Jerry Grossman has been principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1986. He has appeared in recital, and with symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States. He made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the following year performed the American premiere of Kurt Weill’s 1920 Cello Sonata, which led to recording that work, as well as solo works by Dohnanyi, Prokofiev, Bartok, and Kodaly for Nonesuch Records. He has appeared as soloist in Carnegie Hall and on domestic and European tours with the Met Orchestra under James Levine playing Don Quixote by Richard Strauss. The performance has also been recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.
 
A long association with the Marlboro Music Festival, including numerous ‘Music from Marlboro’ tours and recordings, figures prominently in Mr. Grossman’s chamber music experience. He is a former member of Orpheus and Speculum Musicae, and has also appeared as a guest artist with the Guarneri, Vermeer, and Emerson String Quartets. He was the founding cellist of both the Chicago String Quartet and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. Before assuming his position at the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Grossman was a member of the Chicago Symphony for two seasons and the New York Philharmonic for two seasons.
 
Mr. Grossman began his music studies in his native Cambridge, Massachusetts. His teachers there included Judith Davidoff, Joan Esch and Benjamin Zander. He attended the CurtisInstitute of Music, where he studied cello with David Soyer and chamber music with the other members of the Guarneri Quartet. Sandor Vegh and Harvey Shapiro were also important influences.

Violinist Caterina Maria Szepes was born in Berlin, Germany in 1967 into a musical family. Her father was an opera singer and her mother a violinist. She studied at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music with Prof. Ulf Hoelscher 1985-1991 and the Cleveland Institute of Music with Donald Weilerstein 1991-1993. Her recital debut on RIAS Berlin Radio in 1987 was followed by concerto performances and recitals throughout Europe, Australia and the U.S. Ms. Szepes has performed at the Taos, Marlboro, Kingston and Aspen Music Festivals and has collaborated with many artists, including members of the Juilliard and American String Quartets, Lynn Harrell, Hillary Hahn and Andres Diaz among others. She was featured on a recording for the Karlsruhe Conservatory performing the Kurt Weill Violin Concerto and in the Marlboro Music festivals 50th Anniversary CD. Since 1997 C. Szepes has been a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

Nicholas Mann, violin and viola, grew up surrounded by music and musicians. From an early age he has collaborated with such noted artists as Itzhak Perlman, Lynn Harrell and with his father, violinist Robert Mann and has performed throughout the United States and Canada.
 
Mr. Mann has performed extensively as a recitalist and soloist. In New York alone, he has appeared on the Great Performers Series at Alice Tully Hall, with Chamber Music at the “Y”, and has served asconcertmaster of the Jupiter Symphony. After receiving Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School where he studied with Dorothy Delay, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983. His participation in summer festivals includes eight years at the Yellow Barn music festival, solo performances at the Ravinia Festival, several seasons with the Aspen Music Festival and frequent engagements with San Francisco’s Chamber Music West and Colorado’s Baca Ensemble. Mr. Mann is a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet. He has been a member of the faculty at the Juilliard School since 2002 and is now Chair of the String Department at the Manhattan School of Music.

Prizewinner of the Wieniawski and Paganini International Violin Competitions, violinist Bracha Malkin was featured in Musical America 2008 as an up-and-coming talent and was named by Henry Roth, in his book Violin Virtuosos from Paganini to the 21st Century, as one of the “gifted young violinists who are among the vanguard leading the march of violin art into the 21st century.” Ms. Malkin has been heard in numerous performances worldwide, both with orchestra and in recital including with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony, Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Bolivar Orchestra, Bogota Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfonica of Teatro Municipal de Sao Paulo, Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Rishon Lizion Symphony Orchestra, Bologna Symphony, Nederlands Promenade Orchestra and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, she collaborated with Yuri Bashmet, Irena Grafenauer, Gary Hoffman and Lynn Harrell at Kronberg Academy´s Chamber Music Connects the World 2008 (Germany). She spent two summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed at the Menton Music Festival (France), Delft and Storioni Festivals in the Netherlands and appears regularly at the Academy of Music Summer Festival in Nyack, New York. Ms. Malkin is a member of the “Malkin Duo” with her sister, Anat Malkin Almani. Bracha Malkin studied with her father, Isaac Malkin, as well as Aaron Rosand, Miriam Fried and Boris Belkin.

Israeli-born Anat Malkin Almani began her violin studies with her father, Isaac Malkin. At the age of ten, she toured as a soloist in California, Mexico and Norway. She made her Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 16 under the baton of Alexander Schneider. Other performances have taken her throughout Holland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, the United Kingdom and the United States. She is the recipient of numerous awards and was the winner of many competitions. She has been heard on WQXR in New York as part of the Young Artists Series hosted by Robert Sherman. An active chamber musician, Ms. Almani performs regularly with her sister, violinist Bracha Malkin, as part of the The Malkin Duo. Among a few of the Duo’s highlights have been recitalsin Israel, in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and the premier performance of David Ward-Steinman’s Concerto for Two Violins in La Jolla, California. Ms. Almani holds a Bachelor’sDegree from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Cho-Liang Lin, and has a Master’s Degree, cum laude, from the Maastricht Conservatorium in Holland, where she studied with Boris Belkin. In his book entitled Violin Virtuosos from Paganini to the 21st Century, Henry Roth named her as one of the “gifted young violinists who are among the vanguard leading the march of violin art into the 21st century”. Ms. Almani is on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division.

The Financial Times (London) acclaimed that “Korliss Uecker, a bright and pretty American soprano, was charming, crystalline of voice and sparkling as an actress.” Uecker has sung over 150 performances at the Metropolitan Opera including Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro (international radio broadcast), Marzelline in Fidelio, Oscar in A Masked Ball, and Valencienne in The Merry Widow. She sang Giannetta in a telecast of The Elixir of Love with Lucianno Pavarotti and Frasquita in Carmen with Placido Domingo. Other opera credits include Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire in Strasbourg, France; Sybil in the Picture of Dorian Gray with Opera de Monte Carlo; the Wexford Festival, Santa Fe Opera, the Spoleto Festival and the Ravinia Festival, and the Library of Congress. In 2012 she sang at the International Women and Lied Conference in Ireland. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophone, London Decca, Arabesque Records and has appeared on CBS Sunday Morningand Live from Lincoln Center. Ms Uecker’s recording with New World Records features the songs of Victor Herbert and was released May 1, 2012. Korliss has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard school, a Bachelor of Science from the University of North Dakota and was a Registered Nurse before she began her singing career. Her husband is Jerry Grossman, principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and their daughter, Katya, is a Junior at Nyack High School.