Korean-American violinist Kristin Lee has been praised by The Strad for her “rare stylistic aptness” and “mastery of tone and rare mood in a performer of any age.” A violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique, Ms. Lee enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician, and is equally noted for her growing reputation in collaborations with various genres of music. A winner of Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions and a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition, Ms. Lee has appeared as soloist with St. Louis Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, New Mexico Symphony, Albany Symphony, the Ural Philharmonic of Russia, the Korean Broadcasting Symphony of Korea, and many others. She has appeared on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, the Louvre Museum in Paris, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. She has been featured on the Ravinia Festival’s Rising Stars Series, and has toured throughout northern Italy. In April 2012, Ms. Lee organized a memorial concert at the Menlo-Atherton Performing Arts Center for the victims of the Oikos University shooting, which occurred in Oakland, California. Since her Paris-Philly Lockdown performance at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in April 2011 with drummer and DJ ?uestlove, Ms. Lee has enjoyed a continued collaboration with the drummer and frontman for the Grammy Award-winning band, The Roots. She appears on The Roots’ most recent CD Undun, and appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in ?uestlove’s experimental project entitled Shuffle Culture, which evoked iPod’s “shuffle” mode in live performance and brought together musicians such as Deerhoof, D.D. Jackson, Rahzel, and DJ Jeremy Ellis. An accomplished chamber musician, Ms. Lee is a member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, following her completion of a three-year residency as a CMS Two artist. She has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, Music@Menlo, the Perlman Music Program, Festival Mozaic, Medellín Festicámara of Colombia, and the Sarasota Music Festival. She is also the concertmaster of the groundbreaking Metropolis Ensemble, with whom she premiered Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto, written for her, and which appears on Ms. Fung’s CD Dreamscapes, released for the Naxos label CD in September 2012. Ms. Lee’s performances have been broadcast on WQXR in New York, on Bob Sherman’s Young Artists Showcase, and with guitarist Mattias Jacobsson on Annie Bergen’s The Office Hours. Other broadcasts include PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center Honors, and a guest artist performance on WFMT Chicago’s Rising Stars series. She also appeared on a nationally broadcast PBS documentary entitled PBS in Shanghai, which chronicled a historic cross-cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program and Shanghai Conservatory. Ms. Lee has received many honors, including Second Prize in the 2011 Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. She is also the unprecedented First Prize winner of three concerto competitions at The Juilliard School—in the Pre-College Division in 1997 and 1999, and in the College Division in 2007. Born in Seoul, Ms. Lee began studying the violin at the age of five, and within one year won First Prize at the prestigious Korea Times Violin Competition. In 1995, she moved to the United States and continued her musical studies under Sonja Foster. Two years later, she became a student of Catherine Cho and Dorothy DeLay in The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In January 2000, she was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman, after he heard her perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Juilliard’s Pre-College Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Itzhak Perlman and Donald Weilerstein, and served as an assistant teacher for Mr. Perlman’s studio as a Starling Fellow. She is a member of the faculty of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and serves on the summer faculty at the Music@Menlo Festival.

Described as “mold-breaking” and “vital” by The New York Times, Andy Akiho is an eclectic composer and performer whose interests run from steel pan to traditional classical music. Recent engagements include a world premiere by the New York Philharmonic, a performance with the LA Philharmonic, and three performances of original compositions at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. His rhythmic compositions touch a wide spectrum of listeners and continue to increase in recognition, recently winning the grand prize for the 2011 eighth blackbird MakeMusic National Composition Competition. Akiho’s 2011 debut CD No One To Know One on innova Records features innovative compositions that pose intricate rhythms and exotic timbres around his primary instrument, the steel pan. Akiho has also recently been featured on PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer.”

Patrick Castillo leads a multifaceted career as a composer, performer, writer, and educator. His music has been featured at festivals and venues throughout the United States and internationally including Spoleto Festival USA, June in Buffalo, the Santa Fe New Music Festival, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Berklee College of Music, Tenri Cultural Institute, Bavarian Academy of Music (Munich), and Nuremberg Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent season highlights include the world premieres of Incident for cello and piano, The Quality of Mercy for soprano and chamber ensemble, Two Pieces after Grass for tenor saxophone and electronics, and Evocation for chorus and cello; the German premiere of Cirque for solo violin; and the second New York performance of This is the hour of lead, a chamber cantata for baritone/countertenor and ensemble, presented by North/South Consonance; as well as premiere performances of Patrick Castillo’s chamber works by Anti-Social Music, Forecast Music, the Interlochen Chamber Players, the Society for New Music, and the Pharos Music Project. The 2012-13 season features the premieres of Music for the Third Place for violin and electronics, The Conversation of Prayers for soprano and ensemble, and others. Patrick Castillo is variously active as an explicator of music to a wide range of listeners. He has provided program notes for numerous concert series: most prolifically for Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival and institute in Silicon Valley for which he also serves as Artistic Administrator. In this latter capacity, he has led a variety of pre-concert discussion events; designed outreach presentations for middle and high school students; and authored, narrated, and produced the widely acclaimed AudioNotes series of listener’s guides to the chamber music literature. Patrick Castillo has been a guest lecturer at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Fordham University, Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass (Kentucky), String Theory at the Hunter (Chattanooga, TN), and ChamberFest Cleveland. In October 2010, he was appointed Director of Artistic Planning of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.Patrick Castillo holds degrees in music composition and sociology from Vassar College, where his teachers included Lois V. Vierk, Annea Lockwood, and Richard Wilson. He has also participated in master classes with John Harbison, Alvin Lucier, Roger Reynolds, and Charles Wuorinen. While at Vassar, Patrick Castillo served as composer-in-residence for the Mahagonny Ensemble, a collective of performers specializing in twentieth-century music. His Requiem aeternam for mixed chorus and chamber ensemble, composed for the Mahagonny, was awarded the 2001 Jean Slater Edson Prize. He has also been the recipient of the Brian M. Israel Prize, awarded by the Society for New Music for his chamber work Lola.

Lauded for her virtuosity and artistry that broadens the scope of the harp, BRIDGET KIBBEY “makes it seem as thought her instrument had been waiting all its life to explode with the gorgeous colors and energetic figures she was getting from it (New York Times).”
 
She is a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Classical Recording Foundation’s 2012 Young Artist Award, and winner of Concert Artist Guild’s International Competition and Astral Artist Auditions. Bridget’s debut album, Love is Come Again,was named one of 2007’s Top Ten Releases by Time Out New York. She may also be heard on Deutsche Grammaphon with Dawn Upshaw, on a recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre and Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs. Bridget recently completed her newest solo album, The Bridge Project, a celebration of solo harp works that celebrate the rich cultural fabric that makes up the United States, with Dawn Upshaw as special guest. This season Bridget records on Placido Domingo’s next solo album, with producer Robert Sadin. Ms. Kibbey’s solo performances have been broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today, on New York’s WQXR, WNYC’s Soundcheck, WETA’s Front Row Washington, WRTI’sCrossover, WXII’s Backstage Pass, and on television in A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts.
 
Highlights of the season include a five-orchestra consortium world premiere of a harp concerto by Juno-Award winning composer Vivian Fung alongside Debussy’s Danses Sacreé et Profane and Tailleferre’s Concertino with the Alabama Symphony, Karlsruhe Baatische Symphoniker, The Phillips Collection with the Phillips Camerata, San José Chamber Orchestra, and the Metropolis Ensemble. She returns to the Savannah Music Festival as soloist with members of the Atlanta Symphony, makes her debut at the Pelotas Festival in Brazil, will be featured in French Masterworks with the Chamber Music Society on tour and at Lincoln Center, and with Ian Bostridge in duo at Carnegie Hall.
 
Ms. Kibbey is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where she studied with Nancy Allen. She is on the harp faculties of Bard Conservatory, New York University, and the Juilliard Pre-College program.

Shobana Raghavan was fortunate to undergo training in vocal music from the esteemed Guru Smt. Suguna Varadachari in Chennai, India. Shobana has performed both as a soloist and as vocal accompaniment for classical dance at many prestigious festivals and venues around the world, including the Ellora caves festival, the Haryana Palace festival, the Tokyo relations program in Japan and an Off-Broadway production in New York. She has been singer, composer and lyricist for a Carnatic-Jazz fusion song “AmruthaVarshini” in the recently released album titled “Come n play”, now available on Itunes and Amazon.She has conducted Carnatic vocal workshops at several educational institutions including the New York university and the City College of New York.

Vivian Fung official site

JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. Her work often assimilates disparate influences such as non-Western folk music, Brazilian rhythms, and visual inspirations.

Fung has enjoyed numerous high-profile projects in recent years as her music has continued to move in new directions. Her Violin Concerto No. 2 was commissioned and premiered in February 2015 by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra with Jonathan Crow, violin. Last year, her Biennale Snapshots opened the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 2015-16 season alongside Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The 25-minute work, commissioned by the Vancouver Biennale and inspired by five artworks from the Biennale exhibition, garnered much attention: “If [violinist] Miriam Fried was what everyone was talking about when they arrived at the concert … Vivian Fung was all they talked about when they left” (Georgia Straight, Sept. 28, 2015).

Among Fung’s upcoming premieres are a new fanfare for the Toronto Symphony and Ontario Philharmonic; Bounce, a new Horn Trio for Boston Symphony principal hornist James Sommerville, violinist Scott St. John, and pianist Peter Longworth; a new work for the Daedalus Quartet and clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois, co-commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; a work for cello and electronics, for a consortium of cellists in Canada and the U.S.; a new work for the San José Chamber Orchestra; and a new orchestral work commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. Her 2016–17 season highlights include performances of Dust Devils with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the U.S. premiere of Biennale Snapshots with the La Jolla Symphony, String Sinfonietta with Symphony Nova Scotia, and performances of Blaze with the Okanagan Symphony.

Many distinguished artists and ensembles around the world have embraced Fung’s music as part of the core repertoire. Conductors with whom she has collaborated include Justin Brown, Mei-Ann Chen, Andrew Cyr, Barbara Day Turner, Peter Oundjian, Edwin Outwater, Steven Schick, Gerard Schwarz, and Bramwell Tovey. Fung’s Glimpses for prepared piano has been championed by a diverse group of pianists, including Conor Hanick, Jenny Lin, Margaret Leng Tan, and Bryan Wagorn. Fung’s orchestral and chamber works have also been performed by the Alabama Symphony, American Opera Projects, Chicago Sinfonietta, Milwaukee Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, San José Chamber Orchestra, Shanghai Quartet, Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Suwon Chorale of South Korea, and Ying Quartet, to name a few.

In 2012, Naxos Canadian Classics released a recording of Fung’s Violin Concerto [No.1], Piano Concerto “Dreamscapes,” and Glimpses. The Violin Concerto earned Fung the 2013 JUNO Award for “Classical Composition of the Year.” Several other of Fung’s works have been released commercially on the Telarc, Çedille, Innova, and Signpost labels.
Fung traveled to Southwest China in 2012 for ethno-musicological research to study minority music and cultures in the Yunnan province, continuing research that previously inspired Yunnan Folk Songs (2011), commissioned by Fulcrum Point New Music in Chicago with support from the MAP Fund. Following the premiere performance, The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Yunnan Folk Songs stood out … [with] a winning rawness that went beyond exoticism.” As a composer whose travels often inspire her music, Fung has also explored diverse cultures in North Vietnam, Spain, and Indonesia. She toured Bali in 2004, 2008, and 2010, and competed in the Bali Arts Festival as an ensemble member and composer in Gamelan Dharma Swara.

Fung has received numerous awards and grants, including the 2015 Jan V. Matejcek New Classical Music Award for achievement in new music from the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), a Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Gregory Millard Fellowship, and grants from ASCAP, BMI, American Music Center, MAP Fund, American Symphony Orchestra League, American Composers Forum, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre and is serving a three-year term as a board member of the American Composers Forum.

Born in Edmonton, Canada, Fung began her composition studies with composer Violet Archer and received her doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York, where her mentors included David Diamond and Robert Beaser. She was a faculty member at Juilliard from 2002 to 2010 and currently lives in California with her husband Charles Boudreau, their son Julian, and their shiba inu, Mulan.

Jason Vieaux continues to expand the definition of the “classical guitarist” with virtuosic and moving performances, imaginative programming and uncommon communicative gifts. Recent engagements include returns with the Chamber Music Societies of Philadelphia and Lincoln Center, the Caramoor Festival, performances of Lukas Foss Guitar Concerto for New Hampshire Music Festival, and concerto performances with the symphonies of Houston, Toronto, Buffalo, and others. As a chamber musician, Mr. Vieaux performs regularly on major series with the Escher String Quartet, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, accordionist Julien Labro, and flutist Gary Schocker; as well as tours of North and South America with the Curtis On Tour project. Mr. Vieaux’s latest solo CD, Move, featuring Spanish, Latin American and Jazz-inspired encores, was released in 2013 by Azica. It follows Piazzolla and Bach: Vol. I, Works for Lute which hit #13 on the Billboard classical music chart the first week of its release in 2009. Among his other CDs is Images of Metheny, a disc of Mr. Vieaux’s re-creations of music by the American jazz guitarist/composer Pat Metheny, and Sevilla: The Music of Isaac Albéniz, which was rated one of the top ten classical CDs of 2003 by both The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Mr. Vieaux is Head of the Guitar Department at Cleveland Institute of Music, and he co-founded The Curtis Institute of Music’s Guitar Department with David Starobin in 2011. In June 2012, the Jason Vieaux Online Classical Guitar School™ launched in partnership with ArtistWorks™, and already has over 300 students from around the world. Mr. Vieaux’s records are played on radio stations around the world, and he has written blogs for National Public Radio’s Deceptive Cadence series. Jason’s website is www.jasonvieaux.com, and he plays a guitar by Gernot Wagner.

Praised for his “excellent” and “precisely attuned” performances by the New York Times, percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum has developed a musical breadth far beyond his years. He made his Kennedy Center debut in 2009 and later that year garnered a special prize created for him at the Salzburg International Marimba Competition.
 

Last season, Mr. Rosenbaum joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program as only the second percussionist they have selected in their history. Mr. Rosenbaum has performed with the acclaimed So Percussion group and has appeared at the Norfolk, Yellow Barn, Chamber Music Northwest and Music@Menlo festivals.
 
Highlights of the 2013-2014 season include a tour of Southern California performing Christopher Cerrone’s Memory Palace, a recital at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. and a solo performance on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s New Music in the Kaplan Penthouse series.
 
Continuing his passionate advocacy for contemporary music, this season Mr. Rosenbaum will premiere new works for percussion by Andy Akiho, David Crowell, Tawnie Olson and Paola Prestini.
 
Mr. Rosenbaum is a member of Sandbox Percussion, Le Train Bleu, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Novus NY and Time Travelers. He has recorded for the Bridge, Innova and Naxos labels and is on the faculty of the Dwight School in Manhattan. Mr. Rosenbaum endorses Vic Firth sticks and mallets.