Born and raised on Long Island, New York, Chris Camilleri had a convenient drum teacher; his dad. He started listening to Beatles records at a young age, and for many years played drums and sang along to the recordings.

Gradually Chris gravitated to progressive rock bands, but retained a fondness for The Beatles and eventually formed the internationally-renowned Beatles cover band Liverpool, which still reunites to perform at the Fests For Beatles Fans (formerly Beatlefest).

Chris has played drums for a variety of touring artists, including Peter Noone (of Herman’s Hermits fame), Badfinger, Micky Dolenz, Joe Walsh, and other Beatles-era bands. He became a good friend and musical associate to Harry Nilsson (who was a contemporary and close friend to all the individual Beatles). In addition to The Beatles, his musical influences include Jethro Tull, Genesis, ELP, and David Bowie.

When not playing music, Chris has an active commercial and voice-over career.

While he doesn’t have a favorite Beatles song in the Classical Mystery Tour show, Chris admits he favors the material that features the full orchestra. “It’s like playing in my living room at age 13 again – there’s the wonderful ‘pop’ music, but with this huge orchestral background, which is just as important to the tune as the band. It’s completely enlightening”.

A resident of Los Angeles, Martin Herman was educated at Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford University. He also spent two years in Paris on a Fulbright Grant where he worked as a composer and conductor with the “New American Music in Europe” and “American Music Week” festivals. Aside from his conducting interests, Herman is an active composer and arranger. He has received fellowships and grants from the American Music Center, the Camargo Foundation, Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has written chamber and orchestral works as well as three operas. He is recorded on the Albany Record label. As a long time Beatles fan, Martin was commissioned to provide the orchestral transcriptions heard on the Classical Mystery Tour show.

Recent guest conducting engagements include the Detroit Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Dallas Symphony, San Diego Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Louisville Symphony, the Virginia Symphony, Delaware Symphony, Alabama Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra in Prague, Czech Republic.

Singer-songwriter Tony Kishman was born in Tucson, Arizona where he began his musical career in the early 1970s. Although he had been playing guitar for a number of years, it was not until age 19 that Tony started performing seriously.

Kishman’s early influences included Wishbone Ash, Bad Company and Peter Frampton. Between 1973 and 1978, he played guitar in the group Cheap Trix, a cover band performing Top 40 as well as originals.

Starting in 1979, Kishman played bass and guitar for six years as Paul McCartney in both the national and international tours of Beatlemania. He then went on to perform in Legends in Concert and produced shows that ran in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. He joined the classic supergroup Wishbone Ash for a tour of Europe and the recording of the group’s 18th album.

Jim Owen was born and raised in Huntington Beach, California. He gained rich musical experience from his father who played music from the classics for him on the piano and from his extensive library of recordings by the great classical artists.

Owen began studying piano at 6 and won honors in various piano performance competitions through his teenage years. He was 8 years-old when he first heard The Beatles and promptly decided to take up the study of the guitar. His first professional performance as a Beatle was at 16. Then, at age 18 he began touring internationally with various productions of Beatlemania, visiting Japan, Korea, China, Canada, Mexico, and much of South America.

In 1996, Owen began working on his idea for a new show with orchestra. It has long been his dream to share with the public live performances of some of the greatest music ever written and recorded. Classical Mystery Tour is the result.

Tom Teeley has starred as George Harrison in both the Broadway production of Beatlemania as well as the film version. His vocal impersonations of numerous other rock icons have also been featured in many television ads as well as other Broadway productions. He has released solo works on the A&M record label, written songs for artists such as Alice Cooper, as well as touring the world as singer-guitarist for Joe Jackson, Marshall Crenshaw and many others. Tom still enjoys recreating the classic Beatles recordings in a live performance setting, most recently working in tandem with Geoff Emerick,the chief engineer for the Beatles at Abbey Road studios, as musical consultant and performer, in the British production “Sessions at Abbey Road.”