John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.
Kim Kashkashian is an American violist. She has spent her career in the U.S. and Europe and collaborated with many major contemporary composers. In 2013 she won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo. She is recognized as one of the world's top violists.
Lillian Fuchs was an American violist, teacher and composer. She is considered to be among the finest instrumentalists of her time. She came from a musical family, and her brothers, Joseph Fuchs, a violinist, and Harry Fuchs, a cellist, performed with her on various recordings.
The Hollywood String Quartet (HSQ) was an American string quartet founded by violinist/conductor Felix Slatkin and his wife cellist Eleanor Aller. The Hollywood String Quartet is considered to be the first American-born and trained classical music chamber group to make an international impact, mainly through its landmark recordings. These recordings have long been regarded as among the most outstanding recorded performances of the string quartet repertoire.
The Pacifica Quartet is a professional string quartet based in Bloomington, Indiana. Its members are: Simin Ganatra, first violin; Austin Hartman, second violin; Mark Holloway, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello. Formed in 1994 by Ganatra and Vamos with violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson and violist Kathryn Lockwood, the group won prizes in competitions such as the 1996 Coleman Chamber Music Competition, the 1997 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and the 1998 Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. In 2001, violist Masumi Per Rostad replaced Lockwood. The group subsequently received Chamber Music America's prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award in 2002, the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2006, and was named "Ensemble of the Year" by Musical America in 2009. In 2017, violinist Austin Hartman replaced Bernhardsson and violist Guy Ben-Ziony replaced Rostad.
Rosemary Glyde was an American violist and composer. Focusing on expanding the limited repertory for solo viola, she wrote and transcribed many works for that instrument, including Sergei Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata and Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites for viola. She founded the New York Viola Society in 1992.
Marcus Thompson is a violist and viola d'amore player known for his work as a recitalist, orchestral soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and educator. Thompson is a founding member and is currently artistic director of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and is Institute Professor at MIT and a faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Andor John Toth was an American classical violinist, conductor and educator with a musical career spanning over six decades. Toth played his violin on the World War II battlefields of Aachen, Germany; performed with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini in 1943 at age 18; and formed several chamber music ensembles, including the Oberlin String Quartet, the New Hungarian Quartet, and the Stanford String Quartet. For 15 years he was the violinist in the Alma Trio. Toth conducted orchestras in Cleveland, Denver and Houston. In 1969, he was the founding concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Neville Marriner. Toth taught at five important colleges and universities, and recorded for Vox, Decca Records and Eclectra Records.
Sheila Browne is an American-Irish concert violist from Gladwyne, Pennsylvania with dual citizenship. She is a concert and recording artist and Associate Professor at the University of Delaware. For ten years she was on faculty and Associate Professor of Viola at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Named the William Primrose Recitalist of 2016 in conjunction with the Primrose International Viola Archive (PIVA), Ms. Browne has played solo, concerto and chamber music concerts and has played principal of orchestras on six continents, performing in major venues in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. She is in the Fire Pink Trio and principal of the New York Women's Philharmonic, making her Carnegie- Stern Hall concerto debut in 2011. Browne is the Director and faculty member of the January Karen Tuttle Viola Workshop, founder in 2015 and faculty member of the first European Karen Tuttle Viola Workshop at NYU- Prague 2016, and has served on the Executive Board of the American Viola Society Ms. Browne was the violist of the Gotham, Arianna, Pelligrini and Serafin string quartets. She has served on the faculties of Duke and New York universities, University of Missouri- St. Louis and of Tennessee- Knoxville, and Juilliard's Music Advancement Program.
Allard de Ridder was a Dutch–Canadian conductor, violist, and composer. He was notably the first conductor of both the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra, the latter of which he founded in 1944. As a composer he produced several orchestral works, including a violin concerto, four symphonic poems, a Sketch for flute, violin, and orchestra, Overture in D, and Intermezzo. He also wrote a string quartet, the scherzo Beware of Love for a cappella choir, and a number of songs.
David Schwartz was an American violist and music instructor. Schwartz's career spanned orchestral music, chamber music, and studio recording, but he is most recognized for his chamber music performances and recordings with the Yale and Paganini Quartets.
Richard Fleischman is an American violist and viola d'amore player, conductor and pedagogue.
The Curtis String Quartet was an American string quartet based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Maria Louise Newman is an American composer of classical music, violinist and pianist. She is the youngest child of Alfred Newman, a major Hollywood film composer. Maria holds the Louis and Annette Kaufman Composition Chair; and the Joachim Chassman Violin Chair at the Montgomery Arts House for Music and Architecture in Malibu, California, and is a founder of the Malibu Friends of Music. Her library of original works represents a range of genres, from large-scale orchestral works, works for the ballet, chamber works, choral and vocal works, to new collaborative scores for vintage silent film. She has been presented with many awards and commissions, including musical commendations from the United States Congress (2009), the California State Senate (2009), the California State Assembly (2009), the City of Malibu (2010), and the Annenberg Foundation (2011).
The Louise Lincoln Kerr House and Studio is a facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, owned and operated by Arizona State University. It was originally the house of Louise Lincoln Kerr and was willed to the university upon her death in 1977.
Mary Ruth Ray (1956–2013) was an internationally known classical musician who received critical acclaim throughout the United States, Europe and Russia.
Louise Lincoln Kerr was an American musician, composer, and philanthropist from Cleveland, Ohio. She wrote over 100 music compositions including fifteen symphonic tone poems, twenty works for chamber or string orchestra, a violin concerto, five ballets and incidental music, numerous piano pieces, and about forty pieces of chamber music. She was known as "The Grand Lady of Music" for her patronage of the arts. Louise Kerr helped to co-found and developed The Phoenix Symphony (1947), The Phoenix Chamber Music Society (1960), The Scottsdale Center for the Arts, The National Society of Arts and Letters (1944), Monday Morning Musicals, The Bach and Madrigal Society (1958), Young Audiences, The Musicians Club, and the Phoenix Cello Society. Kerr was also a benefactor to the Herberger School of Music at Arizona State University. She was inducted into the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame on October 21, 2004 and was nominated by conductor and musicologist Carolyn Waters Broe.
Brett Deubner is an American violist. He has performed as concerto soloist with over 70 orchestras on four continents.
Jonathan Leshnoff is an American classical music composer and pedagogue.
Four Seasons Orchestra is a Scottsdale, Arizona-based chamber orchestra founded by the conductor, composer, violist and writer Carolyn Waters Broe in 1991.
