Conservatory Faculty

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Rieko Aizawa

Praised by the NY Times for an “impressive musicality, a crisp touch and expressive phrasing,” Japanese pianist Rieko Aizawa has performed throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, including at New York City’s Lincoln Center, Boston's Symphony Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, and London’s Wigmore Hall.

At the age of thirteen, Ms. Aizawa was brought to the attention of conductor Alexander Schneider on the recommendation of the pianist Mitsuko Uchida. Schneider engaged Ms. Aizawa as soloist with his Brandenburg Ensemble at the opening concerts of Tokyo's Casals Hall. Later that year, Schneider presented her in U.S. début concerts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall with his New York String Orchestra. She has since established her own unique musical voice.

Highlights have included acclaimed performances with the New Japan Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa, the English Chamber Orchestra under Heinz Holliger, the Festival Strings Lucerne in Switzerland under Rudolf Baumgartner, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra under Hugh Wolff, the Curtis Institute Orchestra with Peter Oundjian, the St. Louis Symphony under David Loebel and a wonderfully received performance with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Aizawa also has a great interest in exploring unusual repertoire. The St. Paul Pioneer Press described her performance with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hans Graf "the Salieri Piano Concerto in C was played so splendidly by Rieko Aizawa. Hers was a graceful reading. .... Aizawa's performance lent the work a respect it rarely receives." In the same year, she received the Washington Award.

As a recitalist, Ms. Aizawa has been heard in many North American cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, St. Louis, Seattle, Boulder, Los Angeles, Houston, and Toronto; at the Caramoor International Festival; at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival; Ravinia Festival, and the Gilmore Keyboard Festival. Following her all-Beethoven program recital in Dresden, Germany, a reviewer wrote: "Her listeners followed her playing -- full of details and delicate contrasts -- breathlessly." Ms. Aizawa gave her "Prism" series in Japan, with tributes to Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, and specially commissioned works for each program by Akira Nishimura, Dan Coleman and Toshiro Saruya. She also had a project performing a Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Ms. Aizawa performed a series of all- Mozart recitals, a project which was jointly presented by WFMT-Chicago and PianoForte Chicago. Ms. Aizawa’s solo debut recording of Scriabin’s and Shostakovich’s “24 Preludes” was released by Altus in Japan, and her second album of Messiaen's and Faure's preludes is coming out in the upcoming season.

Ms. Aizawa is also an active chamber musician. The youngest-ever participant at the Marlboro Music Festival, she has performed as a guest with string quartets such as the Guarneri Quartet and the Orion Quartet. She has appeared in numerous festivals, such as the Marlboro Music Festival; Bowdoin Festival; the Kammermusik Festival of Moritzburg, Germany; and the Evian Festival, France. She also has been a guest artist of Boston's, Philadelphia's and Seattle's Chamber Music Societies. She is a founding member of the prize-winning Duo Prism and of the Horszowski Trio, which honors the legacy of her teacher.

As a member of the Horszowski Trio, acclaimed as “the most compelling American group to come on the scene” by the New Yorker, Ms. Aizawa has recently made debuts at the 92nd St. Y in NYC, and at Wigmore Hall in London. The trio recorded the complete Robert Schumann piano trios on AVIE Records and the album was featured by Gramophone as an “exemplary performance.” Currently, they are celebrating their 10th Anniversary season with a project which takes inspiration from Schumann, commissioning three American composers from different generations: Paul Chihara, Derek Bermel and David Fulmer. 

Ms. Aizawa was the last pupil of Mieczyslaw Horszowski at the Curtis Institute and she also studied with Seymour Lipkin and Peter Serkin at the Juilliard School. She lives in New York City, and she is on the faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and at Brooklyn College. She became artistic director of the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival in Colorado in 2010.

Ms. Aizawa is a Steinway Artist.

https://www.riekoaizawa.com/

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Demian Austin

Demian Austin is principal trombonist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He is also a member of the MET Chamber Ensemble, which performs regularly at Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel halls. He has performed with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and in the Mostly Mozart festival at Lincoln Center. Mr. Austin has played on numerous recordings including the Metropolitan Opera Brass CDs, several movie soundtracks, Dialogues with Double Bass with Jeremy McCoy on Bridge Records, the GM Recordings issue of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Brahms’ First Symphony conducted by Gunther Schuller, and many recordings with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, including Strauss’ Tod und Verklarung. He can also be heard regularly on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Live at the Met Broadcasts, the Saturday Matinee Broadcasts of the Met, and on The Met: Live in HD worldwide movie simulcasts. Mr. Austin is also on the faculty of Juilliard’s precollege division. He received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1992 from Oberlin College, where he studied with Raymond Premru, and his Masters of Music degree in 1995 from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Per Brevig. Aside from his career in music, Mr. Austin has a keen interest in film and has attended several intensive seminars on screenwriting.

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Edith Bers

Edith Bers received bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University and studied voice with Tourel, Callas, Popper, Berl, Guth, Faull, B. P. Johnson, Cuenod, Brown, Hotter, and Stader; and acting with Stella Adler. Among her performance credits are the United States premiere of Schumann's Des Sangers Fluch and the television production of Britten's The Turn of the Screw. She has presented master classes and served on juries throughout the world, including: Symposium on the Care of the Professional Voice, Aspen Music Festival, Metropolitan Opera Auditions, Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition (Brussels), Korean Broadcasting System, and the Bel Canto Institute (Florence). In addition to teaching at Bard, Edith Bers teaches at the Juilliard School (where she served as chair of the voice department from 1991 to 1995), Manhattan School of Music, and New York University.

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Teresa Buchholz

Versatile mezzo-soprano Teresa Buchholz enjoys success in the realms of opera, art song and oratorio. Verdi’s Requiem is quickly becoming a staple of her repertoire, and she has recently performed the work with True Concord Chorus and Orchestra (Tucson, AZ), the Helena Symphony (Helena, MT), the New Jersey Choral Society, the Lake Como Music Festival (Italy), and will perform the work with Long Beach Symphony (CA) in 2021. Some recent performances include Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall with Distinguished Concerts International New York, several Holiday concerts with The Greenwich Choral Society and a guest recital at her alma mater, The University of Northern Iowa. In March 2019 she performed Alexander Nevsky with the Anchorage Symphony, and 2018/19 marked the debut of a newly formed collaboration with Bard colleagues Erika Switzer and Marka Gustavsson, The Blithewood Ensemble, which has performed a program of chamber music as part of the Downtown Music at Grace series (White Plains, NY) at the Hudson Hall (Hudson, NY) and Bitò Hall at Bard College. She recently soloed with the New Jersey Choral Society on a concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 and Choral Fantasy, and performed the role of Domna Ivanovna Sobyrova in a staged production of “The Tsar’s Bride” by Rimsky-Korsakov as part of the Bard Music Festival. In December 2018 she soloed in Handel’s Messiah at the Bardavon Theatre in Poughkeepsie, and the previous Fall she was heard as Anne in Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All in a highly acclaimed production that took place in Hudson NY, in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with The Orchestra Now at Bard College and in the role of Berta in a New York City concert version of the rarely heard opera Il Grillo del Focolare by Riccardo Zandonai. In past years she has been heard in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Rhode Island Civic Chorale and Orchestra, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Lincoln Center with the National Chorale, a staged version of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Gulfshore Opera, Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Berkshire Bach Society and the Stamford Symphony, and Bach’s Magnificat with Voices of Ascension. Other recent performances have included the role of Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd with Opera Roanoke; Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus with the Asheville Lyric Opera; the title role in Giulio Cesare in Egitto with Opera Roanoke; Mozart’s Requiem with the Tulsa Symphony, the Stamford Symphony, and Voices of Ascension; Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody at the Bard Music Festival; Berio’s Folk Songs at the Gateway Chamber Orchestra, where she had previously performed Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde; and Handel’s Messiah at Lincoln Center with Distinguished Concerts International New York. In 2013 she was the winner of the female division in the Nico Castel International Master Singer Competition. Buchholz holds a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from the University of Northern Iowa, a master’s degree in vocal performance from Indiana University, and an Artist Diploma from Yale University. She has taught at Bard since 2012 where she teaches private voice lessons and is one of the producers and vocal coaches for Bard’s undergraduate Opera Workshop.

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Eric Cha-Beach

A member of the ensemble Sō Percussion (called "brilliant" and "consistently impressive" by the New York Times) since 2007, Eric has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Lincoln Center Festival, Stanford Lively Arts, The Walker Center and dozens of other venues in the United States. In that time, Sō Percussion has toured Russia, Australia, Colombia and throughout Europe. They have performed on The Late Show with Steven Colbert, at the TED Conference and Bonnaroo Festival, and with Radiolab Live. Eric has had the opportunity to work closely with Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Bryce Dessner, Steve Mackey, Dan Trueman, Fred Frith, Suzanne Farrin, Glenn Kotche, Paul Lansky, Donnacha Dennehy, Vijay Iyer, Dawn Upshaw, Shara Nova, Matmos, The National, Dan Deacon, Buke and Gase, Dave Douglas, Angelica Negron, and many others.  And he has performed on eighteen of So Percussion’s albums.

As a composer, he has written works for JACK Quartet, Modern Medieval, Buke and Gase, Shara Nova, Caroline Shaw, Sirius String Quartet, and This Is How We Fly. Eric's pieces written for Sō Percussion are featured in ‘A Gun Show’ (BAM Next Wave 2016); ‘From Out a Darker Sea’ (Forma Arts UK commission 2016); 'Where (we) Live'; (BAM Next Wave 2012); 'Five Songs, Dances, and Meditations'; written to accompany Martin Kersels 'Five Songs' (Whitney Biennial 2010); 'Imaginary City' (BAM Next Wave 2009); and 'Music for Trains' - a site-specific performance on the train and at train stations in Brattleboro and Bellows Falls, VT (2008).  With Jason Treuting and Josh Quillen, he co-composed music for Shen Wei Dance's 'Undivided/Divided' (Park Avenue Armory 2011), the 2wice 'Fifth Wall' app for iPad with dancer Jonah Bokaer, and the sound installation 'On/Off' as part of Bring to Light/Nuit Blanche New York 2011.  He has composed the music for the dance film 'Parts Don't Work' (2011) by choreographer KT Niehoff and Lingo Dance, and the transition music for the internet radio station Q2 (2010 and 2013).  His compositions have also been featured in the 'Bell by Bell' parade as part of Make Music Winter in 2011 and 2012.  And his electronic music has been featured during the 2012 Look and Listen Festival and on the album 'Amid the Noise Remixes' (2011).

Outside of Sō Percussion, Eric has premiered new works from Lukas Ligeti, Caroline Shaw, Frank Nuyts and Jacob Cooper. Upcoming solo commissions are in development with Andrea Mazzariello and Dan Trueman. And he has performed and collaborated with pianist Peter Serkin, rock band The National, electronic artist Nicolas Jaar, composer Tristan Perich, the St. Louis Symphony Chamber Ensemble with David Robertson, bass player Evan Lipson, composer Daniel Wohl and many others.

Together with the other members of Sō Percussion, Eric serves as Edward T. Cone Performer-in-Residence at the Princeton University Music Department. He is also Co-Director of the Sō Percussion Summer Institute at Princeton University, an annual intensive course for college-aged percussionists started in 2009. And he is co-director of the percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

Studying with Robert van Sice, Eric received his Bachelor of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma at the Peabody Conservatory, where he won the Yale Gordon Concerto Competition, and his Master of Music at the Yale School of Music. He also received a Fulbright fellowship and pursued additional study with Bernhard Wulff in Freiburg, Germany.

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Frank Corliss

Frank Corliss is the director of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Prior to coming to Bard he was for many years a staff pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and the director of music at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts. He was a frequent performer on the Boston Symphony Prelude Concert series and he has also performed throughout the United States as a chamber musician and collaborative pianist. Corliss has worked as a musical assistant for Yo-Yo Ma and has assisted Ma in the musical preparation of many new works for performance and recording, including concertos by Elliot Carter, Richard Danielpour, Tan Dun, John Harbison, Leon Kirchner, Peter Lieberson, Christopher Rouse, and John Williams. 

A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, he received his Master of Music from SUNY at Stony Brook, where he studied with Gilbert Kalish.  While at Oberlin he received the Rudolf Serkin Award for Outstanding Pianist and was a member of the Music from Oberlin Ensemble, which toured throughout the U.S.  He has also studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and the Cracow Academy of Music in Cracow, Poland.  Mr. Corliss has participated in several summer festivals, including the Tanglewood Music Festival and the Taos Chamber Music Festival and the Aspen Music Festival.  

He was appointed as an Artistic Ambassador for the United States Information Agency and in that capacity went on a three-week concert tour of Eastern Europe. He was also the recipient of a Rockefeller grant from the Cultural Contact US-Mexico Fund for Culture to commission works for flute and piano by American and Mexican composers and premiered in Boston and in Mexico City. 

Mr. Corliss can be heard in recording on Yo Yo Ma’s Grammy-winning SONY disc “Soul of the Tango”, as well as the Koch International disc of music by Elliot Carter for chorus and piano with the John Oliver Chorale.

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Robert J. Culp

B.A., Swarthmore College; M.A., University of Michigan; M.A., Ph.D., Cornell University. Grants from National Endowment for the Humanities, Spencer Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Committee for Scholarly Communication with China. Articles and reviews in Modern China, Twentieth-Century China, and Journal of Asian Studies. At Bard since 1999.

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Sebastian Danila

Sebastian Danila is a composer and music theoretician. He is a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in composition and music theory at New York University’s Steinhardt School, where he has been part of the adjunct faculty. His dissertation focuses on the music of Romanian composer Anatol Vieru, particularly his application of pitch sets and sound blocks as compositional strategies. He is also manager of the libraries for The Orchestra Now, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and the American Symphony Orchestra. His compositions have been widely performed in the United States and Europe. An active writer, he has also contributed program notes ranging from the Baroque period to the 20th century for the ASO, TON and other ensembles. 

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Tyler Duncan

With a voice described as “honey-coloured and warm, yet robust and commanding” (The Globe and Mail), baritone Tyler Duncan has performed worldwide to great acclaim in both opera and concert repertoire. Throughout his varied career, he has performed with several of the world’s leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Tafelmusik, Minnesota Orchestra, and the Kansas City Symphony.

Mr. Duncan recently performed the role of Count Almaviva in Pacific Opera Victoria's production of The Marriage of Figaro, C.P.E. Bach’s Magnificat with the Handel and Haydn Society, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Bach’s St. John and St. Matthew Passions with the Oregon Bach Festival and Haydn’s Creation Mass with Music of the Baroque. Other notable engagements include Handel’s Messiah with Houston Symphony, New Jersey Symphony and Symphony Nova Scotia; Handel’s Theodora with Trinity Wall St at Caramoor; Handel's Apollo e Dafne and Bach’s Ich habe genug with Arizona Early Music’s Tucson Baroque Music Festival; Brahms’ Requiem with Johnstown Symphony; and concerts with Bard Music Festival, Brooklyn Art Song Society and Aspect Chamber Music. He also returned to the roster of The Metropolitan Opera for their new production of Terence Blanchard’s Champion.

 Mr. Duncan has performed numerous roles at The Metropolitan Opera including Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Moralès in Carmen, Prince Yamadori in Madama Butterfly, and the Journalist in Lulu. At the Spoleto Festival USA, he debuted as Mr. Friendly in the 18th-century ballad opera Flora, returning the next season as Sprecher in Die Zauberflöte. Other notable appearances have included Raymondo in Handel’s Almira, Dandini in La Cenerentola with Pacific Opera Victoria and Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton Festival. In the realm of new opera, he recently performed the role of Raymond in Nic Gotham’s Nigredo Hotel with City Opera Vancouver and sang the world premiere of Jonathan Berger’s Leonardo at the 92stY in NYC.

 Concert credits include Stravinsky’s Canticum Sacrum with San Francisco Symphony; Messiah with New York Philharmonic and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa; Mahler’s 8th Symphony and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium with the Minnesota Orchestra; Beethoven’s Mass in C with Kansas City Symphony; Schubert Lieder at the Wigmore Hall with pianist Graham Johnson; Bach’s Ich habe genug with Les Violins du Roy; Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn with Lviv Philharmonic; a selection of Bach Cantatas and Jeffery Ryan’s Afghanistan Requiem with Calgary Philharmonic; Orff’s Carmina Burana with Quebec Symphony and San Diego Symphony; Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte with Vancouver Symphony; Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra; and Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti with The Orchestra Now at the Met Museum. He has also performed at the Händel Festival in Halle, Verbier Festival, Bard Festival, Vancouver Early Music Festival, Montreal Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Grant Park Festival, Lanaudière Festival, Berkshire Choral Festival, and New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival.

 Frequently paired with pianist Erika Switzer, Mr. Duncan has given acclaimed recitals in New York, Boston, Chicago, Paris, and throughout Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, and South Africa. Together they have premiered many new works written for them by composers.  Alongside their debut album English Songs à la française for Bridge Records, they have released A Left Coast on the same label featuring songs from Canada's west coast.

 Notable recordings include the Juno Award winning Vaughan-Williams Serenade to Music with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Earthquakes and Islands: an album of songs by Andrew Staniland with texts by Robin Richardson, the title role in John Blow’s Venus and Adonis with Boston Early Music Festival, J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, and is featured with the Montreal Symphony in a video recording of Handel’s Messiah.

 Mr. Duncan has received prizes from the Naumburg, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Munich’s ARD competitions, and won the Joy in Singing competition, the New York Oratorio Society’s Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition, the Prix International Pro Musicis Award, and the Bernard Diamant Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts. Mr. Duncan earned music degrees from the University of British Columbia, Hochschule für Musik (Augsburg), and Hochschule für Musik und Theater (Munich). As a current faculty member for the Vocal Arts Program at Bard College, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and as director of voice for the historical performance program at Case Western Reserve University, he finds joy in helping the next generation of singers find their true voice. Originally from British Columbia, Canada, Mr. Duncan now resides in the scenic Hudson Valley of New York. You may find him frequenting roadside farmstands seeking the perfect, freshly picked apple. 

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Alexander Farkas

Alexander Farkas, qualified as a teacher of the Alexander Technique in 1998, trained in London with Shoshana Kaminitz and had prior and further study with Patrick Macdonald, Margaret Goldie, Marjorie Barlow and Elisabeth Walker. A musician as well, he received a MM in piano from the Manhattan School of Music and, with a focus on becoming a collaborative artist, had further study with Brooks Smith, John Wustmann and Paul Ulanowsky. His earlier piano studies were with Nadia Reisenberg. As a teacher Alex has been on the faculty of the Yale School of Music, the Hartt School, University of Hartford, and Vassar College. He was also the recipient of an IREX Grant for study in Hungary and has translated several books on music for Editio Musica, Budapest, most notably the Selected Writings of Lajos Bardos. As a pianist Alex has played for Jennie Tourel and served as accompanist for the class of Pierre Bernac. Applying the Alexander Technique to the vocal arts, Alex has presented workshops and masterclasses both here and abroad including the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity College of Music, London, the Musikhochschule Luzern and the Musikschule Basel, Switzerland and as a guest teacher for Alexander students at training courses in the U. K., Australia and France. Alex has taught for the Bard Conservatory of Music since 2005. His new book, The Alexander Technique; Arising from Quiet, was published in London last fall and contains articles dealing with the many challenges that face all players.

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Elaine Fitz Gibbon

Elaine Fitz Gibbon is a doctoral candidate in Historical Musicology at Harvard University. She received her MA in German Studies from Princeton, and her BA in Musicology and German Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a Diploma of Advanced Studies in music journalism from the Musik Akademie Basel and has been active as a journalist in the field of new music in the German speaking realm. Her dissertation, which focuses on the music-conceptual work of the Argentine German composer Mauricio Kagel, explores trends and relations of opera, music theater and electro-acoustic music of the avant-garde from 1945 to today from the perspective of circum-Atlantic migration and mobility. Fitz Gibbon has published translations of texts by Bernd Alois Zimmermann for The Opera Quarterly (2014) and Hans Merian for Princeton University Press (Puccini and His World, 2015). Her article, “Beethoven Returns to Bonn: Origins, Belonging and Misuse in Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van (1969),” was published in Current Musicology (107) in 2021 and her chapter on the music notational practices of conceptual artist Hanne Darboven recently appeared in the volume Material Cultures of Music Notation (Routledge, 2022). An interview with the Irish composer Jennifer Walshe (b. 1974) is forthcoming in The Opera Quarterly. In her free time, Fitz Gibbon enjoys playing chamber music on modern and Baroque cellos.

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Kyle Gann

B.Mus., Oberlin Conservatory of Music; M.Mus., D.Mus., Northwestern University. Recipient, National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant (1996); Peabody Award (2003); American Music Center Letter of Distinction (2003). Music critic for the Village Voice, 1986–2005. Taught at Bucknell University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, Brooklyn College, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Books include The Arithmetic of Listening: Tuning Theory and History for the Impractical Musician (2018); Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays after a Sonata (2017); Robert Ashley (2012); No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33” (2010); Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice (2006); American Music in the 20th Century (1997); The Music of Conlon Nancarrow (1995); and, as coeditor, The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music (2013). Vice president of the Charles Ives Society. Music on the Other Minds, New World, New Albion, Mode, Cold Blue, Lovely Music, and other record labels. At Bard since 1997.

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Yazhi Guo

Guo, who resides in Boston with his wife and two daughters, is regarded by many as the finest suona player in the world, and his expressive performances and unique style have created many opportunities in the world of modern music for the instrument. He is a visiting artist and teaches master classes at Philadelphia University of the Arts and Berklee College of Music, as well as at the Bard Conservatory of Music. 

Guo graduated with distinction from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1990 and for nine years lectured on suona there. He has won many international awards, including the grand prize at New York’s International ProMusicis Award (1998). Named as one of China’s most outstanding musicians by its Ministry of Culture, he was invited to give a solo performance with suona and saxophone for the heads of states during President Clinton’s visit to Beijing in 1998. In the 1990s, he recorded the original songs for more than 100 films and popular TV series, and drew a huge following of fans. Guo was appointed as principal suona by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra in 1999. Since then, he has performed with many orchestras around the world, including Orchestra de la Suisse Romande (Switzerland), South Korea Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra, Belgium’s Flanders Symphony Orchestra, Malaysia Chinese Orchestra, Singapore Chinese Orchestra, and National Chinese Orchestra of Taiwan. He also lectured at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and led the Hong Kong Suona Association as its first executive director. 

Guo received the Hong Kong Award for Best Artist in 2012 and that same year, at age 46, said farewell to the highly competitive position of principal suona in the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra and relocated to Boston to explore jazz at Berklee College of Music. While studying at Berklee, he actively showcased the uniqueness of suona on various occasions and made the traditional suona more fashionable and popular. After graduating from Berklee with an artist diploma in 2015, he led Berklee’s jazz band during its visits to China and Singapore; he also performed in many other cities and gave college lectures. His fusion-style jazz performances were highly received by Chinese and American audiences. 

Guo is not only a multi-instrumentalist specializing in woodwinds, but also an innovator. He has obtained several patents for changes to instruments such as the suona, hulusi, and guzheng and received a scientific progress award from the Ministry of Culture in China for a movable reed and flexible core of the suona. This significant breakthrough allows the traditional suona to alter modes and change sounds at any time during a live performance. It also makes the suona more expressive, allowing for a deeper integration with Western music.

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Benjamin Hochman

Winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2011, Benjamin Hochman’s eloquent and virtuosic performances blend colorful artistry with poetic interpretation to the delight of audiences and critics alike. He performs in major cities around the world as an orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, working with an array of renowned musicians. Possessed of an intellectual and heartfelt musical inquisitiveness, his playing was described by the Vancouver Sun as “stylish and lucid, with patrician authority and touches of elegant wit.” Hochman frequently juxtaposes familiar and unfamiliar works in his concert programs, a talent that also extends to his thoughtful recorded repertoire, from Bach and Mozart to Kurtág and Peter Lieberson. The New York Times wrote of pianist Benjamin Hochman “classical music doesn’t get better than this.”

Hochman has performed at major venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, 92nd Street Y, Konzerthaus Wien, Berlin Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Louvre in Paris, Liszt Academy in Budapest, Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Tivoli Theatre in Copenhagen, l'Auditori de Barcelona, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and Kumho Art Hall in Seoul. Festival highlights include Marlboro, Ravinia, Santa Fe, Bard, Gilmore, Caramoor, Strings Music Festival, and Vail in North America, as well as European festivals including Lucerne, Spoleto, Verbier, Ruhr, Prussia Cove, and Israel Festival.

Hochman has performed as soloist with the New York, Los Angeles, Israel and Prague Philharmonics; the Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Houston, Seattle, American, New Jersey, Portland, Vancouver, and Jerusalem Symphonies; the New York String Orchestra, IRIS Orchestra in Memphis, National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Tel Aviv Soloists, and Istanbul State Orchestra. He has played under eminent conductors such as Gianandrea Noseda, David Robertson, John Storgårds, Pinchas Zukerman, Trevor Pinnock, Jun Märkl, Leon Botstein, Bramwell Tovey, Jaime Laredo, Joshua Weilerstein, Michael Stern, Jahja Ling, Kazuyoshi Akiyama, and Kaspar Zehnder.

In the 2019-2020 season, Mr. Hochman presents the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas at the Israel Conservatory in Tel Aviv and continues his traversal of the cycle at the Bard College Conservatory. He performs Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lucas Richman and Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Gilbert. He presents two programs on the subject of “Words and Music” at the 92nd Street Y in New York: a solo piano recital with works by Brahms, Adés, and Schumann, and a vocal program of Janáček Diary of One Who Vanished and Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire. Recitals at Coastal Concerts in Delaware and the Performing Arts Center at Western Washington University, and chamber concerts at Boston Chamber Music Society, Schubert Club in Minnesota, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, and Linton Chamber Music in Cincinnati round out the season. He serves as assistant conductor to Rafael Payare and Bramwell Tovey at San Diego Symphony.

Hochman made his New York recital debut in 2006 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and went on to establish a vibrant musical presence in New York City through concerts with the New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra and a succession of prominent recital and chamber performances at 92nd Street Y. He made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Israel Philharmonic and his debut with the Chicago Symphony in a Mozart Piano Concerto project with Pinchas Zukerman and Hubbard Street Dance. He has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and been engaged for three subscription series with the Pittsburgh Symphony.

In recent years, Hochman’s admiration for the rich orchestral repertoire has led him to pursue conducting. He was appointed musical assistant to Louis Langrée as well as to guest conductors at the 2016 Mostly Mozart Festival, including Thierry Fischer, Paavo Järvi and Jeffrey Kahane. He has served as assistant conductor to Leon Botstein for American Symphony Orchestra’s concerts at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall, and to Emmanuel Villaume at Juilliard. Recent and forthcoming conducting engagements include Santa Fe Pro Musica, Orlando Philharmonic, and The Orchestra Now. A graduate of the prestigious Juilliard conducting program, where he received the Bruno Walter Scholarship and Charles Schiff Award, Hochman trained under Alan Gilbert and James Ross. He has also worked in masterclasses with Fabio Luisi, David Zinman, Stefan Asbury, Johannes Schläfli, and James Gaffigan. In the summer of 2018, he participated in the Tanglewood Conducting Seminar. Hochman is founder and music director of the Roosevelt Island Symphony, an ensemble consisting of New York’s top orchestral and chamber musicians which presents its fourth season in 2019-2020.

In October 2019, Hochman’s debut album as conductor and concerto soloist will be released on Avie Records: Mozart Piano Concerti No. 17 and No. 24 with the English Chamber Orchestra. His 2015 album for Avie was titled Variations and included worksbyLuciano Berio, Oliver Knussen, Peter Lieberson, George Benjamin, and Brahms. His second solo album, Homage to Schubert, recorded for Avie Records in 2013, features Schubert’s Sonata in A Major, D. 664 and Sonata in D Major, D. 850, alongside contemporary tributes to Schubert, Jörg Widmann’s Idyll und Abgrund: Six Schubert Reminiscences and Kurtág’s Homage to Schubert. Hochman’s debut solo recording of works by Bach, Berg and Webern was released by Artek in 2009. He has also recorded chamber music by Lawrence Dillon with the Daedalus Quartet for Bridge Records and by Lisa Bielawa for Innova Recordings.

An enthusiastic collaborator, Hochman has worked with the Tokyo, Shanghai, Mendelssohn, Casals, Pražák, Daedalus, Escher, Jerusalem, and Borromeo Quartets; Zukerman ChamberPlayers; and members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, and Orion String Quartets, as well as pianists Jonathan Biss, Orion Weiss, and Shai Wosner, violinists Lisa Batishvili and Ani Kavafian, and cellists Miklós Perényi, Efe Baltacigil, and Ralph Kirshbaum.

A dedicated advocate for contemporary music, Hochman has worked closely with composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Brett Dean, Philippe Hurel, Joan Tower, William Bolcom, Yehudy Wyner, Tamar Muskal, David Ludwig, Menachem Wiesenberg, Jesse Brault, Gilad Cohen and Max Grafe.

Benjamin Hochman has been selected to participate in prestigious residencies around the world such as The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two) at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Isaac Stern's International Chamber Music Encounters in Israel, and Carnegie Hall's Professional Training Workshop. Hochman received the "Outstanding Pianist" citation at the Verbier Academy, the Festorazzi Award from the Curtis Institute of Music, second prize at the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, and the "Partosh Prize" awarded by the Israeli Minister of Culture. His performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio's Young Artist Showcase and Performance Today, WNET’s Sunday Arts, WQXR, CBC (Canada), ABC (Australia), Radio France and Israel's Voice of Music radio station, as well as on the European television network Mezzo.

Born in Jerusalem, Hochman began his piano studies with Esther Narkiss at the Conservatory of the Rubin Academy, and Emanuel Krasovsky in Tel Aviv. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Claude Frank, and the Mannes College of Music, where he studied with Richard Goode. His studies were supported by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. He serves on the piano faculty of Bard College Conservatory of Music. Hochman is a Steinway Artist and lives in New York City. His website is www.benjaminhochman.com.

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Kayo Iwama

American pianist Kayo Iwama has concertized extensively with singers such as Stephanie Blythe, Kendra Colton, William Hite, Rufus Müller, Christòpheren Nomura, Lucy Shelton and Dawn Upshaw throughout North America, Europe and Japan, and has performed in many prestigous venues including the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, The DiMenna Center, Merkin Hall, The Morgan Library, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Tokyo’s Yamaha Hall and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. The Washington Post has called her a pianist “with unusual skill and sensitivty to the music and the singer” and the Boston Globe has praised her “virtuoso accompaniment…super-saturated with gorgeous colors”.  

Miss Iwama is the associate director of the innovative Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where she works alongside Stephanie Blythe, the Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano and recently appointed artistic director of the program. Miss Iwama has been with the program since its inception in 2006, working in tandem with the founding artistic director, the acclaimed soprano Dawn Upshaw.  Other collaborations with Dawn Upshaw include master classes and a recital at the Britten-Pears Young Artist Program at the Aldeburgh Music Festival, and appearances at the International Vocal Arts Institute in Virginia, the University of Wyoming, Edward Pickman Hall at the Longy School of Music and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.  Ms. Iwama has been a faculty member of Songfest, and for over two decades taught at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she also served as the coordinator of the Vocal Studies Program.  There she worked with some of today’s most promising young singers and collaborative pianists, and assisted Maestros James Levine, Seiji Ozawa and Robert Spano in major operatic and concert productions. In addition her teaching has also taken her to some of the foremost universities of the United States and Asia to give master classes and performance/demonstrations. A former resident of the Boston, Massachusetts area, she was a frequent performer on WGBH radio, and performed with such groups as the Florestan Recital Project, the Handel and Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music.  In addition she was the founder, music director and pianist of the critically acclaimed Cantata Singers Chamber Series, creating programs devoted to rarely-heard works of art song and vocal chamber music.  She was formerly on the faculties of the Hartt School of Music, Boston Conservatory and the New England Conservatory of Music.  

Miss Iwama earned a bachelor of music degree at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and her master of music at Stony Brook University where she studied with Gilbert Kalish.  She also attended the Salzburg Music Festival, the Banff Music Center, the Music Academy of the West and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she worked with such artists as Margo Garrett, Martin Isepp, Graham Johnson, Martin Katz and Erik Werba.  She has served previously on the music staffs of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Miss Iwama can be heard on CD on the Well-Tempered label, with baritone Christópheren Nomura in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin, two ISMM discs devoted to French mélodies and the songs of Schumann with tenor Ingul Ivan Oak, and on the The Reckless Heart with soprano Kendra Colton, a collection of 20th century American and British song.  She will also be heard on a newly released CD with Miss Colton in the vocal music of John Harbison, honoring the composer’s 80th birthday

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Patricia Karetzky

B.A., New York University; M.A., Hunter College; Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Adjunct professor, Lehman College, CUNY. Publications include The Life of the Buddha; Court Art of the Tang; Early Buddhist Narratives (2000); contributions to Artibus Asiae, Tang Studies, Oriental Art, others. Editor, Journal of Chinese Religions. Curator, Art of the Twentieth Century and Traditional Chinese Literary Culture (1998), Lehman College Art Gallery and Bard College; Confessions: The Contemporary Art of Asian Women (2001), Hammond Art Gallery. At Bard since 1988.

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David Krakauer

Internationally acclaimed clarinetist David Krakauer redefines the notion of a concert artist. Known for his mastery of myriad styles, he occupies the unique position of being one of the world’s leading exponents of Eastern European Jewish klezmer music, and at the same time is a major voice in classical music. As one of the foremost musicians of the vital new wave of klezmer, David Krakauer tours the globe with his celebrated Klezmer Madness! ensemble. While firmly rooted in traditional klezmer folk tunes, the band “hurls the tradition of klezmer music into the rock era” (Jon Pareles, The New York Times). In addition to his annual European tours to major international festivals and jazz clubs, recent seasons brought Krakauer and his band to the Library of Congress, Stanford Lively Arts, San Francisco Performances, the Krannert Center, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Venice Biennale, Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, BBC Proms, Saalfelden Jazz Festival, Transmusicales de Rennes, La Cigale, New Morning in Paris, and many others. His newest project, The Big Picture, re-imagines familiar themes by such renowned film music composers as John Williams, Marvin Hamlisch, Randy Newman, Wojciech Kilar and Vangelis, and interprets melodic gems by the likes of Sidney Bechet, Sergei Prokofiev, Mel Brooks, Ralph Burns, John Kander & Fred Ebb and Jerry Bock that have appeared in popular films. In addition, Krakauer is in demand worldwide as a guest soloist with the finest ensembles including the Emerson, Orion and Kronos String Quartets, as well as orchestras including the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Detroit Symphony, the Weimar Staatskapelle, the Phoenix Symphony, the Dresdener Philharmonie, and the Seattle Symphony. Krakauer’s discography contains some of the most important klezmer recordings of the past decade including six CDs under his own name: two on John Zorn's Tzadik Label and four on Label Bleu; plus collaborations with the Klezmatics, Itzak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet/Osvaldo Golijov and Socalled. Abraham Inc’s "Tweet-Tweet" on his own label, Table Pounding Records (and Label Bleu in Europe) was released in early 2010. Composers who have written major pieces for him include David del Tredici, Paul Moravec, Ofer Ben-Amots, Jean Philippe Calvin, George Tsontakis, Anthony Coleman and Wlad Marhulets. David Krakauer is on the clarinet and chamber music faculties of Mannes College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, NYU and the Bard College Conservatory of Music. His unique sound can be heard as soloist in Danny Elfman's score for the film "Taking Woodstock" and throughout "The Tango Lesson".

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Peter Laki

Diploma in Musicology, Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest; Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. Program annotator, Cleveland Orchestra (1990–2007 ); editor, Bartók and His World (Princeton University Press, 1995); contributor, Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra and Cambridge Companion to Bartók; articles in The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, the Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra, The Musical Quarterly, Orbis Musicae, International Journal of Musicology, Hungarian Quarterly, and program notes for major orchestras and arts organizations. Has taught at Oberlin College, Case Western Reserve University, Franz Liszt Academy of Music, John Carroll University, Kent State University. At Bard since 2007.

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Honggang Li

Honggang Li is the founding member of the Shanghai Quartet, now in it’s 30th season, has performed over two thousand concerts in 30 countries, and can be heard on more than 30 CD albums. Mr. Li began studying the violin with his parents at age seven. When the Central Conservatory of music in Beijing reopened in 1977 after the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Li was selected to attend from a group of over five hundred applicants. He continued his training at the Shanghai Conservatory and co- founded the Shanghai Quartet with his brother Weigang while in his senior year in the conservatory. The quartet soon became the first Chinese quartet to win a major international chamber music competition (the London International) and came to the US in 1985. He received MM of North Illinois University and served as a teaching assistant at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1987, he won the special prize (a 1757 DeCable violin) given by Elisa Pegreffi of Quartetto Italiano at the First Paolo Borciani International Competition in Italy. In addition to his work at the Bard Conservatory of Music Mr. Li is currently also an artist-in-residence and faculty at Montclair State University. He also held the title of artist in residence at University of Richmond in Virginia from 1989 to 2003. He has been the guest professor of both conservatories of Shanghai and Beijing. Mr. Li is also the guest principal violist of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra since 2009.

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Renée Anne Louprette

Renée Anne Louprette maintains an international career as organ recitalist, conductor, and teacher. She was appointed Bard College Organist, Assistant Professor of Music, and director of the Bard Baroque Ensemble in 2019. The ensemble takes a leading role in an annual series of Bach cantata presentations in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents on the Bard campus and in the local region and collaborates with other Bard ensembles and personnel (Chamber Singers, the Graduate Vocal Arts Program, the Preparatory Division Chorus, members of The Orchestra Now, and faculty from other branches of the College) in an effort to bring outstanding presentations of Baroque music to the wider community.

Renée Anne Louprette has been University Organist and Organ Area Coordinator at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University since 2013 and is a former member of the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, The Hartt School of the University of Hartford, and the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. She is associated with a number of distinguished music programs in the New York City area, having served as Associate Director of Music at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, Associate Director of Music and the Arts at Trinity Wall Street, Organist and Associate Director at the Unitarian Church of All Souls, and Director of Music at the Church of Notre Dame.

She was selected as a conducting fellow of the Mostly Modern Festival in 2019, premiering several new works with the New York-based American Modern Ensemble. In her over 20-year career as choral director, she has led performances by various professional choirs in the greater New York City area accompanied by members of Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and the American Brass Quintet, among other ensembles.

As collaborative keyboardist, she has performed with the Los Angeles Dance Project, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Voices of Ascension, American Brass Quintet, Clarion Music Society, American Symphony Orchestra, The Dessoff Choirs, Oratorio Society of New York, and Piffaro. She made her recital debut in 2018 at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with Irish uilleann piper Ivan Goff, featuring the world premiere of “Were You at the Rock?” by Eve Beglarian, commissioned for the Louprette-Goff duo by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Renée Anne Louprette made her solo debuts at the Royal Festival Hall in London and the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in 2018. Additional European festival appearances include Magadino, Switzerland; In Tempore Organi, Italy; Ghent and Hasselt, Belgium; Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Bordeaux Cathedral and Toulouse Les Orgues, France; and Dún Laoghaire, Ireland. She appeared as organ soloist with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane, Australia, in Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony broadcast live on ABC radio.

Ms. Louprette’s recording of the "Great Eighteen Chorales&" of J. S. Bach was named a Critics' Choice 2014 by The New York Times. Her recent recordings of 20th-century French organ masterworks, and a duo recording of original compositions and arrangements of traditional Irish music with uilleann piper Ivan Goff, were also released to critical acclaim.

Renée Anne Louprette holds a Master’s degree in conducting from Bard College Conservatory and degrees in piano and organ from The Hartt School, University of Hartford. She was awarded a Premier Prix from the Conservatoire National de Région de Toulouse, France and a Diplôme Supérieur in organ from the Centre d’Études Supérieures de Musique et de Danse de Toulouse.

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Pascual Martínez-Forteza

A native of Mallorca, Spain, Acting Associate Principal and E-flat Clarinet Pascual Martínez Forteza joined the New York Philharmonic in 2001, the first and only Spanish musician in the Orchestra’s history. Prior to his appointment with the Philharmonic, he held tenure with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and at age 18 he was assistant principal and later acting principal of the Baleares Symphony Orchestra in Spain. He is regularly invited as guest principal clarinet or e-flat with some of the most important orchestras in USA including the MET, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Dallas, St Louis... He has performed as guest principal clarinet with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle. Mr. Martínez Forteza appears regularly as a soloist, recitalist, and master-class teacher at international festivals and conservatories. Past and future engagements include solo performances of Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, Weber’s Clarinet Concertos, Krommer’s Concerto for Two Clarinets, Rossini’s Introduction, Theme and Variations for Clarinet and Orchestra, and Luigi Bassi’s Fantasy on Themes from Verdi’s Rigoletto. He frequently collaborates with Philharmonic colleagues in New York City venues such as Avery Fisher Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, and Carnegie Hall. Since 2003 Mr. Martínez Forteza and Spanish pianist Gema Nieto have played throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States as Duo Forteza-Nieto. Together they founded the Benifaio Music Festival in Spain, where Philharmonic colleagues have joined them for a week of master classes and concerts. The Duo Forteza-Nieto recently received the 2016 Sunshine Award for Outstanding Performing Arts Classical and Latin Music. Pascual Martínez Forteza started playing clarinet at age ten with his father, Pascual V. Martínez, principal clarinet of the Baleares Symphony Orchestra for 30 years and teacher at the Baleares Conservatory of Music in Spain. Mr. Martínez Forteza earned his master’s degree from the Baleares and Liceo de Barcelona Music Conservatories in Spain and pursued advanced studies with Yehuda Gilad at the University of Southern California, where he won first prize in the university’s 1998 Concerto Competition. Mr. Martínez Forteza is currently a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music, New York University and auxiliary teacher at Juilliard School. A Buffet Crampon Artist and Vandoren Artist, he plays Green Line Tosca Buffet clarinets and uses Vandoren reeds and M30D mouthpieces.

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Anthony McGill

Anthony McGill, principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, has quickly earned the reputation of being one of classical music's finest solo, chamber and orchestral musicians. Before joining the MET Orchestra in 2004, he served as associate principal clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for four years. With the MET Orchestra, McGill frequently performs in Carnegie Hall's Isaac Stern Auditorium, as well as Zankel and Weill Halls with the MET Chamber Ensemble. He can also be seen and heard on the Live in HD broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. In addition to his orchestral career, McGill was a winner of the highly prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2000 and has appeared as a soloist with orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Hilton Head Orchestra, Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, and The Curtis Orchestra. This season he will appear with the Peabody Orchestra, The New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra and the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra. As a distinguished chamber musician, McGill has performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, Sarasota Festival, La Musica, Tanglewood, Music @ Menlo, the Grand Teton Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire , Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Bridgehampton Chamber Festival and the Interlochen Music Festival. He is also a member of the newly formed Schumann Trio with violist Michael Tree and pianist Anna Polonsky. McGill has collaborated with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Lang Lang, Yefim Bronfman and Gil Shaham, as well as world-renowned string quartets including the Guarneri, Tokyo, Shanghai, Miami, Miró and Daedalus quartets. He has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Asia as a chamber and orchestral musician with artists including the Brentano String Quartet, Musicians from Marlboro, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Mitsuko Uchida, Marina Piccinini and Barbara Sukova. McGill has appeared on Performance Today, NPR's St. Paul Sunday, Ravinia's Rising Star Series, on the Mr. Roger's Neighborhood television show and at Lincoln Center as a member of Chamber Music Society Two. McGill attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and the Curtis Institute of Music. His former teachers include Donald Montanaro, Richard Hawkins, Larry Combs, Julie DeRoche, David Tuttle and Sidney Forrest. In addition to being on the faculty of the Bard Conservatory of Music, McGill currently serves on the faculties of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music Precollege. In addition he has given masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, University of Michigan, Stony Brook University, Temple University, UCLA, University of New Mexico and the Manhattan School of Music. McGill is a Leblanc and Rico Artist. Photo by David Finlayson.

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Jessie Montgomery

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019), commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta; and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—which was presented in its United Kingdom premiere at the BBC Proms on August 7, 2021. Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (August 7); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (July 8); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for the National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (August 13). Since 1999, she has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players, and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from The Juilliard School and New York University, and is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at Princeton University. She has served as a professor of violin and composition at the New School, and in May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.


BM, The Juilliard School; MM, New York University; graduate fellow in music composition, Princeton University. (2022– ) Composer in Residence.

[Photo by Jiyang Chen]

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Isabelle O'Connell

Since her acclaimed New York debut recital at Carnegie’s Weill Hall in 2002, pianist Isabelle O’Connell has developed a thriving international career that has taken her across four continents. As soloist and chamber musician she has performed around the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, at venues such as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Gilmore Keyboard Festival, Time:Spans Festival, MATA Festival, Belfast Festival, St David’s Hall, Cardiff and the National Concert Hall, Ireland.

Isabelle has a reputation for being a dynamic interpreter and energetic advocate of music by 20th and 21st century composers, regularly commissioning and premiering new works. Some of the composers she has worked with include John Adams, John Luther Adams, Linda Buckley, Donnacha Dennehy, Michael Gordon, Missy Mazzoli, Morton Subotnick, Joan Tower, Kevin Volans and Julia Wolfe. In 2010 her debut solo album RESERVOIR featuring solo piano music by contemporary Irish composers was released to critical acclaim and the New Yorker called her “the young Irish piano phenom”.

As concerto soloist Isabelle has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland under conductors William Eddins, Gerhard Markson and Gavin Maloney. Most recently she premiered Kevin Volans’ piano concerto 4b with the RTE Concert Orchestra at the 2023 New Music Dublin festival.

Isabelle is co-founder of Grand Band, New York’s new music piano sextet, described by the New York Times as: "six of the finest, busiest pianists active in New York's contemporary-classical scene”. Making their debut at the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York in 2012, they have since performed around the United States and U.K., at the Gilmore Piano Festival, Peak Performances Series at Montclair University, the Rite of Summer Music Festival, Liquid Music Festival, Vale of Glamorgan Festival, Sheffield University and Cornerstone Festival, Liverpool.

As chamber musician, Isabelle has performed with John Adams at Carnegie's Zankel Hall, with Meredith Monk at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival and with the New Zealand String Quartet at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. She has also performed with Crash ensemble at the Canberra International Chamber Music Festival, Sydney Conservatoire, Galway International Arts Festival, Irish Museum of Modern Art and Reich Effect Festival. Isabelle has also played with ensembles Alarm Will Sound, the Da Capo Chamber Players, American Symphony Orchestra, the New Zealand and ConTempo String Quartets.

Isabelle has recorded for the Diatribe, Innova, NMC, Pyroclastic and Lyric fm labels. She has appeared on television and radio on both sides of the Atlantic, with regular broadcasts on ALL ARTS TV, WNYC, WQXR, WFMT Chicago, BBC3, RTE and Lyric FM radio.

Isabelle is currently serving on the piano faculty as Artist-in-Residence at Bard College and Conservatory of Music in New York. She is often invited to give masterclasses and workshops around the world, including at Princeton University, Queen's University Belfast, Montclair University, New Zealand School of Music and the European Piano Teachers' Association. Isabelle was previously Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris.

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Joan Patenaude-Yarnell

Following her debut with the Canadian Opera Company as Micaela in Carmen, this Canadian-born soprano joined both the New York City and San Francisco Operas. She has also sung with opera companies throughout North America and Europe. Her roles have included Violetta in La Traviata, Alice Ford in Falstaff, Gilda in Rigoletto, Nedda in I Pagliacci, the title role in Suor Angelica, Mimì in La Bohème, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, Elle in La Voix Humaine, and Héro in Béatrice et Bénédict. As a recitalist she performed internationally under the auspices of the Canadian Government, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Les Jeunesses musicales, and the United States Department of State. With orchestra she sang under the batons of Sir Charles Mackerras, Charles Dutoit, Seiji Ozawa, Julius Rudel, and James De Preist. Her recordings include Songs of the Great Opera Composers with Mikael Eliasen, pianist, on the Musical Heritage Society label, as well as releases on the C.B.C. International Series and Vanguard labels. In addition to her position at Bard Conservatory, Miss Patenaude-Yarnell also serves on the voice faculties of Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music. Her students perform with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Paris Opéra, Chicago Lyric Opera, and Stuttgart Opera and are participants in the young artists programs at Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Center (Zurich, Switzerland), and Volksoper (Vienna). Several of her students are current winners of the George London Foundation Awards, Marilyn Horne Foundation Awards, and Puccini Foundation Awards, as well as the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions First Prize Winner, 2004. She has presented her master class “The Principals of Bel Canto” throughout the U.S. and Canada. In the 2014-15 season Miss Patenaude-Yarnell has given master classes in the Art of Bel Canto at the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) Young Artists Program, Princeton University, and the University of Southern Ontario (Canada). She is presenting classes in spring 2015 at Guild Hall (London, England), the Royal Welsh College of Music/Drama (Cardiff, Wales), and Oberlin in Italy (Arezzo, Italy).



For more information about Ms. Patenaude-Yarnell and her teaching philosophy, please visit singingwithmanyvoices.com. 

 

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Raman Ramakrishnan

As a member of the Horszowski Trio, cellist Raman Ramakrishnan has performed across North America, Europe, India, Japan, and in Hong Kong, and recorded for Bridge Records and Avie Records. For eleven seasons, as a founding member of the Daedalus Quartet, he performed around the world. Mr. Ramakrishnan is currently an artist member of the Boston Chamber Music Society. Mr. Ramakrishnan has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., and has performed chamber music at Caramoor, at Bargemusic, with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and at the Aspen, Bard, Charlottesville, Four Seasons, Kingston, Lincolnshire (UK), Marlboro, Mehli Mehta (India), Oklahoma Mozart, and Vail Music Festivals. He has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and has performed, as guest principal cellist, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. As a guest member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, he has performed in New Delhi and Agra, India and in Cairo, Egypt. He has served on the faculties of the Taconic and Norfolk Chamber Music Festivals, as well as at Columbia University.

Mr. Ramakrishnan was born in Athens, Ohio and grew up in East Patchogue, New York. His father is a molecular biologist and his mother is the children's book author and illustrator Vera Rosenberry. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University and a Master’s degree in music from The Juilliard School. His principal teachers have been Fred Sherry, Andrés Díaz, and André Emelianoff. He lives in New York City with his wife, the violist Melissa Reardon, and their young son. He plays a Neapolitan cello made by Vincenzo Jorio in 1837.

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Ryan Roberts

Noted for his “beautiful”, “eloquent” and “exquisite” playing by the New York Times, RYAN ROBERTS is the newly appointed English horn/Oboe of the New York Philharmonic. Ryan has performed with many of the country's leading orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the Ft. Worth Symphony. An award-winning oboist, Ryan received first prize at the International Double Reed Society's 2018 Young Artist Competition and the National Society of Arts and Letters' 2018 Woodwind Competition. Before joining the Philharmonic, Ryan spent one season as a member of the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson-Thomas. Ryan recently premiered Michael Torke’s Oboe Concertino with the Albany Symphony and recorded the work for Albany Records. An avid chamber musician, Ryan performs at the Marlboro Music Festival during the summer under artistic directors Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss; he has also collaborated in recitals with the Pacifica Quartet and Emanuel Ax.

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Nicholas Schwartz

Nicholas Schwartz has a diverse career performing across North America, Europe, and Asia. After studying at The Juilliard School with then New York Philharmonic bass trombonist Don Harwood, he moved to San Francisco where he began freelancing throughout the Bay Area. 

Since 2010, he has been the principal bass trombonist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He has also performed with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Opera, The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Lukes Chamber Orchestra, the New York City Opera, Atlanta Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, The Malaysia Philharmonic, Mostly Mozart Festival, and Classical Tahoe.

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James Sizemore

James is a composer and music producer working in the film and television industry. He has worked with composer Howard Shore on over 20 films, producing the score of the Oscar Winning Spotlight and Canadian Screen Award winning The Song of Names, as well as orchestrating the Blockbuster Trilogy The Hobbit.

He has also worked as an arranger, music editor, music mixer, and composer for many Hollywood films ranging from the additional music he composed for A Dogs Purpose to the additional dark string arrangements in Split.

In addition to his solo album releases, James’ music can be heard across a wide variety of network television and national ad campaigns.

He holds a B.A. from Colorado College and an M.M from NYU. In addition to Bard, James has served on the faculty of New York University and the City University of New York, teaching classes on film sound and music. He lives in the Hudson Valley, NY with his wife and daughters.

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David Sytkowski

David Sytkowski, pianist and vocal coach, is a Visiting Artist in Residence at Bard College, where he is Director of Music for Opera Workshop, coaches singers, teaches private piano, and teaches Aural Skills.



In September 2019, he made his Joe’s Pub debut in Under The Influence with legendary cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond. This led to Auntie Glam’s Happy Hour, a weekly livestream during the initial COVID-19 shut down that New York Times critic Zachary Woolf proclaimed one of “The Best of the Year’s At-Home Divas” in December 2020.



As principal music coach for the Bard SummerScape festival for six years, he has prepared Korngold’s Die tote Stadt and Das Wunder Der Heliane, Rubenstein’s Demon, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, Dvorak’s Dimitrij, Mascagni’s Iris, Smyth’s The Wreckers, and Weber’s Euryanthe.



Other recent engagements include the New York premiere of Gregory Spears’s Fellow Travelers for the PROTOTYPE festival in January 2018, Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s The Mother of Us All for the reopening of the Hudson Opera House in Fall 2017 with R.B. Schlather, Berkshire Opera Festival’s inaugural production of Madama Butterfly, Hindemith's The Long Christmas Dinner and Von Schillings's Mona Lisa with American Symphony Orchestra. He frequently appears as a symphony pianist and collaborator at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

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George Tsontakis

George Tsontakis has been the recipient of the two richest prizes awarded in all of classical music; the international Grawemeyer Award, in 2005, for his Second Violin Concerto and the 2007 Ives Living, awarded every three years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He studied with Roger Sessions at Juilliard and, in Rome, with Franco Donatoni. Born in Astoria, New York, into a strongly Cretan heritage, he has, in recent years, become an important figure in the music of Greece, and his music is increasingly performed abroad, with dozens of performances in Europe every season. Most of his music, including eleven major orchestral works and four concertos have been recorded by Hyperion and Koch, leading to two Grammy Nominations for Best Classical Composition, in 2009 and 1999. He is Distinguished Composer in Residence at Bard and artist-faculty emeritus with the Aspen Music Festival, where he was founding director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble from 1991 to 1999. He served three years as composer in residence with the Oxford (England) Philomusica; was the featured composer in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for the 2008-09 season; and is continuing a six-year Music Alive residency with the Albany Symphony. He lives in New York State’s Catskill Mountains, in Shokan.

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Mira Wang

Mira Wang has built a remarkable bridge from her time as a child prodigy in Beijing, China to an acclaimed soloist on the world stage today.

She has appeared as a soloist with many prestigious orchestras all over the world including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Saarbrücken Radio Orchestra, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic and NDR Philharmonic Hannover. 

An avid chamber musician, Mira’s partners include Hélène Grimaud , Oli Mustonen, Alice Sara Ott, Lise de la Salle, Louis Lortie, Jeremy Denk, Pamela Frank, Daniel Müller-Schott, Gautier Capucon, Jan Vogler,  Lawrence Power and Lars Anders Tomter.

She is an enthusiastic exponent of contemporary music, premiering the violin concerto Spring in Dresden by Chinese-American composer Chen Yi with the Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Ivan Fischer and John Harbison’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Carlos Kalmar.  In 2015 she premiered the double concerto by Wolfgang Rihm, with Jan Vogler and the Orpheus Chamber orchestra at Carnegie Hall. In 2018, She premiered a triple concerto “Alisma” by Swiss composer William Blank with Jan Vogler, Daniel Ottensamer and the Philharmonische Staatsorchester Hamburg, conducted by Kent Nagano at Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. 

Mira has recorded extensively for many labels including Sony Classical and Edel Classics.  Her discography includes violin concerto No. 2 by Prokofieff with the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony, the violin concerto No. 3 by Saint-Saens with NDR Philharmonic Hannover, a duo album with cellist Jan Vogler and several chamber music recordings with Artists of the Moritzburg Festival.

Mira has been Artistic Director of the Model Room Musicales concert series in New York City since 2005 and in 2013, she became Director of the Moritzburg Festival Academy in Germany, a training program for young musicians that is part of the annual Moritzburg Chamber Music Festival.

Born in China, Ms. Wang studied at Central Conservatory in Beijing.  She was sponsored by renowned violin teacher, the late Roman Totenberg to further her studies at Boston University, where she graduated summa cum laude and received the prestigious Kahn Award given to outstanding performers.  She has won 1st prizes in several international violin competitions including the Geneva Competition.

 

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Peter Wiley

Peter Wiley attended the Curtis Institute at just 13 years of age, under the tutelage of David Soyer. He continued his impressive youthful accomplishments with his appointment as principal cellist of the Cincinnati Symphony at age 20, after one year in the Pittsburgh Symphony. He has been awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant and was nominated with the Beaux Arts Trio for a Grammy Award in 1998. As a member of the Beaux Arts Trio, Wiley performed over a thousand concerts, including appearances with many of the world's greatest orchestras. He continues his association with the Marlboro Music Festival, dating from 1971. He has also been a faculty artist at Caramoor's "Rising Stars" program and has taught at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, Mannes College of Music, and Manhattan School of Music. He is also on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music and a member of the Guarneri String Quartet.

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Jing Xia

Jing Xia is a guzheng performer, intercultural arts promotor, Chinese music scholar and educator. Xia has received numerous awards and accolades, including the prestigious Golden Bell Award; the Master of a Chinese Traditional Musical Instrument designation by the California State Senate; the Master Artist Award by Southwest Folklife Alliance; the 2022 Top 10 Outstanding Chinese American Youth Award; and the 30 Selected Leaders for the Future by the All American Chinese Youth Federation. She was selected to be featured in the 2016 Cultural and Artistic Achievement stamp and postcard series released by China Post.

As a performing artist, Xia has been invited to perform concerts with the “Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra” along with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, China National Traditional Orchestra, Huaxia Chinese Orchestra, Chandler Symphony Orchestra, and Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra. She has traveled on concert tours to Switzerland, New Zealand, Spain, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, Burma, Bangladesh, and the USA. 

Aside from her devotion to the culture of traditional music, she is also enthusiastic about exploring new music, techniques, idioms, sounds, genres, cultures, and other aspects of musical perception. Her intercultural music project, the Duo Chinoiserie, seeks to build new musical bridges between the East and West. The award-winning album CHINOISERIE includes new works written for the Duo by renowned composers. Xia’s performing style of the guzheng is calm and subtle, yet very powerful and emotional. 

Xia started her guzheng studies when she was four years old. Since then, she has delved into the world of guzheng music and studies with many famous Chinese guzheng masters. She holds a Master of Musicology and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the China Conservatory of Music. She is a Ph.D. candidate of Applied Intercultural Arts Research with an emphasis in applied ethnomusicology and health promotion science at the University of Arizona. Her research specializations include applied and intercultural approaches to the study of music, culture, and wellness; traditional music as a means to enhance the wellbeing of the Chinese diaspora; and the study of the Qing zheng score Shiliu Ban from “Xiansuo Beikao.” She has published articles in the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), and her research has been selected for presentation at the Association of Chinese Music Research (ACMR) meeting, the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) conference, and the National Organization of Arts in Health conference.

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Mingmei Yip

Mingmei Yip received her PhD in musicology from the University of Paris (Sorbonne) on a full scholarship from the French Government. A master performer on the Qin, she has given lectures and performances at venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, Columbia University, Oxford University, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Beijing University, the University of Paris, Amsterdam University, Oberlin Conservatory, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the China Institute in New York. Dr. Yip has served as consultant for Beijing’s Chinese Qin Association 北京中国古琴会, director for Chinese Kun Opera and Guqin Research Association 中国古琴昆剧研究会理事, artistic consultant for New York Cultural Art Association, as well as on the academic board of the Chengdu International Qin Conference.

Also a writer, Dr. Yip has published fourteen books, with two on the qin. Her latest and 7th novel The Witch’s Market (Kensington Books) which received a glowing review from the New York Times. She wrote columns for seven major newspapers and has appeared on over 50 television and radio programs in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and the United States.

She is also accomplished as a painter and calligrapher. A one-person show of her paintings of Guan Yin (the Chinese Goddess of Compassion) and calligraphy was held at the New York Open Center Gallery in SoHo in 2002. Dr. Yip was lecturer and senior lecturer (associate professor) of music at Chinese University of Hong Kong and Baptist University respectively, and in 2005, an International Institute of Asian Studies fellow in Holland researching on the qin. She has taught qin playing and calligraphy at two major Hong Kong Universities.

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Qiang Zhang

A world-famous pipa virtuoso, Professor Zhang Qiang is the Director of the String Instrument Division of the Chinese Music Department at the China Central Conservatory of Music (CCMO). After graduating from CCMO in 1987, Professor Zhang had devoted himself to teaching at CCMO as a pipa instructor for almost three decades. He has been a judge at major domestic and international instrumental music competitions and has been invited to give lectures at many educational institutions. In addition to his traditional approach in systematic technique training, Professor Zhang focuses on the cultivation of students' music awareness and strongly urges his students to explore and display personal character in performing. Many of his students stand out as national winners of China’s highest-level competitions. Professor Zhang is an active performer throughout China and abroad. He has regularly appeared in international music festivals: the Edinburgh International Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center Festival of Contemporary Music, Berlin Art Week, Torino Art Festival, and other festivals held in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. His musical collaborations also include the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra and China National Symphony Orchestra, Dutch New Orchestra, China Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, China Radio National Orchestra, Shanghai National Orchestra, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Taipei National Orchestra, Guangdong National Orchestra, Macau Chinese Orchestra and Singapore Chinese Orchestra. He was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall, Musikverein (Golden Hall in Vienna), Lincoln Center in New York City. His work features solo pieces for pipa, concertos, traditional repertoires, and he actively engages in contemporary chamber music. Professor Zhang maintains a lifelong devotion to academic research. Together with three professors from CCMO, he has been working on a historical preservation project, Xian Suo Bei Kao, imparing, performing and eventually completing the full-scale (1814 manuscripts) music on the ancient spectrum of the Qing Dynasty.

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Carmit Zori

Violinist Carmit Zori is the recipient of a Leventritt Foundation Award, a Pro Musicis International Award, and the top prize in the Walter W. Naumburg International Violin Competition. She has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, among many others, and has given solo recitals at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., the Tel Aviv Museum and the Jerusalem Center for the Performing Arts. Her performances have taken her throughout Latin America and Europe, as well as Israel, Japan, Taiwan and Australia, where she premiered the Violin Concerto by Marc Neikrug. 

Ms. Zori enjoys a prolific career as a chamber musician. After ten years as artistic director at Bargemusic, she founded the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society in 2002. In addition to her own series, she has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has been a guest at chamber music festivals and concert series around the world, including the Chamber Music at the Y series in New York City; Festival Casals in Puerto Rico; Chesapeake Bay Music Festival; Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival; Bard Music Festival; Chamber Music Northwest; Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; La Jolla Chamber Music Festival; Seattle Chamber Music Festival; Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival; Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society in Wisconsin; Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival; Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival in the UK; Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; Sarasota Music Festival; and is a regular participant at the Marlboro Chamber Music Festival in Vermont. 

Ms. Zori has played for Music for Food, a concert series that helps relieve food insecurity in cities all over the United States. She has also participated in Project: Music Heals Us, a nonprofit organization that aims to educate and heal marginalized communities through music. Carmit is also a member of the Israeli Chamber Project, an ensemble that performs chamber music and conducts educational outreach in the US, Israel, and various other countries throughout the world. 

Ms. Zori can be heard on the Arabesque, Koch International, and Elektra-Nonesuch labels. In addition to teaching at the Bard Conservatory, she is professor of violin at Rutgers University and SUNY-Purchase.

At the behest of violinists Alexander Schneider and Isaac Stern, Ms. Zori came to the United States from her native Israel at the age of fifteen to study at the Curtis Institute of Music with Ivan Galamian, Jaime Laredo and Arnold Steinhardt.