MEET the TREES
Introducing the core members of the THROUGH the TREES band
THROUGH the TREES is a folk chamber music trio, while in future recordings and live performances you’ll meet some of our musical guest performers and fellow harmonic travelers. Below are short bios of the group’s core members in alphabetic order since we want to be, like, all democratic and everything.
Ray Garnett is a wide-ranging viola and violin player, who effortlessly switches among styles and genres in live performance and in the studio, gliding from classical to Celtic, old-time to Old-World riffs. He began his multi-instrumental ways with alto saxophone at age 12 and says: “I switched to my beloved viola when I was fourteen, never looking back.” In the classical realm, his favorite composers are Bach and Schubert. Expect to hear him on keyboards while adding his singing voice to future Trees shows and recordings. He is a native of Charleston, W.Va., and a 2017 Capital High School graduate. In Fall 2025, he will enter the bachelor’s program in viola at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va.
DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO is a lifelong storyteller in words, song, pictures, and moving imagery. He worked 30 years as an editor, feature writer, and video producer for The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia and his prose, poetry, songs, videos, and documentaries have been published, heard, and screened widely. Listen to his first album of singer-songwriter music and original tunes, interpreted by a host of West Virginia’s finest musicians, on Apple Music and Spotify, titled ‘Saint Stephen’s Dream’ by garagecow ensemble. He released a second album some years ago, “You Can’t Be Lost,” with his former band The BrotherSisters. He did most of his growing up in Columbus and Cincinnati Ohio, arriving in West Virginia in his early 20s as a cub reporter and as they say in the state: “I got here as soon as I could.”
JIM PROBST is a semi-retired furniture maker and furniture designer with a career spanning 45 years. He lives in rural Lincoln County, West Virginia, where he spends his time gardening; taking care of his deeply wooded property; spending time with his family; and engaged in building one project or another. Recently completed projects have included: an electric solid-body dulcimer; a homemade version of a cajón, the box-shaped Peruvian percussion instrument; and a teardrop camper (for trips around the countryside—a different kind of playing around). Jim has played the dulcimer for decades, but has doubled down into serious playing, performing out, and recording in recent years, including his own original compositions. He also literally ‘sits on’ on occasional percussion atop that cajón he concocted. Jim is a transplant from Indiana and arrived with the first wave of back-to-the-landers to West Virginia in the 1970s.