Ara Gregorian, violin and viola
Founder and Artistic Director of the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Gregorian made his New York Recital Debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and his debut as soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra.  He has appeared at the SpringLight (Finland), Storioni (Holland), Summer Solstice (Canada), Bard, Bravo! Vail Valley, El Paso Pro Musica, Strings in the Mountains and Santa Fe festivals and has recorded for the Bridge and Kleos labels.  He is a former member of the Daedalus Quartet and Concertante and has been a member of the violin faculty at ECU since 1998.

Jesse Mills, violin
Nominated for a Grammy Award, Mills has performed at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Boston’s Gardner Museum, the Rising Stars Series at Caramoor, and the Ravinia and Marlboro music festivals. He has performed as soloist with the Ravinia Festival Orchestra and the New Jersey, Phoenix and Colorado Symphony Orchestras and was a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003. He is currently a member of the chamber music ensembles Antares, Duo Prism and Nurse Kaya.

Hagai Shaham, violin
First prize winner of the 1990 Munich ARD International Music Competition, Shaham has performed as soloist with the English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Belgian National Orchestra, Taiwan National Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic. He has recorded for the Decca International, Chandos, Biddulph, Naxos, and Hyperion labels and is a member of the faculty at the University of Southern California.

Melissa Reardon, viola
Grammy-nominated violist Reardon performs internationally as a member of the Enso String Quartet and as a founding member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO). Reardon is a First Prize Winner of the Washington International Competition and the only violist to win top prizes in consecutive HAMS International Viola Competitions.  She has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and is Assistant Professor of viola at East Carolina University. 

Edward Arron, cello
Artistic coordinator of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert since 2003, Arron has perform-
ed at Carnegie Hall’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Hall, and at prestigious festivals including Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Bravo! Colorado, Tanglewood, and Spoleto USA. He is artistic director of the Musical Masterworks concert series, the Caramoor Virtuosi, and the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival and has toured with the Silk Road Project.

Benjamin Hochman, piano
Hochman has earned widespread acclaim for his performances with the New York and Israel Philharmonics, among others. A 2011 recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, Mr. Hochman’s season highlights include a performance with the Houston Symphony and solo recitals in Baltimore, Washington, Chicago and Jerusalem.  In 2010 he released his first album on Artek featuring solo works of Bach, Berg and Webern.  He is a member of the piano faculty at East Carolina University.

Maria Lambros, viola
A former member of the Mendelssohn Quartet, the Grammy Award-nominated Ridge Quartet and the Naumburg
Award-winning Meliora Quartet, Lambros has appeared at the Aspen, Helsinki, Santa Fe, Yellow Barn and Spoleto festivals; collaborated with the Guarneri, Cleveland and Juilliard quartets; and performed with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. She is a member of the chamber music faculty at the Peabody Conservatory.

Amit Peled, cello
A featured artist at the world’s premier halls, Peled has appeared in London, New York, Paris, Berlin and Tel Aviv. He has recently performed as soloist with the the Baltimore Symphony, European Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony and the Radio Symphony Saarbrucken, and has appeared at the Newport, Seattle and Marlboro music festivals.  His performances have been broadcast on NPR, Radio France, and Swedish National Radio. He is on the cello faculty at the Peabody Conservatory.

Thomas Sauer, piano
Director of the Mannes Beethoven Institute, Sauer is highly sought-after as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher.  He has performed at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Philharmonie in Berlin, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and at the Wolf Trap Center, and has appeared at the Marlboro, Seattle, Portland, El Paso Pro Musica and Salt Bay festivals.  Sauer has recorded for the MSR Classics, Musical Heritage Society, Centaur and Arabesque labels and is on the piano faculty at Vassar College and the Mannes College of Music.

Colin Carr, cello
Winner of the Naumburg International Competition, Carr has appeared as soloist with orchestras worldwide including the Royal Concertgebouw, the Royal Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony, as well as with the major orchestras of Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia and Montreal.  He was a member of the Golub-Kaplan-Carr trio for twenty years, has performed with the Guarneri and Emerson quartets, and has appeared at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.  Carr is on the cello faculty at Stony Brook University in New York.

Soovin Kim, violin
An Avery Fisher Career Grant winner, Kim has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra, Prague Chamber Orchestra and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic.  He was awarded the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, the Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award, and won first prize at the Paganini Competition.

 

Axel Strauss, violin
Winner of the 1998 Naumburg Violin Award, Strauss has performed as soloist with the Hamburg Symphony, the Seoul, Budapest, and Bucharest Philharmonics, and the New York Chamber Symphony.  He has appeared at the Library of Congress and Alice Tully Hall, at the Marlboro, Moab, and the Kammermusiktage Mettlach (Germany) festivals, and with the Philharmonic Violins Berlin on tour in Japan.  Strauss is on the violin faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory.

Hsin-Yun Huang, viola
ITop prize winner of the 1993 ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award, Huang has appeared as soloist with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Symphony and the National Symphony of Taiwan.  She has performed at the Marlboro, Spoleto and Music@Menlo festivals; collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell; and is on the faculty at The Juilliard School.

 

Ani Aznavoorian, cello
A Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Aznavoorian has won the Bunk- amura  Orchard
Hall Award, the Chicago Cello Society Competiton and was a top prize winner in the 1996 International Paulo Competiton in Finland. She has performed as soloist with the Chicago Symphony, Boston Pops, Tokyo Philharmonic and the Helsinki Philharmonic and is a member of the Corinthian Trio, Camerata Pacifica, and the International Sejong Soloists.

 

Michael Kannen, cello
A founding member of the award-winning Brentano String Quartet, Kannen performs chamber music as a member of the Apollo Trio, on period instruments with the Houston-based group Context and at many major music festivals.  He is currently the Director of Chamber Music at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he holds the Sidney Friedberg Chair in Chamber Music. He has recorded for the CRI label.

 

Robert McDonald, piano
McDonald has performed internationally as a solo recitalist and as a recital partner to Midori and Isaac Stern. He has appeared with the San Francisco, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Curtis symphony orchestras, as well as with the Orquestra Sinfonica Nacional in Costa Rica, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Haydn di Bolzano e Trento in Italy.  He has performed with the Juilliard, Takacs, American, Muir, and Brentano string quartets.

 

Keiko Sekino, piano
A 2001 Presser Music Award recipient, Sekino has performed with members of the Peabody Trio, the Los Angeles Piano Quartet, and the Mendelssohn Quartet. She performed at Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Parsimmon Hall (Tokyo), Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria (Spain), and Castello Caetani (Italy); and participated in festivals such as Ravinia and Norfolk. She served as a pianist for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

 

Elina Vähälä, violin
Vähälä made her concerto debut at the age of 12 with the Sinfonia Lahti. Chosen to carry the title of “Young Master Soloist” of the Sinfonia Lahti, she has performed regularly with the Gramophone Award-winning orchestra since. She is the first prize winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and has performed with such orchestras as the English Chamber Orchestra, Dort- mund Orchestra and the Israel Camerata.

Krzysztof Chorzelski, viola
A member of the Belcea Quartet, Chorzelski performs on the world’s most prestigious stages in London, Vienna, Amsterdam and New York.  He released Ittai Shapira’s Violin Concerto “Concierto Latino” with the London Serenata Orchestra for Champs Records in May 2011, and his recital disc with pianist Katya Apekisheva will be out in 2012.  He is a viola professor at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Raman Ramakrishnan, cello
A former founding member of the Daedalus Quartet, First Prize winners of the 2001 Banff International String Quartet Competition, Ramakrishnan has appeared at Alice Tully Hall, Caramoor’s Rising Stars series, the ­Marlboro Festival where he was broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today and at Weill Recital Hall with the contemporary music group, Proteus 5.  He received his BA with honors in physics from Harvard University.

Nicholas Cords, viola
A member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, Cords has appeared across the U.S. and Europe, and in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Iran, Syria and Egypt. He has performed as soloist with the Chicago Symphony and the Minnesota and Philadelphia orchestras and has appeared at the Schleswig-Holstein, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Piccolo Spoleto, Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart, Ravinia and the Smithsonian Folklife festivals.  He has appeared frequently on television and radio, including a Chinese National Television broadcast from the Great Wall, the David Letterman Show, numerous National Public Radio broadcasts and Good Morning America.

 

Alexis Pia Gerlach, cello
Cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach has performed extensively as a soloist with orchestras and in recitals across the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America. She has collaborated with such conductors as Mstislav Rostropovich, James DePreist and Peter Oundjian, and with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Fort Worth Symphony , the Charleston Symphony, the Lakeforest Symphony (Chicago), and Boston’s Metmorphosen Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, Ms. Gerlach has been a guest artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and La Jolla Chamber Music Society and has performed at numerous festivals including Marlboro, Aspen, Piccolo Spoleto and Caramoor, where she is a Texaco Rising Star. She is a member of Concertante, a string sextet based in New York City.