Online Solo Strings Intensive: Fall 2026

Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor, Danielle Belen is already making a name for herself as a seasoned pedagogue with a strong studio of young artists. Her students have won major prizes in national and international competitions including the Menuhin, Stulberg and Klein competitions, as well as being accepted into top conservatories and universities across the country.

Winner of the 2008 Sphinx Competition, Ms. Belen has appeared as a soloist with the Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Nashville and San Francisco Symphonies, the Boston Pops, and the Florida and Cleveland Orchestras. Zachary Lewis from the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote “Violinist Danielle Belen… captivated every ear with an assured, impassioned performance of Ravel’s “Tzigane,” knocking off the daunting showpiece as if it were a trifle.”

A graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music and the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, Ms. Belen joined the faculty of the Colburn School of Performing Arts in 2008. In addition to maintaining her own violin studio, she was the teaching assistant to renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett for five years. During that time, Ms. Belen also served as the Director of the Ed and Mari Chamber Music Institute at Colburn.

In 2010, Ms. Belen founded Center Stage Strings, a summer camp and performance festival for gifted young musicians in central California. After gaining national attention, CSS moved to the campus of The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as part of MPulse, a summer program at the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. As the Artistic Director and head of the violin faculty for Center Stage Strings, she has attracted students and seasoned artists from around the world. Lynn Harrell, James Ehnes, Arnold Steinhardt, Sarah Chang, William Hagen, Rohan de Silva and Stefan Jackiw have joined to perform in support of the program.

As the winner of the 2014 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, Ms. Belen performed for Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her guests at the Supreme Court in Washington DC, where she was awarded a $50,000 career grant. In turn, she used that money towards a matching campaign for Center Stage Strings, doubling the amount into $100,000 for student scholarships.

Ms. Belen plays on a violin made in Mantua, Italy by Stefano Scarampella.

Cornelia Heard currently holds the Valere Blair Potter Chair at Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University, where she is professor of violin and chair of the string department. She has served on the artist faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2005 and is co-director of the chamber music program. As a member of the Blair String Quartet, she has toured extensively throughout the United States, presented complete Beethoven and Bartok cycles and recorded for the Naxos, Innova, Warner Reprise, New World, Blue Griffin and Pantheon labels. She has recently participated in festivals in Portillo and Santiago, Chile, Guangzhou, China and Loja, Ecuador. Ms. Heard has performed on concert series at the Library of Congress and at New York’s 92nd Street Y, as well as at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Merkin Hall and Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. She served on the faculty of the Sewanee Music Festival from 1985 to 1999 and the Killington Festival from 2002-2004. Other summer festival appearances have included Chamber Music Northwest, Colorado, Highlands-Cashiers, Kapalua, Maverick, Music Mountain, Roycroft, Sedona and Skaneateles Festivals, as well as performances in Italy, Ecuador and Iceland. 

Hailed by critics as a “superior poet” (Vancouver Sun) and praised for his “heart and indomitable will” (Gramophone), Grigory Kalinovsky has performed at some of the world’s major venues, from all three stages of Carnegie Hall in New York to Musikhalle Grosser Saal in Hamburg. As a recitalist and avid chamber musician, he has appeared at numerous concert series and festivals, including the Asheville Chamber Music Series, Lyric Chamber Music Society of New York, Lucas Foss’s Festival at the Hamptons, Newport Music Festival, and Pavel Vernikov’s festival, “Il Violino Magico” in Italy, collaborating with such renowned musicians as Pinchas Zukerman, Shmuel Ashkeniasi, Ralph Kirshbaum, Miriam Fried, James Buswell, Dora Schwarzberg, and Paul Coletti, among others.

A devoted educator, Prof. Kalinovsky joined the Jacobs School of Music faculty in the fall of 2013 and continues to teach at the Heifetz International Music Institute and IU Summer String Academy. Previously a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music, he has taught at many summer music festivals, including Pinchas Zukerman’s Young Artists Program in Canada, Keshet Eilon Mastercourse in Israel, Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine, Soesterberg International Music Festival in Holland, Summit Music Festival in New York, “Il Violino Magico” in Italy, and Manhattan in the Mountains, where he was also one of the founding artistic directors. His book “ViolinMind” on theory and technique of playing using different tuning systems, written in collaboration with famed cello professor Hans Jørgen Jensen, has been published by OvationPress in 2019.

He has presented master classes at many major U.S. festivals and music schools, including New England Conservatory, the Colburn School, Meadowmount, University of Maryland, San Francisco Conservatory, and Seattle Conservatory, and at numerous European and Asian institutions, such as the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Buchmann-Mehta Scool of Music and Jerusalem Music Center in Israel, Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Germany, Beijing Central Conservatory in China, Seoul National University and Korea National University of Arts in Seoul.

Prof. Kalinovsky’s students have won top prizes at national and international competitions, including the Spohr International Violin Competition, Tibor Varga Junior Competition, Menuhin Young Artists Competition in England, Andrea Postacchini Young Violinists Competition in Italy, and Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition in Chicago, and have gone on to study at institutions such as Curtis, Colburn, Juilliard, Yale, New England Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, and Indiana University, among others.

His recording with pianist Tatiana Goncharova featuring Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata and Twenty-Four Preludes transcribed for Violin and Piano by Dmitri Tziganov – with several of the transcriptions commissioned by Kalinovsky from the celebrated composer Lera Auerbach – was released by Centaur Records to great critical acclaim and hailed by the composer’s son, conductor Maxim Shostakovich, as “a must-have for any Shostakovich music connoisseur.” The duo’s recording of the complete set of sonatas for violin and piano by Mieczysław Weinberg was released on Naxos label in 2017.

Kalinovsky started his music education with Tatiana Liberova in his native St. Petersburg, Russia. After coming to New York, he continued his studies with Pinchas Zukerman and Patinka Kopec at the Manhattan School of Music, where he served as a faculty member shortly after graduating and until his move to Indiana University.

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. 

As an internationally recognized pedagogue, Simon James has attracted worldwide attention as one of the foremost teachers of violin in the United States. In his long performing career, James has been a member of several prestigious orchestras, including the Seattle Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Orchestra. As concertmaster of the Northwest Sinfonia, he can be heard on hundreds of motion picture, TV, and video game soundtracks and has performed live with Pearl Jam, Elton John, Billy Joel, A R Rahman and many others. He has recorded concerti with the Seattle Symphony and the Slovak Radio Symphony with whom he premiered Richard Englefield’s Violin Concerto.

James students have won many of the world’s top prizes, including the International Menuhin Junior Competition, Stradivarius International Competition, Stulberg International String Competition, Vancouver International Music Competition, MTNA National Competition, and were laureates at the Spohr, Johansen, Il Piccolo Violino Magico, and Postacchini Competitions. They have been featured numerous times on NPR’s From the Top. In addition to appearing with all the Pacific Northwest’s leading orchestras, his students have performed with the Detroit, Richmond, Utah, and Seattle symphonies, the London Philharmonia, and on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series. They have participated at the Aspen Music Festival, Morningside Music Bridge, Meadowmount, Starling/Delay Violin Symposium, New York String Orchestra Seminar, and Kronberg Academy Festivals. Students from his studio have recently won positions in the New York Philharmonic, St Louis Symphony, and Minnesota Orchestra.

For more than two decades, omnivorous violist Nicholas Cords has been on the front line of a growing constellation of projects as performer, educator, and cultural advocate. As former Co-Artistic director of Silkroad, viola and chamber music faculty member at New England Conservatory, violist of Brooklyn Rider, he is deeply committed to music from a broad variety of traditions and epochs, with a particular passion for the cross-section between the long tradition of classical music and the wide range of music of today. 

As a soloist, he has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Bridgeport Symphony. Recent other highlights include performances at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg in works ranging from Feldman to Wuorinen (many heard in Russia for the first time) and the Vail International Dance Festival, where he participated in a revival of a long dormant Balanchine choreography set to Stravinsky’s Élegie for solo viola with the great Brazilian ballerina Carla Körbes. His highly acclaimed 2013 debut solo album, Recursions, features works ranging from Biber to Hindemith to Cords’ own Five Migrations. His 2020 recording Touch Harmonious (In a Circle Records), recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, is a reflection on the arc of tradition spanning form the baroque to today, featuring multiple premieres. He has appeared frequently over the years on television and radio including a Chinese National Television broadcast from the Great Wall, the David Letterman Show, numerous National Public Radio broadcasts, Good Morning America, NHK Japan, and a four year run as resident commentator and performer on WQXR New York’s Radio weekly On A-I-R. In addition, he has worked with many ensembles, including the Knights, the Caramoor Virtuousi, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, An Die Musik, and the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert.

Beginning his musical education at the Juilliard School, Nicholas won top honors in the viola competition and subsequently gave the New York premiere of John Harbison’s Viola Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall. He completed his studies at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. His teachers and mentors have included Karen Tuttle, Harvey Shapiro, Joseph Fuchs, and Felix Galamir. A committed teacher, Nicholas currentlyserves on the viola and chamber music faculty of New England Conservatory. Mr. Cords plays on an instrument made for him in 2019 by famed French luthier Patrick Robin. He performs on bows from a wide variety of the world’s top modern makers including Charles Espey and Benoit Rolland.

Violist Wenting Kang, an acclaimed performing and recording artist, joins NEC from the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid, where she has been an assistant professor alongside the renowned violist Nobuko Imai since 2016. A former violist of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Wenting is currently the principal violist of Orquesta Sinfonica de Madrid at Teatro Real of Spain, as well as one of the founding members of the Madrid Soloists Chamber Orchestra. Her debut CD recording with pianist Sergei Kvitko, “Mosaic,” was released in 2022 to critical acclaim, winning the gold medal in the Melómano Magazine in Spain. Its tracks were selected to the “Best New Classical” playlist on Spotify, and selected for the “New Music Friday” playlist of the American Society of Composers and Publishers. Previously, Wenting has collaborated with Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project on the recording of Serenade No. 1 of George Perle.

Profiled by the Strad magazine as “a man of limitless energy and purpose – he mentors high achievers who make their mark in top positions the world over,” Peter Slowik has been a featured performer and teacher at eight International Viola Congresses, and has recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon, deutsche harmonia mundi/BMG, American Grammophone, Erato and Cedille labels.  Mr. Slowik has performed with William Preucil, Anner Bylsma, Leonard Rose, the Mirecourt Trio, the Jasper, Arianna, Saint Petersburg and Vermeer Quartets, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, and members of the Cleveland, Chester, Orford, and Smithson quartets.  Past orchestral associations include service as Principal Violist of the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, Concertante di Chicago, and the American Sinfonietta.  Between 1986 and 1999 Slowik performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and was solo violist at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.   He has taught master classes in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, Europe, New Zealand, and most of the significant US conservatories

Mr. Slowik is Professor of Viola at Oberlin Conservatory and Artistic Director for Credo Music.   Past teaching posts include Northwestern University, Indiana University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the Eastman School of Music.  He has been named to the highest teaching awards at both Oberlin and Northwestern.  Mr. Slowik was the recipient of the Maurice Riley Viola Award from the American Viola Society for “outstanding teaching, scholarship, and performance.”

His viola and chamber music students have won first prize in numerous significant national and international competitions.  Slowik students may be found in virtually every significant professional orchestra in the US (many serving in titled positions) and in leadership positions in universities and conservatories throughout the country.

Natasha Brofsky is cellist of the Naumburg Award-winning Peabody Trio, which has performed on leading chamber music series throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.. The trio has been heard on numerous radio broadcasts, and has recorded on the New World, CRI, and Artek labels. She has performed as a guest artist with numerous ensembles, including the Takacs, Prazak, Cassatt, Norwegian, Jupiter, Ying, and Borromeo quartets. Brofsky has held principal positions in the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra under Iona Brown. She was also a member of the Serapion Ensemble, performing with the group in Germany and Austria, and the string trio Opus 3, which performed throughout Norway for Rikskonsertene, the Norwegian State Concert Agency. She recorded Olav Anton Thommessen’s Concerto for Cello and Winds for Aurora Records and was a regular participant at Open Chamber Music in Prussia Cove, England. She has given master classes at many schools, including San Francisco Conservatory, Peabody Conservatory, and Boston University. She has taught at Barratt-Due’s Institute in Oslo and at the University of Colorado-Boulder and the Heifetz Institute. She has been on the faculty at the Yellow Barn Festival (Vermont) since 2001; New England Conservatory since 2004, and has been on the faculty at Juilliard since 2012 and of the school’s Pre-college faculty since 2016. She holds a BM and Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School and a MM from Mannes College the New School for Music. Brofsky studied with Marion Feldman, Robert Sylvester, Paul Katz, and Timothy Eddy, and on a Fulbright grant with William Pleeth in London, where she was awarded the Muriel Taylor Cello Prize.

Praised for his “burnished tone, spellbinding technique, and probing musical mind” (Boston Classical Review), cellist Brannon Cho has emerged as an outstanding artist of his generation. He is the First Prize winner of the prestigious 6th International Paulo Cello Competition, and is also a top prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth, Naumburg, and Cassadó International Cello Competitions.

Most recently, Brannon Cho is the recipient of the 2020 Janos Starker Foundation Award, the Landgraf von Hessen Prize from Kronberg Academy, the 2019 Ivan Galamian Award previously held by James Ehnes, and is a scholarship holder in the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.

Born in New Jersey, Brannon Cho received his Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music under Hans Jørgen Jensen. He was awarded the prestigious Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Laurence Lesser. He also studied with Frans Helmerson in the Professional Studies program at Kronberg Academy. Beginning in 2025, Brannon Cho has joined the faculty at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.

Brannon Cho is sponsored by Thomastik-Infeld, and performs on a rare cello made by Antonio Casini in 1668 in Modena, Italy.

Cuban-American cellist Dr. Tommy Mesa is recognized as one of his generation’s most charismatic, innovative performers. Recipient of the 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Organization’s 2023 Medal of Excellence, Mesa has appeared as a soloist at the U.S. Supreme Court and with major ensembles like the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, and The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Mesa gave the 2022 world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s cello concerto Divided, performing it at Carnegie Hall and releasing his orchestral recording debut on Deutsche Grammophon. Recent highlights include premiering Michael Abels’ new cello concerto with the Dallas Symphony, touring with pianist Olga Kern, and giving the Midwest premiere of Wynton Marsalis’ cello concerto alongside Yo-Yo Ma and Cristian Mӑcelaru.

An active recording artist, Mesa’s album Division of Memory earned critical acclaim. His discography includes tango works with JP Jofre, an album with pianist Michelle Cann featuring Black and Latinx composers, and appearances on GRAMMY-nominated projects with The Crossing Choir.

As a chamber musician, Mesa is the principal cellist of Sphinx Virtuosi, has toured with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and collaborated with Itzhak Perlman.

A former First Prize winner in the Sphinx Competition, Mesa joined the cello faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in 2025. He holds degrees from Juilliard, Northwestern University, and Manhattan School of Music. Mesa performs on a 1767 Nicolò Gagliano cello and an Andre Richaume bow, generously on loan from CANIMEX INC.

Soloist, principal cellist, chamber musician, recording artist, and distinguished teacher, Alan Stepansky is known internationally as a musician whose multi-faceted career exemplifies the highest ideals of artistry, versatility, and devotion to teaching and mentoring the next generation of gifted young cellists. One of the most inspiring cellists of his generation, he has appeared as a guest artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Washington National Gallery of Art, the Frick Museum, Camerata Pacifica, Brooklyn’s Bargemusic, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, and has performed in concert with a diverse array of artists across many genres from Isaac Stern, Emanuel Ax, Renee Fleming, Frederika Von Stade, Ruth Laredo, Glenn Dicterow and the American and Takacs String Quartets, to such pop icons as Sting, Bruce Springsteen, and Natalie Merchant. After becoming Principal Cellist of the Boston Pops under John Williams and a frequent performer in the Boston Symphony Orchestra in his early twenties, he rose to prominence in the orchestral world a few years later, when he was chosen by music director Zubin Mehta to be the Associate Principal Cellist of the New York Philharmonic. After ten years of combining this position with many solo, chamber music, and teaching opportunities, he decided to devote more time to his involvement in teaching while simultaneously expanding into a wider range of performing and recording activities.  He is currently Professor of Cello at both the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University and the Manhattan School of Music, and is cello faculty artist of one of the world’s most prestigious summer festivals, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California.