The Financial Times (London) acclaimed that “Korliss Uecker, a bright and pretty American soprano, was charming, crystalline of voice and sparkling as an actress.” Uecker has sung over 150 performances at the Metropolitan Opera including Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro (international radio broadcast), Marzelline in Fidelio, Oscar in A Masked Ball, and Valencienne in The Merry Widow. She sang Giannetta in a telecast of The Elixir of Love with Lucianno Pavarotti and Frasquita in Carmen with Placido Domingo. Other opera credits include Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire in Strasbourg, France; Sybil in the Picture of Dorian Gray with Opera de Monte Carlo; the Wexford Festival, Santa Fe Opera, the Spoleto Festival and the Ravinia Festival, and the Library of Congress. In 2012 she sang at the International Women and Lied Conference in Ireland. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophone, London Decca, Arabesque Records and has appeared on CBS Sunday Morningand Live from Lincoln Center. Ms Uecker’s recording with New World Records features the songs of Victor Herbert and was released May 1, 2012. Korliss has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard school, a Bachelor of Science from the University of North Dakota and was a Registered Nurse before she began her singing career. Her husband is Jerry Grossman, principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and their daughter, Katya, is a Junior at Nyack High School.

Christopher Oldfather has devoted himself to the performance of twentieth-century music for more than twenty years. He has participated in innumerable world-premiere performances, in every possible combination of instruments, in cities all over America. He has been a member of Boston’s Collage New Music since 1979, New York City’s Parnassus since 1997, appears regularly in Chicago, and as a collaborator has joined singers and instrumentalists of all kinds in recitals throughout the United States. In 1986 he presented his recital debut in Carnegie Recital Hall, which immediately was closed for renovations. Since then he has pursued a career as a free-lance musician. This work has taken him as far a field as Moscow and Tokyo, and he has worked on every sort of keyboard ever made, including, of all things, the chromelodeon. He is widely known for his expertise on the harpsichord, and is one of the leading interpreters of 20th century works for that instrument.
 

He has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the New World Symphony and Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, Germany. His recording of Elliott Carter’s Violin-Piano Duo with Robert Mann was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 1990. In more recent years he has collaborated with the conductor Robert Craft, and can be heard on several of his recordings. Mr. Oldfather is also known for his work in the chamber music field, with performances in Washington with the Julliard String Quartet.

Jerry Grossman has been principal cellist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1986. He has appeared in recital, and with symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States. He made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the following year performed the American premiere of Kurt Weill’s 1920 Cello Sonata, which led to recording that work, as well as solo works by Dohnanyi, Prokofiev, Bartok, and Kodaly for Nonesuch Records. He has appeared as soloist in Carnegie Hall and on domestic and European tours with the Met Orchestra under James Levine playing Don Quixote by Richard Strauss. The performance has also been recorded for Deutsche Grammophon.
 
A long association with the Marlboro Music Festival, including numerous ‘Music from Marlboro’ tours and recordings, figures prominently in Mr. Grossman’s chamber music experience. He is a former member of Orpheus and Speculum Musicae, and has also appeared as a guest artist with the Guarneri, Vermeer, and Emerson String Quartets. He was the founding cellist of both the Chicago String Quartet and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. Before assuming his position at the Metropolitan Opera, Mr. Grossman was a member of the Chicago Symphony for two seasons and the New York Philharmonic for two seasons.
 
Mr. Grossman began his music studies in his native Cambridge, Massachusetts. His teachers there included Judith Davidoff, Joan Esch and Benjamin Zander. He attended the CurtisInstitute of Music, where he studied cello with David Soyer and chamber music with the other members of the Guarneri Quartet. Sandor Vegh and Harvey Shapiro were also important influences.

Mikhail Kopelman was born in Uzhgorod (former USSR) and studied with Maya Glezarova and Yuri Yankelevich at the Moscow Conservatory. He is a former member of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and concertmaster of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra; former first violinist of the Borodin String Quartet and the Tokyo String Quartet; and former faculty member, Moscow Conservatory and Yale School of Music. He has given master classes at major conservatories across Europe. He was a prize-winner in the Jacques Thibaud International Competition and a recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award and the Concertgebouw Silver Medal of Honour. For over 15 years Mr. Kopelman performed and recorded with Sviatoslav Richter. He has also collaborated with Mstislav Rostropovich, Gidon Kremer, Natalia Gutman, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Alicia de Larrocha, Christoph Eschenbach, Yuri Bashmet, Victor Tretyakov, Elisso Virsaladze, Peter Donohoe, Boris Berman, and Emanuel Ax. Kopelman has made about thirty recordings for the Melodia, EMI, Virgin Classics, Teldec, Nimbus, Wigmore Live and Philips labels. In 2002 Mikhail Kopelman formed the Kopelman Quartet and in the same year was appointed a Professor of Violin at the Eastman School of Music.

Prizewinner of the Wieniawski and Paganini International Violin Competitions, violinist Bracha Malkin was featured in Musical America 2008 as an up-and-coming talent and was named by Henry Roth, in his book Violin Virtuosos from Paganini to the 21st Century, as one of the “gifted young violinists who are among the vanguard leading the march of violin art into the 21st century.” Ms. Malkin has been heard in numerous performances worldwide, both with orchestra and in recital including with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Academic Symphony, Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, Simon Bolivar Orchestra, Bogota Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfonica of Teatro Municipal de Sao Paulo, Israel Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Rishon Lizion Symphony Orchestra, Bologna Symphony, Nederlands Promenade Orchestra and the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, she collaborated with Yuri Bashmet, Irena Grafenauer, Gary Hoffman and Lynn Harrell at Kronberg Academy´s Chamber Music Connects the World 2008 (Germany). She spent two summers at the Marlboro Music Festival and has performed at the Menton Music Festival (France), Delft and Storioni Festivals in the Netherlands and appears regularly at the Academy of Music Summer Festival in Nyack, New York. Ms. Malkin is a member of the “Malkin Duo” with her sister, Anat Malkin Almani. Bracha Malkin studied with her father, Isaac Malkin, as well as Aaron Rosand, Miriam Fried and Boris Belkin.

Israeli-born Anat Malkin Almani began her violin studies with her father, Isaac Malkin. At the age of ten, she toured as a soloist in California, Mexico and Norway. She made her Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 16 under the baton of Alexander Schneider. Other performances have taken her throughout Holland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, the United Kingdom and the United States. She is the recipient of numerous awards and was the winner of many competitions. She has been heard on WQXR in New York as part of the Young Artists Series hosted by Robert Sherman. An active chamber musician, Ms. Almani performs regularly with her sister, violinist Bracha Malkin, as part of the The Malkin Duo. Among a few of the Duo’s highlights have been recitalsin Israel, in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and the premier performance of David Ward-Steinman’s Concerto for Two Violins in La Jolla, California. Ms. Almani holds a Bachelor’sDegree from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Cho-Liang Lin, and has a Master’s Degree, cum laude, from the Maastricht Conservatorium in Holland, where she studied with Boris Belkin. In his book entitled Violin Virtuosos from Paganini to the 21st Century, Henry Roth named her as one of the “gifted young violinists who are among the vanguard leading the march of violin art into the 21st century”. Ms. Almani is on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division.

Nicholas Mann, violin and viola, grew up surrounded by music and musicians. From an early age he has collaborated with such noted artists as Itzhak Perlman, Lynn Harrell and with his father, violinist Robert Mann and has performed throughout the United States and Canada.
 
Mr. Mann has performed extensively as a recitalist and soloist. In New York alone, he has appeared on the Great Performers Series at Alice Tully Hall, with Chamber Music at the “Y”, and has served asconcertmaster of the Jupiter Symphony. After receiving Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School where he studied with Dorothy Delay, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983. His participation in summer festivals includes eight years at the Yellow Barn music festival, solo performances at the Ravinia Festival, several seasons with the Aspen Music Festival and frequent engagements with San Francisco’s Chamber Music West and Colorado’s Baca Ensemble. Mr. Mann is a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet. He has been a member of the faculty at the Juilliard School since 2002 and is now Chair of the String Department at the Manhattan School of Music.

David Geber had his early musical training in Los Angeles, where he was raised in a family of professional cellists. He holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Juilliard School. Mr. Geber has been recipient of numerous cello and chamber music awards, including the Walter W. Naumburg Award and the Coleman Chamber Music Prize. He has appeared as soloist at Tanglewood Music Center and Aspen Music Festival, as well as with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Montreal Symphony. A strong supporter of new music, he has premiered numerous works for cello as well as for varied chamber combinations. As a founding member of the American String Quartet, he concertized internationally with that ensemble for twenty-eight years. Mr. Geber is Vice Provost and Dean of Artistic Affairs at Manhattan School of Music in New York City, as well as a longtime member of the School’s cello and chamber music faculty. He is artist/faculty at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California and at Tanglewood Music Center. He serves as a tutor in the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme in the United Kingdom and has recently joined the roster of DeTao Masters Academy in China. He has recorded for Albany Records, Capstone Records, CRI, Musical Heritage Society, New World Records, Nonesuch Records, and RCA. Mr. Geber frequently performs and presents cello/chamber music master classes in North America, Europe and Asia, as well as serving as adjudicator for major international string competitions including Bordeaux, Evian and Naumburg. He is on the boards of the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation and American Friends of Kronberg Academy. His cello is a rare G.B. Ruggieri, made in Cremona in 1667.

Julia Lichten enjoys a varied career as soloist, chamber musician and teacher in the New York area. She received degrees from Harvard-Radcliffe and the New England Conservatory, where her principal teachers were Mischa Nieland and Paul Tobias. A member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra from 1995-2014, Ms. Lichten has toured as soloist with Orpheus, as well as with Musicians from Marlboro and the American Chamber Players. Festival engagements have included Marlboro, Tanglewood, Taos, Library of Congress, Caramoor, Rockport, Chesapeake Chamber Music, and Evian. Ms. Lichten is a frequent guest with the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and has served as artist/faculty at Kneisel Hall, Mannes Beethoven Institute, and Perlman Music Program. She has recorded for Marlboro Recording Society, Arabesque, Koch International Classics, Music Masters, Sony Classical, and Deutsche Gramaphon. She is a faculty member at Manhattan School of Music and the Conservatory of Music at Purchase College.