Chamber Music Seminar Faculty

2026 Guest Artists & Faculty

Violinist Alexi Kenney has forged a career that defies categorization, following his interests, intuition, and heart. He is equally at home creating experimental programs and commissioning new works, soloing with major orchestras in the USA and abroad, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of our time. Alexi is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Alexi has performed as soloist with the Detroit Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, California Symphony, and Sarasota Orchestra, as well as in a play-conduct role as guest leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, on Carnegie Hall’s ‘Distinctive Debuts’ series, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, 92nd Street Y, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild Competition and laureate of the 2012 Menuhin Competition, Alexi has been profiled by Musical America, Strings Magazine, and The New York Times, and has written for The Strad.

Chamber music continues to be a major part of Alexi’s life, regularly performing at festivals including Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Chamber Music Northwest, Kronberg, La Jolla, Ojai, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Seattle, and Spoleto, as well as on tour with Musicians from Marlboro and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is a founding member of Owls, a new quartet collective with violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko.

PAMELA FRANK, violin

Pamela Frank has established an outstanding international reputation across an unusually varied range of performing activity. As a soloist she has performed with leading orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Berlin Philharmonic and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Pamela performed regularly with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, recording the complete Mozart Violin Concertos with them and David Zinman and has also recorded a Schubert album and the Beethoven sonata cycle, both with her father Claude Frank. Pamela is a sought-after chamber musician and has performed at many international festivals including Aldeburgh, Verbier, Edinburgh, Salzburg, Tanglewood, Marlboro and Ravinia.

Aside from her devotion to works of the standard repertory, Pamela has performed and recorded a number of contemporary works. Her accomplishments were recognized in 1999 with the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize. Pamela is professor of violin at the Curtis Institute of Music and teaches and coaches annually at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Verbier Festivals. From 2008 to 2024, she was the Artistic Director of the Evnin Rising Stars, a mentoring program for young artists at Caramoor Center for the Arts. Her newest venture is the formation of Fit as a Fiddle Inc., a collaboration with physical therapist Howard Nelson in which they use both their expertise for injury prevention and treatment of musicians.

DANIEL PHILLIPS, violin

Violinist Daniel Phillips enjoys a versatile career as an established chamber musician, solo artist, and teacher. In 2020, he was named co-artistic director of Music from Angel Fire with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor.

A graduate of The Juilliard School, Mr. Phillips’s major teachers were his father, Eugene Phillips; Ivan Galamian; Sally Thomas; Nathan Milstein; Sandor Vegh; and George Neikrug. He’s a founding member of the Orion String Quartet, which was established in 1987. The quartet was in residence at the Mannes School of Music for 27 years, and it performs regularly with The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The quartet’s discography includes the complete quartets of Beethoven and Kirchner.

OWEN DALBY, violin

Praised as “dazzling” (The New York Times), “expert and versatile” (The New Yorker), and “a fearless and inquisitive violinist” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Owen Dalby leads a multifaceted musical life as a soloist, chamber musician, new and early music specialist, orchestral leader, and educator. He is Artist-in-Residence at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco.

From 2015 until the ensemble’s retirement in 2024, Owen was a member of the St Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ), touring all the major chamber music series throughout North America and Europe. During this period he appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Philharmonic (Tokyo) among others. Acclaimed recordings include Haydn’s Op. 20 and Op. 76 string quartets and Korngold’s Piano Quintet Op. 15 with Stephen Prutsman. SLSQ was a particularly beloved ensemble in the world of contemporary string quartets, performing many dozens of concerts each season, nurturing communities of chamber music enthusiasts around the world, and inspiring multiple generations of young artists.

Previously based in New York City, Owen co-founded Decoda (https://decodamusic.org/), Carnegie Hall’s affiliate ensemble, and served as concertmaster of Novus NY, Trinity Wall Street’s contemporary music orchestra. He was also a core member of the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, performing the complete Bach cantatas and passions. Owen is a former fellow of Ensemble Connect (Carnegie Hall/Juilliard) and has taught widely at leading conservatories and universities internationally. With his wife, violist Meena Bhasin, he is Co-Artistic and Executive Director of Noe Music (https://noemusic.org/), an acclaimed concert series in San Francisco. He performs on the 2015 Samuel Zygmuntowicz violin that belonged to his friend and colleague, the late Geoff Nuttall.

AYANE KOZASA, viola

Hailed for her "magnetic, wide-ranging tone" and her "rock solid technique" (Philadelphia Inquirer), violist Ayane Kozasa is a member of the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet. Their current season tours include performance venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to the Vicenza Jazz Festival, and they will be making stops in Brazil, Japan, Sweden, and Latvia. Many of their concerts include dynamic collaborators such as Indonesian singer Peni Candra Rini, visual storytellerAriel Aberg-Riger, and composer Terry Riley. Ayane is also a member of the quartet collective Owls, whose debut album Rare Birds was just released on New Amsterdam Records this spring. As a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet, she toured with the group for 11 years, garnering a Grammy nomination and capturing grand prizes at the M Prize Chamber Arts Competition and the Osaka International String Quartet Competition. Much of Ayane’s current work involves mentoring young musicians through programs like the Meadowmount School of Music, and she is currently on the viola faculty at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Aside from music, she enjoys hiking, doodling, and creating animation.

DIMITRI MURRATH, viola

Born in Brussels, Belgian American viola player Dimitri Murrath made his mark on the international scene, performing as a recitalist and soloist in venues including Kennedy Center (Washington), Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room, Royal Festival Hall (London), and Théâtre de la Ville (Paris).A first prize winner at the Primrose International Viola Competition, Dimitri Murrath has won numerous awards, including top prizes at the Tokyo International Viola Competition and ARD Munich Competition. In 2012, he was named laureate of the Juventus Festival, an award recognizing young European soloists. He is a recipient of a 2014 Avery Fisher Career Grant through which he recorded and released his first solo album recording music by Vieuxtemps, Clarke and Hindemith in 2017.An avid chamber musician, Mr. Murrath is the violist of the Esmé Quartet since 2023. Prior to that, he was a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society from 2013 to 2023. He has collaborated with Richard Goode, Gidon Kremer, Menahem Pressler, Mitsuko Uchida, and members of the Cleveland, Mendelssohn and Guarneri Quartets. He has performed in festivals that include Verbier, Caramoor, Juventus, and Marlboro.Dimitri Murrath began his musical education at the Yehudi Menuhin School studying with Natalia Boyarsky, his Bachelor of Music in London with David Takeno at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and graduated with an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory as a student of Kim Kashkashian.After 9 years teaching viola at New England Conservatory, he is currently Professor of Viola and Chair of Chamber Music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.Dimitri Murrath participates in the Music for Food project, which raises awareness of the hunger problem faced by a large percent of the population, and gives the opportunity to experience the powerful role music can play as a catalyst for change.

LESLEY ROBERTSON, viola
After celebrating 34 years with the internationally celebrated St. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ), Lesley Robertson (viola) continues to make her life at Stanford University (1998–present), where she co-directs the Chamber Music program, teaches viola, spearheads the Emerging String Quartet Program and directs the annual St. Lawrence Chamber Music Seminar . A graduate of the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School, she also matriculated from the University of British Columbia, where she studied with her mentor, Gerald Stanick. A founding member of the SLSQ, Ms. Robertson toured regularly with the ensemble, performing 100+ concerts worldwide per season ( in Berlin, Florence, London, Paris, New York, and Toronto..), while nurturing close ties to the Stanford community through performances in classes, dormitories, laboratories, hospitals, and Stanford’s glorious Bing Concert Hall. She participated in the Marlboro Festival for several seasons and toured with Musicians from Marlboro before co-founding the SLSQ. She has served on the jury of international competitions including the Banff, Melbourne, Geneva and Wigmore Hall string quartet competitions. Summer festivals include Spoleto Festival USA, Norfolk, Banff, Santa Fe, Rockport, Bravo Vail, Music@Menlo and more. Robertson plays a viola (1992) by fellow Canadian John Newton and a bow (2016) by François Malo.

STEVEN TENENBOM, viola

Steven Tenenbom, born in Phoenix, is the violist with the Orion String Quartet and Opus One, and he has appeared as a guest artist with the Guarneri and Emerson string quartets, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson and Beaux Arts trios, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and on the 92nd Street Y Chamber Series. He has been a soloist with the Utah Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and Brandenburg Ensemble on tour through the U.S. and Japan. He has toured and recorded with Tashi, the Galimir String Quartet, and Musicians from Marlboro, in addition to working with composer Lukas Foss and jazz artists Chick Corea and Wynton Marsalis. He graduated from Curtis in 1979, having studied with Michael Tree and Karen Tuttle. Tenenbom, who has been a Juilliard faculty member since 2006, also serves on the faculties of Curtis, Mannes College of Music, and Bard College Conservatory of Music.

JENNAH DELP SOMERS, voice

Jennah earned a Master of Music in Choral Conducting with distinction from Westminster Choir College and undergraduate degrees in Vocal Performance and Music Education from the University of Michigan, summa cum laude. She has prepared choirs for performances of major works, national tours, and the Spoleto Festival USA. As an active performer, Jennah has sung with the world’s leading orchestras, including: The New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Spoleto Festival Orchestra, The Lucerne Festival Orchestra, The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Staatskapelle Berlin. Most recently, Jennah sang in The Crossing, a Grammy-award winning professional choral ensemble that champions new repertoire and the Carmel Bach Festival Chorus. She can be heard on Flower of Beauty, a critically acclaimed recording by the Westminster Choir and Hesperus is Phosphorus by The Crossing. Jennah co-founded iSing in the summer of 2013. iSing is now a thriving organization that serves 375 young singers in Silicon Valley. Jennah loves her home in the Bay Area that she shares with her husband, Adam, daughter, Ada, and puppy, Ripley.

HANNAH COLLINS, cello

Cellist Hannah Collins is a multifaceted artist, educator, and arts-in-health advocate. Winner of De Linkprijs for contemporary interpretation, she is committed to championing compelling new works for cello. Resonance Lines, her solo debut album on the Sono Luminus label, is an “adventurous, impressive collection of contemporary solo cello music,” negotiated “with panache” (The Strad), pairing music by Benjamin Britten and Kaija Saariaho with commissioned works by Caroline Shaw and Thomas Kotcheff. Over the past decade, New Morse Code, her “remarkably inventive and resourceful duo” (Gramophone) with percussionist Michael Compitello, has developed projects responding to our society’s most pressing issues and in 2020 they were awarded the Ariel Avant Impact Performance Prize. Hannah is a member of Decoda and the Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry, having also recently performed with The Knights, Bach Aria Soloists, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She earned a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Yale and also holds degrees in music from the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and CUNY Graduate Center. She is an alumna of Ensemble Connect, a collaborative program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute and has held faculty positions at the University of Kansas and University of Chicago. She is the executive director of the Longwood Symphony, the orchestra of Boston’s healthcare community, which is devoted to promoting the role of the arts in individual and community health.

NINA LEE, cello

An active chamber musician, Nina Lee has collaborated with such artists as Felix Galimir, Jaime Laredo, David Soyer, Nobuko Imai, Isidore Cohen, and Mitsuko Uchida. She has toured with Musicians from Marlboro and participated in the El Paso and the Portland Chamber Music Festivals. She has also performed for the Helicon Foundation and Bargemusic in New York City. Her principal teachers have been Joel Krosnick, David Soyer and Anne Fagerburg-Jacob. She has received degrees and certificates from The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. As an advocate of music education, Ms. Lee has served as returning guest faculty at the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar at Stanford and at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music’s Summer Chamber Music Workshop. In 2012,she made a cameo appearance in A Late Quartet, a film which featured the Brentano Quartet on its soundtrack. Before joining the Yale faculty as a member of the Brentano Quartet, Ms. Lee taught at Princeton and Columbia Universities.

PAUL WIANCKO, cello

Paul Wiancko is an acclaimed composer and cellist. The Washington Post describes Wiancko as “a restless and multifaceted talent who plays well with others”—a reference to his substantial collaborations with artists like Max Richter, Chick Corea, Norah Jones, Arcade Fire, and The National. “Even with this chronically collaborative spirit,” the Post continues, “Wiancko maintains a singular voice as a composer.” In 2023, Paul was named Director of Chamber Music at Spoleto Festival USA. As cellist of the internationally-celebrated Kronos Quartet, Wiancko regularly appears on the world's foremost stages—including Carnegie Hall, the Barbican, and the Sydney Opera House. Wiancko first collaborated with the Kronos Quartet in 2018 when he was invited to compose a piece for 50 For The Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, and soon after toured with the quartet as guest cellist. Upon officially joining the group in 2023, violinist and Kronos artistic director David Harrington stated, "We look forward to soaring into the future with the catalytic, super-charged vitality of Paul’s playing. It will be so much fun to explore the vast world of music together with Paul.”

A serial chamber musician, Wiancko is a founding member of the viola and cello duo Ayane & Paul, as well as Owls, a quartet-collective dubbed a “dream group” by The New York Times. He has shared the stage with many of today’s most prominent artists, including Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, Yo-Yo Ma, Terry Riley, Caroline Shaw, and members of the Emerson, Guarneri, St. Lawrence, and JACK quartets. From 2009 to 2011, he was cellist of the Harlem Quartet, with whom he performed and taught extensively throughout the US, Europe, South America, and Africa.

ANTHONY MANZO, bass

Anthony Manzo’s vibrantly interactive and highly communicative music-making has made him a ubiquitous figure in the upper echelons of classical music, performing at noted venues including Lincoln Center, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. He appears regularly with the Chamber Music Society, both in New York and across the country. He serves as the solo bassist of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra and as a guest with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and A Far Cry. He is a regular guest with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Society, and the Baltimore Symphony when he happens to be near his home in Washington, DC. Formerly the solo bassist of the Munich Chamber Orchestra in Germany, he has also been guest principal with Camerata Salzburg in Austria, where collaborations have included a summer residency at the Salzburg Festival and two tours as soloist alongside bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, performing Mozart’s “Per questa bella mano.” He is an active performer on period instruments, with groups including the Handel & Haydn Society of Boston (where his playing was lauded as “endowed with beautiful and unexpected plaintiveness” by the Boston Musical Intelligencer), Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco, and Opera Lafayette in Washington, DC. He is on the double bass and chamber music faculty of the University of Maryland. Manzo performs on a double bass made around 1890 by Jérôme Thibouville-Lamy in Paris (which now has a removable neck for travel!).

PEDJA MUZIJEVIC, piano

Pianist Pedja Muzijevic has toured extensively as soloist with orchestras and as a recitalist throughout eastern and western Europe, Great Britain, Canada, the United States, South America, Australia, and Asia. A native of Sarajevo, his artistic curiosity has led him to explore both the music of the 18th and 19th centuries on period instruments and the music of contemporary composers such as Knussen, Carter, Cage, Henze, Nancarrow, Crumb, Adès, and many others. His many festival engagements include, among others, performances at Tanglewood, Spoleto USA, Mostly Mozart, Newport, OK Mozart, Bridgehampton, Bay Chamber Concerts, San Miguel de Allende, Aldeburgh, Lucerne, Holland, Melbourne, Aix-en-Provence, Dubrovnik, Merano, and Bratislava festivals. Mr. Muzijevic’s recording Sonatas and Other Interludesis available on Albany Records—it juxtaposes music for prepared piano by John Cage with composers ranging from W. F. Bach to Liszt.

JOHN NOVACEK, piano

Versatile, Grammy-nominated pianist John Novacek regularly tours the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia as solo recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist; in the latter capacity he has presented over thirty concerti with dozens of orchestras. John Novacek is a highly sought-after collaborative artist and has performed with Joshua Bell, Renaud Capuçon, Jeremy Denk, Matt Haimovitz, Leila Josefowicz, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Truls Mørk, Elmar Oliveira and Emmanuel Pahud, and, as well as the Afiara, Colorado, Harrington, Jupiter, New Hollywood, St. Lawrence, SuperNova and Ying string quartets. He also tours widely as a member of the multi-faceted Intersection, a piano trio that includes violinist Kaura Frautschi and cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper. As a tireless advocate for contemporary music, Mr. Novacek has also given numerous world premieres and worked closely with composers John Adams, Kenji Bunch, Gabriela Lena Frank, John Harbison, Jennifer Higdon, George Rochberg, Robert Sierra, John Williams and John Zorn. In 2022, John Novacek was appointment to the Piano and Collaborative Piano faculty of The Mannes School of Music at The New School’s College of Performing Arts in New York City.

STEPHEN PRUTSMAN, piano

Stephen Prutsman has been described as one of the most innovative musicians of his time. Moving easily from classical to jazz to world music styles as a pianist, composer and conductor, Prutsman continues to explore and seek common ground and relationships in the music of all cultures and languages. From 2004-2007 Stephen was Artistic Partner with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, where he conducted concertos from the keyboard, performed in chamber ensembles, conducted works of living composers, developed and arranged collaborations for their Engine 408 series of contemporary and world music, and wrote several new works for the orchestra. From 2009 – 2012 he was the Artistic Director of the Cartagena International Festival of Music, South America’s largest festival of its kind, programming and curating concerts with themes ranging from Mozart celebrations, to eclectic evenings of folk and popular music of the Americas, to hybrid programs fusing art and dance music of multiple musical dimensions.

TODD PALMER, clarinet

Clarinetist Todd Palmer has appeared as soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator, educator, arranger, and presenter in a variety of musical endeavors around the world. A three time Grammy nominated artist, he has appeared as soloist with the Atlanta, Houston, BBC Scotland orchestras; St. Paul, New York, Cincinnati, Montréal, and Metamorphosen chamber orchestras, as well as many others. He’s collaborated with many of the worlds finest string ensembles such as the St. Lawrence, Brentano, Borromeo, Pacifica, Daedalus and Ying quartets; and has also shared the stage with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Elizabeth Futral, Heidi Grant Murphy and Dawn Upshaw, and many other notable instrumentalists. He has championed Osvaldo Golijov’s Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind around the world and commissioned the theatre work Orpheus and Euridice by Ricky Ian Gordon which was presented by Great Performers at Lincoln Center in 2005 . He was a winner of the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, and has participated in numerous music festivals in the US and abroad including 18 years at Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC, 5 years at the Marlboro Festival and the Tanglewood Institute, where he was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship. He has also held principle clarinet positions in the Minnesota Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Lukes, the Gotham Chamber Opera and the Grand Teton Festival. In 2008 he premiered David Bruce’s Gumboots, a Carnegie Hall commission that was written especially for him and the St. Lawrence Quartet, and for two years appeared in Lincoln Center’s revival of South Pacific.Recently he appeared as soloist in Robert Lepage’s staging of Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and Other Fables at BAM — dressed as a Cossack and performed the Mozart clarinet concerto as a part of Great Performers at Lincoln Center’s What Makes It Great series.

HOWARD NELSON, PT

Howard Nelson has been a physical therapist since 1989. He worked for ten years at Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC. Howard helped form the hospital’s Physical Therapy Outpatient Spine Center and served as its clinical supervisor. He also worked for five years in HSS’s sports medicine department. Currently he is in private practice in New York City. During 2007 to 2014 he taught a lecture/lab class on movement system impairments for Columbia University’s physical therapy program. Over the past ten years Mr. Nelson has worked and studied with Washington University’s physical therapy department, developing his expertise in movement system impairments. Specifically, he analyzes how postures and movements can be the cause of injury and pain. His physical therapy practice is focused on treating the biomechanical and neuromuscular causes of injuries by modifying faulty movement patterns.

During the last few years Mr. Nelson has been applying movement system principles to musicians. He has presented Pamela Frank’s case study and worked with musicians at festivals in Rolle and Verbier, Switzerland; Rice University, Caramoor, Chicago Music Institute, Manhattan School of Music, New England Conservatory, Curtis Institute, New World Symphony, the Tokyo Viola and Menuhin Competitions, the Tanglewood Music Center, UCLA, USC, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Trident Medical Center, The Performing Arts Medicine Association, Yale University School of Music, The Juilliard School, Peabody Institute, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Oberlin Conservatory, University of Auckland, Music Academy of the West, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.