castro Valley Orchestra Association in 2024. As a board member, he is committed to helping the orchestra build on a program that entertains and enriches the lives of its musicians, the community, and their guests. He is also the CFO and treasurer of a local non-profit organization for cybersecurity professionals. He brings his corporate experience in building sustainable enterprise-wide governance and risk management programs for companies like Amazon, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Salesforce, and Verizon to the CVO leadership board.
R–just R–is a classical guitarist who actively studies guitar under the tutelage of local instructors to continue to improve his technique and expand his musicianship. A self-proclaimed aficionado of the music from the 60s–the 1760s, he now incorporates jazz and blues into his practice routine in order to build a musical repertoire more familiar to a general audience. At university, he performed in orchestras and concert and jazz bands as a saxophonist, flutist, and clarinetist.
R and his wife reside in Castro Valley where they frequently attend local events with family and friends, often volunteer for community programs to help others, and regularly support businesses and organizations that serve the Castro Valley community.
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Wesley Siegel, Member-at-large
My family came to Hayward from Southern California In 1970, and my father purchased a local motel. We all worked in the hotel and it became a successful family business.
While working in the hotel, I went to school, graduated from Hayward High School in 1982 and then went on to study violin with Nate Rubin at Cal State Hayward (now Cal State East Bay). Halfway through my music studies, I decided to switch majors and ended up getting a degree in Business Administration. About the same time, my father sold the hotel and retired. With all the demands of my new major, and the challenges of my new work world, I stopped playing my violin.
Flash forward 20 years: As fate would have it, my mom saw a notice in the paper about tryouts for a new orchestra forming locally in Castro Valley. She called me one evening with her usual passionate personality and said, “Wesley, they are meeting tonight, why don’t you go over there and try out? What have you got to lose?”
Despite the fact that I had not played for a very long time, I took her advice, found my old violin, went to the audition, and got hooked almost immediately. In fact, I’ve been playing consistently with the Castro Valley Orchestra since its inception-20 years now. It was one of the best decisions I ever made!!
I recently joined the board of directors of CVO, and am now applying my business expertise as Treasurer for the orchestra. It has been, and continues to be a great experience. Thanks Josh! Your guidance has been invaluable to me. Thanks also to my fellow musicians for your inspiration.
And a big thanks to my mom for helping me get my dream back of performing classical music.
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Mike Wilson, Member-at-large
Mike is a recently retired computational chemist who spent most of his career at UCSF and the NASA Ames Research Center. He is also an active woodwind doubler playing saxophone, clarinet and flute in local bands, big bands, community orchestras and community theater pits. He joined the CVO on clarinet in 2015; he has been on the orchestra’s board since 2024. He and his wife live in Castro Valley with a bunch of cats.
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Jessica Ramirez, Member-at-large
Jessica is a semi-retired software designer and developer with a passion for music and cartooning. She joined CVO as a violinist in 2023 and became a member of the CVOA board in 2026. When she’s not practicing for CVO, she enjoys playing string trios with her two teenagers.
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Josh Cohen, Conductor & Artistic Director
Josh is the founding director of the Castro Valley Orchestra and has been an active part of the music scene in and around the San Francisco Bay Area for many years as violinist, bassist, concertmaster, conductor, board member, teacher and impresario. Josh studied violin and conducting at Cal State Hayward, with Daniel Kobialka, Nate Rubin, and Denis DeCoteau. He has performed with numerous professional and community groups in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia, and has conducted a number of opera and theater productions.
In the Bay Area, Josh has performed with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the California Symphony, Oakland Lyric Opera, Holy Names Orchestra, Livermore Valley Opera, Livermore Symphony, San Jose Lyric Theater, Alameda Civic Light Opera, Diablo Valley Opera, Contra Costa Musical Theater. He has also served on the boards of the Oakland Lyric Opera, the California Symphony, and ProMusica Alameda and has been involved in projects with the San Francisco, Oakland (Oakland East Bay) and Berkeley Symphonies.
Josh has been an avid supporter of music throughout the years and currently, along with his duties for the Castro Valley Orchestra, produces, directs, and performs in various chamber, recording and concert productions, has coached students at Holy Names University Preparatory Music Department in Oakland, and taught music at Holy Names High School, as well as privately.
When he has free time, Josh is a principal in Qibits Associates, consulting in computer networks, security, and wireless infrastructure projects.
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Advisory Board Members
Our advisory board members are professionals in the community who lend their talents to ensure the orchestra’s success, but are not voting members of the board.
James Choi
Committed to a life of teaching, James maintains a private studio in Fremont and San Ramon in addition to teaching at the college and preparatory departments of Holy Names University. He coaches the violin section of the Oakland Symphony’s Youth Orchestra. In 2024, he joins the violin faculty at the Montecito International Summer Festival. He was previously the director of Stanford’s Advanced Suzuki Institute and chamber music coach at Indiana University’s Summer String Academy.
James has performed in major cities across Asia, Europe, Australia and the United States, often as a chamber musician working with some of the world’s leading artists Joshua Bell, Kyung-wha Chung, Yuja Wang and others. Other prominent concert engagements include solo recitals at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and San Francisco’s Herbst Theater as well as concerto performances with regional and university orchestras.
As a student, James was a regular scholarship and fellowship recipient of various festivals and institutes in the US, including the Aspen Music Festival and the Encore School for Strings. He was invited to numerous overseas festivals as well, among them the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Pacific Music Festival, Moritzburg Festival Academy where he was one of four American violinists and one of twelve violinists total selected from an international pool of applicants.
James attended Indiana University Jacob’s School of Music as the recipient of the Rose and Irving Fell Scholarship and the Faculty Merit Award. His principal teachers at Indiana include Henryk Kowalski, the longtime assistant to Josef Gingold, and Federico Agostini, assistant to Franco Gulli. While his principal teachers were on sabbatical, he also had the privilege of studying with visiting professors Paul Biss, Michel Zaitzeff, Koichiro Harada and Joshua Bell. He studied pedagogy with Mimi Zweig and Brenda Brenner. He later went on to study with Nam-yun Kim at the Korea National University of Arts but his studies were cut short due to an injury. Other principal teachers include Zoya Leybin, Julie Athayde, Wei He, and Jonathan Vinocour for viola studies.
James completed his pre-med coursework, also studied coding and worked as a software engineer intern for six months. Interestingly, this experience has changed his approach to music and teaching. He now encourages students to also deeply immerse themselves in other areas of study, especially ones that hone skills in logic, analysis and critical thinking. Ultimately, he wants students to be able to teach themselves- to be able to assess and correct their own problems and make interpretations based on sound reasoning.
James’ students regularly place in competitions, serve as leaders in various youth orchestras and have been accepted to major conservatories and music schools in the US.
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Nancy Simonson
Ms. Simonson is a retired IT professional having spent her career working for a nature conservation non-profit. She has experience as a member of several non-profit boards focusing on grant writing. A violin player with professional experience, she is active with various groups throughout the Bay Area.