Inspiring Audiences and Artists for Fifty-Six Years.
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Nick DiBerardino is a composer who talks with his hands. His language is wide-ranging and story-driven, composed of "richly textured, multilayered" sound worlds (Minnesota Star Tribune) that tell fantastical tales. Nick is easily fascinated and has written music about everything from failed flying machines and particle physics to Walt Whitman and tall glasses of beet juice. No matter the inspiration, Nick's music and all his energies as a composer, educator, and public speaker flow from the belief that music can bring people in to unified communities.
Nick is a Rhodes Scholar whose music has been commissioned by many artists and institutions, including Symphony Tacoma, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the New College Choir, arx duo, Sandbox Percussion, The Brass Project, Matthew Levy, Gretna Music, Vesper Concerts, the Rhodes Trust, soundSCAPE Festival, Bennington Chamber Music Conference, Ensemble Dance, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, and Music From Angel Fire. His residencies have included those at the Intimacy of Creativity Festival at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and Hidden Valley, where he is a founding faculty member of the Emerging Composers Intensive. He serves as President of the Board of Long Island Chamber Music and on the board of The Brass Project. Nick's works have been performed around the world by the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, Contemporaneous, Aizuri Quartet, So Percussion, the Israeli Chamber Project, Tony Arnold, Tara O'Connor, Danny Phillips, Steven Copes, Sonora Slocum, Priscilla Lee, and many other ensembles and artists.
Nick enjoys celebrating the work of other composers. His early projects included an outward-looking commissioning initiative with the "superb" (Philadelphia Inquirer) musicians of The Brass Project. Called "Cityscaping," this effort generated thirty-five new pieces of engaging civic music for outdoor performance, including works by Pulitzer Prize winner Aaron Jay Kernis, US Artist Fellow Reena Esmail, and Princeton Professor Emeritus Paul Lansky. Praised as "great fun" by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the project culminated in new music concerts in dozens of schools, public spaces, and non-traditional concert venues. In 2018, selections from this repertoire, including Nick's Ornithopter, were released by The Brass Project on their debut album, "Cityscaping." Nick's passion for championing new music drives his current work as the Director of Ensemble 20/21, Curtis's Grammy-award-winning new music ensemble.
Nick is also proud to have co-founded and directed the Oxford Laptop Orchestra (OxLOrk), a chamber music ensemble comprised of both musicians and coders. Powered by hemispherical speakers and novel software instruments, OxLOrk creates electroacoustic performances that are maximally individually expressive. With Nick presiding over its inaugural year, OxLOrk presented five concerts, including a collaboration with the Ashmolean Art Museum and an interactive performance at the Barbican Centre in London.
Nick has enthusiastically worked to extend the reach of new music through collaborative projects. His children's opera Anansi and the Great Light, produced by Curtis's Family Concert Series, explored a new model for community involvement in the creative process. In his work as a Community Artist Fellow at Curtis, Nick also developed a workshop series for people living with Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of memory loss and dementia. This series, created in partnership with the Penn Memory Center, engaged participants in a range of multisensory group composition exercises with the aim of improving quality of life and culminated in a concert of collaboratively composed works.
Nick is a passionate speaker who enjoys reaching listeners both at home and abroad. He has appeared on BBC Radio Oxford and public radio and television in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Minnesota, and New Mexico. He regularly gives lectures and talks to a wide range of audiences.
Nick earned his bachelor's degree at Princeton University, an M.Phil with distinction from the University of Oxford, an M.M. from the Yale School of Music, and a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, all in composition. He has also earned an MFA in composition from Princeton University, where someday — on a day his wife hopes will be soon — he will hand in his dissertation and collect his long-awaited PhD.
Nick serves on the composition faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he is the Director of Composition Studies. Nick has also taught on Curtis's Musical Studies faculty and was the Musical Studies Lead Instructor and Composition Coordinator at Curtis's Young Artist Summer Program. He now serves in a similar capacity for Curtis's partnership with the Sphinx Performance Academy, a program with a primary focus on cultural diversity that actively recruits students from cultural backgrounds underrepresented in the field of classical music.
Part cartoon character, part virtuoso, composer WANG JIE has spent the last two decades nudging classical music and its concert audiences into spectacular frontiers. One day she spins a few notes into a large symphony, the next she conjures a malevolent singing rat onto the opera stage. For the past three years running, Jie's Symphony No. 1 has been the most-broadcast work on the most-listened-to classical music show in the country. During previous seasons, you might have heard about her pioneering opera "It Rained on Shakopee," based on her mentoring experience at the Minnesota state prison. Unveiling beauty in this world, and paving new paths for greater public engagement with classical music are at the heart of her artistry.
Many consider Ms. Wang's stylistic versatility a rare trait among today's composers, but she comes by it naturally. There is a mile-long dossier on Jie's outside-the-box incidents. It begins with a thrilling escape from a Chinese-military-run kindergarten at the age of four. Apparently it was a rehearsal. Jie will tell you that fighting for her beliefs has gotten her into trouble after trouble. But music critic Jay Nordlinger puts it this way: "Wang Jie is a clear communicator, whose love of music is obvious."
Today, that same refusal of constraint sparks the glorious madness of Jie's music; the skill, theatricality and method that once facilitated her youthful escape are now the engines for her appetite to "Engage • Explore • Play". Jie credits her mentors at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Manhattan School of Music for giving her the tools to materialize her artistic vision. Her career is made possible by trailblazing folks at New York City Opera, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, and Colorado Springs Philharmonic, etc. And she is continuously fueled by organizations that nodded at her endeavors, such as American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress, the McKnight Foundation, the V. Toulmin Foundation, to name a few. These lists are extensive, proof that the whole village must show up to bear witness as an artist struggles daily for her integrity. This daily practice, as James Baldwin says, must be considered as a metaphor for the universal struggle of all human beings to get to become human beings.
Since the pandemic, Jie is busy finishing her new symphony for the Colorado Music Festival, starting another for the Buffalo Philharmonic, and creating new works for the Apollo Chamber Players, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and half a dozen others. Off the composing clock, Jie is a mentor at the Curtis Institute, the City University of NY, and an unexpected student of Bharatanatyam, a classical dance form in South India. Along with her husband Fred Child, Jie enjoys endless rock climbing trips and occasional mountaineering feats.
Fred Child loves music and the outdoors, Italian cheese, English soccer, flying, baseball, and cardamom.
Since 2000, Fred has been the host of APM's Performance Today, the most-listened-to classical music radio show in America. Fred is also the commentator and announcer for Live From Lincoln Center, the only live performing arts series on television. Fred also hosts musical events on stages around the country, working with major orchestras and festivals, and connecting with audiences coast to coast.
Beyond the world of classical music, Fred hosted NPR's innovative Creators@Carnegie, a program of wide-ranging performers in concert, including Brian Wilson, David Byrne, Dawn Upshaw, Youssou N'Dour, Caetano Veloso, Emmylou Harris and many more. Before going to NPR, Fred was music director and director of cultural programming at WNYC in New York, host of a live daily performance and interview program on WNYC, and for 10 years, a host at Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Fred has hosted live national concert broadcasts, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic from Walt Disney Hall, the Last Night of the Proms from London, New Year's concerts by the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, dozens of A-list artists from Carnegie Hall, and BBC specials for American audiences.
Fred's music reviews have appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, and his music reports have appeared on NPR's Morning Edition. He's been a contributor to Billboard magazine, and a concert host and commentator for BBC Radio 3.
While growing up in Portland, Oregon, Fred studied classical piano. He also dabbles in guitar, percussion and bagpipes. His percussion band opened for the Grateful Dead at the Oakland Coliseum. He has narrated works at the Aspen Festival, with the Virginia Symphony, with the U.S. Marine Band and at the Round Top Festival-Institute. His rare musical performances in public include percussion with guitarist Sharon Isbin, and piano four-hands duets with Andre-Michel Schub. He appears as an actor in a video commissioned for the Partita for Solo Violin by Philip Glass.
Fred loves baseball (throws right, bats left) and soccer (he's a fan of North London's Tottenham Hotspur), is an avid rock climber, and a licensed private pilot and certified scuba diver. His better half is composer Wang Jie. They make their musical home in New York City, with a musical Sealyham Terrier named Pilot.
Praised by the Seattle Times as "Simply marvelous" and Taiwan's Liberty Times for "astonishingly capturing the spirit of the music," violinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu enjoys a versatile career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia.
Spotlighted by Marie Claire Taiwan's 2004 September issue "Young Power", Cindy has been featured as a soloist with orchestras such as the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra. Renowned artists with whom she has collaborated in concerts include Yefim Bronfman, James Ehnes, Lynn Harrell, Leila Josefowicz, Kim Kashkashian, Cho-Liang Lin, Midori, Thomas Quasthoff, Yuja Wang, and members of the Alban Berg, Brentano, Emerson, Guarneri, and Tokyo string quartets. She frequently performs at the world's most prominent venues such as the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Deutsches Theater München, the National Concert Hall of Taiwan, and festivals such as Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, the Marlboro Music Festival, Music@Menlo, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. She has also collaborated as a guest violist with Dover, Orion, and Shanghai quartets.
Cindy is a recipient of many awards including the Milka Violin Artist Prize from the Curtis Institute of Music, and third prize at the International Violin Competition of David Oistrakh. She taught violin, chamber music, and string pedagogy at the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California, coached chamber music at the Encore School for Strings and Hotchkiss Summer Portals, and is currently on faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music's Young Artist Summer Program and Mentor Network. Passionate about programming, Cindy is the Music Director of New Asia Chamber Music Society, Director of Chamber Music at the Hidden Valley Music Seminars, creator of Sunkiss'd Mozart, and she has curated programs for the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles as the Artistic Partner and Artist in Residence.
Outside of the classical style, Cindy also explores collaborations with artists of other genres and innovative visions. Some of which include album, "Bach in Los Angeles" with German electric bassist Jacques Bono, performance with contemporary American musicians Jeremy Kittel and singer Aoife O'Donovan, and multiple recording projects for Spanish film composer Arturo Cardelús.
Cindy's teachers include Dorothy DeLay, Victor Danchenko, Midori Goto, Hyo Kang, Ida Kavafian, and Steven Tenenbom. She plays on a 1734 Domenico Montagnana violin, 1918 Stefano Scarampella violin, 2021 Samuel Zygmuntowicz violin, and a 2015 Stanley Kiernoziak viola.
A young artist with a unique voice, violinist Eunice Kim has been proclaimed "just superb" by The New York Times and "a born performer" by Epoch Times. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, the award-winning violinist has been featured soloist with many orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, Louisville Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Seongnam Philharmonic, Bakersfield Symphony, and the Albany Symphony Orchestra, with which she recorded George Tsontakis's Unforgettable, released in 2017 on Naxos Records. She made her solo debut at the age of seven with the Korean Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra.
Ms. Kim's past performances include playing for the United Nations and Secretary General at Bohemian National Hall and the Henry Kissinger Prize Ceremony at the American Academy in Berlin. She was featured as a soloist at Carnegie's Zankel Hall as a part of the Curtis Chamber Orchestra's residency with Krzysztof Penderecki performing his Duo Concertante. She has appeared multiple times at the Kennedy Center as a performer for the Millennium Stage Series, representing the Curtis Institute of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As a guest artist for Curtis on Tour, she has performed across the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Germany with Roberto Diaz. She was invited to perform on the "Ward" Stradivarius violin at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
An avid chamber musician, Ms. Kim has performed at festivals such as Marlboro Music School and Festival, Ravinia's Steans Institute of Music, Music@Menlo, Music From Angel Fire, Taos School of Music, Aspen Music Festival, Great Mountains Music Festival, amongst others. She has collaborated with prominent artists including Miriam Fried, Nobuko Imai, Peter Wiley, Gary Hoffman, Ralph Kirshbaum, Cynthia Raim, and Eighth Blackbird. She is the former violinist of Ensemble39, a contemporary mixed string and wind quintet devoted to commissioning new music and pushing the boundaries of the concert experience. She performed at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts for two years as an artist in the Evnin Rising Stars series and performs regularly at the Chamber Music Festival of Black Hills.
A winner of Astral Artists 2012 audition, she has been partnered with the Philadelphia Orchestra Department of Education to perform outreach series and has also been invited to be a teaching artist for the William Penn Residency at schools in the Philadelphia area. Ms. Kim has been invited to perform and teach at numerous international music festivals, the latest ones including Teatro Del Lago Festival in Chile and Valdres Music Academy in Norway.
Ms. Kim graduated with a Bachelor's Degree at the Curtis Institute of Music with Ida Kavafian, where she was the recipient of the Rose Paul Fellowship. She won the concertmaster position of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, participated as a mentor in the Curtis Community Engagement program, and was awarded with the prestigious Milka Violin Artist Prize upon graduation. She started the violin at age six and formerly studied with Wei He at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Violist David Samuel has joined the Alexander String Quartet, succeeding founding member Paul Yarbrough in 2021. David was most recently the Associate Principal Viola of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and also the Convenor of Classical Performance at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He was previously the violist of Ensemble MidtVest in Denmark and was the founding violist of the Afiara Quartet. During his eight-year tenure with the Afiara Quartet, Mr. Samuel performed more than 100 works for string quartet in over 400 concerts worldwide. In addition to being the first ensemble ever to receive the Young Canadian Musicians Award, the Afiara Quartet was a top prizewinner at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Concert Artists Guild Competition.
Mr. Samuel has performed at Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, the Esterházy Palace, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, at the headquarters of both LinkedIn and Facebook, and on "The Late Show with David Letterman." He has performed chamber music with Robert Mann, Pinchas Zukerman, Atar Arad, Michael Tree, Colin Carr, Marc Johnson, Joel Krosnick, Sergio Azzolini, James Campbell, Jörg Widmann, and members of the Alexander, Cecilia, Danish, Emerson, and Juilliard String Quartets. Mr. Samuel has recorded for CPO, Dacapo, Foghorn Classics, and Naxos, and has worked as a producer most recently for a recording of Mozart chamber music with the Alexander String Quartet and pianist Joyce Yang.
A dedicated teacher, Mr. Samuel enjoys a passion and commitment to education. In addition to giving hundreds of educational concerts and workshops internationally, he has been a faculty member at the University of Stavanger, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Preparatory Division and has held residencies at San Francisco State University, The Juilliard School, The Glenn Gould School, and the University of Alberta.
Mr. Samuel received his Bachelor and Master of Music, as well as an Artist Diploma, from The Juilliard School. He also received an Artist Certificate in Chamber Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His principal teachers were Paul Hersh, Henry Janzen, Michael Tree, and Karen Tuttle.
Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a First Prize winner of the "Dr. Luis Sigall" International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile and the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White's Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He has also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer. He was a founding member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet and is currently the cellist of the acclaimed Apollo Trio. A recent collaboration with dancer Lil Buck brought forth new pieces for solo cello written by Yevgeniy Sharlat and Patrick Castillo. Mihai studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music where he was awarded master's and artist diploma degrees. He is an alum of The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).
Acclaimed young American pianist Drew Petersen is a sought-after soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician in the United States, Europe and Asia. He's been praised for his commanding and poetic performances of repertoire ranging from Bach to Zaimont, and is the recipient of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2017 American Pianists Award, and the Christel DeHaan Fellow of the American Pianists Association, as well as a residency at the University of Indianapolis.
Since then he has made debuts with the Houston, Phoenix, Tucson, Pacific and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestras, and has appeared in solo recitals at the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, University of Indianapolis, and Dame Myra Hess Concerts in Chicago. Most recent performances include concerts at Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival and Brevard Music Center's Summer Festival, orchestral performances with the Indianapolis Symphony and a recital at Chicago's Ravinia Festival. 2018 also marked the release of his first solo recording of American music on the Steinway label for which BBC Music Magazine acknowledged his presence as a rising star. The 2019-2020 season includes appearances with orchestras in Sarasota, Fort Smith, Buffalo, Waco and Columbus, as well as recitals in Madison, Duluth, Savannah and his Kennedy Center debut.
A frequent radio contributor, Petersen has performed on McGraw-Hill Young Artists Showcase, From the Top, and Performance Today. Profiles include The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the documentary just normal by award-winning director Kim A. Snyder. A champion of chamber music, Petersen has appeared on French radio's France Musique while a member of a Verbier Festival piano trio.
Drew Petersen's firm belief in the importance of music in contemporary society led to collaborations with Young Audiences NY that presents performances in New York City's public schools. His appearance in Andrew Solomon's New York Times bestselling book, Far From the Tree, sparked a nation-wide conversation on raising extraordinary and different children who test the willpower and capabilities of their families and society. Petersen continually advocates for the necessity of classical music and other arts in society, and was named a 2006 Davidson Fellow for his portfolio entitled Keeping Classical Music Alive.
First Prize winner of the 2013 Ima Hogg Competition, Clarinetist Moran Katz also received the Audience Choice Prize as well as the Artistic Encouragement Prize voted on by the Houston Symphony musicians. In the year of 2009 alone, Ms. Katz won the First Prize at the Freiburg International Clarinet Competition in Germany, the Second Prize at the Beijing International Music Competition for Clarinet in China and the First Prize and Overall Prize at the Midland/Odessa "National Young Artist Competition" in Texas.
Her performance credits include recitals for the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series in Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society and the Fine Arts Recital Series in Sarasota, FL; a NY debut recital at Merkin Concert Hall as part of the Tuesday Matinee Recital Series and a Debut at the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic. Chamber Music appearances at the United Nations Hall (Switzerland), France's "Les Musicales" Festival in Colmar, Les Invalides in Paris and Palais des Fetes in Strasburg, Marlboro Music Festival, Canandaigua's Lake Music Festival, Cooperstown Music Festival, Mt. Desert Music Festival, Roaring Hooves Festival in Mongolia, the Two Days and Two Nights Festival in the Ukraine, Music in Drumcliffe (Ireland), Homburg Musiktage (Germany), New York's Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, MoMa, Symphony Space, Miller Theater and Bargemusic, among others.
She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees and an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Charles Neidich and was admitted with presidential distinction and a full scholarship. Ms. Katz was a member of Ensemble ACJW--The Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the NYC department of Education, performing chamber music at Carnegie Hall and bringing classical music to students in the NYC public schools. Ms. Katz was on the faculty of Vassar College (2016-19) and coached chamber music groups at the Juilliard Pre College division.