MYCO faculty are high-caliber professional musicians with a passion for chamber music. Faculty are committed to fostering a kind, collaborative, and supportive environment in which students can learn and grow.
Mimi Solomon
Co-Artistic Director, piano
American pianist Mimi Solomon brings warmth, sensitivity and curiosity to her multifaceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, teacher, and artistic director. She has performed throughout the United States, China, Japan and Europe, has appeared as soloist with orchestras including Shanghai Symphony, Philharmonia Virtuosi, and Yale Symphony Orchestra, and has been featured on numerous radio and television broadcasts including the McGraw-Hill Young Artist’s Showcase, France 3, France Inter, and National Public Radio.
An avid chamber musician, she has appeared at music festivals on both sides of the Atlantic such as Santander, IMS Prussia Cove, Lockenhaus, Rencontres de Bel-Air, Ravinia, Taos, Norfolk, Yellow Barn, Charlottesville, and La Loingtaine.
She regularly performs and records with her husband, violinist Nicholas DiEugenio. Their award-winning duo project, “Unraveling Beethoven” includes a full cycle of Beethoven violin sonatas alongside newly commissioned response works by Allen Anderson, D.K. Garner, Robert Honstein, Jesse Jones and Tonia Ko. Their first recording, released on New Focus, was praised as a “touching, committed tribute” (I Care If You Listen) to the late Steven Stucky.
Mimi is also an enthusiastic and dedicated pedagogue: she is co-artistic director of MYCO Chamber Players and she is currently on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has taught at Kinhaven as well as at Cornell University, East Carolina University, and Ithaca College. Her students have been accepted to schools including Juilliard, Colburn, New England Conservatory, Peabody and Yale.
Mimi lived in Paris for several years, during which, in addition to being active as a chamber musician and soloist, she gained an assiduous understanding of where to find all the best French delicacies! She also fell in love with historic keyboard instruments during her time in Paris. She graduated from Yale and Juilliard and has worked with Peter Frankl, Robert McDonald, Ferenc Rados and fortepianist Patrick Cohen. She lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband, violinist Nicholas DiEugenio and their Plott hound Tengo.
Nicholas DiEugenio
Co-Artistic Director, violin
Violinist Nicholas DiEugenio has been heralded for his “excellent...evocative” playing (The New York Times), full of “rapturous poetry” (American Record Guide). Nicholas is in-demand as a soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble leader, creating powerful shared experiences in music ranging from early baroque to contemporary commissions.
A core member of the Sebastians, a period group hailed as “topnotch” by the New Yorker and “sharp-edged and engaging” by the New York Times, Nicholas also performs and records with pianist and wife Mimi Solomon. Their award-winning duo project “Unraveling Beethoven” comprises a full cycle of the Beethoven violin sonatas along with response works from composers Tonia Ko, Robert Honstein, Jesse Jones, Allen Anderson, and D.K. Garner.
His Musica Omnia recording of the complete Schumann violin sonatas with Chi-Chen Wu on fortepiano was named one of the Top 10 albums of 2015 by The Big City. His August 2017 release on the New Focus label with Mimi Solomon, critically lauded as “a touching, committed tribute” (I Care If You Listen), is an homage to the late Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky. The disc features Stucky’s Sonata for violin and piano, two new works by Stucky’s students Jesse Jones and Tonia Ko, and the previously unrecorded Violin Sonata of Robert Palmer.
A two-time prize-winner at the prestigious Fischoff competition, Nicholas is passionately committed to collaboration, and has performed chamber music with Laurie Smukler, Joel Krosnick, Joseph Lin, Peter Salaff, and Ani Kavafian, as well as members of the Meta4 Quartet. As a baroque and classical violinist, he has performed with violinists Ingrid Matthews and Aislinn Nosky, as well as members of Tafelmusik, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque, and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has also performed as guest Principal Second Violinist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. He is an alumnus of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, where he was deeply influenced by the musicianship of pianist Seymour Lipkin. At the same time, Nicholas also strives to incorporate musical elements from some of his favorite rock icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Anthony Kiedis, and Thom Yorke.
Rooted in a deeply compassionate approach to teaching, Nicholas is currently Associate Professor of Violin at UNC Chapel Hill, and is co-artistic director of MYCO, a non-profit chamber music organization for middle and high school students. Formerly Assistant Professor of Violin at the Ithaca College School of Music, Nicholas continues as a faculty member of the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont during the summers. Nicholas holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music (B.M, M.M) and the Yale School of Music (D.M.A., A.D.), and he performs on a baroque violin made by Karl Dennis in 2011, and also on an 1835 violin made by J.B. Vuillaume.
Caroline Polito
MYCO Registrar
Caroline has always had a passion for music, and she enjoys being involved in the musical community at MYCO in her role as Registrar. She took piano, violin, and organ lessons in middle and high school before deciding to pursue the organ at Oberlin Conservatory. Caroline graduated from UNC Chapel Hill and was a dedicated continuo player in the UNC Baroque Ensemble. She joined MYCO in 2022 and enjoys getting to know students and their families as well as assisting with registration, scheduling, and more!
Contact: myco.registrar@gmail.com
Faculty
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Jonathan Bagg has performed hundreds of concerts in the U.S. and around the world as violist with the Ciompi String Quartet, with whom has made many recordings. He is co-Artistic Director of Electric Earth Concerts in New Hampshire and has also directed the Monadnock Music festival. Festival appearances include the Great Lakes and Portland Chamber Music Festivals, the Eastern, Sebago Long-Lake, Highlands-Cashiers, Mohawk Trail, and Castle Hill festivals. Currently principal viola with the CityMusic Cleveland, he has appeared with many notable ensembles, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Bagg has recorded solo vi0la music on the Bridge, Albany, Centaur and Gasparo labels. His latest project is due out in 2025 on the New Focus label, of music for viola and piano ty Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay, and Margaret Bonds. Bagg is a Professor at Duke University, where he was Department Chair from 2019-2023.
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Bassist Leonid Finkelshteyn is Principal Bassist of the North Carolina Symphony and the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra, and a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University, and the Eastern Music Festival. He has performed as a soloist with various orchestras, including the North Carolina Symphony, Punta Gorda Symphony, and East Carolina University Orchestra, and has premiered works by composers like Gareth Glyn and J. Mark Scearce. Mr. Finkelshteyn has toured with major orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Cleveland Orchestra, and has performed with renowned conductors including Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Muti. An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with artists like Julia Fischer and Awadagin Pratt. As a dedicated educator, he gives master classes at institutions such as Yale and the Manhattan School of Music and is involved with local youth orchestras. Originally from Leningrad, Mr. Finkelshteyn joined the Leningrad Philharmonic at 19 and went on to study at the Leningrad Conservatory, where he earned his M.M. with honors.
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Originally from Korea, Dr. Eunho Kim has been an avid solo/chamber/orchestra performer and a devoted pedagogue in SW Ohio, NW Iowa, South Dakota, and NE Ohio. She holds BM from Seoul National University, and two MMs in Violin & Music Theory and DMA from CCM, University of Cincinnati.
As a graduate student in Cincinnati, Kim joined Dayton Philharmonic and Kentucky Symphony, and has appeared in the festival orchestras under Myung-hun Chung, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Charles Dutoit. Her academic excellence and love for tonal-music analysis also led her to pursue a second master’s degree in Music Theory.
In Iowa/South Dakota area (2005-17), she has taught in Morningside College, Northwestern College, and Dordt College, and was an Assistant Professor at University of South Dakota where she also was the violinist of Rawlins Piano Trio and the concertmaster/co-director of the no-conductor USD Chamber Orchestra. With Rawlins Piano Trio, she gave performances and masterclasses in Korea, Panama, and throughout the U.S., and presented at the national conferences of Chamber Music America and College Music Society.
After moving to NE Ohio in 2017, Kim continued performance career with Citymusic Cleveland (Principal Vn II & chamber-series player) and Akron Symphony, and regularly gave benefit concerts in Cleveland as the violinist of Crea Piano Trio. She taught violin and chamber music at Kent State University, and actively engaged in public music education as a guest instructor for high schools and youth orchestras.
Kim joined the string faculty of UNC at Chapel Hill as a Lecturer after relocating to North Carolina with her family in Summer 2023.
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A native of Raleigh, North Carolina, Robie began studying piano and violin at the age of 6. By age 13, he had already made solo appearances with the Winston-Salem and Raleigh Symphonies, garnering praise for precocious readings of Mozart and Tchaikovsky
Described as “a poet at the piano” (New York Sun) and praised for his “striking pianism” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), pianist Teddy Robie has performed extensively both as soloist and chamber musician in Canada, Taiwan, Italy, and across the United States.
Robie has performed in many prestigious venues, including the Rising Stars series at Ravinia, the Performances series in San Francisco, the Peggy Rockefeller series in New York, Alice Tully Hall, and at Cleveland’s Mixon Hall master’s series. He has also appeared live numerous times on WQXR (New York) and WCLV (Cleveland), and has been a frequent guest performer on WFMT (Chicago). Robie has won prizes in numerous competitions, including Juilliard’s Gina Bachauer Scholarship competition, the Fischoff National Chamber Music competition, and the SUNY Stony Brook concerto competition.
An avid chamber musician as well as soloist, Robie has collaborated with many renowned artists, including Roger Tapping, Donald Weilerstein, Catherine Cho, Bonnie Hampton, Joan Kwuon, Joel Smirnoff, Violaine Melancon, and Jean-Michel Fonteneau. Festival appearances include Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival, Taos Chamber Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, and Pianofest in the Hamptons, and faculty at the Heifetz Institute and Luzerne Music Center. Robie is a regular guest at many chamber festivals across the country, including The Bronx Arts Ensemble, Chatter (New Mexico), and The Taos Music Ensemble.
Robie's teachers have included Jerome Lowenthal, Robert McDonald, Veda Kaplinsky, Randall Hodgkinson, and John Ruggero. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, and is now a doctoral candidate at SUNY Stony Brook, where he studies with Christina Dahl. Robie recently returned to the Triangle, where he maintains a private teaching studio in Cary and continues to perform.
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Clara Yang has appeared in numerous solo, chamber music, and orchestral performances at major venues and festivals across the United States and internationally . Clara began her cello studies at age 10, and made her concerto debut at age 12 with the Dong-A University Orchestra in South Korea under the baton of her grandfather Jong-Gu Bae. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Concord Orchestra, and the Brockton Symphony, among others. She gave her New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2008 and has given other performances in venues such as Lincoln Center’s Avery Fischer Hall and Alice Tully Hall, and Kaufman Center’s Merkin Hall.. As a dedicated teacher, Clara became a certified Suzuki cello instructor in 2005, and since then served as a cello faculty at a number of music schools. Her past positions include cello faculty at the Colburn School’s Community School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, the Lucy Moses School at Kaufman Center, the Preparatory Studies in Music at Queens College in New York, as well as Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School and Providence College in Rhode Island. Clara holds a doctorate degree in Cello Performance from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Juilliard School. While at Juilliard, she was a recipient of the Victor Herbert Prize, the Leonard Rose Scholarship, and the Grunin Prize in Cello.
Guest Faculty
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Allen Anderson (Professor Emeritus) received a Bachelor of Music (1973) from the University of California at Berkeley, a Master of Arts (1977) and Doctor of Philosophy (1984) in Theory and Composition from Brandeis University. A composer and former Head of the Composition Area, he taught courses in composition, theory, and analysis until his retirement in December 2022. Before joining the UNC faculty in 1996, he taught at Columbia University, Wellesley College, and Brandeis University. He received the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty at UNC in 1999, a Schwab Academic Excellence Award in 2017, and is a Fellow of the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC.
Anderson has composed numerous solo, chamber, orchestral, choral and electronic works, including music for earspace, the Empyrean Ensemble, Ensemble Ascolta, the Raleigh Chamber Music Guild, The Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle, The Ackland Museum of Art, The Horace Williams House, Speculum Musicae, the University of North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, and the UNC Chamber Singers. He has written music for soloists Nicholas DiEugenio and Mimi Solomon, Aleck Karis, Clara Yang, Stefan Litwin, Jessica Kunttu, Robert Buxton, and Andrew Nogal, among others. His music for film and video includes Iceblink with photographer and flutist Brooks de Wetter-Smith, music for Hans Richter’s 1926 silent Filmstudie, and both Graffito and cym bow lick garden with artist Tama Hochbaum.
His work has been acknowledged with awards or commissions from the Guggenheim, Fromm and Koussevitsky foundations, Chamber Music America, BMI, League of Composers/ISCM (both the National and Boston chapters) and the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC. In 2005, he received the Goddard Lieberson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music is published by C. F. Peters and APNM, and has been released on recordings from CRI, Albany Records, New Focus and Centaur labels. Of An Opportunity for Mischief, his 2014 Albany Records release, Fanfare magazine wrote: “thoughtful, literate music that supplies its own logic; it makes an impact and is worth returning to for a point of view that suggests meaningful identities, relationships, and associations.”
Recent compositions include the mixed sextet Raveled Skein, In your Narrowing Dark Hours for mezzo-soprano and piano on texts by Louise Bogan, Think That’s You for piano solo, Memento for cello ensemble, Labels of Uncertainty for violin, and Memory Wheel for chamber orchestra. In addition to writing fully notated acoustic scores, he composes electronic music and participates in live, semi-improvised electro-acoustic sound creation.
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Angela Bae, violin
Justin DeFilippis, violin
Benjamin Zannoni, viola
Russell Houston, cello
The Balourdet Quartet is acclaimed for their vibrant energy and masterful blend of technical precision and emotional depth that brings a fresh perspective to both beloved classics and modern compositions. Its unique closeness and willingness to take creative risks earned it the 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award. With more than 70 concerts per season, recent highlights include the Balourdet’s debuts at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, and new string quartets by composers Karim Al-Zand, Paul Novak, and Nicky Sohn through grants from Chamber Music America (2021) and the Barlow Foundation (2023). They are currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and are recent graduates of the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Program.
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Award-winning Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak has achieved international acclaim as a trailblazing artist, praised for his radiant stage presence, dynamic interpretations, and fearless power. Critics have described him as “an exciting new voice in Classical performance” (I Care If You Listen), “a powerhouse musician, with a strong voice and compelling sound” (The Whole Note) and lauded his “haunting lyrical grace” (Gramophone). The recipient of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s ‘Alexandra Jupin’ Award and former Young Classical Artist Trust’s (YCAT) ‘Robey Artist,’ Bak was also a prizewinner in the Sphinx, Lionel Tertis, and Concert Artists Guild Competitions, and has received accolades from ClassicFM, MusicalAmerica, and WQXR.
Bak’s enthusiastically-received sophomore album, Cantabile: Anthems for Viola (Delphian Records), has garnered significant international attention, featuring works by Arnold Bax, Benjamin Britten, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, paired with contemporary compositions by Jonathan Harvey, Bright Sheng, and Augusta Read Thomas. A proud new music advocate, Bak has given numerous world premieres, including Kaija Saariaho’s Du gick, flög for viola and mezzo-soprano, Jessica Meyer’s On fire…no, after you for viola, mezzo-soprano and piano, Augusta Read Thomas’ Upon Wings of Words for string quartet and soprano, and Jeffrey Mumford’s stillness echoing for viola and harp.
Bak has appeared as soloist with such orchestras as London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sarasota Orchestra, London Mozart Players, New York Classical Players, Juilliard Orchestra and Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra among others, and has performed under such esteemed conductors as Howard Griffiths, Stephen Mulligan, Keith Lockhart, Gerard Schwarz, and Ewa Strusińska. As a recitalist and chamber musician, he has been heard at some of the world’s greatest performance venues including Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Jordan Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Perelman Theater at The Kimmel Center, Elgar Concert Hall, and Helsinki Musiikkitalo.
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The versatile Hungarian musician Petra Berényi enjoys a dual career as a violist and cimbalom player, having taken degrees in both instruments from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Before moving to the United States, she performed in several contemporary music festivals in Hungary both as a chamber musician and as a participant at the International Bartók Seminar in Szombathely, Hungary, where she worked with the renowned Hungarian composer and teacher György Kurtág. She performed numerous chamber and symphonic orchestras such as Danubia Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Chamber-Symphony, Hungarian Virtuosos Orchestra, and Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2001, Berényi was honored with the Award of Artisjus Foundation for her outstanding cimbalom performances of Hungarian contemporary music. She took second prize at the Paul Lukács Viola Competition in 2002, which was organized by the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. In the same year she was an invited guest artist as a cimbalom player at the Kurtág Festival in London, England, where she performed Kurtág‘s major orchestral works with the Orchestra of the Royal Academy and London Sinfonietta.
Since moving to the U.S. in 2003, she has been associate principal violist in the Musica Nova Symphonic Orchestra in Scottsdale, Arizona, and occasionally performed in the Phoenix Symphony. She received a full scholarship three times to the Colorado College Summer Music Festival, where she served principal and co-principal viola in the Festival Orchestra.
After moving to North Carolina she became involved in different musical events in the Triangle area. She has performed frequently on different recitals and chamber music concerts at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a cimbalom player as well as a violist, and performed several times in concerts presented by Mallarmè Chamber Players. Her recent appearances were as a cimbalom player in Dracula (music composed by Raleigh resident composer J. Mark Scearce) with the North Carolina Ballet, at a Gala event in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and performances with Center City Opera at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. She became a full-time member of the North Carolina Symphony viola section in 2012.
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From 2002 until 2024, Jonathan Brown was the violist of the Cuarteto Casals, with whom he has performed in all of the major concert halls in Europe, North America and Asia as well as making numerous recordings on the Harmonia Mundi label including repertoire ranging from Bach through Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to Bartók, Ligeti and Shostakovich.
As a guest violist, Jonathan has performed with the Tokyo, Jerusalem, Kuss, Marmen, Miro, Zemlinsky, Quiroga and Armida quartets and has been on the jury of international quartet competitions in London, Salzburg, Prague and Katowice. Jonathan has also been an artistic director of the Da Camara chamber orchestra, the contemporary ensemble FUNKTION and Musethica Spain.
Jonathan is currently Professor of Chamber Music at the Colburn School in Los Angeles and previously taught viola and chamber music at ESMUC in Barcelona and Escuela Reina Sofía in Madrid. He has given masterclasses in Köln, London, Aix-en-Provence, Den Haag, Weikersheim, Fiesole, Linz, Lübeck, Essen, Rotterdam, Cleveland and Chicago among many other cities. Originally from Chicago, Jonathan’s principal viola teachers were Martha Strongin Katz, Karen Tuttle, Heidi Castleman, Thomas Riebl and Veronika Hagen and he was deeply influenced by Ferenc Rados and György Kurtág.
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Cellist Hannah Collins is a dynamic performer who uses diverse forms of musical expression and artistic collaboration to build connections and community. Winner of the Presser Music Award and De Linkprijs for contemporary interpretation, she takes an active role in expanding the repertoire for the cello by commissioning and premiering solo works and by co-creating interdisciplinary projects—most recently working with visual artist Antonia Contro and violinist Clara Lyon on Correspondence, a multimedia installation exhibited at the Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago. Resonance Lines, her solo debut album on the Sono Luminus label, pairs music by Benjamin Britten and Kaija Saariaho with commissioned works by Caroline Shaw and Thomas Kotcheff. The release included video features with Strings Magazine and The Strad, the latter calling the album an “adventurous, impressive collection of contemporary solo cello music,” negotiated “with panache.”
Over the past decade, New Morse Code, her “remarkably inventive and resourceful duo” (Gramophone) with percussionist Michael Compitello, has developed projects responding to our society’s most pressing issues, including The Emigrants, a documentary chamber work by George Lam, and dwb (driving while black), a chamber opera by Roberta Gumbel and Susan Kander. They were recently named the inaugural grand prize winners of the Ariel Avant Impact Performance Prize which will support the development and touring of new works addressing sustainability goals and scientific innovation.
Solo and chamber music performances have taken Hannah to festivals such as Orford Centre d'arts, Kneisel Hall, the Aldeburgh Festival, and Musique de Chambre à Giverny. She is a member of A Far Cry and Decoda, and has recently performed with The Knights, Bach Aria Soloists, Grossman Ensemble (20-22), and NOVUS NY. Praised for her “incisive, vibrant continuo” playing (South Florida Classical Review), Hannah appears regularly as a Baroque cellist with the Sebastians, New York Baroque Incorporated, Quodlibet Ensemble, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra.
A dedicated teaching artist, Hannah is an alumna of Ensemble Connect, a professional development program focused on chamber music performance, teaching artistry, and arts advocacy through the resources of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute, in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. She served as co-director of KHBH: Together in Music, a recurring outreach residency which connects the Kneisel Hall Music Festival with the community of Blue Hill, Maine through creative projects. During the summer, she teaches cello and chamber music at Greenwood Junior Music Camp and has previously served as resident director of Avaloch Farm Music Institute.
Hannah earned a B.S. in biomedical engineering summa cum laude from Yale College and also holds graduate degrees in cello performance from the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and the City University of New York's Graduate Center. Her principal mentors have included Stefan Reuss, Ole Akahoshi, Aldo Parisot, Michel Strauss, Robert Mealy, and Marcy Rosen. Hannah is currently Associate Professor of Cello at the University of Kansas School of Music and the newly appointed Executive Director of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra.
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Cultural heritage has always been central to the musical life of Gabriela Lena Frank. Born in Berkeley, California to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela is constantly exploring her multicultural ancestry through her compositions. Inspired by the likes of Bartók and Ginastera, she has travelled extensively throughout South America in pursuit of folklore and indigenous musics that are then incorporated into her own Western classical framework.
Moreover, she writes, "There’s usually a story line behind my music; a scenario or character." Her original program notes often enhance the listener’s experience, for they describe how a piano part mimics a marimba or pan-pipes, or how a movement is based on a particular type of folk song, where the singer is mockingly crying. Even a brief glance at her titles evokes specific imagery: Leyendas (Legends): An Andean Walkabout; La Llorona (The Crying Woman): Tone Poem for Viola and Orchestra; and Concertino Cusqueño (Concertino in the Cusco style).
In 2025, Gabriela concluded a long-term residency with the Philadelphia Orchestra, marked by the world premiere of Picaflor: A Future Myth. She was also inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2026, her first opera The Last Dream of Frida and Diego will be staged at both the Metropolitan Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. With a libretto by the Pulitzer-prizewinning playwright Nilo Cruz, The Last Dream of Frida and Diego is one of the most successful American operas of the decade, with acclaimed runs at Los Angeles Opera and San Francisco Opera following its 2022 world premiere at San Diego Opera. Other upcoming premieres include two collaborations with MacArthur Fellow J. Drew Landham; a song cycle for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and a work for the Pacifica Quartet and narrator Sigourney Weaver.
Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Gabriela also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship. Her work has been described as ‘crafted with unself-conscious mastery’ by The Washington Post, who also cited her as one of the most significant women composers in history. She has received commissions and performances from leading American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony. She has also been commissioned by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano with guitarist Manuel Barrueco, and Brooklyn Rider, and has collaborated with conductors Marin Alsop, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Mei-Ann Chen, Rei Hotoda, David Robertson, and Andres Orozco-Estrada. In 2026, NAXOS will release a recording of her and Nilo Cruz’s oratorio Conquest Requiem, featuring the Nashville Symphony and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero.
Gabriela Lena Frank is also an educator and climate activist. In 2017, she founded the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (GLFCAM), which helps composers of any aesthetic and demographic, from emerging through mid-career levels, to develop self-determined 21st century lives. She has also written about composing with hearing loss as a guest columnist with The New York Times. In 2020, Gabriela was a recipient of the prestigious 25th-anniversary Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanity category with an unrestricted cash prize of $250,000. The award recognized Gabriela for breaking gender, disability, and cultural barriers in the classical music industry, and for her work as an activist on behalf of emerging composers from all walks of life.
Gabriela is the subject of several scholarly books including the W.W. Norton Anthology: The Musics of Latin America; Women of Influence in Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers (Scarecrow Press); and In her Own Words (University of Illinois Press). She is also the subject of several PBS documentaries including “Compadre Huashayo” regarding her work in Ecuador composing for the Orquestra de Instrumentos Andinos comprised of native highland instruments; and Música Mestiza, regarding a workshop she led at the University of Michigan composing for a virtuoso septet of a classical string quartet plus a trio of Andean panpipe players. Músic Mestiza, created by filmmaker Aric Hartvig, received an Emmy Nomination for best Documentary Feature in 2015.
Civic outreach is an essential part of Gabriela’s work. She has volunteered extensively in hospitals and prisons, with her current focus on developing the music school program at Anderson Valley High School, a rural public school of modest means with a large Latino population in Boonville, CA.
Gabriela attended Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she earned a B.A. (1994) and M.A. (1996). She studied composition with Sam Jones, and piano with Jeanne Kierman Fischer. At the University of Michigan, where she received a D.M.A. in composition in 2001, Gabriela studied with William Bolcom and Leslie Bassett, and piano with Logan Skelton.
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Mélanie Clapiès, violin
Meg Freivogel, violin
Liz Freivogel, viola
Daniel McDonough, cello
The Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Mélanie Clapiès and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). Founded in 2001, the ensemble is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music, and exudes an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous. The New Yorker states, “The Jupiter String Quartet, an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.”
The quartet has performed across the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and the Americas in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, and Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall. Their major music festival appearances include the Aspen Music Festival and School, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Music Festival, the Banff Centre, Taos School of Music Summer Festival, Virginia Arts Festival, Music at Menlo, Maverick Concerts, Caramoor International Music Festival, Lanaudiere Festival, West Cork (Ireland) Chamber Music Festival, Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Skaneateles Festival, Madeline Island Music Festival, Yellow Barn Festival, Encore Chamber Music Festival, the inaugural Chamber Music Athens, and the Seoul Spring Festival, among others.
Their chamber music honors and awards include the grand prizes in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2004. In 2005, they won the Young Concert Artists International auditions in New York City, which quickly led to a busy touring schedule. They received the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America in 2007, followed by an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2008. From 2007-2010, they were in residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Two and, in 2009, they received a grant from the Fromm Foundation to commission a new quartet from Dan Visconti for a CMSLC performance at Alice Tully Hall. In 2012, the Jupiter Quartet members were appointed as artists-in-residence and faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where they continue to perform regularly in the beautiful Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, maintain private studios, and direct the chamber music program.
The Jupiters place a strong emphasis on developing relationships with future audiences through educational performances in schools and other community centers. They believe that, because of the intensity of its interplay and communication, chamber music is one of the most effective ways of spreading an enthusiasm for “classical” music to new audiences. The quartet has also held numerous masterclasses for young musicians, including most recently at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Northwestern University, Eastman School of Music, the Aspen Music Festival, Encore Chamber Festival, Madeline Island Music Festival, and Peabody Conservatory.
The quartet chose its name because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of its formation and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four.
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Violinist Sarah Kim began her musical studies at the age of three and has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. As a resident artist at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music from 2008 2013, Sarah performed internationally with the Apple Hill String Quartet, directed summer chamber music sessions, and taught master classes in universities such as UCLA, Colby College, Boston Conservatory, University of New Mexico, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Through Apple Hill's innovative Playing for Peace program, Sarah performed and taught chamber music workshops in major conflict areas of the world, including Israel/Palestine, Cyprus, and Ireland. From 2017-2023, Sarah was a Resident Musician with Community MusicWorks, a nationally recognized community-based music performance and education program. In addition to her work at CMW, Sarah taught violin at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, and from 2021-2023, Sarah taught violin and chamber music as a Teaching Associate at Brown University. Currently, Sarah resides in Chicago and teaches violin, viola, and chamber music at Loyola University Chicago.
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Cellist Raman Ramakrishnan enjoys performing chamber music, old and new, around the world. For two decades, as a founding member of the Horszowski Trio and the Daedalus Quartet, he toured extensively through North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and recorded for Bridge Records and Avie Records. Mr. Ramakrishnan is currently a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and is on the faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. In the summers, he has performed at the Marlboro, Vail, Portland, and Kingston Chamber Music festivals, and served on the faculties of the Kneisel Hall and Norfolk Chamber Music Festivals.
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Pianist Keiko Sekino has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan, at such venues as Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, Bennett-Gordon Hall at Ravinia Park, Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria, and Meguro Persimmon Hall, and at festivals including Ravinia, Norfolk, and Yellow Barn in the United States and Kuhmo, Encuentro de Música y Academia de Santander, and Pontino in Europe.
A frequent chamber musician, Keiko Sekino has collaborated with violinists Ana Chumachenko and MinJung Kang, soprano Awet Andemicael, and with members of Boston Symphony Orchestra, Enso Quartet, and Daedalus Quartet. As a duo with Awet Andemicael, she participated in the Carnegie Hall Professional Workshop on German Lieder with baritone Thomas Quasthoff and was presented in a recital at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.
Recent projects include performances of Schubert Winterreise with bass-baritone Marc Callahan, interdisciplinary collaborations with Callahan and Japanese classical dance master Umekawa Ichinosuke, and a world premiere performance of the piano concerto Meloscuro (2018) by Matthew Ricketts. She has recorded for Delos label with cellist Emanuel Gruber and has an album of songs by Gerald Finzi forthcoming on Albany label with baritone Marc Callahan.
Keiko Sekino completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University and holds additional degrees from Yale University in economics and music. Among her teachers are Peter Frankl and Robert McDonald. She has also worked closely with Elisso Virsaladze, Claude Frank, Boris Berman, and Margo Garrett. Sekino currently serves as Associate Professor of Piano and Chair of Keyboard Studies at the East Carolina University School of Music and as Artistic Director of the East Carolina Piano Festival. In 2021, she was nominated and inducted to the Steinway Teacher Hall of Fame.
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Bonnie Thron joined the North Carolina Symphony as principal cellist in 2000. She is an active chamber musician and recitalist and locally has been a guest artist with the Mallarmé Chamber Players and the Ciompi Quartet, as well as occasionally joining the Jacobowitz-Larkin Duo to form a clarinet trio called Three For All. In the Washington, D.C. area, she has recently been a guest with the American Chamber Players and performs regularly on the Washington Musica Viva series. For the past several summers, she has been a guest artist and teacher at the East Carolina University Summer Chamber Music Institute. In the summers, she plays in the Sebago Long Lake Music Festival in Maine.
Previously Thron was a member of the Peabody Trio, in residence at the Peabody Institute, during which time the group won the Naumberg chamber music competition. Early in her career Thron was assistant principal cellist of the Denver Symphony for a season and she has played and recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble. She has had a long history with the Apple Hill Chamber Players, as a guest artist and chamber music coach, and was involved in the group’s first Playing for Peace tour to the Middle East in 1991. Thron has performed concertos with the North Carolina Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Panama National Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and various other orchestras in North Carolina and her original home state of New Hampshire.
Thron received both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Her teachers include Lynn Harrell, Norman Fischer, and Elsa Hilger. Thron also received a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and worked as a nurse for several years at Johns Hopkins Hospital and as a case manager in home care nursing, during which time she was also a cello teacher at the Baltimore School for the Arts.
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Andrew Waggoner was born in 1960 in New Orleans. He grew up there and in Minneapolis and Atlanta, and studied at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the Eastman School of Music and Cornell University. Called “the gifted practitioner of a complex but dramatic and vividly colored style” by the New Yorker, his music has been commissioned and performed by the the Academy of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Saint Louis, Denver, Syracuse, and Winnipeg Symphonies, and the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic of Zlin, Czech Republic; the Corigliano, Miro, Villiers, Lark, JACK, Ciompi, and Lydian Quartets; the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble; the California EAR Unit; pianists Gloria Cheng and Molly Morkoski; violist Melia Watras; Sequitur; the Empyrean Ensemble; Dinosaur Annex; Flexible Music; Peggy Pearson and Winsor Music; Duo Cortona; Seattle Modern Orchestra; Tanglewood; Ekmeles; Ensemble Nordlys, and the Rudersdal Kammersolister, of Denmark; and Ensemble Accroche Note, of France.
In 2009 he received an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has also received grants and prizes from ASCAP, Yaddo, The New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, and New Music Delaware.. Other awards include the Lee Ettelson prize from Composers Inc.; a Guggenheim Fellowship; the Roger Sessions Prize from the Liguria Study Center in Bogliasco, Italy; second-prize in the Lydian String Quartet/Brandeis University Composition Competition; and a Fromm Foundation commission for his 5th Quartet, composed for the Lydian.
His latest solo disc, Quantum Memoir, concertos for guitar, piano, and violin, was released on Bridge Records in August of 2019, about which MusicWeb International wrote “Waggoner is indubitably his own man, and in these compact pieces conjures music of astonishing and unexpected depth, precision and sophistication”. His CD of chamber music and improvisations from Albany Records, Terror and Memory, was released in 2011 to broad critical acclaim. His work is also available on CRI/New World; Vienna Modern Masters; Centaur; and Fleur de Son. In addition to his concert works, Waggoner has also composed extensively for theatre and for film, and is an active violinist. He was a founding Director of the Seal Bay Festival of American Music in Vinalhaven, Maine, and is currently Co-Artistic Director, with his wife, cellist Caroline Stinson, of the Catskills-based Weekend of Chamber Music. He currently teaches composition and improvisation at Duke University. His music is available through Subito Music.
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Erica Wise’s love for chamber music developed early, first at places such as the Kinhaven Music School, and later at festivals such as Tanglewood, Kneisel Hall and Yellow Barn. A founding member of the Dalia Quartet, her numerous chamber music collaborations have always been a hugely influential part of her life as a cellist.
As winner of the Nakamichi Cello Competition, she performed the Dvorak Concerto with maestro Michael Stern. Other solo performances have included the Walton Concerto with the NEC Symphony Orchestra in Jordan Hall and with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic under maestro Keith Lockhart.
Erica Wise has served as principal cellist for conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas and Seiji Ozawa among others, and has toured with the New World Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She is an artistic advisor for Da Camera and co-artistic director for Musethica España. Actively engaged with the contemporary music of our time, she has given numerous world and Spanish premieres both as soloist and as a founding member of FUNKTION, a contemporary chamber ensemble based in Barcelona.
At the age of twenty-six, Wise stepped away from music and began pursuing a career in medicine. She was accepted to the MD/PhD program at Washington University of Saint Louis, where she began medical school and did research in immunology. After four years away from professional musical pursuits, she realized that her true passion lay in music, and returned with a renewed sense of dedication to playing the cello.
Wise received a Bachelor Degree from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and a Masters Degree at the New England Conservatory. As a recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship from the Fondation des Etats-Unis, Ms. Wise studied baroque cello with David Simpson at the Conservatoire National de Région de Paris.
Board of Directors
Tara Eppinger, President
Mike Bate, Treasurer
Eileen Chow
Kim Hagan Doug Henderson
Aaron Shackelford Artistic Advisory Board
Teddy Robie, pianist
