Violinist Ani Kavafian enjoys a prolific career as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has performed with virtually all of America’s leading orchestras in major venues across the country, has premiered and recorded a number of works written for her, and has been featured on many network and PBS television music specials. Kavafian is a member of the Trio da Salo and the Kavafian-Schub-Shifrin Trio and tours internationally as an artist-member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She also appears frequently in performance with her sister, violinist and violist Ida Kavafian.

Paul Kantor is currently the Sally Shepherd Perkins Professor of Violin at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University having previously served as the Eleanor H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Violin at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He received his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard studying violin with Dorothy DeLay and chamber music with Robert Mann. For thirteen years he served as Chair of the String Department at the University of Michigan and has taught at the Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory, and Yale University. He continues as Artist in Residence at the Glenn Gould School of Music/ Royal Conservatory of Music since his appointment in 2008. Along with his son, violinist Timothy Kantor, he founded and directs the Gabriel Del Orbe Violin Program in the Dominican Republic.

One of the leading violinists of his generation, Mark Kaplan’s consummate artistry has resulted in solo engagements with nearly every major North American orchestra, and with  many of the world’s foremost conductors, among them Ormandy, Tennstedt, Maazel, Dutoit, Rattle, Zinman, Masur, etc. 

Kaplan has also maintained a flourishing international career for over four decades, with highly acclaimed concerto and recital appearances in all the musical centers of Europe – London, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Prague, Zurich, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Milan – as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

Also devoted to chamber music. Mr. Kaplan appears with pianist Yael Weiss and cellist Peter Stumpf as the Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio, with recordings and concerts world-wide.

Mr. Kaplan has a wide range of repertoire available on CD.  His second recording of Bach’s solo violin works was issued in 2016 by Bridge Records, and due for release this season is a Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio set of Beethoven’s complete Trios.  Other recordings include concerti of Berg Stravinsky,  Lalo, Bartók, Paganini, Wieniawski and Viotti, Sonatas of Schumann and Schubert, Spanish Dances of Sarasate, trios of Brahms, Debussy, Dvorak, Fauré, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Saint-Saens, Schubert, Smetana and Tchaikowsky.

Since 2005, Mark Kaplan has been Professor of Violin at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, and prior to that he served as Professor with Distinction at UCLA.  He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Dorothy DeLay.  Kaplan plays a violin made by Antonio Stradivari in 1685, known as the Marquis.                             

Violinist Ani Kavafian enjoys a prolific career as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. She has performed with virtually all of America’s leading orchestras in major venues across the country, has premiered and recorded a number of works written for her, and has been featured on many network and PBS television music specials. Kavafian is a member of the Trio da Salo and the Kavafian-Schub-Shifrin Trio and tours internationally as an artist-member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She also appears frequently in performance with her sister, violinist and violist Ida Kavafian.

From 1999 until its final season in 2013, Clive Greensmith was a member of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet, giving over one hundred performances each year in the most prestigious international venues, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, London’s South Bank, Paris Chatelet, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. He has collaborated with international artists such as Andras Schiff, Pinchas Zukerman, Leon Fleisher, Lynn Harrell, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Alicia de Larrocha, and Emanuel Ax.

Mr. Greensmith has given guest performances at prominent festivals worldwide. In North America he has performed at the Aspen Music Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, [email protected], La Jolla SummerFest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Cleveland Chamber Fest, and the Ravinia Festival. He is a regular guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and will undertake a national tour with Paul Huang, Wu Han, and Matthew Lipman in 2020. Internationally he has appeared at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, Pacific Music Festival in Japan and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. As a soloist, Clive Greensmith has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, and the RAI Orchestra of Rome among others. 

During a career spanning over twenty-five years, Mr. Greensmith has built up a catalog of landmark recordings, most notably The Complete Beethoven String Quartets for Harmonia Mundi with the Tokyo String Quartet, Mozart’s ‘Prussian’ Quartets with the Tokyo String Quartet, Brahms Cello Sonatas with Boris Berman for Biddulph Recordings, and Clarinet Trios of Beethoven and Brahms with Jon Nakamatsu and Jon Manasse for Harmonia Mundi. Toccata Classics will release a live recording of his world premiere performance of the Pál Hermann Cello Concerto with Theodore Kuchar and the Lviv International Symphony Orchestra in the spring of 2019.

Mr. Greensmith studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in England with American cellist, Donald McCall, where he was the recipient of the prestigious Julius Isserlis Scholarship. He continued his studies at the Cologne Musikhochschule in Germany with Russian cellist Boris Pergamenschikow.

In 1987, he made his concerto debut with the London Symphony Orchestra and went on to be first prize winner in the Sergio Lorenzi chamber music competition in Trieste, Italy, and first prize winner in the Caltanissetta Duo competition. Most notably, he was a major prizewinner in the first ever “Premio Stradivari” held in Cremona, Italy in 1991. 

Deeply committed to the mentoring and development of young musicians, Clive has enjoyed a long and distinguished teaching career. In addition to his fifteen-year residency with the Tokyo String Quartet at Yale University, Mr. Greensmith has served as a faculty member at the Yehudi Menuhin School and Royal Northern College of Music in England, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Manhattan School of Music. In 2013, following the final concerts of the Tokyo String Quartet, Mr. Greensmith joined the faculty at the Colburn School where he teaches cello and coaches chamber music for the Conservatory of Music and the Music Academy. Students of Mr. Greensmith have gone on to secure major positions in orchestras throughout the world and have won a number of prestigious awards. In July 2019, he will succeed Günther Pichler as director of string chamber music at the Accademia Chigiana International Festival and Summer Academy in Siena. 

Formerly the principal cellist of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Mr. Greensmith is a founding member of the Montrose Trio with pianist Jon Kimura Parker, and violinist Martin Beaver.

Carol Rodland enjoys a distinguished international career as a concert and recording artist and teacher. First prizewinner of the Washington International Competition and winner of the Artists International Auditions and the Universal Editions Prize at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, she made her solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra as a teenager. Critics describe her playing as “larger than life, sweetly in tune, infinitely variegated” and “delicious” (Fanfare) and her recordings on the Crystal and Neuma Record Labels have been critically acclaimed. A passionate advocate for contemporary music, she has commissioned, premiered and recorded works of Kenji Bunch, Dan Coleman, Adolphus Hailstork, David Liptak, Christopher Theofanidis, and Augusta Read Thomas.

 A dedicated teacher, Ms. Rodland is Professor of Viola and Chamber Music at the Juilliard School. She is also an artist-faculty member at the Perlman Music Program, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Karen Tuttle Coordination Workshop.   Previous positions have included professorships at the Eastman School of Music, where she was also Co-Chair of the String Department, at New England Conservatory, where she was recognized with the “Krasner Award for Excellence in Teaching”, at the Musikhochschule “Hanns Eisler” Berlin, and at Arizona State University.    

In 2009, Ms. Rodland founded “If Music Be the Food…”, a fully volunteer benefit concert series whose mission is to increase awareness and support for the hungry in the local community through the sharing of great music. “If Music Be the Food…” has inspired musicians across the country to implement initiatives based on this concept in their own communities.

Ms. Rodland studied on full scholarship with Karen Tuttle at the Juilliard School and as a Fulbright Scholar with Kim Kashkashian at the Musikhochschule Freiburg.  She had the unique privilege of serving as teaching assistant to both of her mentors.

For further information please visit www.carolrodland.com and www.ifmusicbethefood.com

Cellist Eric Kim has a diverse career performing throughout the United States, Europe, South America, and the Middle and Far East as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with orchestra.

He joined the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music as professor of cello at the beginning the 2009-10 academic year.

He served as principal cello of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1989 to 2009 and has also held principal cello positions with the San Diego and Denver symphonies.

Having made his solo debut at age 15 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Kim was a featured soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra on its critically acclaimed tour of the Far East and has appeared as soloist with the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati, Denver, and San Diego.

He has collaborated as soloist with such conductors as Zubin Mehta, Sergiu Comissiona, Lawrence Foster, Alan Gilbert, Paavo Jarvi, Gianandrea Noseda, and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and has appeared in recital in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Active as a chamber musician, he has performed with such artists as Emmanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Susan Graham, Lynn Harrell, Stephen Hough, Jaime Laredo, Menahem Pressler, and Gil Shaham, as well as collaborating with members of the Emerson, Guarneri, and Orion string quartets.

At the invitation of violinist Pinchas Zukerman, he performed with Zukerman at the festivals of Athens (Greece), Mostly Mozart (N.Y.), Schleswig-Holstein (Germany), and Verbier (Switzerland).

He has participated in several tours with Zukerman to South America and Israel as a member of the Pinchas Zukerman and Friends chamber ensemble. Highlights include chamber music debuts at Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, performing both Brahms Sextets with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, and Michael Tree, among others.

Kim can regularly be heard at the festivals of Angel Fire (New Mexico), Aspen, La Jolla, Orcas Island (Wash.), Sangat (India), Santa Fe, and Savannah. He has made several recordings for the RCA, EMI, Telarc, and Koch labels.

As a teacher, he has students in major orchestras throughout the world. He is a regular teacher and performer at the Aspen Music Festival and School as well as the Music Masters Course Japan program held in Yokohama and Tokyo.

Born of Korean parents in New York City, Kim grew up in Illinois, where he began piano studies with his mother at age five. At age 10, he began cello studies with Tanya L. Carey.

He received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Leonard Rose, Lynn Harrell, and Channing Robbins. Upon graduation, Kim received the first William Schuman Prize, awarded for outstanding leadership and achievement in music.

Winner of numerous prizes including the Walter Naumburg International Competition,  Tibor Varga International Competition, Astral Artists National Auditions, Young Performers Career Advancement, and Lili Boulanger awards, Ayano has performed with orchestras across the U.S., Switzerland, Bulgaria, and most recently in Carnegie Hall.  Praised for her “deeply communicative and engrossing” (The New York Times) performances, she has performed at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Moab, Bowdoin, Kingston, Adams (New Zealand), Canberra International (Australia), and Prussia Cove (England) festivals.  She has been featured on Musicians from Marlboro tours in the U.S. and France, and gave a TEDx talk in 2012 at the University of Tokyo.  She was first violinist of the Ying Quartet and was Associate Professor at the Eastman School of Music until 2015 when she joined the violin faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music.  As a recipient of the Beebe Fellowship, Ayano studied in Budapest, Hungary, at the Liszt Academy after graduating from Harvard University and The Juilliard School.  In her spare time, she loves to paint and practice Aikido.

Renée-Paule Gauthier is a passionate performer and teacher whose career has taken her across the United States and Canada as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, and clinician. Dr. Gauthier joins the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra for the 18-19 season, and she performs with some of Chicago’s finest ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Joffrey Ballet, Elgin Symphony, and Chicago Philharmonic. She is the String Area Coordinator, Co-director of the Chamber Music Program, and Violin Instructor at North Park University.

Dr. Don Greene, a peak performance psychologist, has taught his comprehensive approach to peak performance mastery at The Juilliard School, Colburn School, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Opera Young Artists Program, Vail Ski School, Perlman Music Program, and US Olympic Training Center. During his thirty-two year career, he has coached more than 1,000 performers to win professional auditions and has guided countless solo performers to successful careers. Some of the performing artists with whom Dr. Greene has worked have won jobs with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Opera, Montreal Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, National Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the Dance Theatre of Harlem, to name just a few. Of the Olympic track and field athletes he worked with up until and through the 2016 Games in Rio, 14 won medals, including 5 gold. Dr. Greene has authored eight books including Audition Success, Fight Your Fear & Win, and Performance Success. In 2017, Dr. Greene was named a TED Educator and collaborated with musician Dr. Annie Bosler to produce the TED-Ed  How to practice effectively…for just about anything. The video went viral receiving over 31 million views across Facebook and YouTube.