Our Staff

The 2023-2024 academic year is Mr. Jiménez’ 13th year at College Park High School and 19th year as a public school music educator. 

Mr. Jiménez holds a Bachelor of Music degree in choral & instrumental music education from California State University, Stanislaus as well as a California single-subject teaching credential in music. Before coming to College Park, Mr. Jiménez taught choral & instrumental music at all levels, K-12 in the River Delta Unified School District and the Woodland Joint Unified School District. 

Since he arrived in Fall 2011, Mr. Jiménez has helped oversee significant growth in the CPHS Instrumental Music Program which now offers three concert bands, two jazz bands, three orchestras, guitar classes, piano classes and AP music theory. He is also involved in the College Park school community by currently serving on the board for the Contra Costa County Band Directors Association and on the board for the California Music Educators Aassociation (CMEA) Bay Section as Band Representative. 

Professionally, Mr. Jiménez has experience playing and performing with the Modesto & Stockton Symphony Orchestras, the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchesta, One Found Sound (a San Francisco based chamber orchestra), the Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra and the San Francisco Wind Ensemble. He has also conducted summer camp bands at the Hayward-La Honda Music Camp and Summer Music at Stanislaus. 

Mr. White is a music educator and researcher passionate about advocating for robust music programs in our Bay Area high schools and colleges. Before CPHS, he was the band director at Alameda High School, where he taught concert bands, orchestras, jazz bands, guitar ensembles, and marching bands that performed constantly throughout the school year. Currently, he juggles both teaching and ensemble directing roles at Saint Mary’s College of California (SMC), and plans to continue his SMC work in addition to teaching at CPHS. Originally from San Diego, Mr. White now lives in San Francisco where he enjoys the rich music scene (SF Jazz is a personal favorite) and opportunities to camp around coastal Northern California. Mr. White is ecstatic to begin teaching at CPHS and supporting Mr. Jiménez in shaping the CPHS Instrumental Music Program to deliver musical opportunities students will remember for a lifetime!

Mr. White holds a Bachelor of Music degree in saxophone performance from the University of Southern California (USC), a Master's degree in music education from Chapman University, and will be graduating from Saint Mary's College of California (SMC) with his doctorate in educational leadership in May 2024. Coincidentally, his dissertation investigates the experiences of music educators and their music programs within the secondary curriculum

Laura Jeannin performs regularly on period and modern instruments in the US, Europe, New Zealand and Asia. She was a scholarship student at Juilliard’s Baroque Performance Program, and has appeared with Juilliard415 and with New York Baroque Inc. On the West Coast, she performs with Bach Collegium San Diego, Archetti Baroque String Ensemble, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Galax Quartet, San Jose Baroque Orchestra, and San Francisco Bach Choir. As an educator, Ms. Jeannin has been teaching privately in the Bay Area for over a decade and coaches the Sacramento Youth Symphony Chamber Music Workshop. When not playing the violin, she enjoys knitting, baking, exploring nature with her husband and playing with her cat Sherbert.

Cellist Douglas Machiz is in high demand as both a classical and contemporary musician. He co-founded the Friction Quartet, a nonprofit performing arts organization whose mission is to modernize the chamber music experience and expand the string quartet repertoire. They were quarter-finalists in the 2015 Fischoff Competition and won Second Prize in the 2016 Schoenfeld Competition. Also in 2016, the quartet was personally selected by the Kronos Quartet to perform at Carnegie Hall, and returned in 2018 playing George Crumb’s Black Angels. Since then, the group has recorded two full-length albums and, through the Friction Commissioning Initiative, has funded the creation of 12 new works for string quartet.

An active educator, Doug is on faculty at The Crowden School, where he teaches private cello lessons and ensembles. He has taught chamber music at Interlochen Arts Camp and given masterclasses and clinics at Cornish College for the Arts, Western Washington University, and CSU campuses across the Bay Area. With his quartet, Doug has also performed at every public elementary school in San Francisco through the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music Program.

Doug enjoys arranging his favorite pop songs for string quartet, and his covers of artists like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga have been wildly successful with younger audiences. He has also collaborated with bands including Toh Kay and the Pascal Le Boeuf Trio.

A native of Washington, D.C., Doug first came to the Bay Area to attend San Francisco Conservatory, where he earned his Professional Studies Diploma under Jennifer Culp. He also holds a Masters Degree in cello performance from UT Austin, where he studied with Bion Tsang. In his spare time, Doug enjoys hiking, playing basketball, and hanging out with his cat.

Sohrab Bazargannia is a percussionist who regularly performs with many of Northern California’s major arts organizations. He has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Berkeley Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, Oakland Symphony, Monterey Symphony, Stockton Symphony, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Marin Baroque Orchestra, Festival Orchestra Napa, Mendocino Music Festival Orchestra, United States Air Force Band of the Golden West, and several more. He has also appeared as guest Principal Percussionist with the California Symphony and the Marin Symphony. 

Having performed in the premieres of countless symphonic, chamber, and wind ensemble repertoire, Sohrab has collaborated with composers such as Julia Wolfe, Mason Bates, Gabriela Lena Frank, Angélica Negrón, and Brian Raphael Nabors. Internationally, he has performed and recorded throughout Europe with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, including concerts at the Royal Concertgebouw, Berliner Philharmonie, Smetana Hall, Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine, Sala Verdi Milano, and Stadttheater Ingolstadt. 

Sohrab is an alumnus of Diablo Valley College where he studied with Ken Bergmann, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied with Jack Van Geem, Jake Nissly, Trey Wyatt, and Ed Stephan. He has also studied extensively with Raymond Froehlich and Ty Gale. As an educator, Sohrab is a member of the Blue Devils Performing Arts organization as the Percussion Instructor of the Diablo Wind Symphony. 

Sohrab is also an almuns of College Park High School, class of 2013.