First Monday at Jordan Hall: Scarlatti, Paganini, Prokofiev, & Vaughan Williams

Domenico Scarlatti (arr. Eliot Fisk) | Five Sonatas

Andante commodo in E Major, K. 380
Allegro in C Minor, K. 11 (played in E Minor)
Allegro in A Major, K. 322
Andante in D Minor, K. 213
Allegro in D Major, K. 178

Niccolò Paganini | Sonata Concertata in A Major for Violin and Guitar, op. 61

Allegro spiritoso
Adagio, assai espressivo
Allegretto con brio, scherzando

Sergei Prokofiev | Overture on Hebrew Themes, op. 34

Sergei Prokofiev | Toccata, op. 11

Vladimir Horowitz, piano - recorded in 1930

Ralph Vaughan Williams | On Wenlock Edge (1909)

On Wenlock Edge
From far, from eve and morning
Is My Team Ploughing?
Oh, when I was in love with you
Bredon Hill
Clun

Texts

On Wenlock Edge

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

T’would blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood;
‘Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.

Then, ‘twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare;
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet;
Then ‘twas the Roman, now ‘tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, ‘twill soon be gone:
Today the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.


From far, from eve and morning

From far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.

Now for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart.
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.


Is my team ploughing?

“Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.


Oh, when I was in love with you

Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.


Bredon Hill

In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.

Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.

The bells would ring to call her
In valleys miles away;
“Come all to church, good people;
Good people come and pray.”
But here my love would stay.

And I would turn and answer
Among the springing thyme,
“Oh, peal upon our wedding,
And we will hear the chime,
And come to church in time.”

But when the snows at Christmas
On Bredon top were strown,
My love rose up so early
And stole out unbeknown
And went to church alone.

They tolled the one bell only,
Groom there was none to see,
The mourners followed after,
And so to church went she,
And would not wait for me.

The bells they sound on Bredon,
And still the steeples hum,
“Come all to church, good people.”—
O noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.


Clun

Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.

In valleys of springs of rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,

We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton,
When I was a Knighton lad.

By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
‘Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.

And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled them long before.

Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I’d lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor Knighton the town:

‘Tis a long way further than Knighton,
A quieter place than Clun,
Where doomsday may thunder and lighten
And little ‘twill matter to one.

Alfred Edward Housman

Artist biographies

(in alphabetical order)

Tanya Blaich is a pianist and teacher with particular sensitivity for and expertise in the song and collaborative piano repertoire. A faculty member of New England Conservatory's collaborative piano and voice departments since 2006, Blaich is co-coordinator of NEC’s Liederabend Series and teaches classes dedicated to the performance of song repertoire and in language diction and expression. Blaich has been praised for her “unfailingly expressive and finely judged” playing (The Guardian) and her “distinct and refined palette and textures” and “unwaveringly attentive” ensemble (Opera Today).
        Blaich has performed in concert venues and festivals throughout the United States, Europe, and Russia with such recitalists as Thomas Hampson, Paula Murrihy, Klemens Sander, and Sari Gruber. Recent highlights with Murrihy include recitals at Teodor Currentzis’ International Diaghilev Festival, Performance Santa Fe’s Festival of Song, and in concert venues across Europe. She also worked with Murrihy and composer John Harbison in preparation for the world premiere of Harbison’s Sixth Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Blaich and Murrihy’s first album, I Will Walk With My Love: Folk-Inspired Songs and Myths, was released on Orchid Classics in 2020 to great acclaim. 
        As a guest artist, Blaich has given song recitals and master classes at universities and colleges throughout the U.S. In addition to her collaborations with singers, she has performed as a chamber music partner with members of the Colorado, Lydian, and Miro string quartets. She has also served as a coach and rehearsal pianist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Handel and Haydn Society, and Odyssey Opera.
        Tanya Blaich attended the University Paris-Sorbonne and graduated from Walla Walla College in Washington. She moved to Vienna to pursue her passion for the German Lied repertoire, earning a diploma in performance from the Vienna Conservatory in vocal accompaniment and chamber music. She subsequently earned both her M.M. and D.M.A. from New England Conservatory.

Daring, versatile, and charismatic, American violinist Robyn Bollinger is recognized for her musical creativity, rich tones, emotional depth, and technical mastery. An innovator in the field, she received a prestigious 2016 Fellowship from the Lenore Annenberg Arts Fellowship Fund for her multimedia performance project, entitled “CIACCONA: The Bass of Time,” and she was recognized with an Entrepreneurial Musicianship Grant from NEC for her ground-breaking “Project Paganini,” a performance project featuring all twenty-four Paganini Caprices. More recently, she was awarded an historic 2019 Early-Career Musician Fellowship from Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, D.C., to research and prepare her next multimedia project, entitled “ENCORE: Just One More”.
        Having made her Philadelphia Orchestra debut at age twelve, Ms. Bollinger regularly performs as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across the United States. Recent highlights include solo engagements with the Boston Pops and the symphony orchestras of California, Charleston, Knoxville, and Symphony in C. She is a returning participant at the storied Marlboro Music Festival in Marlboro, VT and has been featured in numerous national tours with the acclaimed Musicians from Marlboro. She has also appeared at the chamber music festivals of Lake Champlain, Orcas Island, Highlands-Cashiers, Monadnock, and others, and she has presented recitals at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, National Sawdust, Osaka’s Phoenix Hall, Tokyo National Arts Center, and other venues. This season she appears with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble in Boston, the Boston Chamber Music Society, Mistral Music, Spruce Peak Chamber Music Society, and Glissando Music to name just a few. 
        A noted leader, Ms. Bollinger is a frequent Guest Concertmaster with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and she is a member of the Boston-based chamber orchestra, A Far Cry. She has appeared on GRAMMY®-nominated commercial recordings with both the Pittsburgh Symphony and A Far Cry, and her solo album, CIACCONA: The Bass of Time, was released on A Far Cry’s record label in 2018.
        Ms. Bollinger is a devoted educator, having presented masterclasses at Cincinnati Conservatory, the Longy School of music, University of California Bakersfield, and the University of Tennessee Chatanooga.  Based in Boston, she maintains a robust teaching studio at NEC Preparatory School. She plays a 1697 G. B. Rogeri on generous loan from a private collector.

Cellist Lluís Claret was born in 1951 in Andorra la Vella to exiled Andorran parents, and began his musical studies at the age of nine. In 1964 he moved to Barcelona, Spain, where he won major distinctions at the Conservatory of the Liceu, and began working with Enric Casals, brother of Pablo Casals. He continued his studies in France, Italy, and in the United States, with masters such as Maurice Gendron and Radu Aldulescu. Claret has said that his personal meetings with György Sebök, Eva Janzer, and Bernard Greenhouse were also implemental in the development of his artistic personality. Claret’s professional career was launched into the international spotlight after he took first prizes at the Pablo Casals International Cello Competition in 1976 and the Rostropovich Cello Competition in 1977.
        Chamber music, pedagogy, and a great interest in contemporary music are all essential elements of Claret’s musical focus. His previous teaching posts include the "Victoria dels Angels" Music School at Sant Cugat in Barcelona, and the Toulouse Conservatory in France. He currently teaches at the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu in Barcelona, and has presented masterclasses in France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, the U.S., Japan, and Korea. Also, together with Bernard Greenhouse he conducted seminars at the Abbey of Fontfroide in Narbonne, France.
        A consummate performer, Claret has been on stage in the principal capitals of Europe, America, and Asia. Under the baton of Vaclav Neumann, Mstislav Rostropovitch, Pierre Boulez, Karl Münchinger, Dimitri Kitaienko, Sakari Oramo, George Malcolm, and many others, Claret has performed with orchestras such as the Washington National Symphony, Moscow Philharmonic, Hungarian Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, and the French National Orchestra. He has also performed with notable orchestras in Tokyo, Seoul, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart,
Bamberg, Moscow, Madrid, and Barcelona. In 1980, he founded the Barcelona Trio, which performed for nearly 15 years. He regularly plays with pianists Josep-Maria Colom and Benedicte Palko and has collaborated often with prestigious musicians such as Henri Dutilleux, Witold Lutoslawski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Joan Guinjoan, Iannis Xenakis, and Pierre Boulez.
        A regularly invited jury member for international competitions, Claret has served on the juries of the Rostropovitch Competition in Paris, France, Paulo Cello Competition in Helsinki, Finland, the International Pablo Casals Competition in Kronberg, Germany, and the Adam Cello Competition in Auckland, New Zealand.  He joined the NEC faculty in 2016 and serves as co-chair of the Strings and Chamber Music Departments.

American violinist Isabelle Ai Durrenberger is a rising young artist praised for her vivid musicality, genuine communication with her audiences, and passion for chamber music. She is currently completing her graduate studies with Donald Weilerstein and Soovin Kim at the New England Conservatory. Isabelle completed her B.M. at the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with Jaime Laredo. Isabelle has enjoyed recent exposure to and exploration of contemporary music and compositions. In the summer of 2021, Jennifer Koh and ARCO Collaborative chose Isabelle as the Artist Fellow in the Alone Together educational project. Additionally, Isabelle spent her time as a chamber musician at Yellow Barn. Isabelle was awarded the Milton Preves Memorial 3rd Prize at the 2018 Irving M. Klein International String Competition. She has collaborated with many American orchestras including the Columbus Symphony, Asheville Symphony, and Lakeside Symphony Orchestra amongst many others. Isabelle performed at Carnegie Hall as a member of New York String Orchestra Seminar in 2018 and 2015.
        Isabelle performs on a Terry Borman violin. In her free time, Durrenberger enjoys baking, rewatching Downton Abbey, and playing with her dog. Isabelle will spend the summer of 2022 making music at Perlman Music Program, Marlboro Music Festival, and Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival.

Guitar Eliot Fisk was the last direct pupil of legendary guitarist, Andres Segovia, and of the brilliant harpsichordist and scholar, Ralph Kirkpatrick, with whom he studied at Yale University from where he graduated summa cum laude in 1976.
        Since his Alice Tully Hall debut later that same year, Eliot Fisk has concertized as recitalist, in myriad chamber music combinations, and as soloist with orchestra on five continents to great public and critical acclaim.
        He has created an enormous amount of new music for the guitar through innumerable transcriptions including the complete solo lute, violin and cello works of J. S.  Bach, dozens of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, the 24 Capricci of Niccolò Paganini, the 51 Caprice Variations after Paganini of George Rochberg, and innumerable other works.
        Eliot Fisk has also inspired many new compositions for guitar, solo and in combination with other instruments, written for and dedicated to him by eminent composers including Luciano Berio, Robert Beaser, Kurt Schwertsik, Nicholas Maw, Ralf Gawlick, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and George Rochberg. Fisk’s numerous recordings, often featuring these works, have achieved critical and public acclaim.
        Eliot Fisk has enjoyed a long career as an educator, particularly at the Universitaet “Mozarteum” in Salzburg, where he teaches in 5 languages, at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where in 2006 he founded the highly successful Boston Guitar Fest, and at his annual summer seminar at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy. Many of his students have become great leaders in the musical world and continue his efforts to combine the great romantic tradition with the best of modernity.
        Together with his wife, virtuoso guitarist Zaira Meneses, he recently founded the Eliot Fisk Guitar Academy (EFGA) which aims to project his legacy of inter-disciplinary musicianship and humanitarian aspiration around the world. More specifics at www.eliotfisk.com. and at EFGAmusic.org. Eliot Fisk is presently recording a double CD of his transcriptions of the 6 Bach Cello Suites for the Music Omnia label.

Njord Fossnes is a Norwegian violinist, violist and composer who studies viola at NEC with Kim Kashkashian. Fossnes is a prize-winner, both as a soloist and a chamber musician, at multiple national and international competitions such as the Midgard Competition, Youth National Music Competition, and the Virtuoso & BelCanto International Competition. Furthermore, in 2018 he was the youngest participant at the prestigious ARD International Music Competition and won second prize in the first-ever Hindemith International Viola Competition in 2021. Fossnes has also appeared as a soloist in the Bartók Viola Concerto, Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, Hindemith Kammermusik 5 and in Kurt Atterberg’s Suite for violin, viola and orchestra with violinist Gustav Rørmark and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Njord is also an avid composer and his work Etyde was performed by the Oslo Philharmonic in 2018.

“The finest performance I have ever heard of this very difficult piece. It was as if he was reading my mind…” Aaron Copland on hearing pianist Randall Hodgkinson performing his Piano Fantasy in Jordan Hall. While studying at the New England Conservatory Hodgkinson became grand prizewinner of the International American Music Competition sponsored by Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has performed with orchestras in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, Cleveland and abroad in Italy and Iceland, and also numerous recital programs spanning the repertoire from J.S. Bach to Donald Martino and Mark Berger.  A frequent guest of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, he also performs the four-hand and two-piano repertoire with his wife, Leslie Amper. Festival appearances include Blue Hill-Maine, Bargemusic, Chestnut Hill Concerts in Madison Connecticut, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and Chamber Music Northwest (Portland, OR). Solo recordings on the Ongaku, New World, and Albany labels  have garnered much critical acclaim.  Mr. Hodgkinson is on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music and Wellesley College.
        Hodgkinson is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner having completed the Boston Training in 2020. In addition to teaching Awareness Through Movement® lessons he also gives private one on one Funtional Integration® lessons. 

Violist Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career by performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Highlights of her 2017–2018 season included performances as soloist under the batons of David Robertson, Osmo Vanska, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdes in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogota. She is also the first solo violist to be presented in the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing and was featured as a faculty member with Yo-Yo Ma and his new initiative in Guangzhou. She has commissioned compositions from Steven Mackey, Shih-Hui Chen, and Poul Ruders. Her 2012 recording for Bridge Records, titled Viola Viola, won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her next recording will be the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J. S. Bach, in partnership her husband, violist Misha Amory.
       Ms. Huang regularly appears at festivals, including Marlboro, Spoleto, Ravinia, Santa Fe, and Music@Menlo, among many others. Huang first came to international attention as the gold medalist in the 1988 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. In 1993, she was the top-prize winner in the ARD International Competition in Munich and was awarded the highly prestigious Bunkamura Orchard Hall Award. A native of Taiwan, she received degrees from the Yehudi Menuhin School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and The Juilliard School. From 1995-2000 she was a member of the Borromeo String Quartet and the string faculty at NEC.  She now serves on the faculties of Juilliard and Curtis and lives in New YorkCity.

Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career, regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season.  When he was 20 years old, Mr. Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition.  He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the first violinist of the Johannes Quartet.  Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices, and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works to be released in 2022.
        Soovin Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont.  In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all third through fifth grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin.  The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an honorary doctorate upon him in 2015.  In 2020 he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became Artistic Directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon.  The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center awarded Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim the Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music for the more than 100 performances, lectures, interviews, and masterclasses they presented for online audiences around the world since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. 
        Mr. Kim is a full-time violin faculty member at NEC, and in the Fall of 2022 he will also join the Yale School of Music faculty.

American-born, Cuban and Colombian tenor, Anthony León, is a young up-and-comer who is quickly developing an international performing career. Anthony’s newest engagements include singing Ernesto in Don Pasquale at NEC and being on tour performing the roles of Giove and Amphinome in Monteverdi’s opera, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria with the ensemble I Gemelli. On tour, Anthony performed at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, France; Arsenal Theater in Metz, France; and Victoria Hall in Geneva, Switzerland. A recorded album is in the works and is set to be released in 2023. In the fall of 2021, Anthony also presented the role of Count Almaviva in Opera Theatre St. Louis’ production of The Barber of Seville. During the summer of 2021, Anthony was an Apprentice Artist at Santa Fe Opera covering the role of Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In addition to these contracts, Anthony has performed in other leading roles recently such as Le Chevalier in Dialogue des Carmélites, Agenore in Il re pastore, Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, Tamino in The Magic Flute, the Witch in Hansel and Gretel, and Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance. Most recent honors include winning the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition in the Los Angeles District in 2022 and receiving a Career Development Grant from the Sullivan Foundation. Other accolades include being named “Best up-and-comer” in the Inland Empire Magazine’s “Best of the Best 2019” list and being awarded NEC’s Wendy Shattuck ‘75 Presidential Scholarship for Vocal Studies.
        Anthony holds a Bachelor of Music degree from La Sierra University and a Master of Music degree concentrating in Vocal Performance from NEC. He currently studies voice under Bradley Williams, pursuing an Artist Diploma degree in Vocal Performance at NEC.

Cellist Dilshod Narzillaev was born in 1997 in Navoi, Uzbekistan. In 2007 he began studying cello under the tutelage of Professor Djakhongir Ibragimov in the R.M. Glier specialized lyceum in music, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He continued hs studies with Daniel Veis at the International Center for Music at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. Currently, he is a master’s student at New England Conservatory studying with Laurence Lesser.
        Narzillaev is the winner of the Rovere d’Oro Prize in Italy and the Alexander Glazunov competition in Paris and is also the winner of the Division Prize of Wichita Symphony Young Artist Competition in 2016. He received fourth prize at the 7th Antonio Janigro International Cello Competition in Zagreb, Croatia.
        Narzillaev has performed concertos of Saint-Saëns, Dvořák, and Haydn with the Uzbekistan National Symphony. He made his debut with Shostakovich’s first concerto with the Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony Orchestra. He made his debut with Kansas City Chamber orchestra in Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in 2016.

Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman has opened up new possibilities for the instrument, giving the first clarinet recitals in the histories of both the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall, and becoming the first wind player to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1986. He has performed as soloist with more than one hundred orchestras, as a recitalist, chamber musician, and jazz artist. He has performed or recorded with Gary Burton, the Canadian Brass, Chick Corea, Judy Collins, Eddie Gomez, Keith Jarrett, the King’s Singers, George Shearing, Wayne Shorter, Mel Tormé, and Jeremy Wall of Spyro Gyra. He has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works for clarinet. For ten years Stoltzman was a participant in the Marlboro Festival, and subsequently became a founding member of the Tashi chamber music ensemble in 1973. Other chamber music performances and recordings include work with the Beaux Arts Trio and the Amadeus, Cleveland, Guarneri, Vermeer, Tokyo, Emerson, and American string quartets. He has received Grammy awards for his recording of the Brahms sonatas with Richard Goode (1982) and the Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart clarinet trios with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma (1997). He received an Emmy Award for best performing arts video for his performance of the Copland clarinet concerto with Dudley Moore and Michael Tilson Thomas. His laserdisc/videocassette project 1791-1891-1991 includes a performance with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in Vienna’s Konzerthaus of Mozart’s clarinet concerto—200 years to the day after its premiere—along with Brahms’s clarinet quintet and the premiere of Takemitsu’s Fantasma/Cantos.     
            Stoltzman is the author of the books Aria and The Richard Stoltzman Songbook, both published by Carl Fischer, Inc. Stoltzman has recorded several CDs of clarinet concerti written for him by American composers.     
            In 2013, Richard Stoltzman was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Currently he  enjoys playing chamber music, duets with his wife, marimbist Mika, and teaching his students at NEC. In July he will give his 80th birthday concert in Tokyo.

Canadian violinist Sophia Anna Szokolay has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Based in Boston, she is a Doctoral Candidate at the New England Conservatory and Chamber Music Instructor at NEC’s Preparatory School. 
        Sophia is a recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Borromeo Guest Artist Award, Fischoff, Plowman and Remember Enescu International Competitions. As a soloist, Sophia has appeared with the Győr Philharmonic, Toronto Sinfonietta, Scarborough Philharmonic, Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra.
        Passionate about new music, Sophia has worked with living composers Brett Dean, David Ludwig, Osvaldo Golijov, Jeffrey Mumford, James MacMillan and Jörg Widmann with the Phoenix Orchestra and at the Yellow Barn Music Festival. Outside of performance, Sophia has worked with violin and music theory students at Opportunity Music Project and at Thurgood Marshall Academy Lower School through Juilliard’s Gluck and Morse fellowship programs. In 2020, Sophia performed online for ICU Covid-19 hospital patients and their families across the United States with Project: Music Heals Us. She curated an online Music and Movement class for children ages 2-5 in collaboration with the Toronto-based Art Strollers Academy, and led music appreciation workshops at Lenox Hill Women’s Shelter.
        Sophia began her violin studies at the age of 3, the fourth generation of a musical family. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory with a Minor in Music Theory, and her master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Her teachers include Catherine Cho, Miriam Fried, and Donald Weilerstein.