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 | Richard Aaron
Richard Aaron has traveled extensively, giving master classes in Madrid, Spain; Manheim, Germany; Seoul, Korea; Matsumoto, Japan; and Paris, France. He has presented master classes in the U.S. at many leading schools, including Rice, Eastman, Michigan and Oberlin. During summers, he has taught at the Aspen Music Festival, Indiana University String Academy, Calgary Music Bridge, Aria, Innsbruck, the Chautauqua Festival and Idyllwild. Mr. Aaron’s students have won numerous national and international competitions and have performed as soloists with prestigious orchestras, including the Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Seattle Symphonies. Award-winning quartets, including the Biava, Fry Street and American, include his students. He is a member of the Elysian Trio, in residence at Baldwin-Wallace College. Mr. Aaron served on the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music and ENCORE School for Strings faculties for fourteen years prior to his appointment at the University of Michigan.
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 | Sanford Allen
Violinist Sanford Allen was appointed Director of the Clarion Concerts in Columbia County’s Leaf Peeper Series after the death of its founder Newell Jenkins. Mr. Allen started his study of the violin at the age of seven and entered the Juilliard School of Music at age ten, continuing at the Mannes College of Music under Mme. Vera Fonaroff. In 1962 he became the first black musician ever to become a regular member of the New York Philharmonic. Regarding his recording of Cordero’s violin concerto with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Strad magazine said: “Its virtuoso challenges are thrillingly met by Sanford Allen - a fabulous player who was, incidentally, the first African-American to gain a regular place with the New York Philharmonic in 1962. Despite the challenging nature of the writing, the listener’s attention is held effortlessly throughout due largely to the extraordinary commitment and finesse of Allen’s playing. Indeed the intensity generated by this impassioned performance is nothing short of overwhelming. Well worth seeking out”. His solo appearances with orchestra have included the Quebec, Baltimore, Detroit Symphonies and the New York Philharmonic. He served on the advisory panel of the New York State Arts Council and was also a member of the Executive Board of the Kennedy Center National Black Music Colloquium and Competition. In 1998, Mr. Allen gave a premiere performance of Sir Roland Hanna’s Sonata for Violin and Piano at the Kennedy Center in Washington, joined by the composer.
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 | Kazem Abdullah
Maestro Kazem Abdullah is quickly becoming one of the most watched young American conductors on
the scene today, and, in June of 2010, he was awarded the 2010 Solti Foundation U.S. Career
Assistance Award. The 2010-2011 season includes performances with the Sinfonieorchester Aachen,
Napa Valley Symphony, Elgin Symphony Orchestra, and the Atlanta Opera, where he will conduct Cosi
fan Tutte. He will also be on the judging panel for the Sphinx Competition in Detroit, Michigan.
Highlights of the 2009-2010 season included sold-out performances of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha at
the Théâtre du Châtelet de Paris and debuts with the Chicago Sinfonietta, Detroit Symphony Orchestra,
Huntsville Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, and the Staatskapelle Weimar. Kazem Abdullah also
conducted the internationally renowned Orquestra de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s most celebrated
classical music ensembles, during its return to the United States for the orchestra’s third coast-to-coast
tour. Moreover, Mr. Abdullah was named #4 on the Daily Beast’s list of “Young Rock Stars of the
Conducting World.” Mr. Abdullah began his music studies at the age of ten and later graduated from the Cincinnati
Conservatory of Music in 2000, and subsequently studied at the University of Southern California. He
originally trained as a clarinetist and has appeared as a soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony, National
Symphony, and the New World Symphony. His conducting teachers and coaches include Jorma
Panula, Gustav Meier, Markand Thakar, Stefan Asbury, Bernard Haitink and James Levine.
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 | Pamela Frank
American violinist Pamela Frank has established an outstanding international reputation across an unusually varied range of performing activity. The recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, Ms. Frank has appeared with such orchestras as the Baltimore Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, the Orchestre National de France, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the San Francisco Symphony and the Vienna Symphony. She has performed under many esteemed conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Leonard Slatkin and, most regularly, Yuri Temirkanov and David Zinman. In addition to her partnership with her father, pianist Claude Frank, she works regularly with pianist Peter Serkin. Her other frequent collaboratorsinclude Yo-Yo Ma, Tabea Zimmermann and Alexander Simionescu. Ms. Frank has also participated in several of the Isaac Stern chamber music seminars at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Centre as part of a group of performer-colleagues assisting Mr. Stern. A champion of contemporary music, she gave the 1998 world premiere of a new concerto by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich commissioned for her by Carnegie Hall with Hugh Wolff and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. She has also premiered and recorded two works by Aaron Jay Kernis. Born in New York City, Pamela Frank is the daughter of noted pianists Claude Frank and Lilian Kallir. She began her violin studies at age 5 and after 11 years as a pupil of Shirley Givens continued her musical education with Szymon Goldberg and Jaime Laredo. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Pamela Frank is married to violinist Alexander (Andy) Simionescu, and they make their home in the New York area.
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 | Danielle Belen
Violinist Danielle Belen, First Prize winner of the 2008 Sphinx Competition, releases her debut recording with Naxos later this year. Ms. Belen recently performed as 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." She has recently enjoyed working with conductors such as Franz Welser-Mostt, Robert Spano, Keith Lockhart, and Carl St. Clair. A graduate of the USC Thornton School of Music and the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, Ms. Belen is now on faculty at the Colburn School. With a growing violin studio of her own, and also teaching assistant to renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, she loves to work with young aspiring talent. She enjoys teaching master classes and leading community engagements across the country in conjunction with her professional performance appearances. Ms. Belen is the founder and Artistic Director of Center Stage Strings, a summer camp and performance festival for gifted young musicians in Three Rivers, California.
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 | Astrid Schween
Astrid Schween enjoys a busy international concert career. As a 20-year member of the Lark Quartet and guest with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, she performed in some of the world’s most important venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Concertgebouw, Musikverein, L’Opera de la Bastille, Wigmore Hall, the Library of Congress, and on tour throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. She has received critical acclaim for her performances at festivals as wide-ranging as the Istanbul Festival, Musicades, Lockenhaus, the Schleswig-Holstein and Edinburgh festivals, Moscow’s Beethoven Festival, the Festival da Camera in St. Miguel de Allende, Würzburg’s Mozart Festival and Sweden’s prestigious Siljan Festival. Also with the Lark, she won numerous international prizes including the gold medal at the Shostakovich Competition in St. Petersburg and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award in New York. Astrid Schween has recorded nearly two dozen CDs for Decca/Argo, Arabesque, Point, Agora, New World, CRI, Koch and Endeavor Classics and collaborated with many celebrated artists including Joshua Bell, Branford Marsalis, Edgar Meyer, Karl Leister, choreographer Bill T. Jones, and has commissioned new works from America’s leading composers; Aaron Jay Kernis, Peter Schickele, Daniel Bernard Roumain(DBR) and Julia Wolfe to name a few. Ms. Schween is currently Professor of Cello at the University of Massachusetts, where she succeeds cellist Matt Haimovitz. She holds a senior faculty position at Interlochen and is a featured artist with the Boston Chamber Music Society and at the Inter-Harmony International Music Festival in Germany. She is represented by MCM Artists Management.
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 | Michael Tree
A founding member of both the famed Guarneri String Quartet and the Marlboro Trio, Michael Tree was born in Newark, New Jersey. He studied the violin with Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Following a Carnegie Hall recital debut, he appeared as a soloist on both the violin and viola with major orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and his native New Jersey. As a chamber musician he has concertized throughout the world and recorded more than 80 chamber music masterpieces; prominent among them are ten piano quintets and quartets with Arthur Rubinstein. Mr. Tree serves on the faculties of The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, the Curtis Institute, and the University of Maryland. He plays a Domenicus Busan viola, dated 1750, from Venice or Hiroshi Iisuka, Philadelphia, dated 1996. Mr. Tree has served on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music since 1993.
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