Oliver Herbert, cello

2019 – Glissando LIVE! Benefit

Cellist Oliver Herbert, from San Francisco, is quickly building a reputation as an artist with a distinct voice and individual style—“From his opening notes it was immediately apparent that Herbert has a very vocal approach to his playing and regardless of the technical demands he makes his cello sing”. Performing a wide range of repertoire, Oliver’s recent solo and recital appearances include debuts with the San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic, Las Vegas Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony SoundBox, Union College Concert Series, and the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series in Chicago, among others. 

Oliver has worked with renowned conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Juanjo Mena, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. As a chamber musician, Oliver has performed with some of the leading musicians of our time including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Franklin Cohen, Pamela Frank, Miriam Fried, Nobuko Imai, and Meng-Chieh Liu.​ In addition, Oliver frequently collaborates with pianist Xiaohui Yang as a recital duo. This season, they will perform on tour in both the United States and Greece.
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Oliver is frequently invited to participate in music festivals including the Caramoor Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, Krzyżowa Music, Music in the Vineyards, Open Chamber Music at IMS Prussia Cove, the Ravinia Festival Steans Music Institute, and the Verbier Festival Academy. In addition to being a fellow at the Ravinia Festival, Oliver was also invited to perform on a tour with renowned violinist Miriam Fried, the festival’s director. At the 2017 Verbier Festival, Oliver was awarded the Prix Jean-Nicolas Firmenich. He has also appeared on NPR’s From the Top.

Oliver’s most recent competition awards include a top prize and special prize in the XI Witold Lutoslawski International Cello Competition in 2018, first prize and Pablo Casals prize in the 2015 Irving M. Klein International String Competition, and a top prize in the 2015 Stulberg International String Competition. 

Oliver is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Carter Brey and Peter Wiley. Before starting his studies at Curtis, Oliver was a student of Clive Greensmith at the Colburn School. In addition, he has been greatly inspired by his studies with Pamela Frank and Dr. Ford Lallerstedt at the Curtis Institute, as well as his sessions with Steven Isserlis at IMS Prussia Cove. He currently plays on a 1769 Guadagnini cello that belonged to the great Italian cellist Antonio Janigro, on generous loan from the Janigro family.

Susann McDonald, harp

2019 Fall Festival Masterclasses

Eric Lu, piano

2018 – Glissando LIVE! Benefit

“Artistry of that kind is rare in pianists of any age; to find it in a 20-year old is simply astounding” – The Daily Telegraph, September 2018

Eric Lu won First Prize at The Leeds International Piano Competition in 2018 and made his BBC Proms debut with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Long Yu in summer 2019. He is currently a member of the BBC New Generation Artist scheme.

Highlights of the 2019-20 season include debuts with the BBC Symphony (at the Barbican with Alpesh Chauhan), Detroit Symphony (Eduardo Strausser), St Petersburg Philharmonic (Charles Dutoit) and Kansas City Symphony (Johannes Debus); alongside returns to The Hallé (Jiří Rožeň), Warsaw Philharmonic (Niklas Willén) and Swedish Chamber Orchestra (Martin Fröst). He will also tour the U.K. tour with the Orchestre National de Lille (Alexandre Bloch), and give recitals at the Elbphilharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, BOZAR Brussels, Philharmonie Luxembourg and Gewandhaus Leipzig.

The 2018-19 season saw Eric perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (with Vasily Petrenko), Swedish Chamber Orchestra (Thomas Dausgaard), and The Hallé (Sir Mark Elder and Tomáš Hanus); and give recitals at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, LSO St Luke’s, Seoul Arts Centre, Saint Petersburg Philharmonia, Grand Theatre Shanghai and Louis Vuitton Foundation Paris. In June 2019, Eric replaced Martha Argerich with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (Darío Alejandro Ntaca).

Born in Massachusetts in 1997, Eric Lu first came to international attention as a prize-winner at the 2015 Chopin International Competition in Warsaw aged just 17. He went on to win First Prize at the 2017 International German Piano Award and the 2015 US National Chopin Competition, and perform at Carnegie Hall, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Taipei National Concert Hall, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre and the Auditorio Nacional Madrid.

In 2018, Warner Classics released Eric’s winning performances from The Leeds, featuring Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, as well as Chopin’s Second Sonata and Fourth Ballade. He has also released a Mozart, Schubert and Brahms recital on Genuin Classics. He currently resides in Philadelphia where he attends the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Jonathan Biss and Robert McDonald. He is also a pupil of Dang Thai Son.

Hilary Hahn, violin

2017 – Benefit with Hilary Hahn

Three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn is renowned for her clear and brilliant musicality, expansive interpretations of an incredibly varied repertoire, and organic connections with her audience. Her creative approach to music-making and her commitment to sharing her experiences with a global community have made her a fan favorite. She recently created the Instagram project #100DaysOfPractice for which she posted videos of herself practicing for a hundred days straight, openly sharing her behind-the-scenes work with her fans to break down perceived barriers around the creative process.

Hahn devotes much of the 2018-19 season to a thread that has bound her entire musical career together. In October she released Bach’s Partita No. 1 and Sonatas 1 and 2, after the two decades of anticipation from fans and critics alike that followed her first album, Hilary Hahn plays Bach, released when she was only 17. Throughout the fall and spring, she performs solo Bach recitals in Vienna, Paris, New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Toronto, Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, London, and Munich. Also in 2018-19, she is Artist-in-Residence at the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, with whom she will perform Sibelius in Austria, Germany, France, and Spain and premiere the final violin concerto of Einojuhani Rautavaara, written for Hahn and completed posthumously by Kalevi Aho. She takes Mozart’s fifth concerto to Japan and Korea with Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, performs Prokofiev’s first concerto with Järvi and the Philharmonia Orchestra in Germany, and returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Sibelius.

Bach has been a part of Hahn’s life from the beginning of her musical studies, including with her first teacher, Klara Berkovich. At ten she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia to study with Jascha Brodsky, a former pupil of Eugène Ysaÿe and Efrem Zimbalist, who dedicated part of nearly every lesson to solo Bach. She often incorporates movements of the partitas and sonatas into her free – and sometimes surprise – concerts for knitting circles, community dance workshops, yoga groups, art students, and parents with their babies. She developed these mini concerts as part of recent residencies in Vienna, Seattle, Lyon, and Philadelphia, and will continue to do so this year at Radio France, encouraging music lovers to combine live performance with their interests outside the concert hall and providing opportunities for parents to enjoy live music with their infants.

In addition to honoring the traditional violin literature, Hahn constantly delves into the unexpected. Her latest commission, her first for solo violin and her first of a set of works from a single composer, is six partitas by Antón García Abril, which she premiered in the United States, Europe, and Japan. García Abril was also one of the composers for In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores, Hahn’s multi-year commissioning project to revitalize the duo encore genre. Her album of those encores won a Grammy for Best Chamber Music/ Small Ensemble Performance in 2015, and the print edition of the complete sheet music will be released by Boosey & Hawkes. Complete with Hahn’s fingerings, bowings, and performance notes, the sheet music will ensure that the encores become part of the active violin repertoire.

Hahn’s curiosity extends beyond music. After having completed her university requirements at the Curtis Institute at sixteen and having already made her solo debuts with the Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Utah, and Bavarian Radio symphony orchestras; the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Budapest Festival orchestras, and the New York Philharmonic, among others, she chose to continue her studies for three more years, delving into languages, literature, and writing. She spent four summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and another four in the total-immersion German, French, and Japanese programs at Middlebury College. She holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College and Ball State University, where there are also three scholarships in her name.

Hahn has released eighteen albums on the Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and Sony labels, in addition to three DVDs, an Oscar-nominated movie soundtrack, an award-winning recording for children, and various compilations. Hahn’s first Grammy came in 2003 for her Brahms and Stravinsky concerto album. A pairing of the Schoenberg and Sibelius concerti spent 23 weeks on the charts and earned Hahn her second Grammy. Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which was written for Hahn and which Hahn recorded along with the Tchaikovsky concerto, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 2012 Hahn launched Silfra with experimental prepared-pianist Hauschka. The album was produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson and was entirely improvised by Hahn and Hauschka following an intensive period of development. In 2017 she released a retrospective collection that also contained new live material and art from her fans, in keeping with a decades-long tradition of collecting fan art at concerts.

Hahn is known for her natural ability to connect with fans, from their art projects and her YouTube interview series (youtube.com/hilaryhahnvideos), to her violin case’s comments on life with a concert violinist on Twitter and Instagram(@violincase). She was an early blogger, sending her fans “postcards from the road” on her website, hilaryhahn.com, and publishing articles in mainstream media. In 2001, Hahn was named “America’s Best Young Classical Musician” by Time magazine, and in 2010, she appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. Hahn was featured in the Oscar-nominated soundtrack to The Village and has participated in a number of non-classical productions, collaborating on two records by the alt-rock band ….And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, on the album Grand Forks by Tom Brosseau, and on tour with folk-rock singer-songwriter Josh Ritter.

Project Trio, ensemble

2016 – Hip Harp Benefit

Gramophone Magazine singled out the group as “an ensemble willing and able to touch on the gamut of musical bases ranging from Baroque to nu-Metal and taking in pretty much every stylism in between,” while The Wall Street Journal hailed the Trio for their “wide appeal, subversive humor and first-rate playing.” The New York Times has called beatboxing flutist Greg Pattillo “the best in the world at what he does.”

The Trio was forged out of a collective desire to draw new and diverse audiences by performing high energy, top quality music. Using social media to broaden their reach beyond the concert stage and classroom, the Trio has its own YouTube channel, which has over 85 million views and 100,000 subscribers, making PROJECT Trio one of the most watched instrumental ensembles on the internet.

Combining the virtuosity of world-class artists with the energy of rock stars, PROJECT Trio is breaking down traditional ideas of chamber music. The genre-defying Trio is acclaimed by the press as “packed with musicianship, joy and surprise” and “exciting a new generation of listeners about the joys of classical and jazz music.”

Pat Ciarrocchi, host

Every benefit since 2012!

After three decades, Pat Ciarrocchi, Philadelphia’s leading news lady, recently passed the torch as CBS 3’s Emmy Award-winning news reporter. She set the pace for morning news in Philadelphia as the station’s early morning news anchor, growing that program from a half-hour newscast to a two-hour staple in the market.

Since 1991, she has reported on and covered live the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, telling the stories of women and their families coping with breast cancer.

Ciarrocchi has served on the boards of the Easter Seal Society of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. She has also personally raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local charities through The Pat Ciarrocchi Golf Classic and Pat’s Passion for Fashion Show and Auction, two local events she founded. Her final CBS 3 assignment was covering Pope Francis I’s visit to Philadelphia, a majestic and fitting ending to her career as a nationally ranked reporter.

DePue Brothers’ Band, ensemble

2015 – Harpin’ Hoedown 10th Anniversary Benefit

For those not familiar with this musical iconic family from northwest Ohio (Bowling Green, to be exact) one is in for an ear-bending revelation. These four violinist brothers encompass a vivid blend of bluegrass, classical, and rock genres.

Each brother is a classical virtuoso in his own right, and brings rich and diverse talents to their sound. As a family they have been making music together for over 25 years. They were named “Musical Family of America” in 1989 by presidential decree, were the subject of a nationally televised PBS documentary in 1993, and two brothers (Jason and Zach) were featured in the film documentary Music From the Inside Out in 2005. Their first album as brothers, Classical Grass, sold out of its first printing.

Coming together with Tony Trischka, Mark Cosgrove, Don Liuzzi and a variety of bass players, the band began performing and recording in 2004. Weapons of Grass Construction, with its progressive mix of genres, gives a direct nod to their bluegrass tradition and their classical training, while adding a deeper infusion of rock and blues.

BAND MEMBERS: Wallace DePue, Jason DePue, Alex DePue, Zach DePue, Kevin MacConnell (Bass), Don Liuzzi (Drums and vocals), Mark Cosgrove (Guitar), Mike Munford (Banjo).

Pennsylvania Ballet

2014 – After the Rain Benefit

Pennsylvania Ballet comprises a team of dedicated professionals—each one devoted to bringing you the most thrilling and inspired works ballet has to offer. In the following pages, we invite you to meet the world-class performers who bring these works to life and the artists and executives who encourage and support them.

Ann Hobson Pilot, harp

2013 – Harpist’s Homecoming Benefit

After 40 years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, legendary principal harpist, Ann Hobson Pilot, retired at the end of the Tanglewood 2009 season.

Ann Hobson Pilot is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music under Alice Chalifoux. She became principal harp of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1980, having joined the BSO in 1969 as assistant principal harp and principal with the Boston Pops. Before that she was substitute second harp with the Pittsburgh Symphony and principal harp of the Washington National Symphony.

Ms. Pilot has had an extensive solo career. She has performed with many American orchestras as soloist, as well as with orchestras in Europe, Haiti, New Zealand, and South Africa. She has several CDs available on the Boston Records label, as well as on the Koch International and Denouement labels. In September 1999 she traveled to London to record, with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Harp Concerto by the young American composer Kevin Kaska, a work that she commissioned.

In May of 2010, Ms. Pilot was the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Tufts University. She has received numerous awards including the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1993 and again in 2010, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Boston Musicians Association in 2010, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Talent Development League of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in January of 2014. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bridgewater State College in 1988.

Ann Hobson Pilot with Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the historic Teatro Colon In 1997 she traveled to South Africa to record a video documentary, “A Musical Journey”, sponsored by the Museum of Afro-American History and WGBH. The film aired nationwide on PBS for three years. While there she performed with the National Symphony of Johannesburg and visited the San people of Namibia.

Ms. Pilot recently retired from the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music and Boston University. She will now be affiliated with the State College of Florida, Fl. in addition to the Tanglewood Music Center and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. She has performed with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Marlboro Music Festival, Newport Music Festival, Sarasota Music Festival and the Ritz Chamber Players.

After the 2009 Tanglewood concerts and her official retirement, Pilot returned to the stage as soloist with the BSO opening the Boston Symphony season and the Carnegie Hall season with the premiere of a concerto written for her by John Williams, “On Willows and Birches” a concerto for harp and orchestra. On October 3, the orchestra paid tribute to her dedicating the entire concert in her honor and featuring her in two other works for solo harp in addition to the Williams.

Producer Susan Dangel has recently completed a new half-hour documentary that will tell the story of her life in music, “A Harpist’s Legacy, Ann Hobson Pilot and the Sound of Change”. It has aired on PBS stations nationwide.

The 2013 season brought the release of her new CD – music of the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, for harp, violin and bandoneon, with Lucia Lin, violinist with the Boston Symphony and the Muir String Quartet, and bandoneonist, JP Jofre.

The end of the 2016 season brought several important concerts including a performance on Sept. 24 at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. In October she performed the Ginastera Concerto with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the historic Teatro Colon to a sold-out audience, then in November she performed the Ginastera in Boston with the Boston Civic Symphony at Jordan Hall. Pilot once again ended the season in her role as artistic advisor and harpist for the classicalpops festival in Barbado’s www.classicalpops.com.

Her most recent performances were in January of 2019 with Maestro Thomas Wil-kins and the Omaha Symphony and her debut with the International Chamber Music Festival “La Musica” in Sarasota, FL as well as a performance of the Ginas-tera Concerto with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Orchestra on July 27, 2019 at Seiji Ozawa Hall in Lenox, MA.

Jennifer Koh, violin

2012 – Benefit with Jennifer Koh

Recognized for intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance, violinist Jennifer Koh is a forward-thinking artist dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire, while promoting diversity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects, and has premiered more than 70 works written especially for her. Her quest for the new and unusual, sense of endless curiosity, and ability to lead and inspire a host of multidisciplinary collaborators, truly set her apart.

During the 2018-19 season, Ms. Koh continues critically acclaimed series from past seasons, including The New American Concerto, Limitless, Bach and Beyond, Shared Madness, and Bridge to Beethoven. The New American Concerto is an ongoing, multi-season commissioning project that explores the form of the violin concerto and its potential for artistic engagement with contemporary societal concerns and issues through commissions from a diverse collective of composers. This season, as part of the project, Ms. Koh performs Vijay Iyer’s violin concerto Trouble with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and Vermont Symphony Orchestra. The New American Concerto launched with Ms. Koh’s world premiere performance of Trouble at the 2017 Ojai Music Festival and has since continued with a new concerto by Chris Cerrone titled Breaks and Breaks, which she premiered with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in May 2018. Ms. Koh performs music from Limitless, a commissioning project that engages leading composer-performers to write duo compositions that explore the artistic relationship between composer and performer. She and Vijay Iyer perform his piece Diamond for violin and piano at Cornell University, while Ms. Koh also solos in Anna Clyne’s concerto Rest These Hands―a work composed for Ms. Koh―with the Cornell Chamber Orchestra. Later in the season, Ms. Koh performs duos with Mr. Iyerand composer-percussionist Tyshawn Sorey in a Limitless program that also features solo works and an improvised trio performed by the artists, presented by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Limitless launched in March 2018 over two nights at National Sawdust.

Ms. Koh also performs Bach and Beyond, a recital series that traces the history of the solo violin repertoire from Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas to 20th- and 21st-century composers, at the Music Institute of Chicago; and Shared Madness, comprising short works for solo violin that explore virtuosity in the 21st century, written for the project by more than 30 of today’s most celebrated composers, as part of the Music on Main Festival in Vancouver. In addition to experiencing Shared Madness in the concert hall, listeners are also able to hear recordings of the premiere performances and interviews between Ms. Koh and the composers via the Shared Madness radio show, which originally aired on WQXR’s New Sounds (formerly Q2) during the summer of 2017 and remains available on demand. Ms. Koh and her frequent recital partner Shai Wosner continue Bridge to Beethoven, which pairs Beethoven’s violin sonatas with new and recent works inspired by them to explore the composer’s impact and significance on a diverse group of musicians, with performances in Baltimore, among other cities. She performs with the Variation String Trio—of which she is a founding member—in Naples and Palm Beach, Florida, as well as at Berkeley’s Hertz Hall as a quintet with pianist Nicolas Hodges and cellist Anssi Karttunen.

Other projects on the horizon include The 38th Parallel: A Contemporary Pansori, which explores the impact of displacement and immigration, and individual and familial transformation through music, visual art, and movement. Conceived by Ms. Koh and composer Jean-Baptiste Barrière, The 38th Parallel connects the transformation of three generations of human lives and encapsulates the experience of cultural uprooting and assimilation. Ms. Koh performs a suite from The 38th Parallel with baritone Davóne Tines and flutist Camilla Hoitenga this season in New York at the Advent Lutheran Church as part of the Music Mondays Concert Series.

Ms. Koh is active not only in the concert hall, but also as a lecturer, teacher, and recording artist. She is in residence in October at Cornell and Tulane Universities, during which she will perform, give master classes, and speak on topics from diversity to contemporary composition. Also this season, Cedille Records releases Ms. Koh’s recording of works by Kaija Saariaho, whose music she has long championed and with whom she has closely collaborated. Scheduled for release in November 2018, the album is Ms. Koh’s twelfth release on the Chicago-based label and includes the chamber version of the violin concerto Graal Théâtre with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra; Cloud Trio with violist Hsin-Yun Huang and cellist Wilhelmina Smith; Tocar with pianist Nicolas Hodges; Aure with cellist Anssi Karttunen, with whom she premiered the violin and cello version in 2015; and Light and Matter with both Mr. Hodges and Mr. Karttunen, with whom she performed the French premiere in 2017. The composer’s music also appears on Ms. Koh’s two Bach and Beyond albums—Nocturne on Part 1, Frises on Part 2. In 2016, Ms. Koh gave the world premiere of Sense for solo violin, which was commissioned for her Shared Madness project.

This season, Ms. Koh performs a broad range of concertos that reflects the breadth of her musical interests, from traditional repertoire such as Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 1 (Los Angeles Philharmonic) and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (Rhode Island Philharmonic); to twentieth-century classics like Bernstein’s Serenade (Philadelphia Orchestra, as part of the All Bernstein: Celebrating 100 Years conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Delaware Symphony), Ligeti’s Violin Concerto (Camerata Salzburg and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra), and Szymanowski’s Second Violin Concerto (Jacksonville Symphony); to music of this millennium, such as Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto (Phoenix and Gothenburg Symphony Orchestras).

Ms. Koh has been heard with leading orchestras around the world including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics; the Cleveland, Mariinsky Theatre, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and Philharmonia (London) Orchestras; the Atlanta, Baltimore, BBC, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Montreal, Nashville, National, New Jersey, New World, NHK (Tokyo), Pittsburgh, RAI National (Torino), St. Louis, Seattle, and Singapore Symphony Orchestras; and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, among other ensembles. She played the role of Einstein in the revival of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach from 2012 to 2014, and a particular highlight of her career was performing for former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama and former First Lady of South Korea Kim Yoon-ok in 2011.

Ms. Koh brings the same sense of adventure and brilliant musicianship to her recordings as she does to her live performances. She has recorded twelve albums, including her fall 2018 Saariaho release, with Chicago-based Cedille Records. Her discography on Cedille Records also includes Tchaikovsky: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra with the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Vedernikov, Bach & Beyond parts 1 and 2; Two x Four in collaboration with her former teacher, violinist Jaime Laredo, and featuring double violin concerti by Bach, Philip Glass, and new commissions from Anna Clyne and David Ludwig; Signs, Games + Messages, a recording of violin and piano works by Janáček, Bartók, and Kurtág with Mr. Wosner; Rhapsodic Musings: 21st Century Works for Solo Violin; the Grammy-nominated String Poetic, featuring the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s eponymous work, performed with pianist Reiko Uchida; Schumann’s complete violin sonatas, also with Ms. Uchida; Portraits with the Grant Park Orchestra under conductor Carlos Kalmar with concerti by Szymanowski, Martinů, and Bartók; Violin Fantasies: fantasies for violin and piano by Schubert, Schumann, Schoenberg, and saxophonist Ornette Coleman, again with Ms. Uchida; and Ms. Koh’s first Cedille album, from 2002, Solo Chaconnes, an earlier reading of Bach’s Second Partita coupled with chaconnes by Richard Barth and Max Reger. Ms. Koh is also the featured soloist on a recording of Ms. Higdon’s The Singing Rooms with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra led by Robert Spano for Telarc.

Ms. Koh is the Artistic Director of arco collaborative, an artist-driven nonprofit that fosters a better understanding of our world through a musical dialogue inspired by ideas and the communities around us. The organization supports artistic collaborations and commissions, transforming the creative process by engaging with specific ideas and perspectives, investing in the future by cultivating artist-citizens in partnership with educational organizations. A committed educator, she has won high praise for her performances in classrooms around the country under her innovative “Music Messenger” outreach program. Ms. Koh is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Foundation for the Advancement for the Arts, a scholarship program for high school students in the arts.

Born in Chicago of Korean parents, Ms. Koh began playing the violin by chance, choosing the instrument in a Suzuki-method program only because spaces for cello and piano had been filled. She made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. She has been honored as Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year, top prize winner at Moscow’s International Tchaikovsky Competition, winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute, where she worked extensively with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir.

Emmanuel Ax, piano

Born in modern day Lvov, Poland, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. His studies at the Juilliard School were supported by the sponsorship of the Epstein Scholarship Program of the Boys Clubs of America, and he subsequently won the Young Concert Artists Award. Additionally, he attended Columbia University where he majored in French. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and captured public attention in 1974 when he won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists followed four years later by the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

In partnership with colleagues Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma, he begins the current season with concerts in Vienna, Paris and London with the trios of Brahms recently released by SONY Classical. In the US he returns to the orchestras in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Washington, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Nashville and Portland, OR, and to Carnegie Hall for a recital to conclude the season. In Europe he can be heard in Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Vienna, London, and on tour with the Budapest Festival Orchestra in Italy.
Always a committed exponent of contemporary composers, with works written for him by John Adams, Christopher Rouse, Krzysztof Penderecki, Bright Sheng, and Melinda Wagner already in his repertoire, most recently he has added HK Gruber’s Piano Concerto and Samuel Adams’ “Impromptus”.

A Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987, recent releases include Mendelssohn Trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, Strauss’ Enoch Arden narrated by Patrick Stewart, and discs of two-piano music by Brahms and Rachmaninoff with Yefim Bronfman. In 2015 Deutche Grammophon released a duo recording with Mr. Perlman of Sonatas by Faure and Strauss, which the two artists presented on tour during the 2015/2016 season. Mr. Ax has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. His other recordings include the concertos of Liszt and Schoenberg, three solo Brahms albums, an album of tangos by Astor Piazzolla, and the premiere recording of John Adams’s Century Rolls with the Cleveland Orchestra for Nonesuch. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax also contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th century music/Piano).

A frequent and committed partner for chamber music, he has worked regularly with such artists as Young Uck Kim, Cho-Liang Lin, Mr. Ma, Edgar Meyer, Peter Serkin, Jaime Laredo, and the late Isaac Stern.

Mr. Ax resides in New York City with his wife, pianist Yoko Nozaki. They have two children together, Joseph and Sarah. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, Yale University, and Columbia University.