Canadian-born violinist Martin Beaver was First Violin of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet from June 2002 until its final concert in July 2013.  As such, he appeared to critical and public acclaim on the major stages of the world including New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall and the Sydney Opera House.

As a member of the Tokyo String Quartet, Mr. Beaver was privileged to perform on the 1727 Stradivarius violin from the “Paganini Quartet” set of instruments, on generous loan to the quartet from the Nippon Music Foundation.  Recordings of the Tokyo String Quartet during his tenure notably include the complete Beethoven string quartets on the Harmonia Mundi label.

Mr. Beaver’s concerto and recital appearances span four continents with orchestras such as the San Francisco Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège and the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra and under the batons of Kazuyoshi Akiyama, Raymond Leppard, Gilbert Varga and Yannick Nézet-Séguin among others.  Chamber music performances include collaborations with such eminent artists as Leon Fleisher, Pinchas Zukerman, Lynn Harrell, Sabine Meyer and Yefim Bronfman.

Mr. Beaver is a regular guest at prominent festivals in North America and abroad. Among these are: the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla SummerFest, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Edinburgh Festival (U.K.) and Pacific Music Festival (Japan).  Additionally, he was a founding member of several notable chamber ensembles including Triskelion and the Montrose Trio.

Mr. Beaver’s discography includes concerti, sonatas and chamber music on the Harmonia Mundi USA, Biddulph, Naim Audio, René Gailly, Musica Viva, SM 5000, Toccata Classics and Naxos labels.  His recorded repertoire ranges from Bach, Beethoven and Brahms to the music of 21^st century composers Alexina Louie, Gerard Schurmann and Joan Tower.

Following his early studies with Claude Letourneau and Carlisle Wilson, Mr. Beaver was a pupil of Victor Danchenko, Josef Gingold and Henryk Szeryng.  He is a laureate of the Queen Elisabeth, Montreal and Indianapolis competitions. Subsequently, he has served on the juries of major international competitions including the Queen Elisabeth and Montreal violin competitions, the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and the Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Beaver has been the grateful recipient of generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts.  This includes Arts Grants for his studies at Indiana University, Career Development Grants and the 1993 Virginia-Parker Prize.  In 1998, through the generosity of an anonymous donor, the Canada Council awarded Mr. Beaver the loan of the 1729 “ex-Heath” Guarnerius del Gesù violin for a four-year period.

A devoted educator, Mr. Beaver has conducted masterclasses throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.  He has held teaching positions at the Royal Conservatory of Music, the University of British Columbia and the Peabody Conservatory.  More recently, he served on the faculty of New York University and as Artist in Residence at the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded its highest honor – the Sanford Medal.

Mr. Beaver joined the faculty of the Colburn School in Los Angeles in August 2013 where he is currently Professor of Violin and Chamber Music.

Icelandic violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson joined the Oberlin Conservatory faculty in 2017 after performing for the previous 17 years with the Pacifica Quartet, with which he won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, Musical America Ensemble of the Year honors, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant.

As a member of the Pacifica Quartet, Bernhardsson appeared in more than 90 concerts worldwide each year, including engagements in Wigmore Hall (London), the Vienna Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall (New York), and other major venues. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, and the Reykjavík Arts Festival, and has collaborated with Menahem Pressler, Yo-Yo Ma, Jörg Widmann, Lynn Harrell, Leon Fleisher, the Emerson String Quartet, Johannes Moser, and members of the Guarneri and Cleveland quartets. His television appearances include The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the MTV Europe Music Awards with Icelandic artist Björk. He appears on 16 recordings with the Pacifica Quartet and has recorded the violin music of Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson and the sonatas for violin and piano by Franz Schubert.

Bernhardsson serves as director of the Cooper International Violin Competition at Oberlin and as artistic director of Iceland’s Harpa International Music Academy. He gives regular concerts and master classes in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has appeared as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, and other ensembles.

Bernhardsson is a 1995 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory. His teachers include Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, Almita and Roland Vamos, Mathias Tacke, and Shmuel Ashkenasi. He previously served on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

LA Phil’s First Associate Concertmaster Nathan Cole, who joined the LA Phil in 2011, has appeared as guest concertmaster with the orchestras of Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Houston, Ottawa, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. He will transition to the role of Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in July of 2024. He was previously a member of the Chicago Symphony and Principal Second Violin of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. A native of Lexington, KY, he made his debut with the Louisville Orchestra at the age of 10 while studying with Donna Wiehe. After eight years working with Daniel Mason, Cole enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music. In addition to his studies there with Pamela Frank, Felix Galimir, Ida Kavafian, and Jaime Laredo, Cole formed the Grancino String Quartet, debuting in New York’s Weill Hall. Several summers at Marlboro enriched his love of chamber music. 

Violinist Glenn Dicterow has established himself worldwide as one of the most prominent American concert artists of his generation.

Mr. Dicterow has enjoyed a storied career. The concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for 34 years, an all-time record in that major orchestral position, he became the first holder of the Robert Mann Chair in Strings and Chamber Music at the USC Thornton School of Music in 2013. He is also the Chairman of the Orchestral Performance Program at New York’s Manhattan School of Music. More than ever before, Dicterow performs as a soloist with orchestras around the nation and beyond, while participating in musical festivals and chamber music, teaching in musical academies and leading masterclasses around the world, while adjudicating competitions, among a plethora of musical assignments in a “second act” easily as active as his much lauded years with the Philharmonic.

Glenn Dicterow first came to prominence at the age of 11, making his solo debut in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where his father, Harold Dicterow, served as principal of the second violin section for 52 years. He first appeared with the New York Philharmonic in 1967, at the age of 18, performing the Tchaikovsky Concerto under the baton of André Kostelanetz.

Dicterow joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Associate Concertmaster in 1971, becoming Concertmaster there before turning 25. He came to New York as that orchestra’s Concertmaster in 1980, while soloing annually with the Philharmonic in each of his 34 years. In that time, he served as the orchestra’s “leader” (to use the British term) in collaboration with four very different music directors, Zubin Mehta, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel and Alan Gilbert

In a New York Philharmonic concert tour Dicterow was featured as the soloist in Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade After Plato’s Symposium, with Bernstein himself conducting. He performed the Waxman/Bizet Carmen Fantasy under Zubin Mehta as part of the New York Philharmonic’s “Live From Lincoln Center” telecast, and he was a soloist in the orchestra’s 1982 concert at the White House. Another career highlight was his performance of the Barber Violin Concerto at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China during the Philharmonic’s 1998 tour of Asia.

His shelf of recordings is endless, as the Philharmonic’s Concertmaster, in a large array of solo assignments, both of the great romantic concerti and of the 20th Century classics that he has championed, and in a wide range of chamber music. He has twice recorded Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade with the New York Philharmonic, once with Yuri Temirkanov conducting, once with Kurt Masur. He and his wife, violist Karen Dreyfus, have committed Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante to disc, alongside the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Carl St.Clair. He has recorded violin sonatas by such heroes of American music as Ives, Copland, Bernstein, and John Corigliano.

“The Glenn Dicterow Collection,” a three-CD set on the New York Philharmonic label, surveys his career with the orchestra, in performances spanning thirty years, from 1982 – 2012, featuring his performances of concerti by Bruch, Bartok, Barber, Korngold, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Szymanowski, plus the Bernstein Serenade, Kernis’s Lament and Prayer, and John Williams’s Theme From Schindler’s List, among many highlights.

As a sidelight, Dicterow has also provided the violin solos for numerous Hollywood films, including such modern classics as The Turning Point, The Untouchables, Altered States, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Interview With the Vampire, among others.

A graduate of The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Ivan Galamian, he also studied with Joachim Chassman, Naoum Blinder, Manuel Compinsky, Erno Neufeld, Gerald Vinci, Eudice Shapiro, Jascha Heifetz and Henryk Szeryng.

Today, Dicterow is as committed to passing on the great musical legacy that spurred his own career as he once was in his orchestral duties. Beside his endowed chair at the USC-Thornton School and his innovative work in the Manhattan School’s orchestral program, he is the leader of the String Leadership Program at Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West, training new generations of concertmasters and principal second violinists.

Among his many honors, the Young Musicians Foundation, a Los Angeles institution which has spurred the careers of innumerable artists, honored Dicterow in February 2015 with its “Living the Legacy Award.” It should be noted that in his early teens, Dicterow, who is now on the YMF Advisory Board, won that organization’s Debut Concerto Competition in 1963.

Glenn Dicterow and his wife, Karen Dreyfus, are founding members of the Lyric Piano Quartet and the Amerigo Trio, performing, recording, teaching and proselytizing at leading festivals and musical institutions around the world.

He joined the Music Academy faculty in 2014.

Acclaimed as “a wonderfully talented violinist…whose sound and technique go well beyond her years”,  violinist Yoonshin Song was born in South Korea, where she began her musical studies at age 5. Making her solo debut with the Seoul Philharmonic at age 11, she has since built a successful performing career internationally.

Yoonshin was appointed as Concertmaster of the Houston Symphony in August 2019. Prior to that she has held the same position with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for seven seasons. Yoonshin has also served as guest concertmaster of the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer.

Beyond her first chair duties, Yoonshin has performed as a soloist with many orchestras around the world, including the Houston Symphony, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, the Paul Constantinescu Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the KBS Philharmonic Orchestra, among many others. The highlights of her 2020-2021 season as a soloist include concertos with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Houston Symphony and the New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra.

She has also participated as a soloist and chamber musician in numerous leading music festivals, including the Marlboro, Deer Valley, Great Lakes, and Aspen Music Festivals in the United States; the Miyazaki Chamber Music Festival in Japan; and the Verbier, Lucerne, and Bayreuth Festivals in Europe.

Yoonshin has earned many prestigious prizes throughout her career, including top prize awards in the Lipizer International Violin Competition in Italy; the Lipinski & Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poland; the Henry Marteau International Violin Competition in Germany; and first prize at the Stradivarius International Competition in the United States. She studied under the tutelage of Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory and continued her studies with Robert Mann and Glenn Dicterow at the Manhattan School of Music.

Violinist Bing Wang joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Associate Concertmaster in 1994. She previously held the position of Principal Second Violin of the Cincinnati Symphony and has served on the faculty and as concertmaster at the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2003. Since 2009, she has also been Guest Concertmaster of her hometown orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, where her tenure was highlighted by a televised New Year’s concert conducted by Riccardo Muti. 

As a soloist, Wang has won critical praise for her appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In September 1997, during the Philharmonic’s celebration of the Brahms anniversary year, she performed the composer’s Double Concerto with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Hollywood Bowl. She made her Walt Disney Concert Hall concerto debut in May of 2005 and appears annually as both concertmaster and soloist at the Hollywood Bowl under the baton of composer John Williams, performing his signature movie classics such as Schindler’s List and his arrangement of Fiddler on the Roof. Wang has appeared regularly with the American Youth Symphony since 1997, and she has also been featured as a soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Manhattan Symphony, and other orchestras. In 2002, she gave her first performances in China since emigrating to the U.S., touring as a soloist with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. 

Active as a chamber musician, Wang has collaborated with such distinguished artists as Lang Lang, Yefim Bronfman, Emanuel Ax, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, among others. Chamber music appearances include performances at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam, Germany. She also performs regularly on the Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella and Chamber Music series. 

Bing Wang began studying the violin with her parents at the age of six. She entered the middle school of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where she was concertmaster of the school orchestra, and graduated with highest honors. After coming to the U.S. to study with Berl Senofsky at the Peabody Conservatory, she received her master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music under the tutelage of Glenn Dicterow. In 2012, Bing Wang was named an Adjunct Associate Professor at the USC Thornton School of Music. 

Karen Dreyfus enjoys a wide-ranging career as a noted soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician and as a pedagogue. She has performed extensively in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and South America, and has toured with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Musicians from Marlboro, and the New York Philharmonic. Her numerous honors include prizes at the Naumburg, Lionel Tertis, Washington International, and the Hudson Valley competitions. Along with her work in the classical music field, Dreyfus has performed on many film scores, pop, jazz, and rock recordings.

The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Award, Ms. Dreyfus has recorded many CDs as a soloist and chamber musician. Her premiere recording with Bridge Records, Romanze, met with considerable critical acclaim. She has recorded William Walton’s Viola Concerto, Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante”, as well as solo works by American composers. Such composers as Ezra Laderman, Jon Deak, George Tsontakis, Paul Chihara, William Thomas McKinley, Elizabeth Brown, and others have written works expressly for her. Dreyfus has toured with jazz pianist/composer Chick Corea and recorded a Grammy- nominated work entitled “Lyric Suite for Sextet.”

In 2014 Ms. Dreyfus was invited to teach on the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music where she continues to teach viola, chamber music, and orchestral studies. Dreyfus has taught on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Mannes School along with the Manhattan School of Music where she was honored with an Emerita Award in 2022 after more than 30 years on faculty. Many of Karen Dreyfus’ students have gone on to win positions in orchestras, teach on university faculties, as well as play in chamber ensembles.

Karen Dreyfus is a founding member of the Lyric Piano Quartet and the Amerigo Trio.

She has been a Music Academy teaching artist since 2014.

Milan Milisavljević is Principal Viola with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. His performances combine intense expression with an immediate and profound link to his listeners and have won much critical acclaim.

The Strad magazine has described his playing as “very imaginative, with a fine, cultured tone.” Milan’s solo album Sonata-Song, released by Delos Music, has received glowing reviews, with the recording of Aram Khachaturian’s solo sonata on the album hailed as “definitive”.

He has won prizes at competitions such as Lionel Tertis and Aspen Lower Strings and has performed at Marlboro, Cascade Head, Classical Tahoe, Mostly Mozart, Josef Gingold, and Grand Teton music festivals.

Milan has appeared as soloist throughout the world, with orchestras such as the Munich Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonic orchestras of Belgrade, Medellín, and Boca del Río, Aspen Sinfonia, New York Classical Players, Classical Tahoe, and others. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with members of the Guarneri and Mendelssohn String Quartets, as well as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Joseph Kalichstein, Augustin Hadelich, Cho-Liang Lin, and many others.

Milan has been heard worldwide on countless recordings and broadcasts of the MET. He previously served as its Assistant Principal Viola for 11 seasons. He is a former member of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and has served as guest Principal Viola of many orchestras, such as the Toronto Symphony.

As an educator, Milan has given classes at universities and conservatories worldwide, such as at the Juilliard School and the Rubin Academy of Music, the Verbier Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Milan is on the viola faculty of the Mannes School of Music as well as New York University.

He is also increasingly in demand as a conductor, serving on the conducting faculty of the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division as head of one of its orchestras.

Deeply committed to music of today, Milan has given the world premiere of Afro-Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s Solo Viola Sonata, and regularly performs new music by Ana Sokolovic, Jessie Montgomery, and others. One of his recent projects has been Slow Beethoven, collaborating with Lara St. John, Miranda Cuckson and Jeffrey Zeigler, in a unique creation of a lush sonic landscape based on the world of Beethoven’s late string quartets.

Milan’s teachers include Jutta Puchhammer, Atar Arad, James Dunham, Nobuko Imai, and Samuel Rhodes. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Rice University.

Newly appointed violist of the Takács Quartet, Richard O’Neill has distinguished himself as one of the great instrumentalists of his generation. GRAMMY Award winner for Best Classical Instrumental Solo Performance in 2021, O’Neill is only the second person to receive an award for a viola performance in the history of this category. Also an EMMY Award winner and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, O’Neill has appeared as soloist with the world’s top orchestras and conductors including Andrew Davis, Vladimir Jurowski and Yannick Nezet-Seguin. An Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Principal Violist of Camerata Pacifica, he also served as Artistic Director of DITTO, his South Korean chamber music project, for thirteen seasons, leading the ensemble on international tours to China and Japan and introducing tens of thousands to music. A Universal Music/Deutsche Grammophon recording artist, he has made 10 solo albums and many other chamber music recordings, earning multiple platinum discs. Composers Lera Auerbach, Elliott Carter, Paul Chihara, John Harbison, and Huang Ruo have written works for him. He serves as Goodwill Ambassador for the Korean Red Cross, The Special Olympics, UNICEF and OXFAM and serves on the faculty of the Music Academy of the West and is an Music Academy alumnus (‘98, ‘99).

Esteemed violist Cynthia Phelps’s wide-ranging career has taken her to stages across the world as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and pedagogue. Principal Violist of the New York Philharmonic for over two decades, she is a regularly featured soloist with the orchestra both at home and abroad, in a variety of repertoire, including two world premieres written solely for her. Other concerto appearances have been with the Minnesota Orchestra, Shanghai, Vermont, Santa Barbara, Eastern Music Festival, and San Diego Symphonies, Orquesta Sinfonica de Bilbao, and Rochester and Hong Kong Philharmonics.  Known for her emotional nuance, virtuosic technique, and plush tone, she is a founding member of both the New York Philharmonic String Quartet and Les Amies trio and is a frequent guest with chamber series across the globe. She has been featured in several nationwide “Live from Lincoln Center” telecasts, on National Public Radio, Radio France, Italy‘s RAI, and in regular broadcasts from the 92Y, including collaborations with Emanuel Ax and Daniil Trifonov. She is on the faculty of The Juilliard School Shanghai Academy, Music Academy of the West, and Mannes College of Music.

Ms. Phelps attended the Music Academy in 1979 and 1983, and was named a recipient of the Music Academy’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2001.

Alan Stepansky is recognized as one of the most gifted and versatile cellists of his generation. After a distinguished orchestral career playing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, serving as Principal Cellist of the Boston Pops, and culminating in a ten-year tenure as Associate Principal Cellist of the New York Philharmonic, he is in demand as a soloist, chamber musician, principal cellist, and recording artist. He is currently Chair of Strings and Professor of Cello at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and cello faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.

Mr. Stepansky has performed as a guest artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, and has appeared in concert with a diverse array of artists including the Takács and American String Quartets. He has recorded a series of chamber music and solo discs for EMI, which were honored by Gramophone Magazine, BBC Magazine, the New York Times, and the British Music Industry Association, and has been engaged as the solo cellist for numerous major motion picture soundtracks. He has also appeared on the albums of many noted recording artists across many genres, including Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Merchant, David Byrne, Audra McDonald, Joss Stone, and Sting, with whom he has also appeared in concert.

Recently, Mr. Stepansky served as the Principal Cellist for six major fund-raising events held in Carnegie Hall, Beethoven’s Ninth for South Asia, Requiem for Darfur, Mahler for the Children of AIDS, Beethoven for the Indus Valley, Shostakovich for the Children of Syria, and the Scheherazade Initiative, which featured an international orchestra drawn from leading symphonic, chamber music, and solo artists from around the world. He has appeared as soloist with many orchestras and frequently as Guest Principal Cellist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. After studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Stepansky graduated from Harvard University with the Horblit Prize, conferred for his outstanding musical accomplishments.

Mr. Stepansky has been a member of the Music Academy faculty since 2003.

Hailed by The Guardian as “a cellist of power and grace” who possesses “mature artistry and willingness to go to the brink,” cellist Seth Parker Woods has established his reputation as a versatile artist and innovator across multiple genres. His projects delve deep into our cultural fabric, reimagining traditional works and commissioning new ones to propel classical music into the future. Woods is a recipient of the 2022 Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.

In the 2022-2023 season, Woods premieres a new version of his evening-length, multimedia tour de force Difficult Grace at 92Y, UCLA, and Chicago’s Harris Theater; curates and performs a program honoring the centennial of composer George Walker at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.; premieres Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony; and performs a world premiere by Anna Thorvaldsdottir at Carnegie Hall as part of Claire Chase’s Density Series. The Great Northern Festival in Minneapolis will present Woods in his critically acclaimed performance installation, Iced Bodies, in which Woods, in a wetsuit, plays an obsidian ice cello.

Recital appearances this season include concerts with pianist Andrew Rosenblum at Dumbarton Oaks in D.C., Boston’s Isabella Gardner Museum, and The Wallis Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, and a return to his former home Brussels for a solo recital at Das Haus. He also tours to Washington Performing Arts, Krannert Center, Stanford Live, California Center for the Arts, Count Basie Center for the Arts, Auburn University, and Emory University with the Chad Lawson Trio. In addition, Woods will hold residencies at Montclair State University and Oberlin Conservatory. The season will also see the release of a new solo album on Cedille Records and the soundtrack of the PBS documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust – a film by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein – to which Woods contributed.

In addition to solo performances, he has appeared with the ICTUS Ensemble (Brussels, BE), Ensemble L’Arsenale (IT), zone Experimental (CH), Basel Sinfonietta (CH), Ensemble LPR, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Atlanta and Seattle Symphonies, and in chamber music with violinist Hilary Hahn and pianist Andreas Haefliger. A fierce advocate for contemporary arts, Woods has collaborated and worked with a wide range of artists ranging from the likes of Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, G. F. Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, and Peter Eötvos to Peter Gabriel, Sting, Lou Reed, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Rachael Yamagata to such visual artists as Ron Athey, Vanessa Beecroft, Jack Early, Adam Pendleton, and Aldo Tambellini. In the 2021-2022 season, he premiered concertos by Rebecca Saunders and Tyshawn Sorey.

In recent years, Woods has appeared in concert at the Royal Albert Hall – BBC Proms, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Festival, Snape Maltings Festival, the Ghent Festival, Washington Performing Arts, Strathmore, Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Le Poisson Rougel, Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Klang Festival-Durham, INTER/ actions Symposium, ICMC-SMS Conference (Athens, GR), NIME-London, Sound and Body Festival, Instalakcje Festival, Virginia Tech, La Salle College (Singapore), and FINDARS (Malaysia), amongst others. Recent awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, McGill University-CIRMMT/IDMIL Visiting Researcher Residency, Centre Intermondes Artist Residency, Francis Chagrin Award, Concours [Re]connaissance-Premiere Prix, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship.

His debut solo album, asinglewordisnotenough (Confront Recordings-London), has garnered great acclaim since its release in November 2016 and has been profiled in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, The Guardian, 5against4, I Care If You Listen, Musical America, Seattle Times, and Strings Magazine, amongst others.

Woods recently joined the faculty of the Thornton School of Music at The University of Southern California as Assistant Professor of Practice – Cello and Chamber Music. He previously served on the faculties of the University at Buffalo, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, and the Chicago Academy of the Arts and as Artist in Residence at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and Northwestern University – Center for New Music. Woods holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, and a PhD from the University of Huddersfield. In the 2020-21 season, he was an Artist in Residence with the Kaufman Music Center, and from 2018-2020 he served as Artist in Residence with Seattle Symphony and Creative Consultant for the interactive concert hall, Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Seth Parker Woods is a Pirastro Artist and endorses Pirastro Perpetual Strings worldwide.

The world-renowned Takács Quartet, is now entering its forty-eighth season. Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Richard O’Neill (viola) and András Fejér (cello) are excited about the 2022-2023 season that begins with a tour of Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, and includes the release of two new cds for Hyperion Records. A disc of Haydn’s opp. 42, 77 and 103 is followed by the first recording of an extraordinary new work written for the Takács by Stephen Hough, Les Six Rencontres, presented with quartets by Ravel and Dutilleux. As Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall, the Takács will perform four concerts there. In addition to programs featuring Beethoven, Schubert and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, one concert consists of works by Britten, Bartók and Dvořák that highlight the same themes of displacement and return explored in Edward Dusinberre’s new book Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home. The book is published by Faber and the University of Chicago Press in the Fall of 2022. The quartet will perform the same program at several venues in the USA, complemented by book talks. During this season the quartet will continue its fruitful partnership with pianist Jeremy Denk, performing on several North American series.

Throughout 2022 and 2023 the ensemble will play at prestigious European venues including the Edinburgh and Schwetzingen Festivals, Madrid’s Auditorio de Música, Bilbao’s Philharmonic Society, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Bath Mozartfest. The group’s North American engagements include concerts in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Ann Arbor, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Tucson, Portland and the Beethoven Center at San Jose State University.

The Takács Quartet is known for innovative programming. In 2021-22 the ensemble partnered with  bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro to premiere new works by Clarice Assad and Bryce Dessner, commissioned by Music Accord. In 2014 the Takács performed a program inspired by Philip Roth’s novel Everyman with Meryl Streep at Princeton, and again with her at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto in 2015. They first performed Everyman at Carnegie Hall in 2007 with Philip Seymour Hoffman. They have toured 14 cities with the poet Robert Pinsky, and played regularly with the Hungarian Folk group Muzsikas.

The Takács records for Hyperion Records, recently winning awards for their recordings of string quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, and – with pianist Garrick Ohlsson – piano quintets by Amy Beach and Elgar. Other releases for Hyperion feature works by Haydn, Schubert, Janáček, Smetana, Debussy and Britten, as well as piano quintets by César Franck and Shostakovich (with Marc-André Hamelin), and viola quintets by Brahms and Dvorák (with Lawrence Power). For their CDs on the Decca/London label, the Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits. Full details of all recordings can be found in the Recordings section of the Quartet’s website.

In 2014 the Takács became the first string quartet to be awarded the Wigmore Hall Medal. In 2012, Gramophone announced that the Takács was the first string quartet to be inducted into its Hall of Fame. The ensemble also won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London. Based in Boulder at the University of Colorado, the members of the Takács Quartet are Christoffersen Faculty Fellows, and the grateful beneficiaries of an instrument loan by the Drake Foundation. The members of the Takács are on the faculty at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where they run a summer string quartet seminar, and Visiting Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music, London.

The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér, while all four were students. The group received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The Quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The Quartet made its North American debut tour in 1982.

Timothy Day was appointed principal flute of the San Francisco Symphony in 2006 and occupies the symphony’s Caroline H. Hume Chair. Previously, he served as principal flute with the Baltimore Symphony for 12 seasons.

Mr. Day has served as acting principal flute for the Minnesota Orchestra and the Boston Symphony. In addition to participating in festivals in Moab, Mohonk, and Montreal, he has been a featured soloist during San Diego’s Mainly Mozart Festival and has appeared many times as part of the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series.

A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, where he studied with Robert Willoughby. Mr. Day taught at the Peabody Conservatory for ten years, and since 1987, he has been on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He also has served as a wind coach with the New World Symphony.

Mr. Day has been a member of the Music Academy faculty since 1992.

Few flutists in history have made such indelible marks in so many musical circles. From jazz to pop to classical (orchestra, chamber, and solo) to television and film to the concert hall and his teaching studio, Jim Walker has enjoyed tremendous success.

In 1969 he was named associate principal flute in the Pittsburgh Symphony after a stint playing in the U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point. In 1977 he won the principal flute position in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After seven successful seasons of performing, recording, and touring with the Los Angeles Philharmonic — during which time the New York Philharmonic briefly borrowed him as principal flute for its 1982 South American tour — he left the orchestra to focus on jazz, studio recording, and teaching.

In 1980 he organized his jazz quartet Free Flight, playing jazz-classical fusion (including four appearances on The Tonight Show and 16 recordings). In the 1990s he was a first-call studio flutist prized for his bold, expressive playing; he can be heard on hundreds of soundtracks. Along the way he collaborated with everyone from John Williams and Paul McCartney to Leonard Bernstein, James Galway, and the LA Guitar Quartet.

Mr. Walker is professor of flute, chamber music, and music technology at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, and professor of practice/coordinator of flute studies at the USC Thornton School of Music, where he was awarded with the Mellon Mentoring Award. His summer masterclass, “Beyond the Masterclass,” is now in its seventh year

Eugene Izotov is one of the leading wind players of his generation. His playing continues to receive wide acclaim for its “luminous beauty” (San Francisco Chronicle), “lyrical gold” (Chicago Tribune), and “fiery Russian temperament” (Boston Globe). Appointed by Michael Tilson Thomas in 2014, Eugene Izotov is the principal oboist of the San Francisco Symphony. He previously served as the principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony, appointed by Daniel Barenboim, principal oboist of the Metropolitan Opera, appointed by James Levine, and as guest principal oboist with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Izotov is the first Russian-born musician in history to hold a principal wind position in any major American symphony orchestra. His numerous awards include top prizes at solo competitions in Saint Petersburg (1991), Moscow (1990), New York (1995), and at the Fernand Gillet International Competition (2001).

Izotov has appeared over 70 times as soloist with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Pacific Music Festival Orchestra, and has collaborated with Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Valery Gergiev, James Levine, Nicholas McGegan, Edo De Waart, Ludovic Morlot, Ton Koopman, and Michael Tilson Thomas performing works by Mozart, Strauss, Marcello, Haydn, Martinu, Vivaldi, Carter, Hummel, Krommer and Bach. Eugene Izotov has recorded for Sony Classical, BMG, Boston Records, Elektra, SFSMedia, CSOResond, and was a featured soloist with the Chicago Symphony under the baton of John Williams on the Oscar-nominated recording for Steven Spielberg’s film Lincoln. He has also recently been a guest soloist on NPR’s Live from Here with Chris Thile. A prolific chamber musician, Eugene Izotov has collaborated regularly with the MET Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall, as well as with Yefim Bronfman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jamie Laredo, Yo Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, André Watts, and the Tokyo String Quartet.

Eugene Izotov teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at The Colburn School. He has also served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, DePaul University, and Pacific Music Festival. He regularly presents master classes at conservatories across the nation and abroad, such as Aspen, Oberlin, New World Symphony, Boston University, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, Vanderbilt, University of Michigan, Tanglewood, Verbier, Domaine Forget, and Interlochen. Eugene Izotov has served as an oboe mentor for the 2011 YouTube Symphony Orchestra during its residency at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, which included a live internet simulcast to over 30 million of worldwide viewers. In 2019 Eugene Izotov was invited by Valery Gergiev to serve on the first-ever woodwind jury of the Tchaikovsky International Competition. Izotov’s former students are enjoying careers in symphony orchestras of Chicago, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Montreal, Kansas City, Buffalo, San Diego, Lexington, Ontario, Atlanta, Osaka, Fort Worth, Jerusalem, and others.

Born in Moscow, Russia, Izotov studied at the Gnesin School of Music with Ivan Pushechnikov, Sergey Velikanov, and Alexander Izotov (his father). After immigrating to the United States, he studied at Boston University with Ralph Gomberg.

Oboist Xiomara Mass was appointed to the position of Second Oboe of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 2020 by Music Director Stéphane Denève. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Ms. Mass began her musical training at the age of four and made her solo debut with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra when she was 13. Two years later Ms. Mass was accepted into the “Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico” where she studied with David Bourns, former Principal Oboe of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, and Pedro Díaz, solo English Horn of the Metropolitan Opera. Ms. Mass has also worked with such renowned oboists as Elaine Douvas, Hansjörg Schellenberger, and Scott Hostetler.

Xiomara Mass has been invited to participate in many prestigious music festivals, including the John Mack Oboe Camp, “Tercer Festival de Dobles Cañas” in Panama, The Youth Orchestra of the Americas, Domaine Forget, St. Barth’s Music Festival, The Sunflower Music Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, and The New Hampshire Music Festival. Ms. Mass was selected to participate in the 2011 YouTube Symphony Orchestra during its residency at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, which included a live Internet simulcast to over 30 million viewers worldwide.

In 2014, Xiomara Mass won The Jerome and Elaine Nerenberg Foundation Scholarship award at the Musicians Club of Women Competition in Chicago. Ms. Mass is also the first prizewinner of the Tuesday Musical State Scholarship Competition in Akron, Ohio, and the first Chamber Music Competition at the “Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico” as a member of her woodwind quintet. Most recently, Ms. Mass was a finalist and winner of the audience choice award in the inaugural Virtual Oboe Competition 2020, an entirely digital contest for oboe players formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ms. Mass was the only oboist representing the United States in the finals of this global competition.

Xiomara Mass is a former member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and was a featured soloist with the Civic Orchestra in J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Oboe and Violin. During her years in Chicago Ms. Mass was an active freelancer in the area and often performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Winds as a substitute oboist as well as with many orchestras in the area, among them Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra and Illinois Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Mass also played as a substitute with the San Francisco Symphony and has performed with them as assistant principal.

In addition to working as a performer, Ms. Mass taught as an adjunct professor at the DePaul University School of Music. Currently, she maintains a small private studio.

Xiomara Mass holds a bachelor’s degree in Oboe Performance and an Artist Diploma from Oberlin Conservatory, where she graduated with highest honors under the tutelage of Alex Klein and Robert Walters. After relocating to Chicago, Ms. Mass studied privately with Music Academy faculty artist Eugene Izotov, principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony.

Richie Hawley ranks among the most distinguished clarinetists of his generation. As principal clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO), he impressed audiences around the world with his virtuosity and the velvety, sonorous tone that has become his trademark. The Cincinnati Enquirer has praised him for the “seamless flowing tone so many clarinetists long for and few can achieve.”

In 2011, Mr. Hawley left the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and moved to Houston, Texas to become the Professor of Clarinet at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Mr. Hawley appears on stages around the world regularly as a soloist, chamber musician and recitalist. During the summer he is in residence as the clarinet teaching and performing artists at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. Highlights of this year’s season include the premiere of Georgina Derbez’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra with the UNAM orchestra of Mexico and the debut duo album with Conor Hanick featuring the music of Higdon, Copland, Tower and Jalbert. Mr. Hawley made his debut at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1999 and toured with the legendary “Musicians from Marlboro” for the 50th anniversary performance at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Hawley has garnered awards as both performer and educator. He won the Coleman-Barstow prize at the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition in 1988 with Trio con Brio, and that same year was one of five musicians to receive the Gold Medal as a Presidential Scholar in the Arts from Ronald Reagan in a ceremony at the White House. He has received the Léni Fé Bland Foundation Career Grant twice, and was awarded the 2009 Glover Award for outstanding teaching at University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music.

Originally from Los Angeles, Mr. Hawley began his clarinet studies with Yehuda Gilad at the Colburn School of Performing Arts at age 9. He made his orchestral solo debut at age 13 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and at age 14 performed as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. While a student of Donald Montanaro at the Curtis Institute of Music, Mr. Hawley appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

As a D’Addario performing artist, Mr. Hawley performs exclusively on a reeds and mouthpieces that he helped to develop. He is also an artist for Buffet Crampon and performs on the Tosca model of clarinet.

He has been a member of the Music Academy faculty since 2005.

Since entering the world of professional music in 1972 as the associate principal bassoonist of the Minnesota Orchestra, Benjamin Kamins has enjoyed a wide-ranging career as an orchestral musician, chamber player, solo performer, and educator. In 1981 he was appointed Principal Bassoon of the Houston Symphony, a position he held until 2003.  He is currently the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Bassoon at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.  In addition, he has served as a guest principal with other major symphony orchestras in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York.

Mr. Kamins’ interests have also taken him into the world of historical performance where he performs on baroque bassoon.  He can be heard playing with many fine period instrument ensembles, especially Ars Lyrica Houston. In addition to his musical activities, Ben Kamins is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique through Alexander Technique International.

An alumnus of the Music Academy (’68, ’69), he has been an Academy faculty member since 1999.

Dennis Michel is second bassoon of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and an ensemble artist with the Chicago Chamber Musicians. He also serves as Artist Teacher of Bassoon and serves as Director of Woodwind Chamber Music at The Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

Prior to establishing his career in Chicago, he served as principal bassoon of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra for 16 years, and was a founding member of the Arioso Wind Quintet, an ensemble that toured widely and recorded for Koch International Classics.

Mr. Michel has been a featured performer with the Da Camera Society of Houston and in the chamber music series at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, among others. He has appeared at numerous festivals including Tanglewood, The Grand Teton Festival, The Bard College Festival, The San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, and for 10 seasons performed with Summerfest LaJolla.  In 1996 Mr. Michel was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for advanced study with Milan Turkovic at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna. During that time he also performed with the Vienna State Opera.

Mr. Michel is a graduate of Yale University, where he was a student of Arthur Weisberg. He previously served on the faculties of Northwestern University, the University of Southern California, the University of California at San Diego and San Diego State University.

He has been a member of the Music Academy faculty since 1988.

Principal horn with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for 25 years, Julie Landsman is a distinguished performing artist and educator. She received a bachelor of music degree from The Juilliard School in 1975 under the tutelage of James Chambers and Ranier De Intinis, and has served as a member of the Juilliard faculty since 1989 to 2024.  Her appointment to the faculty at USC Thornton School of Music began in 2020.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Landsman achieved her dream of becoming principal of the MET in 1985 and held that position until 2010. She has also shared her talent to many other ensembles within the city as a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and having performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic. Additionally, she has performed with numerous groups outside the city, including her co-principal position with the Houston Symphony, substitute principal position with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra as Associate principal horn, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

She has recorded for RCA, Deutsche Gramophone, CRI, Nonesuch and Vanguard labels, and is most famous for her performance of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle as solo horn with the MET Opera under the direction of James Levine. Landsman has performed as chamber musician at numerous festivals and concert series, including the Marlboro Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she appeared as a guest artist with the Guarneri Quartet. In the summers she currently performs and teaches at the Music Academy of the West, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival.

World renowned as a master teacher, Julie Landsman held faculty positions at The Juilliard School and Bard College Conservatory. Her current position is adjunct professor of music at USC. She has presented master classes at such distinguished institutions as The Colburn School, Curtis Institute, Eastman School of Music, Mannes College of Music, Manhattan School of Music, USC Thornton School of Music, Cal State Long Beach, Rowan University, University of Oklahoma, and University of Southern Mississippi, to name a few. She is also a visiting master teacher at the New World Symphony in Miami. Her international presence includes master classes in Norway, Sweden, and Israel.  In 2016 Landsman was an honored jury member at the ARD horn competition in Munich, Germany.

Her students hold positions in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestras, Washington National Opera Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Auckland Philharmonia, Nova Scotia Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, and the American Brass Quintet. She recently received the “Pioneer Award” from the International Women’s Brass Conference and was a featured artist at the International Horn Society Conference in 2012 and 2015.  She was featured in the International Musician magazine in February, 2022. https://internationalmusician.org/julie-landsman/  She was interviewed by Local 802 in 2013 https://www.local802afm.org/allegro/articles/telling-it-like-it-is/

Her series of Carmine Caruso lessons on YouTube have led to further fame and renown among today’s generation of horn players. Landsman currently resides in Santa Barbara, CA.

Grammy Award winner, Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, and Music Academy alum Jennifer Montone has been hailed by The New York Times for her “flawless horn solos… and warm and noble sound”. The Principal Horn of the Philadelphia Orchestra, she has been on the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School since joining the orchestra in 2006. Previously she served as the Principal Horn of the Saint Louis Symphony and Associate Principal Horn of the Dallas Symphony. She regularly performs as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the National Symphony, the Polish National Radio Symphony, and the Warsaw National Philharmonic. Montone studied with Music Academy teaching artist Julie Landsman at The Juilliard School. Her recording of the Penderecki Horn Concerto, “Winterreise” with the Warsaw National Philharmonic won a 2013 Grammy Award in the category of “Best Classical Compendium”.

Barbara Butler is a soloist with Music of the Baroque, Chicago Chamber Musicians, and Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra. She is a former member of Eastman Brass, Eastman Virtuosi, and the Vancouver and Grant Park Symphony Orchestras. She has performed, recorded, and appeared in broadcasts with the St. Louis, Chicago, and Houston Symphony Orchestras and the New York Philharmonic. She has made solo appearances with many major orchestras and festivals and presented recitals and master classes worldwide. She appears on recordings and international broadcasts with Eastman Brass, Music of the Baroque, Chicago Chamber Musicians, and CBC Radio. Her most recent recordings include “Carmen Fantasia” on Warner Brothers and “With Clarion Voice” on D’Note Records with Charles Geyer. She is a former faculty member of the Northwestern University, Eastman School of Music and University of British Columbia, and studied with Vincent Cichowicz and Adolph Herseth. Ms. Butler began as Professor of Trumpet at Rice University in 2013.

Hailed as one the greatest classical trombonists of his generation, Mark Lawrence has had a long and successful career as an orchestral musician, soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, he was Principal Trombonist with the San Francisco Symphony for 34 years . In that capacity, he traveled the world performing and giving master
classes. As a chamber musician, he has been a member of the world famous and groundbreaking Empire Brass Quintet, the Center City Brass Quintet, the Four of a Kind trombone quartet, the Summit Brass Ensemble, and San Francisco’s Bay Brass Ensemble. He was a featured soloist with the San Francisco Symphony on many occasions, and has been a frequent recitalist in this country and abroad. In 2005 Mr. Lawrence was asked to join Sir George Solti’s World Orchestra for Peace, comprised of orchestral musicians from all over the world. As a member of that group, he performed wildly successful concerts in New York, London, Moscow, and Beijing. Mr. Lawrence has also been guest Principal Trombone with the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and is currently a member of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque. Teaching has always been a big part of his life, and many of his students have successful orchestral and chamber careers in the U.S., Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Japan. In addition to The Colburn School, he has been on the faculty of Boston University, Northwestern University, Tanglewood Institute, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and currently, Music Academy of the West. As a recording artist, his impressive discography includes 3 solo recordings, 16 chamber music recordings with Empire Brass Quintet, Center City Brass Quintet, The Four of a Kind Trombone quartet, Summit Brass, and Bay Brass, and over 30 recordings with the San Francisco Symphony, including their Grammy winning recordings of Mahler Symphonies number 3 and 7.

A prominent leader, performer, and educator in classical music, Weston Sprott is Dean and Director of the Preparatory Division at The Juilliard School, a Co-Founder of the Black Orchestral Network, and a trombonist in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Weston Sprott’s work is based on mission-driven values developed over a twenty-year career in the arts. His approach to all elements of his career is steeped in basic principles—a commitment to excellence and fairness, an abiding sense of kindness and compassion towards others, and an unwavering sense of optimism that is not naive. Sprott grew up in Spring, TX, immersed in the fabric of sports, marching bands, soul and R&B music, hip-hop culture, and the Pentecostal church. From an early age, his parents raised him to take pride in his identity, cultivate an industrious spirit, and embrace the heritage of leaders in arts and culture who speak truth to power and understand the implications of being Black in America. In a visit to his office, one will find photos of several individuals he views as inspirations, like Muhammad Ali, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Wynton Marsalis, and Malcolm X.

Following studies at Indiana University and the Curtis Institute of Music, Sprott began a robust performance career that includes orchestral, chamber, and solo performances. Hailed as “an excellent trombonist” with a “sense of style and phrasing [that] takes a backseat to no one,” he has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South Africa. In addition to being a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, since 2005, he has held positions with the Zurich Opera and Philharmonia, Pennsylvania Ballet, and Delaware Symphony. He has performed with several of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, and the Oslo Philharmonic. He can be heard on numerous solo, chamber, symphonic, opera, and film recordings, from “Live from Lincoln Center” broadcasts to the recent “Lion King” live-action movie. His chamber music and festival engagements include Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Gateways Chamber Players, Classical Tahoe, Festival Napa Valley, Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival, PRIZM Ensemble, and numerous others.

Growing up in a home of educators, the value and importance of teaching was reinforced from an early age and informs Sprott’s approach to his work. His commitment to working with young people is evidenced by his prolific teaching career. Sprott’s former students hold positions in leading ensembles across the world as well as others who have forged successful careers in other fields. He holds faculty positions at Juilliard, Bard College, and Music Academy of the West. He frequently appears as a guest teacher for the New World Symphony and The Orchestra Now, and has presented over a hundred masterclasses at conservatories and colleges around the world. Previous faculty positions include Mannes College, Rutgers University, Purchase College, Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program (MAP), PRIZM, Curtis Institute of Music’s Young Artist Summer Program, National Youth Orchestra-USA (NYO-USA and NYO2), Aspen Music Festival and School, and Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (SICMF).

The inclusion of arts administration into his career was inspired by a pivotal conversation with mentor Wynton Marsalis, who encouraged Sprott to “switch from the me agenda to the we agenda.” In 2019, Sprott was named Dean of the Preparatory Division at The Juilliard School—comprising the Pre-College and Music Advancement Program (MAP)—becoming the first Black dean in the institution’s history. During his tenure as Dean and Director, Sprott has played a central role in securing multiple transformative gifts for both the Pre-College and MAP, including permanent endowment and episodic funding to increase access to music education and build a more inclusive repertoire for young musicians. With this support, Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program, which actively seeks students historically underrepresented and underserved in classical music, now serves over 50% more students and provides full-tuition scholarships to all students in perpetuity. The Preparatory Division has contributed substantially to the creation of new work, having commissioned over 50 new works and counting—including etudes, solos, chamber, choral, wind ensemble, and orchestral works—with a focus on increasing the diversity of composers introduced to young musicians, creating a more inclusive future, and meaningfully elevating the work of talented creators from every walk of life. In 2020, upon receiving the Sphinx Medal of Excellence—the highest honor bestowed by the organization—and recognizing the importance of year-round educational opportunities, he established the “Weston Sprott and Anthony McGill MAP Summer Scholarship Fund” in partnership with MAP Artistic Director, Anthony McGill. In 2021, he was awarded the Sphinx Venture Fund for “Composing Inclusion,” a partnership between Juilliard, the New York Philharmonic, and American Composers Forum that commissioned and premiered nine new works with flexible orchestration by Black and Latinx composers, performed side-by-side by Preparatory Division students and the New York Philharmonic.

In 2021, Sprott co-founded the Black Orchestral Network (BON), an organization that supports Black orchestral musicians whose mission is “cultivating community, lifting our voices, and telling our stories.” Since its inception, BON has released multiple open letters to the field shedding light on inequitable practices and policies affecting Black musicians in the industry and created the podcast Black Music Seen to capture the stories of important Black figures in classical music. Sprott’s advocacy efforts have also led to the creation of the National Alliance for Audition Support, Sphinx Orchestral Partners Auditions Excerpt Competition, and Classical Tahoe Academy, as well as numerous other initiatives that are shifting the landscape of the industry.

Regularly sought after as a speaker and panelist, Sprott recently delivered the keynote address for SphinxConnect and the alumni commencement address at his alma mater, the Curtis Institute of Music. He has consulted for various organizations, authored several articles in publications including Local 802’s Allegro, and been featured in the Wall Street Journal and on the cover of the International Musician, the national publication of the American Federation of Musicians. Sprott has been the recipient of the Atlanta Symphony’s Aspire Award and the Community Music Center of Boston’s John Kleshinski Award.

Sprott is the Board Chair of the Friends of Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, a member of the Sphinx National Advisory Board, and the Avery Fisher Artist Program’s Recommendation Board. He has served as an advisory board member for Project STEP, the Community Music Center of Boston, and the Bronx Arts Ensemble. As an artist and clinician for the Antoine Courtois Instrument Company, Sprott performs exclusively on the Creation New York trombone, an instrument he designed.

Jeffrey Anderson joined the San Francisco Symphony as Principal Tuba, occupying the James Irvine Chair, in 2002. He holds a bachelor’s degree and performer’s certificate from Indiana University, where he studied with Harvey Phillips, and he completed his master’s degree at Arizona State University as a student of Daniel Perantoni. As a member of the New Mexico Symphony from 1989 to 1998, he made several solo appearances. Previously a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, he was featured as soloist in Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto with that orchestra in 2000. He has also performed with the National Repertory Orchestra and the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, and he appeared as guest principal tuba with the Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic and in the 2009 Seattle Opera production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. With the SFS, he has been heard as soloist in David Lang’s are you experienced? in the SoundBox series, and in the North American premiere of Robin Holloway’s Europa & and the Bull.

Mr. Anderson is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he teaches tuba and coaches chamber music. He is in demand as a clinician and performer, making appearances at International Tuba and Euphonium Association international and regional conferences as well as in master classes at Indiana University, Northwestern University, Manhattan School of Music, and the Shanghai Orchestra Academy. Mr. Anderson is Buffet-Crampon Group artist and exclusively plays B&S tubas.

Mr. Anderson attended the Music Academy of the West in 1982.

Joseph Pereira (1974) enjoys a multi-faceted career as a timpanist/percussionist, composer, conductor, and teacher. His work in all areas has been widely hailed for his creativity and virtuosity, and has been profiled in feature articles in both The New York Times (2006) and The Los Angeles Times in 2012 and 2015. In 2015 Pereira was featured on the PBS series, “Craft in America”.

Pereira has been the Principal Timpanist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2008. As a versatile performer, Pereira is in demand as an orchestral timpanist, studio recording percussionist. He regularly appears as a solo percussionist in the orchestra’s “Green Umbrella” new music series and has also conducted his music and other world premieres on the orchestra’s chamber series. In Los Angeles, he also can be found in the recording studios and can be heard on many major motion pictures. Previously Pereira was a member of the New York Philharmonic from 1997 to 2008, as a timpanist and percussionist. His line of signature timpani mallets by JGPercussion are sold worldwide.

Pereira currently runs the percussion studio at USC Thornton School of Music, and is also on the faculty of the Music Academy, and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo Japan. Pereira was previously on the faculty of The Juilliard School, from 2004-2012.

As a composer, Pereira’s music has been described as “restless yet lucidly textured” (The New York Times), “striking atmospherics of colour” (The Guardian), and “one sonic surprise after another” (The Los Angeles Times). His works have been commissioned and performed worldwide, most notably by the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel, the Singapore Symphony, the New York Philharmonic Chamber Series, the Miro Quartet, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, percussionist Colin Currie, Duo Harpverk, French Ensemble TM+, and the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet. In 2013 the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet recorded his piece Repousse’ (2009), which was nominated for three 2013 Grammy Awards. The following year LAPQ recorded Pereira’s Mallet Quartet (2013), and it was rated “Best of 2014 Classical Music” on iTunes. Pereira’s works can be heard on Sono Luminus, Yarlung Records, and New Focus Recordings. His works are published in the US by Bachovich Music and Black Dot Press in London.

Before joining the Seattle Symphony as Principal Percussionist in the fall of 2009, Michael Werner was a percussionist with the Metropolitan Opera for 13 years, and Principal Percussionist for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for two years.

Mr. Werner is currently the Principal Percussionist at the Seattle Symphony, and was also acting Principal for the 2014-2015 season at the LA Philharmonic, including the 2015 Asia Tour. In the spring of 2016 he was invited to perform with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra as a Percussion Teacher and Guest Artist. In 2014, Michael was the featured soloist at The Seattle Symphony Orchestra where he performed F. Gruber’s “Rough Music Concerto”. Michael has performed with The Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, The Metropolitan Opera, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Pittsburgh Symphony,  The Metropolitan Opera Chamber Ensemble, The Metropolitan Opera Percussion Ensemble,The Seattle Chamber Music Society,The Canadian Brass and Empire Brass Ensembles, and at The Santa Barbara International Percussion Festival.

Mr. Werner has been a faculty member at The Mannes School of Music in New York since 2002. He has served as a Clinician and Instructor for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Percussive Arts Society, The New World Symphony, Oberlin Percussion Institute, Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, The Cleveland Institute of Music, and The New England Conservatory. He also serves as an Artist and Clinician for Pearl Percussion, Zildjian Symbols, and Freer Percussion.

Michael started his secondary studies at the Eastman School of Music, under John Beck. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Richard Wiener. Michael also studied with Tom Freer at Cleveland State University.

An alumnus of the Music Academy of the West (1990), Mr. Werner has been a faculty member since 2005.

JoAnn Turovsky is principal harpist with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale Orchestra. She also serves as a professor of harp at the USC Thornton School of Music, the Colburn Conservatory, and the Colburn School of Performing Arts.

Ms. Turovsky has received numerous honors for her solo and chamber repertoire interpretations. These include first prize in the American Harp Society National Competition, Young Professional Division; first prize in the Coleman Chamber Music Competition; a prize at the Fifth International Harp Competition in Jerusalem; and numerous local awards from Mu Phi Epsilon, Sigma Alpha Iota, the Etude Music Club, and the Young Musicians Foundation. She serves as chair of the American Harp Society National Competition.

Ms. Turovsky appears frequently as a soloist with musical organizations throughout California and is busy in the motion picture and television industry. The composer John Williams wrote a solo piece for harp that she performed on the Angela’s Ashes soundtrack, while her performances also grace such films as Avatar, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Karate Kid, Toy Story (plus its sequels), The Kite Runner, and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Star Wars, Frozen, and Avatar, among the more than 400 movie soundtracks in which she has participated.

She has received the Schoenfeld Artist Teacher Award for Harp from the California Chapter of the American String Teachers Association and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Harp Society.

Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists. Winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Denk returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and in recent seasons has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and The Cleveland Orchestra, as well as on tour with Academy of St Martin in the Fields and at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.

In 2019-2020, until the COVID-19 pandemic led to the shutdown of all performances, Denk toured Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier Book 1 extensively, and was to have performances culminate with Lincoln Center in New York and the Barbican in London. He returned to Carnegie Hall to perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and made his solo debut at the Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. He also made his solo recital debut at the Boulez Saal in Berlin performing works by Bach, Ligeti, Berg, and Schumann, and returned to the Piano aux Jacobins Festival in France, as well as London’s Wigmore Hall. Further performances abroad included his debut with the Bournemouth Symphony, his returns to the City of Birmingham Symphony and the Piano Espoo Festival in Finland, and recitals of the complete Ives Violin Sonatas with Stefan Jackiw.

Highlights of the previous season included a three-week recital tour, culminating in Denk’s return to Carnegie Hall; play-directing Mozart Concerti on an extensive tour with Academy of St Martin in the Fields; and a nationwide trio tour with Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis. He also performed and curated a series of Mozart Violin Sonatas (‘Denk & Friends’) at Carnegie Hall.

Denk is also known for his original and insightful writing on music, which Alex Ross praises for its “arresting sensitivity and wit.” He wrote the libretto for a comic opera presented by Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, and the Aspen Festival, and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New Republic, The Guardian, and on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. One of his New Yorker contributions, “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” forms the basis of a book for future publication by Random House in the US, and Macmillan in the UK.

Denk’s recording of the Goldberg Variations for Nonesuch Records reached No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Charts. His recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111 paired with Ligeti’s Études was named one of the best discs of the year by the New Yorker, NPR, and the Washington Post, and his account of the Beethoven sonata was selected by BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library as the best available version recorded on modern piano. Denk has a long-standing attachment to the music of American visionary Charles Ives, and his recording of Ives’s two piano sonatas also featured in many “best of the year” lists. His recording c.1300-c.2000 was released in 2018 with music ranging from Guillaume de Machaut, Gilles Binchois and Carlo Gesualdo, to Stockhausen, Ligeti and Glass.

Jeremy Denk graduated from Oberlin College, Indiana University, and The Juilliard School. He lives in New York City, and his website and blog are at jeremydenk.com.

Mr. Denk has been a Music Academy of the West faculty artist since 2015.

Pianist Conor Hanick is regarded as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master.” (New York Times) Hanick’s playing, “a revelation of clarity and bite,” reminds the Times’ Anthony Tommasini of a “young Peter Serkin.” His performance of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes was, according to the Times’ critic David Allan, “the best instrumental concert I have seen all year”; praise echoed by the Boston Globe, which named the performance “Best Solo Recital” of 2019.

Hanick has recently been presented by The Gilmore Festival, the New York Philharmonic, Caramoor, Cal Performances, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Park Avenue Armory, and performed with the Seattle Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Orchestra Iowa, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. A fierce advocate for the music of today, and “the soloist of choice for such thorny works” (NYT), Hanick has premiered over 200 pieces and collaborated with composers both emerging and iconic; among them, Hanick has worked with Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, Steve Reich, and Charles Wuorinen, in addition to the leading composers of his generation, including Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw, Tyshawn Sorey, Matthew Aucoin, and Christopher Cerrone.

In the 2022-23 season, Hanick premieres a new piano concerto by composer Samuel Carl Adams with the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen; appears with soprano Julia Bullock at the Aix en Provence Festival in Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi; and presented in recital by the Library of Congress, Hancher Auditorium, Ensemble Music Society of Indianapolis, the 92nd Street Y, and elsewhere. He is a founding member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), a group of artists focused on developing discipline-colliding work. With that group, Hanick served as co-artistic director of the Ojai Festival in 2022 and present work the Spoleto Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Saint John the Devine, and LaMaMa Theater.

Since 2014 Hanick has been a teaching artist at the Music Academy. He has given lectures and masterclasses in Asia, Europe, and throughout the US, including Northwestern University, the New England Conservatory, UCLA, The University of Washington, University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Iowa. He is a member of the piano and chamber music faculty of The Juilliard School, Mannes College, and the Peabody Institute of Music. A Yamaha Artist, Hanick a graduate of Northwestern University and the Juilliard School, and lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, son, and Westies.

Recognized by colleagues and critics worldwide as a leading chamber musician and collaborative pianist, Jonathan Feldman has performed on four continents with some of the world’s greatest instrumentalists, among them the legendary Nathan Milstein, Itzhak Perlman, Gil Shaham, James Galway, Sarah Chang, and Joshua Bell. He performed regularly with the New York Philharmonic as a keyboard player within the orchestra and as a chamber musician appeared in concert with the New York Philharmonic Chamber Ensembles and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City. He was a featured performer in a Live From Lincoln Center with Gil Shaham, which was broadcast throughout the United States on PBS.

A graduate of The Juilliard School, Mr. Feldman joined the Juilliard faculty in 1989 and was chairman of the school’s collaborative piano department from 1991-2015. He joined the faculty of New England Conservatory in 2010. He has given masterclasses throughout the United States and the Far East, and has lectured at international festivals and competitions. He is the Director of Collaborative Piano at the Music Academy of the West, a post he has held since 2005. He has appeared in other summer festivals, such as Tanglewood, Bridgehampton, Music from Angel Fire, Bravo Festival in Vail, Colorado, Hidden Valley Music Seminars, and the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival.

Mr. Feldman’s most recent recordings, with his wife, New York Philharmonic principal bassoonist Judith LeClair, and principal flutist Robert Langevin, are available on Avie Records. He has also recorded for Angel/EMI, Columbia Masterworks, DGG, RCA Red Seal, Naxos, Nonesuch, Summit, and Cala Records. He can be heard on soundtracks for many movies, including Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep and The Man Who Wasn’t There by the Coen Brothers.

Natasha Kislenko has performed extensively as a soloist and a collaborative pianist across Russia, Europe, Asia and the United States. She has appeared in recital and chamber music performances with numerous distinguished soloists, including Torleif Tedeen, James Buswell, Zvi Zeitlin, Theodore Kuchar, Tadeu Coelho, and Leone Buyse.

As a soloist, Ms. Kislenko has received top prizes in international piano competitions in Germany, Portugal, France, the Slovak Republic, and the United States. She made her solo recital debut in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in 1996, and most recently has appeared with Orquesta del Congreso Nacional in Paraguay, the Varna Chamber Orchestra in Bulgaria, the Eskisehir Municipal symphony orchestra in Turkey, and the Santa Barbara Symphony.

Ms. Kislenko holds graduate degrees in piano from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX) and the Stony Brook University, NY, where she completed her doctorate with Gilbert Kalish in 2004.

In 2007 Ms. Kislenko moved to Santa Barbara to assume a teaching position at UC Santa Barbara. Previously, she served on the faculties of California State University Fresno and Meadowmount School of Music (New York).

An alumna of the Music Academy (2001), Ms. Kislenko has been a member of the faculty since 2004.

Pianist Margaret McDonald, a native of Minnesota, is an Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano at the University of Colorado Boulder.  She joined the College of Music keyboard faculty in the fall of 2004. She helped to develop the College’s graduate degree program in Collaborative Piano and the undergraduate collaborative curriculum. Praised for her poetic style and versatility, Dr. McDonald enjoys a very active performing career and has partnered many distinguished artists including the Takács Quartet, Kathleen Winkler, Zuill Bailey, Paula Robison, Carol Wincenc, Ben Kamins, David Shifrin, David Jolley, Ian Bousfield, Joseph Alessi, Steven Mead, and Velvet Brown.  She has performed throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Dr. McDonald received her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in Piano Performance from the University of Minnesota and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Collaborative Piano from the University of California – Santa Barbara.  Her principal teachers include Lydia Artymiw and Anne Epperson.  She received fellowships to study at both the Music Academy of the West and the Tanglewood Music Center where she worked closely with Dawn Upshaw, Robert Spano, and Osvaldo Golijov.

Dr. McDonald is active throughout the country giving master classes at institutions including The Juilliard School, Indiana University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, Arizona State University, University of California – Santa Barbara, and Louisiana State University.  She has released recordings with Velvet Brown, tuba, Aaron Tindall, tuba, and Erika Eckert, viola for Potenza Records and Meridian Records.

Dr. McDonald has been a staff accompanist at the Meadowmount School for Strings in New York and an official accompanist at the Music Teachers National Association competition and the National Flute Association annual convention. McDonald is an alumna of the Music Academy of the West and has been a member of the Music Academy faculty since 2005.

Two-time GRAMMY Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke has been called a “luminous standout” by the New York Times and “equal parts poise, radiance and elegant directness” by Opera News. Sasha has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Seattle Opera, Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, among others, and with over 80 symphony orchestras worldwide frequently in the works of Mahler. This season marks Sasha’s appointment at the Music Academy as Co-Director of the Lehrer Vocal Institute.

Sasha Cooke opened the 2022-23 season with a return to Houston Grand Opera in her role debut as Thirza in the company’s new production of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers conducted by Patrick Summers. On the concert stage, she performs throughout the U.S. and abroad: in Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with Wiener Konzerthaus, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Houston Symphony conducted by Juraj Valčuha, Michael Tilson Thomas’ Meditations on Rilke with the New York Philharmonic conducted by the composer, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra alongside Gemma New and Mozart’s Requiem with the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Klaus Mäkelä and later with Nashville Symphony. She debuts with Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano and the Utah Symphony in Mendelssohn’s Elijah which she later performs with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra under the baton of Alan Gilbert. She makes returns to Chicago Symphony for works by Vivaldi, to Philadephia Orchestra for Handel’s Messiah and to Kansas City Symphony for Hindemith’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. Special collaborations on the recital stage include Jake Heggie’s Intonations: Songs for the Violins of Hope with Music of Remembrance; recitals with guitarist Jason Vieaux at San Francisco Performances and Round Top Festival; and a recital at Kaufman Music Center, alongside pianist Kirill.

Last season marked the release of Sasha Cooke’s new CD on Pentatone, entitled how do I find you, now nominated for the 65^th GRAMMY Awards that will be held in February 2023 as Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. The recording, which features 17 newly written songs by Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, Jimmy Lopez, and others, is intended as a tribute to both the struggles and hopes of artists that have been wrought by the pandemic. The album can be listened to on all streaming platforms.

As a dedicated recitalist, Sasha was presented by Young Concert Artists in her widely acclaimed New York and Washington debuts at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and the Kennedy Center. She has also appeared in recital at Alice Tully Hall, The Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center and the 92nd Street Y. Her recordings can be found on the Hyperion, BIS, Chandos, Pentatone, Naxos, Bridge Records, Yarlung, GPR Records, and Sono Luminus labels. Most recently she appears on recordings including Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer on Pentatone, Michael Tilson Thomas’ Meditations on Rilke with the San Francisco Symphony with won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Classical Compendium, L’enfance du Christ with Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony on Chandos, Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs on Pentatone which won the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS and Sasha Cooke LIVE a collection of her performances from the Music@Menlo chamber music festival released on their label.

A graduate of Rice University and The Juilliard School, Sasha also attended the Music Academy, the Aspen Music Festival, the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute, the Wolf Trap Foundation, the Marlboro Music Festival, the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, and Seattle Opera and Central City Opera’s Young Artist Training Programs. She has given masterclasses throughout the United States, Australia and Canada. Sasha lives near Houston, Texas with daughters Evelyn and Julia, and husband baritone Kelly Markgraf.

One of the leading collaborative pianists of his generation, John Churchwell enjoys a career on the concert stage as well as in the nation’s leading opera houses.

In August 2011, John was named Head of Music for San Francisco Opera. Previously, he was an assistant conductor for both the Metropolitan Opera and the San Francisco Opera for 14 years. He has assisted on more than 140 productions and has collaborated with some of the world’s leading conductors including James Levine, Nello Santi, Nicola Luisotti, James Conlon, Donald Runnicles, Sir Charles Mackerras, Marco Armiliato, Fabio Luisi, and Eun Sun Kim. John Churchwell has been a Music Academy teaching artist since 2000.

A champion of American music, John was involved in the world premieres of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. In recent seasons, he has prepared the world premieres of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Christopher Theofanidis’ Heart of a Soldier, as well as the Philip Glass opera Appomattox, the Stewart Wallace/Amy Tan collaboration The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Tobias Picker’s Dolores Claiborne, as well as the world premiere of Girls of the Golden West by John Adams, all for San Francisco Opera. From 2005-2008 John was the official accompanist for the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions.

This summer saw John appear in recitals with Renée Fleming, Sasha Cooke, and Susanna Phillips. He has partnered with some of today’s most sought-after vocalists including Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Diana Damrau, Larry Brownlee, Lisette Oropesa, Isabel Leonard, Frederica von Stade, Dawn Upshaw, and Carol Vaness. Recent appearances include San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall and the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts in Davis, California with tenor Michael Fabiano and the Hollywood Bowl for Prairie Home Companion with soprano Ellie Dehn. In addition to song recitals, John is an active chamber musician and has appeared regularly with members of the Metropolitan and San Francisco’s Opera Orchestras.

A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, John studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and Tufts University where he earned a Bachelor of Music in Piano and a Bachelor of Arts in French, respectively. He continued his studies at the University of Minnesota where he earned a Master of Music and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Accompanying. John studied song literature at the Banff Centre for the Arts and remains the only pianist to be invited for three summers as a Tanglewood Fellow. He is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program.

Mary Birnbaum, whose stage direction of opera and theatre New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini called “viscerally overwhelming” (Rape of Lucretia at Juilliard) and “genuinely insightful…vibrant” (The Classical Style at Carnegie Hall), works both internationally, from Taiwan (Otello) to Central America (L’elisir d’amore and La bohème at the National Theatre of Costa Rica and Querido Arte in Guatemala), Australia and Israel, and across the U.S. (Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, Opera Columbus, Virginia Arts Festival (Kept), Ojai Festival, Boston Baroque).

Birnbaum’s 2020-21 season included productions of Das Rheingold at Virginia Opera, L’Orfeo (Rossi) at The Juilliard School, In a Grove (Cerrone/Fleischmann) at Pittsburgh Opera, and The Sound of Music at the Virginia Arts Festival. Her production of La bohème opened the season at the Santa Fe Opera in 2019, the first new female-led production at the company since 1997.

Birnbaum’s production of Dido and Aeneas played Opera Holland Park in London and Opera de Versailles. In Opera Magazine, George Loomis wrote that Mary Birnbaum’s “thoughtful direction [of Eugene Onegin at Juilliard] was rich with imaginative touches” and the Houston Press termed her Hansel and Gretel a “stunner, perhaps the company’s most perfect realization. [The Company] has found a director of real quality in Mary Birnbaum.”

Currently Associate Director of the post-graduate Artist Diploma in Opera Studies program at Juilliard, Mary has taught acting for singers at Bard College and in the Lindemann Young Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera. A graduate of Harvard College, Mary also trained professionally in physical theater at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

Equally devoted to instrumental chamber music as he is to art song and operatic repertoire, César Cañón alternates his activity as a pianist with vocal coaching, teaching and conducting. He has performed in his native Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Italy, Norway and across the United States. His concert appearances include the Kennedy Center, the Norwegian National Opera, Detroit Symphony, and San Francisco Opera’s Taube Atrium Theatre at the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera. He has been a guest performer and lecturer at Michigan State University, University of Michigan, Emory University, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, University of Texas at Austin, Universidad Central de Colombia, Universidad Sergio Arboleda, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Cañón is an alum of the Aspen Opera Theatre Center and the Merola Opera Program. He has also been a vocal coach and repetiteur for the Ad Astra Music Festival; assistant conductor and pianist for Opera de Colombia, the Bogota philharmonic, Teatro Colón de Bogotá and Festival Amazonas de Opera in Manaus, Brazil. Cañón was an Adler Fellow with the San Francisco Opera in 2018 and 2019. As a fellow, he was featured in the Schwabacher recital series, in which he performed Johannes Brahms’ Die Schöne Magelone alongside baritone Christian Pursell and soprano Felicia Moore. In the summer of 2019, he conducted Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera with Accademia Europea dell’Opera in Lucca, Italy. While in San Francisco, Cañón worked with several Bay Area cultural institutions. He was music director for productions of Pocket Opera in their 2019 and 2020 seasons, pianist for the 2019 and 2022 James Toland Vocal Competition, and rehearsal pianist in selected projects with the San Francisco Symphony and Opera Parallèle. In 2021 he was awarded a Bayreuther Festspiele Stipendiat by the Wagner Society of Northern California, allowing him to attend the prestigious festival in Bayreuth. As a staff pianist, Coach and conductor for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he closely collaborated with mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade.

Cañón holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and a Master of Music and Doctorate in Collaborative Piano from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Martin Katz. He is currently part of the music staff of the San Francisco Opera and the Norwegian National Opera, where he works as staff conductor, repetiteur and assistant chorus master.

Soprano Christine Goerke has appeared in many of the most prestigious opera houses of the world including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Royal Opera House, Paris Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Teatro Real in Madrid, and the Saito Kinen Festival. She has sung much of the great soprano repertoire, beginning with the Mozart and Handel heroines and now moving into dramatic Strauss and Wagner roles.

Ms. Goerke has also appeared with leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Radio Vara, the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms, and both the Hallè Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Symphony at the Edinburgh International Festival. She has worked with some of the world’s foremost conductors including James Conlon, Sir Andrew Davies, Sir Mark Elder, Christoph Eschenbach, Claus Peter Flor, James Levine, Sir Charles Mackerras, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Andris Nelsons, Seiji Ozawa, David Robertson, Donald Runnicles, Esa-Pekka Salonen, the late Robert Shaw, Patrick Summers, Jeffery Tate, Christian Thielemann, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Edo de Waart.

Ms. Goerke’s recording of Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra won the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Classical Recording and Best Choral Performance. Her close association with Robert Shaw yielded several recordings included the Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes, Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, and the Grammy-nominated recording of Dvorak’s Stabat Mater. Other recordings include the title role in Iphigenie en Tauride for Telarc and Britten’s War Requiem, which won the 1999 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

Ms. Goerke was the recipient of the 2001 Richard Tucker Award, the 2015 Musical American Vocalist of the Year Award, and the 2017 Opera News Award. Opera.

“Martin Katz must surely be considered the dean of collaborative pianists,” said the Los Angeles Times, and Musical America magazine created an award expressly for him: Accompanist of the Year. One of the world’s busiest collaborators, he has been in constant demand by the world’s most celebrated vocal soloists  for more than five decades. He was fortunate to accompany Marilyn Horne for almost all of that time. He has also appeared and recorded regularly with Frederica von Stade, David Daniels, Jose Carreras, Karita Mattila, Cecilia Bartoli, Kiri Te Kanawa, Kathleen Battle, Piotr Beczala, Joseph Calleja to name just a few. Season after season, the world’s musical capitals figure prominently in his schedule. 

Mr. Katz is a native of Los Angeles, where he began piano studies at the age of five. He attended the University of Southern California and studied the specialized field of accompanying with its pioneer teacher, Gwendolyn Koldofsky. While yet a student, he was given the unique opportunity of accompanying the classes and lessons of such luminaries as Lotte Lehmann, Jascha Heifetz, Pierre Bernac, and Gregor Piatigorsky. Following his formal education, he held the position of pianist for the US Army Chorus in Washington, D.C. for three years, before moving to New York where his international career began in earnest in 1969.     

In more recent years, invitations to conduct orchestral evenings and operas have come with increasing frequency. Mr. Katz has partnered several of his soloists on the podium for orchestras of the B.B.C., Houston, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, New Haven and Miami. He has also been pleased to conduct several staged productions for the University of Michigan’s Opera Theatre, the Music Academy, and San Francisco Opera’s prestigious Merola program. 

Finally, the professional profile of Martin Katz is completed with his passionate commitment to teaching. For four decades, the University of Michigan has been his home, where he has been happy to chair the School of Music’s program in collaborative piano, and also play an active part in operatic productions. He has been a pivotal figure in the training of countless young artists, both singers and pianists, who are now working  all over the world. The University of Michigan has recognized this important work, awarding him the first Artur Schnabel professorship, and more recently named him a Distinguished University Professor. He chose to name this award after his teacher, Gwendolyn Koldofsky, herself a cornerstone at the Music Academy for many decades. In addition to his work at his home school, he is a regular guest teacher at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy, Songfest, Chicago College of Performing Arts, Canadian Operatic Arts Academy, and the New National Theatre of Tokyo.  

Mr. Katz’s comprehensive guide for accompanists, “The Complete Collaborator,” published by Oxford Press, is widely seen as the seminal work on this subject.

Mr. Katz attended the Music Academy in 1964, and was named a recipient of the Academy’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1999.

London-based conductor William Long continues to showcase his “masterful command of challenging, multi-stylistic works” (Opera News) with some of the world’s premier musical institutions. Recent highlights include his debut with the London Symphony Orchestra at The Barbican, conducting Washington National Opera’s production of Carmen and the world premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones with Opera Theater Saint Louis and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

This upcoming season, Long returns to The Metropolitan Opera to cover Terence Blanchard’s Champion, San Francisco Opera for the world premiere of John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra and concerts with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra & Chorus, and Washington National Opera for La bohème. Long will also continue his relationship with the London Symphony Orchestra as a Cover Conductor where he has assisted in a wide variety of programs since 2020, working with Sir Simon Rattle, Gianandrea Noseda, and John Wilson. He also continues his posts at the prestigious Music Academy in Santa Barbara, California.

Long’s previous work has included appearances as Cover Conductor at the Kennedy Center for productions of Eugene Onegin, Candide, and the world premieres of Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up and Terence Blanchard’s Champion. A native of California, he has worked extensively with San Francisco Opera as Assistant Conductor on productions of Arabella, Hänsel und Gretel, Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro, and with Los Angeles Opera as Cover Conductor for Gordon Getty’s Usher House and The Canterville Ghost.

From 2013-2018 Long served as Assistant Conductor at San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle, where he prepared productions of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and At the Statue of Venus, Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, Jonathan Dove’s Flight, Tarik O’Regan’s Heart of Darkness, and Philip Glass’ Les enfants terribles, among other projects.

Long holds a B.A. in Piano Performance and an M.A. in Conducting from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studied with Maria Ezerova and Nicole Paiement. He also studied with Harold Farberman at the Conductor’s Institute at Bard College and Vance George at Westminster Choir College.

Sought after pianist, coach, and conductor, Mario Antonio Marra currently serves as the Head of Music at Minnesota Opera where he also stewards the development of the company’s Resident Artists. He has served on the music staff at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, and Oper Frankfurt among others. Recent conducting credits include Minnesota Opera’s production of Don Giovanni and Season Preview Gala. Passionate in his work nurturing and coaching the next generation of singers, Mario has served on the faculties of numerous summer training programs including the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco where he returns for his third summer in 2024.

An active recitalist, he has recently performed with many of today’s most sought after singers including Željko Lučić, Eric Owens, Quinn Kelsey, Ramón Vargas, and Stephanie Blythe. He has been presented at prestigious venues internationally, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Palazzo Davanzati in Florence, Oper Frankfurt, and the Civic Opera House in Chicago.

Lauded by the legendary Marilyn Horne for his “superb technique,” Marra was a winner of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition at Music Academy where he was a fellow in 2023 and 2014, along with the critically acclaimed young baritone John Brancy. He is a graduate of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center young artist program at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. His mentors and teachers include Norma Verrilli, Marilyn Nonken, and Warren Jones.

William McGraw, baritone, retired from CCM in May of 2021 after a 35-year tenure as Professor of Voice. McGraw studied voice with the renowned Wagnerian soprano Margaret Harshaw and began his professional singing career under the care of the inestimable Boris Goldovsky. McGraw’s operatic roles include Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Marcello in La bohéme, Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor, Germont in La Traviata, Konrad Nachtigall in Die Meistersinger, Marco in Gianni Schicchi, and John Proctor in The Crucible. McGraw has performed with opera companies including Boston Opera (with the late Sarah Caldwell), Goldovsky Opera on Tour, Greater Miami Opera (now Florida Grand Opera), Cincinnati Opera, Dayton Opera, Indianapolis Opera, Maracaibo, Venezuela Opera, Shreveport Opera, and Kentucky Opera.

Professor McGraw has had the good fortune of sharing the solo stage with internationally acclaimed artists soprano Deborah Voigt, tenor Ben Heppner, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe at Cincinnati’s May Festival, under the baton of maestro James Conlon. In the summers of 2010 and 2011, Professor McGraw taught at the CCM Spoleto Music Festival in Spoleto, Italy. In the summers of 2013 and 2014, Professor McGraw taught at Opera On The Avalon under the direction of Cheryl Hickman in St. John’s, Newfoundland. In the summers of 2016 and 2017, Professor McGraw teaches in the wonderfully unique art song festival, SongFest, which features influential living composers of song as well as high visibility coaches of art song and is the creation of Rosemary Hyler Ritter. In May of 2024, Mr. McGraw will join the faculty of Fellowship of the Song founded by Samuel Martin in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Professor McGraw was a CCM faculty member from 1986-2021, and many of his former students have gone on to successful careers in the performing arts. Additionally, his current and former students have performed in the major opera houses of Berlin, Bonn, Bremen, Paris, Mannheim, Freiburg, Salzburg, San Francisco, Houston, Indianapolis, Santa Fe, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cincinnati. Students have also performed in numerous young artist programs such as those of Cincinnati Opera, Opera Theater of St. Louis, Des Moines, Central City, Chautauqua, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, Houston Grand Opera, Merola, Music Academy with Marilyn Horne, Florida Grand, and Chicago Lyric Opera. Professor McGraw is proud to have students teaching in leading universities and colleges in the United States.

Professor McGraw has been named Omicron Delta Kappa Man of Merit by Baylor University in recognition of outstanding accomplishments.

Newly appointed Chief Conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Christian Reif has established a reputation for his natural musicality, innovative programming and technical command. The 2023/24 season marks Reif’s inaugural season as Chief Conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra. He leads 7 programs with the orchestra including their season-opening concerts and a Swedish tour in March 2024.

Since 2022, Reif has served as Music Director of the Lakes Area Music Festival in Minnesota, a month-long summer festival committed to commissioning new works and to giving free concerts for the community with programming that ranges from opera and chamber music to symphonic performances.

Highlights of Reif’s 2023/24 season highlights also include subscription appearances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony and Brno Philharmonic Orchestra plus summer festival appearances at the Grand Teton Music Festival and at Interlochen. Reif conducts his own arrangement of John Adams’ El Niño with the Cincinnati Symphony, and with the American Modern Opera Company on tour to Stanford University, Yale University, Harriman-Jewel in Kansas City, and at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.

With an equal footing in North America and Europe, Reif has conducted the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Colorado, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Louisville, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. In Europe, he has performed repeatedly with Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra and Stavanger Symphony.

Reif is featured on classical singer Julia Bullock’s debut solo Nonesuch Records album Walking in the Dark where he leads London’s Philharmonia Orchestra as well as accompanies Bullock on the piano. The album, praised by Gramophone Magazine as “illuminating”, won the 2024 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. In 2020, Reif and Bullock recorded a series of at-home virtual “Songs of Comfort”. NPR Music featured the duo in a “Tiny Desk Concert” for their special quarantine edition of the series, and The New York Times highlighted them on their “Best Classical Music of 2020” list.

From 2016 to 2019, Christian was Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, after being the Conducting Fellow at the New World Symphony from 2014 to 2016 and at Tanglewood Music Center in 2015 and 2016.

Georgian pianist Nino Sanikidze has held the position of a Head Coach for the Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program at Los Angeles Opera since the program’s inception in 2006. In addition, she works closely with LA Opera’s Richard Seaver Music Director James Conlon as a pianist and a prompter for mainstage productions.

Outside of LA Opera, she has been engaged with such companies as Teatro Real in Madrid, Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Royal Opera House Muscat, Teatro Municipal di Santiago, Washington National Opera, Bard Summerscape, Cleveland Opera, and Wichita Grand Opera. A frequent collaborator with the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, her notable concert appearances include a recital with tenor Marcelo Alvarez and a recital with mezzo-soprano Elina Garanca. In addition she has performed in a recital with world-renown guitarist Angel Romero at Palm Springs Life Festival.

Since 2008 she has been an official pianist for Placido Domingo’s World Opera Competition Operalia.  In this capacity she has performed on the illustrious stages of Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Royal Opera House in London, Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos in Lisbon, National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Hungarian State Opera House in Budapest, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara, Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, Grand Théâtre de Québec, among others.

Dr. Sanikidze serves on a judging panels of the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions, Richard Tucker Music Foundations Study and Career Grant Auditions, Marcela Sembrich International Voice Competition, Classical Singer Convention, Music Center Spotlight Awards, and Center Stage Opera Competition. A sought-after clinician, she has been a principal guest coach for the USC Thornton School of Music and has conducted masterclasses at Chapman Conservatory, Opera Santa Barbara, University of Kansas, Songfest, Music Center Spotlight, and YoungArts Los Angeles.

Ms. Sanikidze is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Marilyn Horne Foundation Award for Excellence in Vocal Accompanying. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and is an alumna of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at Washington National Opera, as well as the Music Academy of the West, Aspen Opera Center, Cleveland Art Song Festival, and SongFest. She has served on the faculty of prestigious Vocal Institute at the Music Academy of the West since 2014.

“Technically nimble and supportive pianist” (New York Times), “Accompanist with wondrous tact and virtuosity” (San Francisco Chronicle), “Vigorous and versatile” (Washington Post) and “Extraordinarily sensitive collaborative synch throughout the evening” (VOICE Magazine) Tamara Sanikidze gave her first performance with the Georgian Symphony Orchestra at age eight and has since appeared as soloist and chamber musician throughout the Republic of Georgia, Russia, Europe, Asia and the Americas.

Since 2009, in capacity of an official pianist for Plácido Domingo’s annual World Opera Competition “Operalia” Dr. Sanikidze has performed in such renown opera houses as Hungarian State Opera house in Budapest, La Scala in Milano, Galina Vishnevskaya’s Opera Centre in Moscow, Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, Royal Opera house in London, Dorothy Chandler Auditorium in Los Angeles, Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara, São Carlos in Lisbon, and National Theater in Prague.

As a winner of the Marilyn Horne Foundation Award for Excellence in Vocal Accompanying she has performed regularly in the Marilyn Horne Foundation’s “The Song Continues…” and “On the Wings of Song”. Active Song Recitalist she has partnered with such luminaries as Thomas Hampson, Nino Machaidze, Isabel Leonard, Quinn Kelsey, Marjorie Owens, Elizabeth Futral, Nicole Cabell, Leah Crocetto, Nadine Sierra and Amanda Majeski in New York City’s Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall and other prestigious venues including the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. By the special invitation, she has traveled to Beijing, China to perform with Mo. Plácido Domingo and also has performed at the White House for President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.
In May 2019 Sanikidze joined the much acclaimed Camerata Pacifica ensemble for a concert tour throughout South California.

Between 2007- 2012 Ms. Sanikidze was a Young Artist Coach at the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program at Washington National Opera and an Adler Fellow at San Francisco Opera, where she served as an Assistant Conductor and Coach for productions of Don Giovanni (Mo. Plácido Domingo), Rigoletto (Mo. Giovanni Reggioli), Hansel and Gretel (Mo. Steven Gathman), La Traviata (Mo. Plácido Domingo and Mo. Dan Ettinger), Carmen (Mo. Julius Rudel), Turandot(Mo. Keri-Lynn Wilson), Falstaff (Mo. Sebastian Lang-Lessing), La fanciulla del West (Mo. Nicola Luisotti), Aida (Mo. Nicola Luisotti), The Makropulos case (Mo. Jiří Bělohlávek), Die Walküre (Mo. Donald Runnicles), Carmen (Mo. Nicola Luisotti), and Xerxes (Mo. Patrick Summers).

Upon finishing the prestigious Adler Fellowship Program, Sanikidze joined the Music Staff at both San Francisco Opera and Los Angeles Opera where she works closely with Mo. Plácido Domingo, Mo. James Conlon and Mo. Nicola Luisotti. In the capacity of a Pianist, Prompter, Coach and an Assistant Conductor she has prepared and performed a wide range of operatic repertoire, including Simon Boccanegra starring Plácido Domingo, Tosca, Der fliegende Holländer, La Cenerentola, Falstaff, Evgeny Onegin, Die Zauberflöte, Billy Budd, Lucia di Lammermoor, Madama Butterfly, Un ballo in maschera, Le nozze di Figaro, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Aida, Turandot, Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Rusalka, and Manon Lescaut.

Ms. Sanikidze is a prize-winner of numerous national and international piano competitions. She has received top scholarships, including a personal scholarship from the former president of the Republic of Georgia Edward Schevardnadze. She has also received the Vocal Piano Fellowship Award from the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara and participated in summer programs at Wolf Trap Opera Company, Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera, SongFest, Cleveland Art Song Festival and Aspen Music Festival. She has made several recordings for the Excelsior label and her performances have been broadcast on NPR, as well as Georgian and Russian National Television and Radio.

Sought after for her coaching skills and extensive experience, Ms. Sanikidze has been invited to work with young singers at the Merola Opera Program, Wolf Trap Opera Center, and the Young Artist Programs both at Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera.

In 2015 Tamara joined faculty of Butler School of Music at University of Texas, Austin and Music Academy of the West.  In January 2019 Ms. Sanikidze became Director of Butler Opera Center.

Tamara Sanikidze holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Bill Schuman is internationally celebrated as one of the world’s leading teachers of singing. His students represent some of the most important names in the music world.

A native of Portland, Oregon, Mr. Schuman began his vocal studies under B. Gibner King, the coach of such Met luminaries as Ezio Pinza and Margaret Harshaw. Following his studies with Margaret Woodward at Brigham Young University and with Rita Streich at the Conservatory of Music in Vienna, he became a protégé of the famed vocal pedagogue, Luisa Franceschi Verna, herself the teacher of Zinka Milanov, among others. He finished his studies in New York, studying Italian style and repertory with Rita Saponaro Patanè.

Since beginning his teaching career, Mr. Schuman’s success has been completely unique in the opera world. His operatic students are not only major stars in the great opera houses around the world, but they have won an unprecedented number of international vocal competitions and awards. For four years in a row, his students were honored with the Richard Tucker Award, America’s most prestigious award for opera singers. Three of his students were also consecutively bestowed the Beverly Sills Award.

Over the years, Mr. Schuman has also maintained his work with non-classical singers, where his students have included some of the biggest stars from the Broadway, film, TV and popular music worlds and have included numerous Tony, Grammy and Emmy award winners and Academy Award nominees.

Mr. Schuman has been associated with the Metropolitan Opera Young Artist Program, the Curtis Institute of Music and was personally invited by Placido Domingo to be one of the inaugural teachers at the Washington Opera Young Artist Program. Since 1989, Mr. Schuman has been on the faculty of the Academy  of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, where he has exclusively based his academic career.

Mr. Schuman is in demand worldwide for master classes and lectures. He has been featured in numerous articles and books on the art of singing and has been the subject of articles in various publications including Opera News and the Wall Street Journal. In 2008, Mr. Schuman was honored by the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation, becoming the youngest voice teacher to ever receive their coveted Lifetime Achievement Award.

Originally from China, Mo Zhou is a stage director whose international career spans all artistic disciplines including opera, theater, musical theater, dance, and film.

Equally passionate about invigorating the classical canon and spearheading new works, Zhou’s productions have been seen at Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie and Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, National Centre for the Performing Arts in China, Santa Fe Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, The Juilliard School, and WP Theatre. She has also worked as a member of the directing staff at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, the Dallas Opera, and Des Moines Metro Opera.

Zhou makes her debut with Minnesota Opera in the 2022-23 season with a new production of Handel’s Rinaldo. She also directs Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi alongside Michael Ching’s sequel, Buoso’s Ghost for Florida Grand Opera, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride with Boston Baroque, La bohème at Music
Academy, and Don Giovanni at University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, where she joined the faculty in the fall of 2022. For the 2023-24 season she will stage the world premiere of The Big Swim from composer Meilina Tsui and librettist Melisa Tien for Houston Grand Opera.

Ms. Zhou completed her training as the James Marcus Opera Directing Fellow at The Juilliard School, the Directing Fellow at Wolf Trap Opera, Artistic Fellow with New York Theater Workshop, Time Warner Directing Fellow with Women’s Project Theater and as an Apprentice Stage Director with both Merola Opera Program in San Francisco and the Glimmerglass Festival in Upstate New York. She is also a winner of the OPERA America Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Prize.

Collaborative pianist Maureen Zoltek enjoys a diverse career working with leading vocalists, instrumentalists, orchestras, and opera companies across the United States.

Dr. Zoltek currently serves as the Music Director of the Houston Grand Opera Studio. She was previouly an assistant conductor, vocal coach, and orchestral keyboardist on the staff of San Francisco Opera and as a member of the Vocal Institute Faculty at the Music Academy of the West. Her 2020-21 scheduled engagements (pre-Covid cancellations) included a return to San Francisco Opera for productions of Ernani, Rigoletto, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Der Zwerg, to Opera Omaha for Eugene Onegin, and to the Music Academy of the West for Ellen Reid’s Odysseus Cycle and Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles. An active proponent of new music, she recently served on the music staff for the world premieres of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber, and John Adams’ Girls of the Golden West, as well as the west coast premiere of Jake Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life.

Dr. Zoltek is a graduate of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center and has collaborated with the Lyric Opera of Chicago on several productions, including La clemenza di Tito, Tosca, Idomeneo, and the world premiere workshop of Jimmy López and Nilo Cruz’s Bel Canto. At the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis she served as music staff, pre-concert lecturer, and keyboardist for Puccini’s La rondine, as well as a coach for Tobias Picker’s Emmeline. Dr. Zoltek has also been an assistant conductor at Canadian Opera Company (Elektra) and Opera Omaha (Les enfants terribles, Die Enfürung aus dem Serail).

As an orchestral keyboardist, Dr. Zoltek has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with major conductors including Boulez, Salonen, Conlon, Dudamel, Gilbert, and Gergiev, in addition to premiering works by composers-in-residence of the CSO Augusta Read Thomas and Marc Anthony Turnage. She has appeared with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, Chicago’s Latino Music Festival, and at the 2010 Fischoff Competition, in which she was a semi-finalist.

Dr. Zoltek attended both the Aspen Music Festival and School (2009) and Music Academy of the West (2010, 2012). During her second summer as a fellow at the Music Academy, she won first prize in the pianist division of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition. Her association with Marilyn Horne also includes participation in the legendary mezzo-soprano’s series “The Song Continues” (2011, 2012), with performances and masterclasses held through Carnegie Hall’s “Marilyn Horne Legacy” program. Among the other star performers with whom Zoltek has recently collaborated are mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, soprano Patricia Racette, bass-baritone Eric Owens, and Welsh singer-songwriter Katherine Jenkins. Ms. Zoltek is also featured alongside mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges in Nicole Miller’s new commission and installation, “To the Stars,” a multi-sensory work that weaves together film, sound, and laser light at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Phyllis Wattis Theater.

Dr. Zoltek completed her D.M.A. degree at the Manhattan School of Music, and holds a master’s degree in piano performance and musicology from Roosevelt University in addition to a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from DePaul University. Her teachers include Mary Sauer and Warren Jones. When she is not in rehearsal, Zoltek enjoys true crime podcasts, baking various and sundry desserts, and going out and about with her standard poodle and travel companion, Henry.

She has been called the “Star-Spangled Singer” and “the Heifetz of singers.” In 2002, following a career that had seen her dominate her field for more than four decades, Opera News declared, “Marilyn Horne – whose face and song have been in the light – in so many places, in so many styles, through so many media, for so many years – may be the most influential singer in American history.”

Ms. Horne’s distinguished career has garnered her numerous honors, including a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Gramophone magazine. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1995, received the National Medal of Arts in 1992, and has been inducted into the American Classical Music and Hollywood Bowl halls of fame. Among her worldwide prizes are the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters from France’s Ministry of Culture. She was named a National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors recipient in 2009.

Ms. Horne began her music studies with her father and first sang in public at age 2. She studied voice and song/recital works at the University of Southern California and participated in many masterclasses conducted by Lotte Lehmann in Los Angeles and at the Music Academy. With her 60th birthday gala at Carnegie Hall in 1994, Ms. Horne launched the Marilyn Horne Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted exclusively to the art of the vocal recital in the United States. In 2010 the foundation’s programs became part of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall.

Ms. Horne has performed in more than 1,300 recitals, made well over 100 recordings, and received three Grammy Awards. Her most recent release, Marilyn Horne – Just for the Record: The Golden Voice, is a retrospective of her career and includes classical songs, opera, and American standards. Her autobiography, Marilyn Horne: The Song Continues, written with Jane Scovell, was published in 2004.

Ms. Horne was the Academy’s Distinguished Alumni Award winner in 1995, has been a member of the Music Academy faculty since 1995, and in 1997 was appointed Voice Program director. She transitioned to the role of Honorary Voice Program Director from 2018 to 2021, and is now Faculty Emeritus.

Since entering the world of professional music in 1972 as the associate principal bassoonist of the Minnesota Orchestra, Benjamin Kamins has enjoyed a wide-ranging career as an orchestral musician, chamber player, solo performer, and educator. In 1981 he was appointed Principal Bassoon of the Houston Symphony, a position he held until 2003.  He is currently the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Bassoon at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.  In addition, he has served as a guest principal with other major symphony orchestras in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York.

Mr. Kamins’ interests have also taken him into the world of historical performance where he performs on baroque bassoon.  He can be heard playing with many fine period instrument ensembles, especially Ars Lyrica Houston. In addition to his musical activities, Ben Kamins is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique through Alexander Technique International.

An alumnus of the Music Academy (’68, ’69), he has been an Academy faculty member since 1999.

Janet Rarick is a graduate of the Houston School for the Alexander Technique and is certified to teach through Alexander Technique International. Her long-time interest and study of the Technique has included extensive work with nationally and internationally noted teachers. A musician and professor at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, she teaches courses and private lessons in the Alexander Technique for Rice University undergraduates, Shepherd School of Music students, and for the Rice Community at Large. She also teaches workshops and classes in the Alexander Technique throughout the Greater Houston Area. As Associate Professor of Music Career Development at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Rarick coaches chamber music, teaches classes in professional development and performance skills, and directs outreach activities.

Jerome Lowenthal’s influence on generations of pianists can never be underestimated. In addition to his residency in Santa Barbara each summer, he has been teaching at The Juilliard School since 1991. He brings forward the legacies of his distinguished teachers, William Kapell, Eduard Steuermann, and Alfred Cortot (with coachings from Arthur Rubinstein). Jerry has performed a prodigious amount of repertoire that includes more than 63 different concerti, which he has played and recorded with many of the world’s greatest conductors, including Maurice Abravanel, who was on the faculty of the Music Academy for more than two decades

He’s had a dominant presence at chamber music festivals around the world, and performed in duo concerts with violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Nathaniel Rosen, and pianists Ronit Amir, Ursula Oppens, Carmel Lowenthal, Vassily Primakov, and Michael Brown. A frequent adjudicator, Jerry has served on the juries of the Cliburn, Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Cleveland, and Leeds piano competitions.

2019 marked his 50th summer at the Music Academy.

Donald McInnes has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, and l’Orchestre National de France, among others, and for many years was a resident member of Camerata Pacifica. His career includes associations with many of the world’s major artists, including Leonard Bernstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Lynn Harrell, and Yo-Yo Ma.

An active recording artist, Mr. McInnes can be heard on the Columbia, RCA, Deutsche Grammophon, Angel/EMI, and Laurel labels. He has introduced many new works for viola, including those commissioned for him by William Schuman, Vincent Persichetti, William Bergsma, Robert Suderberg, Paul Tufts, and Thomas Pasatieri.

A frequent guest artist and teacher at leading music schools, including the University of Michigan, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and the University of Washington, Mr. McInnes was named the 2004 American String Teachers Association Teacher of the Year. He has been associated with the Banff Centre in Canada, the Menuhin Schools in both England and Switzerland, and the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in England, as well as festivals at Interlochen, St. Barts, Marlboro, and Sunflower, and the International String Workshop. He was long associated with the University of Southern California in Los Angeles at the Thornton School of Music.

Last year, Mr. McInnes was a guest professor at the Royal Conservatory in Barcelona, the Shanghai Conservatory, and the Central Conservatory in Beijing.

Camerata Pacifica, the Music Academy of the West, and USC recently honored Mr. McInnes with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and the International Viola Society presented him with the Silver Alto Clef, its highest honor, at the 2007 International Viola Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

Mr. McInnes is an alumnus of the Music Academy (1954 to 1956), was the Distinguished Alumni Award winner in 2012, and has been a member of the faculty since 1982. He recently retired from professional performance, but continues to teach and give masterclasses.

Peter Salaff was director of string chamber music at the Cleveland Institute of Music for 23 years. As a founding member of the Cleveland Quartet he recorded more than 50 chamber works and received a Grammy Award, six Grammy nominations, and Best of the Year honors from Time and Stereo Review. The quartet toured the former Soviet Union, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Israel, the United States, Europe, and Canada.

Mr. Salaff has served on the faculties of the University of Concepción (Chile), State University of New York at Buffalo, and the Eastman School of Music. He has also taught at numerous festivals, including Interlochen, Chamber Music in the Mountains at Echo Glen, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, the Perlman Music Program, PhoenixPhest in Ann Arbor, and the Chamber Music Connection in Columbus, Ohio, and has coached chamber music and given masterclasses at conservatories and universities in the United States, Germany, Japan, Israel, and New Zealand.

Mr. Salaff has been a judge at many chamber music competitions, including the Yellow Springs Competition, the London International String Quartet Competition, the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the Plowman Chamber Music Competition, and the Coleman Chamber Music Association Competition.

He has been a member of the Music Academy faculty since 1996.