When pianist Margaret Halbig moved to the Bay Area in 2011, she joined the accompanying and vocal coaching staff at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Margaret also performs regularly with the Silicon Valley Music Festival, a San-Jose based music festival dedicated to artistic excellence and innovation. An advocate of new and contemporary music, Margaret has been the pianist for Wild Rumpus, a San Francisco-based new music collective, since its inception in 2011. Margaret is also a founding member of Firesong, a chamber music trio with soprano Vanessa Langer and clarinetist Sophie Huet, dedicated to innovative, contemporary programming in addition to the commissioning of the next generation of vocal chamber works. Margaret earned her DMA from the University of California at Santa Barbara under the tutelage of Robert Koenig and also holds performance degrees from the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory and University of Evansville, Indiana.