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A native of Berkeley, California, violinist Nathan Olson began his appointment as Co-Concertmaster with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2011. He has served as Adjunct Faculty at Southern Methodist University and the University of North Texas, and as Faculty at the Interlochen Arts Festival and the Innsbrook Institute Summer Music Festival. Nathan has performed at the Mainly Mozart Festival, the Bravo Vail Music Festival, and the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and has been a guest artist and coach at the New World Symphony.

An enthusiastic chamber musician, Nathan is a member of the Baumer String Quartet, whose debut recording will be coming out in the next year. The BSQ has held residencies at several institutions, including Southern Methodist University, the University of North Texas, the University of South Florida, and the University of South Dakota.

In recent seasons, Nathan has appeared as Guest Concertmaster with the symphony orchestras of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Toronto, and as Guest Principal Second Violin with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Houston Symphony. During the summers of 2023 and 2024, he served as Concertmaster of the Santa Fe Opera.

Siwoo Kim is an “incisive” and “compelling” violinist (The New York Times) who “plays with stylistic sensitivity and generous tonal nuance.” (The Chicago Tribune) Siwoo actively performs as soloist & chamber musician and he is the founding co-artistic director of VIVO Music Festival in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. 

Since his Carnegie Hall debut with the Juilliard Orchestra, he has gone on to perform as soloist with orchestras in four different continents. As chamber musician, he performs at festivals such as the Marlboro Music Festival, collaborating with revered artists including Mitsuko Uchida, Denes Varjon and Susan Graham. An advocate of new music, Siwoo premiered and recorded Samuel Adler’s only violin concerto on Linn Records and VIVO Music Festival annually co-commissions new chamber music works with Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain. This season, Siwoo recorded and released the premiere recording of Michael Torke’s “Last” on Ecstatic Records with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO). 

Siwoo received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Juilliard School where he studied with Robert Mann and Donald Weilerstein. He went on to complete a two-year fellowship at Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect program. 

PC: Titilayo Ayangade

Canadian violinist Jessica Tong has garnered international acclaim as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, having been described as an "outstanding talent" (Performing Arts in Canada) with "keen sensitivity and receptivity" (Bloomington Herald Times), who "allow[s] us to savour her sense of ardour and intensity, but never at the detriment of her tonal beauty." (ClassiqueInfo France).

She has been a top prizewinner at the Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition, the Toronto Symphony, Canadian Music and Yellow Springs International Chamber Music Competitions and has served as first violinist of both the Vinca and Larchmere String Quartets, during which time she was Artist-in-Residence for the Perlman Music Program in Florida, the ProQuartet Odyssée Program in France and at the University of Evansville in Indiana. A pupil of Pamela Frank, Jessica has also studied with Kathleen Winkler, Donald Weilerstein, and Zhang yun Zhang, and has been mentored as a chamber musician by members of the Alban Berg, Vogler, Artemis and Brentano Quartets.

She is currently the Violin Professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Chamber Music Director of the Composers Conference, and Co-Artistic Director of Avaloch Farm Music Institute. For more information, visit www.jessicatong.com

Violist Stephanie Fong is a native of Oakland, California.  She enjoys a versatile career as a chamber and orchestral musician. 

Stephanie performs regularly with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and has served on the chamber music faculty at the University of Michigan School of Music, Gordon College, the Innsbrook Institute Summer Music Academy, and the Peaks to Plains Suzuki Institute.

Stephanie has also concertized with groups such as Mistral Music, Chameleon Arts Ensemble, A Far Cry, Winsor Music, Boston Artists Ensemble, Enso String Quartet, Phoenix Ensemble, and Radius Ensemble, among others. 

She holds degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where her principal teachers were Martha Strongin Katz and Ian Swensen.

Described by the New York Times as having “especially eloquent playing,” violinist/violist Ken Hamao is a dynamic musician renowned for his sensitive interpretation, and has concertized extensively throughout the world in notable venues such as Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Melbourne Recital Centre, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, and Lincoln Center. 

As a member of the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet, Ken is Professor of the Practice at Harvard University’s Department of Music. He has also held guest faculty positions at the New England Conservatory and Dartmouth College. Prior to joining the Parker Quartet, he was a member of the Ensō String Quartet from 2014 to 2018, with whom highlights include worldwide tours of Australia, Brazil, Colombia, and New Zealand. As a soloist, he has performed concertos by Giya Kancheli, Kurt Rohde, and Tan Dun, the latter of which with the composer at the podium. He also appears frequently with Argento Chamber Ensemble, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and Talea Ensemble.

In addition to music, Ken’s passions include attempting to make a bowl of ramen entirely from scratch, cheering on his beloved Tottenham Hotspur while attending various live football matches around the world, and amateur woodworking.

(PC: Beowulf Sheehan)

​Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, cellist Estelle Choi has garnered top prizes as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She has gained international recognition as a founding member of the Calidore String Quartet, an ensemble that celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2020. Praised by The New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct" the Calidore won the Grand-Prize of the 2016 M-Prize international chamber music competition. As a member of the Calidore, Ms. Choi is an Avery Fisher Career Grant winner, recipient of the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist award, BBC 3 New Generation Artist and Borletti-Buitoni Trust recipient. Ms. Choi and the Calidore are members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and alumni of the Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two). Ms. Choi's artistry with the Calidore has been broadly praised by critics like Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times who wrote that “her tone is rich, deep and powerful, giving the impression that music and the room are a single living being."

Ms. Choi studied with John Kadz in Calgary, Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music and Ronald Leonard at the Colburn Conservatory. She instructed cello performance and chamber music at the University of Houston. With the Calidore, Ms. Choi currently teaches and performs at the University of Delaware.​

American cellist Ashley Bathgate has been described as an “eloquent new music interpreter” (New York Times) and “a glorious cellist”(The Washington Post) who combines “bittersweet lyricism along with ferocious chops”(New York Magazine). Her “impish ferocity”, “rich tone” and “imaginative phrasing” (New York Times) have made her one of the most sought after performers of her time. The desire to create a dynamic energy exchange with her audience and build upon the ensuing chemistry is a pillar of Bathgate's philosophy as a performer. Dynamism drives her to venture into previously uncharted areas of ground-breaking sounds and techniques, breaking the mold of a cello's traditionally perceived voice.

For ten years Bathgate was a member of the acclaimed sextet Bang on a Can All-Stars. She also served as the cellist of the GRAMMY winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird for several years, and is currently a member of the chamber ensemble HOWL; TwoSense with pianist Lisa Moore; Bonjour, a low-strung, percussive quintet.; and the Anzu Quartet. She serves as the Artistic and Executive Director of Avaloch Farm Music Institute.

For more information about Ashley, please visit www.ashleybathgate.com.

Polish-American pianist Adam Golka has been regularly on the concert stage since the age of sixteen, when he won first prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. He has also received the Gilmore Young Artist Award and the Max I. Allen Classical Fellowship Award from the American Pianists Association.

As a concerto soloist, he has appeared with dozens of orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony, NACO (Ottawa), Warsaw Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, as well as the San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, New Jersey, and San Diego symphonies. Adam has enjoyed collaborations with conductors such as Donald Runnicles, Pinchas Zukerman, Mark Wigglesworth, Joseph Swensen, and he has made countless concerto appearances with his brother, conductor Tomasz Golka.

In recent years, Adam Golka performed the eleven-hour cycle of Beethoven’s Sonatas five times in its entirety, accompanied by 32 short films he created with Zac Nicholson, known as 32@32 (available on YouTube). First Hand Records in London recently released his “Beethoven Piano Sonatas Vol. 1”, recorded at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana.

Adam Golka is deeply indebted to his two main teachers, José Feghali, with whom he studied at Texas Christian University, and Leon Fleisher, with whom he worked with at Peabody Conservatory. He has continued to develop his artistry under the mentorship from his favorite artists, including Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Ferenc Rados, and András Schiff.

Guitarist Taylor Levine is a founding member of Dither, an electric guitar quartet. In addition, Taylor often performs a variety of composed and improvised music with a wide range of groups. Some of these include Signal Ensemble, Kronos Quartet, Marc Ribot, Tyondai Braxton, Erykah Badu, Bang On A Can, Eighth Blackbird, Blarvuster, Newband, Weasel Walter, Eve Beglarian, Ethel, New York City Opera, New World Symphony, London Sinfonietta, BBC Orchestra, and Wordless Music Orchestra. Taylor also pursues an active role as an educator. He studied at The Manhattan School of Music and The Amsterdam Conservatory. Taylor currently resides in Brooklyn, where he can often be found building a variety of electronic circuits.

Born in diamond-rich Arkansas and then raised all around the country, songwriter, multi-instrumentist, singer and composer Shara Nova came from a musical family of traveling evangelists. Having decided to pursue a musical degree, she went on to study operatic voice at The University of North Texas. After moving to New York via Moscow, she chose to focus on arranging and began studying classical composition with composer / performer Padma Newsome (Clogs). Nova then began issuing recordings as her chamber pop band, My Brightest Diamond, releasing four albums: Bring me the Workhorse (2006), A Thousand Sharks’ Teeth (2008), All Things Will Unwind (2011), and This is My Hand (2014). Recent years have found Nova in the role of composer as much as songwriter. She has received numerous composer commissions that include work for the yMusic ensemble at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series (2011), Brooklyn Youth Chorus (2012), Brooklyn Rider (2012), Young New Yorkers’ Chorus (2013), Nadia Sirota (2013), Clara Schumann Children's Choir (2014), Roomful of Teeth (2015), and So Percussion (2015). Nova has performed her works with the San Francisco Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, and the Indianapolis Symphony. Additionally, many composers, songwriters, and filmmakers have sought out Nova’s distinctive voice, including David Lang, David Byrne, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Steve Mackey, The Decemberists, Laurie Anderson, Meshell Ndegeocello, Matthew Ritchie, and Matthew Barney.