American violinist Isabelle Ai Durrenberger is praised for her imaginative performances and her ability to communicate with sincere artistry. Based in New York City, she is first violinist of the Aeolus Quartet and a recent graduate of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect program. An avid chamber musician, Durrenberger is recognized for her unique collaborative instincts. Recent engagements include concerts with Boston Chamber Music Society, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music Northwest, Jupiter Chamber Players, The Knights, A Far Cry, and Marlboro Music Festival.

Durrenberger grew up in a musical home in Columbus, Ohio, and began playing piano at age four, beginning violin lessons three years later. At age 13, she began her studies with Jaime Laredo at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She attended Meadowmount School of Music for four years, graduated from high school a year early, and at age 16 began her undergraduate program in Cleveland where she continued receiving mentorship from Laredo. Other influences include Jennifer Koh, Sharon Robinson, Joan Kwuon, Jinjoo Cho, Jan Mark Sloman, and Jun Kim. In 2022, she completed her graduate studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston with Soovin Kim and Don Weilerstein. Durrenberger has a private violin studio in New York City and serves on the violin faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston, where she teaches violin and coaches chamber music. Durrenberger performs on a 2020 Zygmuntowicz violin on private loan from a patron in New York City.

Violinist Alexi Kenney is forging 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, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated artists and 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 Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and San Diego symphonies, l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Gulbenkian Orchestra, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. This season, he plays the complete violin sonatas of Robert Schumann with Amy Yang on period instruments at the Frick Collection, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Phillips Collection. He continues to tour his project Shifting Ground in collaboration with the new media artist Xuan, which intersperses works for solo violin by J.S. Bach with pieces by Matthew Burtner, Mario Davidovsky, Salina Fisher, Nicola Matteis, Angélica Negrón, and Paul Wiancko.

Alexi is a founding member of the two-cello quartet Owls, hailed as a "dream group" by The New York Times, alongside violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko. He regularly performs at chamber music festivals including Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla, Ojai, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Seattle, and Spoleto. He is an alum of the Bowers Program at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried. Previous teachers in the Bay Area include Wei He, Jenny Rudin, and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow made in Port Townsend, WA by Charles Espey in 2024.

Outside of music, Alexi enjoys searching for great food and coffee, baking for friends, and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.

Alicia Hui, currently Principal Second Violin of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, began her musical studies at the age of four and made her orchestral debut at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, Maryland at age nine. Since then, she has soloed with numerous orchestras including the Arlington Symphony, Williamsburg Symphony Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony, the Firelands Symphony Orchestra, the Nationals Repertory Orchestra, the Zurich Symphony Orchestra, the Latvian Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, and the Columbus Symphony Orchestra.  

Ms. Hui was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age 11 where she studies with Victor Danchenko and received her Bachelor’s Degree at sixteen. She received her Master’s Degree, Artist Diploma, and Professional Studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the tutelage of David Cerone, Paul Kantor, and William Preucil. In addition to her current position, Ms. Hui is also a member of the Columbus Ohio Discovery Ensemble and a regular performer and Development Director of the Vivo Music Festival.

Siwoo Kim is an “incisive” and “compelling” (The New York Times) violinist who plays with “stylistic sensitivity and generous tonal nuance” (Chicago Tribune). Siwoo performs as soloist and chamber musician, and he is the co-founding artistic director of VIVO Music Festival in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

As soloist, Siwoo gave the world premiere performance of Samuel Adler’s violin concerto which was written for him. His recording of the work on Linn Records was praised by the BBC Music Magazine for its “notable fire & impassioned playing.” Siwoo made his Carnegie Hall concerto debut with the Juilliard Orchestra and has since performed with orchestras around the world such as the Staatsorchester Brandenburgisches Frankfurt, Houston Symphony, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Orchestre Royal de Chambre, and Seongnam Philharmonic.

As chamber musician, Siwoo regularly collaborates with Concordia Chamber Players, Music From Copland House and the Manhattan Chamber Players. Siwoo’s engagements with Quartet Senza Misura, Ensemble DITTO, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and Decoda have led to international debuts and residencies. Highlights include summers at Marlboro Music Festival, Kennedy Center debut, serving as faculty at Stellenbosch Music Festival and collaborating with veteran artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Joyce DiDonato, and Susan Graham. 

Siwoo received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Juilliard School where he studied under Robert Mann and Donald Weilerstein with full scholarship.

John Stulz (b. 1988) is a member of the Paris-based new music group Ensemble Intercontemporain and co-artistic director of VIVO Music Festival in Columbus, Ohio. His performances have been noted for their "taut control and poetic intensity" (Boston Globe) and "glowing tone and stunning technique" (the Los Angeles Times).

As a member of Ensemble Intercontemporain, John is on the cutting edge of new musical creation, collaborating with the world's leading living composers and performing masterpieces of the 20th and 21st century across the globe.

In 2015, John co-founded the VIVO Music Festival in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio with violinist Siwoo Kim and Ted Ou-Yang. Together they work to bring vital, singular and accessible chamber music performances across central Ohio.

He has performed around the world with organizations and ensembles like Klangforum Wien (Vienna, Austria), the Marlboro Music Festival, Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt, Germany), Omnibus Ensemble (Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Talea Ensemble (New York City), Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra.

From 2007 to 2012, John was founding co-artistic director of the Los Angeles based What's Next? Ensemble with conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni. Under their joint leadership, What's Next? presented the works of over 70 southern California composers as well as masterpieces by composers ranging from Gérard Grisey to JacobTV.

John has taught at Ecoles d'Art Américaines de Fontainebleau since 2017. He has worked with students at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, Oberlin Conservatory, Conservatoire du Grand Besançon, Northern Colorado University, and on faculty at the Lucerne Festival Academy, IRCAM's ManiFeste festival, and the Decoda Skidmore Chamber Music Institute.

John’s original compositions have been presented by the New Philharmonic (Omaha), Splendor Amsterdam, the Van Abbenmuseum (Eindhoven), the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and Omnibus Ensemble.

John studied at the University of Southern California (BM, 2010), New England Conservatory (MM, 2013), and as a fellow of Carnegie Hall's Ensemble ACJW (2011-2013). His primary teachers include Kim Kashkashian, Donald McInnes, Garth Knox, and Roland and Almita Vamos.

Isabella Prater is a violist, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose musical passions range across chamber music, community engagement, diverse and contemporary compositions, and arts administration. Isabella vigorously pursues programming diverse and contemporary composers, playing works by composers such as Jennifer Higdon, Tessa Lark, Caroline Shaw, and Joan Tower on her most recent solo recitals, and self-programming a classical music radio show on WSUM 91.7FM exploring underrepresented composers and artists. She graduated with a Master of Music at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music this Spring, where she studied with Ayane Kozasa, and received a Bachelor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music studying with Sally Chisholm.

Praised for “her sense of joyful virtuosity” as concerto soloist (South Florida Classical Review), cellist Julia Yang is multi-faceted performer, and founding member of the “riveting” (Reading Eagle) and “impeccably elegant” Merz Trio (All About the Arts) and multidisciplinary Trio Phōs.

On stage as soloist and chamber musician, Yang has been described as the “stunning find of the evening” (New York Classical Review) with recent and forthcoming recitals at Newport Classical, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, DACAMERA Houston, the People’s Symphony Concerts and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. 

Yang’s Merz Trio are winners of the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Prize as well as first prize winners of the Concert Artists Guild, Fischoff and Chesapeake International Chamber Music competitions. The Trio tour widely and present innovative multidisciplinary concert experiences that interweave repertoire of the traditional piano trio genre with diverse art forms. With her clarinet trio, Trio Phōs, Yang’s latest project, The Sound of Connection, is supported in part by the New World Symphony and a Visiting Artists residency at The Ohio State University, with a mission to foster intergenerational connection with older adults through music, dance and story-telling. 

Yang’s orchestral leadership experiences includes serving as principal cellist of the Colorado Music Festival under Peter Oundjian and performing and touring as principal of the New World Symphony as a fellow under conductors such as Susanna Mälkki, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, and Leonard Slatkin. 

A dedicated pedagogue, Yang is Visiting Assistant Professor of Cello at The Ohio State University and has previously served as a cello instructor and chamber music coach at the University of Pennsylvania and at the College of the Holy Cross. She holds degrees from Northwestern University and the New England Conservatory. Away from the cello, you’ll find her reading or checking out the local arts scene, enjoying the outdoors or nearby gym, and cooking and crafting cocktails.

Jordan Dodson, described by Performance Today as “one of the top young guitarists of his generation,” is a musician and educator. A passionate advocate of contemporary music, Dodson has given the premiere of hundreds of new works. In 2013 he was the first guitarist to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music’s new guitar program. In the same year he won Astral Artists’ National Auditions and was selected to be Young Artist in Residence on American Public Media.

He recently appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra with the premiere of Andrea Clearfield’s new concerto, Glow. He plays in several New York City chamber ensembles including the Metropolis Ensemble and the New York City Guitar Quartet, and frequently collaborates with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Curtis on Tour, the American Modern Opera Company, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, and Contemporaneous. He has performed alongside such musicians as Roberto Díaz, Anne Marie-McDermott, and Ransom Wilson.

Dodson has appeared on several commercially available recordings including Jason Eckardt’s Subject. His most recent recordings are Elliot Cole’s Nightflower and Journals, vol. 1. As collaborator with American Modern Opera Company, he has helped create the guitar part for a new arrangement of John Adams’ El Niño, which received its premiere in New York City in 2022.

Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Dodson is on faculty at EzraGuitar and The Smith School in New York City. He has given masterclasses and lectures and holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Cincinnati, and his teachers have included Clare Callahan, David Starobin, and Jason Vieaux.

Jordan is endorsed by Oasis strings and plays a Gary Lee guitar. 

Liam Battle is a cellist in search of spirituality and liberation through performance and ritual. The music he specializes in concerns a wide range of American and Western styles from the mid-century Avant-Garde to new experimental music and free improvisation. He regularly performs in settings that straddle the improvisation, classical, and experimental worlds and he hopes to blur the lines that create such distinctions.

The common thread in all of Liam’s work is a commitment to newness. As a founder of the Antigone Music Collective, he regularly curates and performs contemporary classical music. The ensemble was noted for “Their technical mastery, rich tone, and fluid character…” by Cleveland Classical. Always on the cutting edge of performance and technology, they have also been hailed for their unique integration of mixed media into performance: “the pedal stomping to turn digital pages was distracting.”

Bringing new works into the world is a major part of the work Liam does with the AMC and outside of it. Liam has been the commissioner or dedicatee of dozens of works by composers including Brian Raphael Nabors, Gregory Rowland Evans, Kevin Kay, and Emma Tucker. He has also collaborated with a wide variety of today’s leading classical composers including Joan Tower, Marilyn Shrude, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and Juri Seo. Classical concertizing has brought Liam in front of orchestras performing the concerti of Qigang Chen and Iannis Xenakis. Liam holds a BM from the University of Cincinnati and is pursuing an MM at the Cleveland Institute of Music.