MUSICIANS
Katherine Collier, piano and music director
Katherine Collier has had a distinguished and versatile career as a soloist, chamber music artist, and accompanist. After her early training in Texas, she studied piano with Cecile Genhart and accompanying with Brooks Smith. She was awarded unanimously the Performer’s Certificate at Eastman. Professor Collier was the first prize winner of the National Young Artist’s Competition and the Cliburn Scholarship Competition and was the recipient of a Rockefeller Award. She won a Kemper Educational Grant to study at
the Royal College of Music in London, England. Collier has been asoloist with orchestras in Cincinnati, Dallas, Eastman-Rochester, and Houston, and is an active collaborator with many renowned musicians including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Ani Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Andres Cardenes, Erling Bengtsson, David Shifrin, and members of the Tokyo, Emerson, Cleveland, Orion, Vermeer, Miami, Shanghai, and Ying Quartets.
She has performed around the world and appeared at recital halls in Europe such as Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room (Southbank) in London, the Concertgebouw, the Brahms-Saal, and the Konzertsaal der Staatlichen Hochschule für Musik. She has presented concerts at Merkin Hall, the Phillips Collection, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, and the Y Music Society in Pittsburgh. She performs at the Aspen Music Festival, Interlochen, Meadowmount, and Skaneateles. As an accompanist, Ms. Collier worked in the studios of Dorothy Delay at Aspen and Nathan Milstein and the BBC in London.
Collier tours extensively with her husband, violist Yizhak Schotten. They are founders and music directors of the Maui Classical Music Festival in Hawaii and music directors of the Strings in the Mountains Festival in Steamboat Springs. Ms. Collier appears with her husband on four compact discs on Crystal Records and has recorded with other artists on the Pandora, Pearl, Crystal, and Centaur labels. Ms. Collier previously taught at the universities of Washington, Northern Kentucky, and Wyoming.
Yizhak Schotten, viola and music director
Yizhak Schotten (viola) was brought to the United States by the renowned violist William Primrose, with whom he studied at Indiana University and the University of Southern California. Other studies were with Lillian Fuchs at the Manhattan School of Music. Schotten has concertized in his native Israel, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Holland, Austria, Mexico, England, Canada, and throughout the United States. His solo appearances with orchestras
in this country and abroad have included performances with conductors Seiji Ozawa, Thomas Schippers, Sergiu Commissiona, Joseph Swensen, Arthur Fiedler, and others. His solo recitals have included Town Hall, Carnegie Hall, and Merkin Hall in New York, Boston’s Jordan Hall, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. He has also had numerous broadcasts on National Public Radio.
As a member of the Trio d’Accordo, Schotten won the Concert Artists Guild International Competition in New York. He regularly collaborates with renowned musicians and has appeared in concerts at Bargemusic in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Boston’s Symphony Hall, and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Abroad he has performed at the Taipei Philharmonic Festival in Taiwan, the Festival Internacional de Musica Clasica in Mexico, the Amsterdam Kamermuziek Festival, the Festival de Musique de Chambre de Montreal, and at Domaine Forget in Quebec.
Formerly a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Schotten has been principal violist of the Cincinnati and Houston symphony orchestras. He was the artistic director of the XIV International Viola Congress and has been a featured artist at six other International Congresses. In 1997, he represented the U.S. as a judge and performer at the Tertis International Viola Competition in England. He has recorded seven discs for Crystal Records and his C.R.I. recording was chosen as “Critics’ Choice” for three months in HIGH FIDELITY Magazine. Pearl Records included his playing on its anthology, History of the Recording of the World’s Finest Violists.
Schotten has been on the faculties and performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Banff, Meadowmount, Interlochen, Tanglewood, Chamber Music Northwest, Montreal, Chautauqua, Skaneateles, Montecito, Juneau, and Fairbanks Festivals. He is also music director of the Maui Classical Music Festival in Hawaii and was director of Strings Music Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and SpringFest in Ann Arbor.
Schotten was also on the American Federation of Musician’s Congress of Strings faculty. He is very active giving master classes in the U.S. and throughout the world. He has given classes in England at the Tertis International Viola Competition at the Isle of Man, the Menuhin School in Surrey, and the Guildhall School of Music, Royal College of Music, and the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has also given master classes in Spain at the Conservatrio Superior de Musica, Oviedo; in Israel at the Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem Academies of Music; in Australia at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; in Canada at the Banff School of Music, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the Glenn Gould School, and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto; in Korea at the College of Music at Seoul National University; and in Taiwan at the Hsing Tien Kong Culture Foundation in Taipei. He has also been on the faculties of Rice University and the University of Washington.
Andrés Cárdenes, violin
Recognized worldwide as a musical phenomenon, Grammy-nominated Andrés Cárdenes parleys his myriad talents into one of classical music’s most versatile careers. A ferocious, passionate and personally charismatic artist, Cuban-born Cárdenes has garnered international acclaim from critics and audiences alike for his compelling solo violin, conducting, viola, chamber music, concertmaster and recorded performances.
Since capturing the Second Prize in the 1982 Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition in Moscow, Mr. Cárdenes has appeared as soloist with over one hundred orchestras on five continents, including those of Philadelphia, Pitts burgh, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Moscow, Bavarian radio, Helsinki, OFUNAM, Shanghai, Caracas and Barcelona.He has collaborated with many of the world’s great conductors, including Lorin Maazel, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Mariss Jansons, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir André Previn, Leonard Slatkin, Jaap van Zweden, Sir Neville Marriner, David Zinman and Manfred Honeck.
A prolific recording artist, Cárdenes has interpreted concerti by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Barber, Balada, Gutíerrez, and David Stock on the Artek, Naxos and Albany labels. He has recorded the complete works for violin by Leonardo Balada, and the complete violin and piano sonatas by Hindemith and Schubert.
Cárdenes is the co-founder and Artistic and Music Director of the Josef Gingold Chamber Music Festival of Miami, a program geared towards educating young musicians in chamber music and solo repertoire, inspired by the teachings, legacy, humanity, and ideology of the legendary violinist. He has been the violinist of the world-renowned Díaz Trio since 1995 and the Carnegie Mellon Trio since 1989.
The year 2021 marked the 44th anniversary of Mr. Cárdenes’ renowned teaching and pedagogical career, which began as an assistant to his teacher and mentor Josef Gingold at Indiana University. Today, Mr. Cárdenes continues Professor Gingold’s legacy and discipline while holding the title of Distinguished Professor of Violin Studies and the Dorothy Richard Starling/Alexander Speyer Jr. Endowed Chair at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music. In addition, Cárdenes gives master classes regularly at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Masterclass Al-Andalus, Sibelius Akademie, Manhattan School, Shanghai Conservatory, Moscow and St. Petersburg Conservatories, Cleveland Institute, Curtis Institute, and at virtually every major university in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.
Among his humanitarian awards are the Kollell Foundation Jewish Learning Award, the Kindness Award from Chabad, Mexican Red Cross and the UNICEF Cultural Ambassadorship.
Mr. Cárdenes is the father of two teenagers, Isabel, an accomplished young harpist studying at the Manhattan School of Music, and Tino, a math whiz and talented classical/jazz pianist.
Robert deMaine, cello
Praised by the New York Times as “an artist who makes one hang on every note,” ROBERT deMAINE is the Principal Cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A highly sought-after solo artist and chamber musician, he is a frequent guest artist at many of the world's premier chamber music festivals, including those of Marlboro, Seattle, Great Lakes, Limoges, Heidelberg Schlossfest, Chamberfest Cleveland, Montréal, Seoul’s Ditto Festival, and most recently featured as a soloist at the 2016 Piatigorsky Cello Festival. His playing is noted for its "beautiful singing tone, lapidary technical precision, and a persuasive identification with the idiom of the music at hand." As a soloist, he performs the great works of the repertoire both old and new from concertos by Haydn, Dvorak, Elgar and Penderecki, as well as more recent works by John Williams and Christopher Theofanidis. As a recitalist the great works for cello and piano as well as the suites of J.S. Bach remain staples of his repertoire, and as one critic noted, his playing was "magnificent" and that his "technical brilliance is surpassed only by the beauty of tones he produces."
DeMaine has appeared on the stages of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Teatro Colón, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Konzerthaus, and Moscow's Tchaikovsky Hall, Auditorium du Louvre, Suntory Hall and the Seoul Arts Center, as well as the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center and Conservatory and London's Wigmore Hall, among others. He is the recipient of a career grant from the Helen M. Saunders Foundation, and the gift of a Vuillaume cello from the Cecilia Benner Foundation. His principal teachers include Leonard Rose, Stephen Kates, Steven Doane, Paul Katz, Luis García-Renart and Aldo Parisot. Masterclasses and additional studies were undertaken with Bernard Greenhouse, János Starker, Boris Pergamenschikow, Felix Galimir, and Jerome Lowenthal.
DeMaine studied at The Juilliard School, the Eastman School of Music, the University of Southern California, Yale University, and the Kronberg Academy in Germany. A first-prize winner in many national and international competitions, deMaine was the first cellist ever to win the grand prize at San Francisco’s prestigious Irving M. Klein International Competition for Strings. As soloist, he has collaborated with many of the world’s most distinguished conductors, including Neeme Järvi, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Peter Oundjian, Mark Wigglesworth, Joseph Silverstein, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, and Leonard Slatkin, and has performed nearly all the major cello concertos with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, where he served as principal cello for over a decade. DeMaine has also served as guest Principal Cellist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, and the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway. A founding member of the Ehnes Quartet in 2010, he also performs in a piano trio with violinist Hilary Hahn and pianist Natalie Zhu.
Robert deMaine has recorded for Naxos, Chandos, Onyx, CBC, DSO, Elysium, and Capstone and has been featured on the BBC, PBS, NPR's Performance Today, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, France Musique, and RAI, among others. His recording of the John Williams Cello Concerto (Detroit Symphony, Leonard Slatkin conducting) was released by Naxos in fall 2015. Robert deMaine is an exclusive Thomastik-Infeld artist, and performs on a cello made in 1684 by Antonio Stradivari, the “General Kyd, ex-Leo Stern.”
Rohan De Silva, piano
Pianist Rohan De Silva was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
His partnerships with violin virtuosos Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Cho-Liang Lin, Midori, Joshua Bell, Benny Kim, Kyoko Takezawa, Vadim Repin, Gil Shaham, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Julian Rachlin, James Ehnes and Rodney Friend have led to highly acclaimed performances at recital venues all over the world. With these and other artists he has performed on the stages of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Philadelphia Academy of Music, Ambassador Theater in Los Angeles, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, La Scala in Milan and in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Mr. De Silva’s festival appearances include Aspen, Ravinia, Interlochen, Seattle Chamber Music, Manchester, Schleswig-Holstein, Pacific Music Festival and the Wellington Arts Festival in New Zealand. He has performed chamber music in Beijing with the American String Quartet and has appeared in recital worldwide with Itzhak Perlman.
Alongside Mr. Perlman, Mr. De Silva has performed multiple times at the White House, most recently in 2012 at the invitation of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama for Israeli President and Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Shimon Peres; and at a State Dinner in 2007, hosted by President George W. Bush and Mrs. Bush for Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. A native of Sri Lanka, Mr. De Silva was invited in 2015 by the Prime Minister of his country to perform at a luncheon for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on his historic visit to Sri Lanka.
In recent seasons, Mr. De Silva has toured with Mr. Perlman in sold-out concerts throughout Asia and to Europe in their first appearances as a duo in London (Barbican Centre), Paris (Philharmonie de Paris) and Munich (Gasteig). In North America, he has performed with Mr. Perlman at notable venues including Los Angeles’ Disney Hall, San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, Chicago’s Lyric Opera, West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center and Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, to name a few. Over the summer, at the invitation of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mr. De Silva performed for an exclusive guest list at the Supreme Court with Mr. Perlman in Washington D.C. Mr. De Silva also performed at Center Stage for Strings in Michigan, Innsbrook Institute in Missouri and Maui Music Festival in Hawaii.
Mr. De Silva began his piano studies with his mother, the late Primrose De Silva, and with the late Mary Billimoria. He spent six years at the Royal Academy of Music in London as a student of Hamish Milne, Sydney Griller and Wilfred Parry. While in London, he received many awards including the Grover Bennett Scholarship, the Christian Carpenter Prize, the Martin Music Scholarship, the Harold Craxton Award for advanced study in England, and, upon his graduation, the Chappell Gold Medal for best overall performance at the Royal Academy. Mr. De Silva was the first recipient of a special Scholarship in the arts from the President’s Fund of Sri Lanka. This enabled him to enter the Juilliard School, where he received both his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees, studying piano with Martin Canin, chamber music with Felix Galimir, and working closely with violin pedagogue Dorothy DeLay. He was awarded a special prize as Best Accompanist at the 1990 Ninth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and received the Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artist Award as presented to him by Itzhak Perlman at the 2005 Classical Recording Foundation Awards Ceremony at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. De Silva joined the collaborative arts and chamber music faculty of the Juilliard School in 1991, and in 1992 was awarded honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2015, he was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music. In 2001, he joined the faculty at the Ishikawa Music Academy in Japan, where he gives masterclasses in collaborative piano. Mr. De Silva additionally has served as a faculty member at the Great Wall International Music Academy in Beijing, China, and at the International String Academy in Cambridge, U.K. since 2011. He was on the faculty of the Perlman Music Program from 2000 to 2007. Radio and television credits include PBS’s Live from Lincoln Center and the Colbert Report with Itzhak Perlman, The Tonight Show with Midori, CNN’s “Showbiz Today”, NHK Television in Japan, National Public Radio, WQXR and WNYC in New York, Berlin Radio, and the 2000 Millennium Grammy Awards. Mr. De Silva has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Universal, CBS/SONY Classical, Collins Classics in London and RCA Victor.
Amir Eldan, cello
Amir Eldan performs as a soloist, chamber musician, and as guest principal cellist. In 2011-12, he served as principal cellist of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra by invitation from Zubin Mehta and a year later, as guest principal cellist with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. At age 22, he became the youngest member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York, when he won the position of associate principal cellist and was invited by James Levine to perform with the MET Chamber Ensemble in Carnegie Hall. As the winner of the Juilliard Competition, Eldan made his New York debut with the Brahms Double Concerto in Lincoln Center and has performed the six Bach Cello Suites in a series of concerts worldwide.
Eldan has collaborated in chamber music performances with members of the Cleveland, Guarneri, and Juilliard String Quartets and the Beaux Arts Trio, pianist Richard Goode, and cellists Lynn Harrell and Steven Isserlis.
Music festivals appearances include Bowdoin, Giverny (France), La Jolla (California), Pilsen (Czech Republic), Prussia Cove (England), and West Cork (Ireland). He also participated in the Marlboro music festival and toured with Musicians From Marlboro.
In 2006, while working on his doctorate, Eldan was appointed cello professor at the Oberlin Conservatory and served as chair of the String Department from 2015-19. He was a member of the Oberlin Trio and performed with the Trio throughout the U.S. and South Korea.
Professor Eldan holds a DMA and MM, both from Juilliard where he also served as a guest teacher. His performances have been featured on public television and radio in the U.S., Europe, and in Israel.
He was appointed a professor of cello at the University of Michigan in 2019.
Tara Helen O'Connor, flute
Tara Helen O'Connor is a charismatic performer noted for her artistic depth, brilliant technique, and colorful tone spanning every musical era. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, she was the first wind player to participate in the CMS Two program and is now a season artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. A Wm. S. Haynes flute artist, Tara is a regular participant in the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Spoleto USA, Chamber Music Northwest, Mainly Mozart Festival, Music from Angel Fire, the Banff Centre, the Great Mountains Music Festival, Chesapeake Music Festival and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
A much sought after chamber musician and soloist, she has premiered hundreds of new works and has frequently collaborated with the Orion String Quartet, St. Lawrence Quartet, the Emerson Quartet, Jaime Laredo, Dawn Upshaw, Eliot Fisk, Jeremy Denk, Ida Kavafian, Peter Serkin and David Shifrin.
Tara is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble, a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape and the legendary Bach Aria Group. A passionate advocate of new music, she is a member of the TALEA and Cygnus Ensemble. Tara has appeared on A&E's "Breakfast for the Arts" and Live from Lincoln Center. She has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, CMS Studio Recordings with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Bridge Records. She has just released a solo CD of American Flute works entitled "The Way Things Go" on Bridge Records with pianist Margaret Kampmeier.
Tara holds a DMA from SUNY Stony Brook were she studied with the late Samuel Baron. Her other teachers include Julius Levine, Thomas Nyfenger, Robert Dick and Keith Underwood. She is Associate Professor of Flute, Area Head of the Wind Department at Purchase College School of the Arts Conservatory of Music and is the Coordinator of Classical Music Studies. Additionally, Tara is on the faculty of Bard College Conservatory, the contemporary program at Manhattan School of Music and is a visiting artist, teacher and coach at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Her yearly summer flute master class at the Banff Centre in Canada is legendary.
Susie Park, violin
Australian-born Susie Park, the Minnesota Orchestra’s first associate concertmaster, had already toured with the Orchestra before beginning her appointment in September 2015, performing concerts and participating in educational programs when the ensemble traveled to Cuba the previous May.
Park has concertized around the world, performing solos with such European orchestras as the Vienna Symphony, Orchestre National de Lille and the London-based Royal Philharmonic; American orchestras including the Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Memphis Symphony and Orchestra of St. Luke’s; the major Australian symphony orchestras including Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Tasmania, Canberra and Perth; Korea’s KBS Orchestra; and Orchestra Wellington in New Zealand. She has collaborated with conductors including Simon Rattle, Hans Vonk, Alan Gilbert, Fabio Luisi and Yehudi Menuhin, performing in venues ranging from New York’s Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Symphony Hall in Boston, the Ravinia Festival and Millenium Park in Chicago, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Smithsonian Institute, Vienna Musikverein Cologne Philharmonie, Düsseldorf Tonhalle and Danish Radio Concert Hall.
Park has received numerous awards. She won top honors at the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, the Wieniawski Competition in Poland and the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition in France, which led to many performances and reengagements throughout the U.S. and Europe. She also won the Richard Goldner Concerto Competition, Ernest Llewellyn String Award and various additional awards.
Park is passionate about chamber music. She is a founding member of ECCO, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, a conductorless ensemble comprising a diverse selection of talented chamber musicians, soloists and principal string players from American orchestras; their self-titled debut album of 2012, released on the eOne label, includes works from three centuries, by Geminiani, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.
In addition, Park was the violinist of the Eroica Trio from 2006 to 2012, with which she recorded the ensemble’s eighth CD, an all-American disc nominated for a Grammy, and toured internationally. She was also a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two, collaborating with Wu Han, Gary Hoffman and Ida Kavafian. For three consecutive summers she was in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival, and she has participated in numerous tours with Musicians from Marlboro. Additional musicians with whom she has performed chamber music include members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, Emerson and Cleveland Quartets, and Kim Kashkashian, Pamela Frank, Jason Vieaux, Cho-Liang Lin and Jaime Laredo. Among her festival engagements have been performances at Music from Angel Fire, Music in the Vineyards in Napa, the Seattle, Caramoor, Skaneateles, Aspen, Ravinia, Portland and Bowdoin festivals in the U.S.; Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove in England; Bermuda Festival; the Mozarteum Sommerakademie in Austria; and Keshet Eilon in Israel.
Park’s interest in music of all genres has also led to collaborations with artists such as jazz trumpeter Chris Botti, with whom she performed 41 consecutive shows at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York.
A native of Sydney, Park picked up a violin at the age of three, made her solo debut at five and completed preparatory studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She went on to earn a bachelor of music degree at the Curtis Institute and an artist diploma at the New England Conservatory; her teachers have included Jaime Laredo, Ida Kavafian, Donald Weilerstein, Miriam Fried, Shi-Xiang (Peter) Zhang and Christopher Kimber. In her spare time she enjoys a variety of creative arts, including knitting and clothing design.
Daniel Phillips, violin and viola
Violinist Daniel Phillips enjoys a versatile career as an established chamber musician, solo artist, and teacher. He serves as co-artistic director of the Music from Angel Fire chamber music festival with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, and he’s a founding member of the 35-year-old Orion String Quartet, which regularly performs with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The quartet’s discography includes the complete quartets of Beethoven and Kirchner.
Mr. Phillips is a graduate of The Juilliard School and a winner of the 1976 Young Concert Artists competition. His major teachers were his father, Eugene Phillips; Ivan Galamian; Sally Thomas; Nathan Milstein; Sandor Vegh; and George Neikrug.
Throughout his career, Mr. Phillips has performed as a soloist with ensembles such as the Boston, Houston, New Jersey, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, and Yakima symphony orchestras. His festival appearances include Chamber Music Northwest, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the Chesapeake Music Festival. He’s performed at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival every season since 1979, and he’s participated in the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England, since its inception. Mr. Phillips’s faculty appointments include Mannes, Juilliard, the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and the Bard College Conservatory of Music as well as the summer faculties of the Heifetz International Music Institute and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford.
Daniel Phillips is a former member of the renowned Bach Aria Group, and he’s toured and recorded in a string quartet for Sony Classical with violinist Gidon Kremer, violist Kim Kashkashian, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In 2018, he served as a judge for the Seoul International Violin Competition, and this summer he serves as a judge for the Leipzig International Bach Competition, where he won third prize in 1976. Mr. Phillips lives with his wife and two cute dachshunds on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Cory Smythe, piano
Pianist Cory Smythe has worked closely with pioneering artists in new, improvisatory, and classical music, including saxophonist-composer Ingrid Laubrock, violinist Hilary Hahn, and multidisciplinary composers from Anthony Braxton to Zosha Di Castri. His own music “dissolves the lines between composition and improvisation with rigor” (Chicago Reader), and his first record was praised by Jason Moran as “hands down one of the best solo recordings I’ve ever heard.” Smythe has been featured at the Newport Jazz, Wien Modern, Trondheim Chamber Music, Nordic Music Days, Approximation, Concorso Busoni, and Darmstadt festivals, as well as at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival, where he was recently invited to premiere new work created in collaboration with Peter Evans and Craig Taborn. He has received commissions from Milwaukee’s Present Music, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, the International Contemporary Ensemble, of which he is a longtime member, and the Shifting Foundation. Smythe received a Grammy award for his work with Ms. Hahn and plays regularly in the critically acclaimed Tyshawn Sorey Trio.