Hailed for their “precision, assertiveness and vigor” (New York Times) and “gripping intensity...suspenseful and virtuoso playing” (San Francisco Chronicle), the Amphion String Quartet is a winner of the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competiton. The ASQ has been selected to join the roster of the prestigious Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two program, beginning with the 2013 season and were named the 2012-2013 Ernst Stiefel Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Center. Highlights of the 2011-2012 season included performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a world premiere of John Sichel’s String Quartet No. 4. This past summer, they made return visits to the OK Mozart Festival and to Chamber Music Northwest and appeared at La Jolla’s SummerFest. They have performed as part of the International Program as well as at the Beethoven Institute at Mannes (NYC), working closely with members of the Brentano Quartet and participated in the first annual Robert Mann Quartet Institute at the Manhattan School of Music. Appearances in 2012-2013 include a Carnegie Hall debut (Weill Hall) as well as performances at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. Violinists Katie Hyun and David Southorn, violist Wei-Yand Andy Lin, and cellist Mihai Marcia first joined together for a performance at Sprague Hall at the Yale School of Music in February 2009. The overwhelmingly positive audience reception at this concert was the inspiration behind their mutual desire to pursue a career as the Amphion String Quartet.

Baritone Mischa Bouvier, winner of the 2010 Concert Artists Guild Competition, has performed with the BSO, and in Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Tanglewood, under the direction of James Levine. Called a “delight to encounter for the first time” by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and noted by the New York Times for his “rich timbre” and “fine sense of line,” he recently made a debut with The Knights, singing a newly commissioned orchestral piece, and gave his NYC recital debut at Carnegie Hall under the auspices of the Concert Artists Guild. He has performed with the Mark Morris Dance Group, the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, and the Long Island Philharmonic. In 2012-13, he joins the Colorado Symphony as a soloist in Handel’s Messiah and sings Handel’s Apollo and Dafne in a return engagement with the American Bach Soloists, performs Bach’s St. John Passion (bass soloist and Pilate) at New York’s St. Thomas Church; collaborates with Catacoustic Consort and the Wildcat Viols at the San Francisco Early Music Festival; and appears with Bach Collegium San Diego (Mozart Requiem and St. John Passion). A singer of tremendous versatility, Mr. Bouvier made his professional musical theater debut under the baton of Keith Lockhart in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel with the Boston Pops. On stage, he has performed leading roles in Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande, Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe and in Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He received his B.M. from Boston University and his M.M. from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

Known worldwide for his adventurous repertoire and willingness to take art music into unusual venues (including schools, senior centers, and even logging camps and prisons!), Eliot Fisk is one of the most exciting musicians before the public today. He belongs, as his great mentor Andrés Segovia once wrote, “At the top line of our artistic world.” Mr. Fisk has transformed the repertoire of the classical guitar through his ground-breaking transcriptions (including works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini, Albeniz, etc.), through countless works dedicated to him by composers as varied as Luciano Berio, Leonardo Balada, Robert Beaser, Nicholas Maw, and George Rochberg, and through his countless collaborations with other musicians in classical, flamenco, jazz and world music styles. Eliot Fisk’s numerous recordings, many of which have even entered the Billboard charts as best sellers, have introduced much of this repertoire to an international audience and have elicited unqualified praise from musicians, critics and the public at large. In June 2006, by order of King Juan Carlos of Spain, Fisk was awarded the “Cruz de Isabel la Catolica” for his service to the cause of Spanish music. Recent seasons have included the premieres of two groundbreaking new works: Robert Beaser’s monumental Guitar Concerto (premiered at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall with the American Composer’s Orchestra under Dennis Russell Davies) and his transcription for guitar of John Corigliano’s Red Violin Caprices (described by the composer as a “tour de force”). He continues new chamber music collaborations with guitar legend, Angel Romero; virtuoso clarinetist, Richard Stoltzman; and jazz guitar great, Bill Frisell, as well as duo appearances in recital and with orchestra with his wife, celebrated guitarist, Zaira Meneses. In addition to his performing career, Eliot Fisk is Founder and Director of Boston Guitar Fest, an annual cross disciplinary and cross cultural extravaganza co-sponsored by the New England Conservatory and Northeastern University.

Ara Gregorian made his New York recital debut in 1996 at Carnegie Hall, and his debut as a soloist with the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1997. Since then, he has performed in cities throughout the world, and is also founder and artistic director of the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival in Greenville, North Carolina, which recently celebrated its 12th anniversary season. He has appeared at festivals worldwide and performed extensively as a member of numerous chamber music ensembles, including the Daedalus Quartet, Concertante and the Arcadian Trio.

Natalia Lavrova is a highly-regarded performer of multi-faceted artistry. Solo and orchestral performances have taken her throughout her native Russia, to Canada, France, Hungary, Italy, United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States, and to notable New York venues such as Alice Tully Hall, Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall. Ms. Lavrova captured top prizes at the New Orleans, Isabel Scionti, Music Academy of the West, and Senigallia international piano competitions. At her debut at the Leeds Competition, Ms. Lavrova was the youngest performer of 1996 admitted to the quarterfinal round. She entered the Moscow Conservatory at the age of five, and was subsequently accepted to The Juilliard School Pre-College Division, as a pupil in the studio of Herbert Stessin and earning her Bachelor of Music and Masters of Music degrees at Juilliard under the tutelage of Jerome Lowenthal. Ms. Lavrova is the founder and president of the Music School of New York City where she passes along to the next generation of pianists principles of the Russian school of piano pedagogy.

Pianist Adam Neiman is recognized as an artist of rare depth, sensitivity and virtuosity. With a repertoire that spans over fifty concertos, he has performed with the American orchestras of Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Minnesota, San Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC. He has concertized in France, Germany, Italy and Japan, the latter in which his eight-city tour culminated in his debut at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. Born in 1978, Adam Neiman has captured the attention of audiences and critics since his concerto debut at age 11 in Los Angeles’ Royce Hall. Clavier magazine wrote: “Adam Neiman gave a performance that rivaled those of many artists on the concert stage today...his playing left listeners shaking their heads in disbelief.” At 14 he debuted in Germany at the Ivo Pogorelich Festival, and at 15 he won second prize at the Casagrande International Piano Competition in Italy, the youngest winner in the competition’s history. In 1995 he also became the youngest ever winner of the Gilmore Young Artist Award. The following year he won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and went on to make his Washington, DC and New York recital debuts at the Kennedy Center and the 92nd Street Y. Two-time winner of Juilliard’s Gina Bachauer Piano Competition, he is also a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant. An avid chamber musician, he became a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center II in 2004. He frequently participates in the major chamber music festivals of Belgrade, Korea, Macedonia, Seattle, Caramoor, Ravinia, Vail, and Vancouver as well on New York’s Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players series. He has performed on the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music series, Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series and the FleetBoston Celebrity Series. In addition to his career as a concert pianist, Adam Neiman devotes time to composition. He has written works for solo piano, voice, chamber ensemble and orchestra.

Tina Packer (actor/playwright) is the founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. She has directed most of Shakespeare’s plays (some of them several times), acted in seven of them (never when directing) and taught the whole canon one way or another at over thirty colleges in the U.S., including Harvard, M.I.T. and NYU. At Columbia, she taught in the M.B.A. program for four years, resulting in the publication of her piece, Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management with Deming Professor John Whitney. For Scholastic, she wrote Tales from Shakespeare, a children’s book and recipient of the Parent’s Gold Medal Award. She began her career in England, having trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she won the Ronson Award for most Outstanding Actor. Following this, she became an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing at Stratford, in the West End, and on tour. She has worked at The Royal Court in London; Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leicester, Coventry and Hornchurch repertory companies. For BBC Television, she played Dora to Ian McKellen’s David Copperfield, was a love interest for Patrick Troughton’s Doctor Who (which she has never lived down), and also performed in several other TV plays and series. She came to the U.S. in 1974 when the Ford Foundation funded an eleven-month project for her to research the visceral roots of Elizabethan theater with five master teachers (Kristin Linklater, John Barton, B.H. Barry, John Broome, Trish Arnold), fifteen actors, and three managers. Out of these projects led by Tina throughout England and the US, her work has translated into the aesthetic and practical methods that Shakespeare and Company is based on, and still practices to this day. Tina then received two grants from the Ford Foundation to travel the world, looking at the relationship of mind, body, sacred texts, stand-up comedy, voice, and actor–audience relationship in her studies. The current company was founded in 1978 at Edith Wharton’s derelict mansion in Lenox, far from the cities of New York and London. Tina has returned to acting from time to time, most notably as Edith Wharton and a two-year stretch as Shirley Valentine, playing in Lenox, Boston and Louisville, and Lettice in Lettice and Lovage. For the Boston Shakespeare Company, she directed a season of twelve Irish plays, including the U.S. premiere of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme. She has received the state of Massachusetts’s highest honor, The Commonwealth Award, and has six honorary degrees (which gives her great pleasure as she never went to regular college). During the mid-90′s, Tina conceived the idea for Women of Will, and subsequently received grants from the Guggenheim and Bunting fellowships to fund the project. This collaboration resulted in its first incarnation, at that time. In 2009, desperate to get back to WoW, Tina gave up the artistic directorship—though Shakespeare & Company remains her creative home and passion. She began work, first with Nigel Gore and then joined by Eric Tucker, to bring Women of Will to its present form of one Overview and five separate performances. This is Tina’s seventh creative collaboration with Nigel (including playing George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and she would like to acknowledge the power of their work together over the past six years. The book of Women of Will will be published by Knopf next year. Women of Will marks her New York debut as an actor and a writer.

Tina Packer can be seen Off-Broadway, with co-star Nigel Gore, now through June 2 in their triumphant and critically acclaimed production of "Women of Will" a concept of Tina's own creation, examining the women of William Shakespeare throughout the body of his work. Performances run at The Gym at Judson Memorial Church, 243 Thompson Street at Washington Square South, NY. For further information and to purchase tickets visit: WomenOfWill.com or call TheatreMania at 212-352-3101. Check out what Ben Brantley of the New York Times has to say, and her interview on the Charlie Rose Show.

In recent years, Vassily Primakov has been hailed as a pianist of world class importance. Born in Moscow in 1979, his initial piano studies were with his mother, Marina Primakova. He entered Moscow’s Central Special Music School at the age of eleven as a pupil of Vera Gornostaeva, and at seventeen came to New York to pursue studies at the Juilliard School with the noted pianist, Jerome Lowenthal. At Juilliard Mr. Primakov won the William Petschek Piano Recital Award, which presented his debut recital at Alice Tully Hall, and while still at Juilliard, aided by a Susan W. Rose Career Grant, he won both the Silver Medal and the Audience Prize in the 2002 Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition. He took First Prize in the 2002 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. In 2007 he was named the Classical Recording Foundation’s “Young Artist of the Year.” In 2009, Primakov’s Chopin Mazurkas recording was named “Best of the Year” by National Public Radio and that same year he began recording the 27 Mozart piano concertos in Denmark. BBC Music Magazine praised the first volume of Primakov’s Mozart concertos: “The piano playing is of exceptional quality: refined, multi-coloured, elegant of phrase and immaculately balanced….. By almost every objective criterion, Vassily Primakov is a Mozartian to the manner born, fit to stand as a role model to a new generation.” His extensive discography includes Beethoven Sonatas, Chopin Concertos, and music of Tchaikovsky, Schumann, and Scriabin for Bridge Records.

Twenty-seven year old Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich is winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel. Praised by critics for “vivacity and virtuosity” and his “impeccable clarity of execution,” he has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Israel in such prestigious venues as Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wigmore Hall, Lucerne and Davos festivals in Switzerland, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Metropolitan and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museums, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and Glazunov Hall in St. Petersburg, Vienna’s Musikverein, as well as Jordan Hall in Boston, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago, Les Invalides in Paris and the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. At age ten he made his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra debut under the baton of Zubin Mehta, performing with that orchestra and Maestro Mehta again in 1999 and 2003. He has since appeared with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Ann Arbor Symphony, Dohnányi Orchestra of Budapest, Lubbock Symphony, and the Neuchatel Chamber Orchestra (Switzerland), among others. This season Mr. Rabinovich plays Shostakovich’s First Concerto with Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and Joseph Swensen, Prokofiev’s Fifth Concerto with Riverside Philharmonic, and Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto in Israel. In May 2008 Roman replaced Murray Perahia in a recital at the Mann Auditorium in Tel-Aviv. His chamber music collaborators have included violinists Daniel Hope and Miriam Fried, clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester, the Atrium string quartet and the piano quartet Fourtissimo. Born in Uzbekistan, Mr. Rabinovich began his piano studies at the age of six with his mother. In 1994, he and his parents immigrated to Israel where he studied at the Rubin Academy of Music. A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and with a Masters Degree from Juilliard, he also excels as an artist, often combining concerts with exhibitions of his paintings.

Peter Rosen has produced and directed over 100 full-length films and television programs that have been distributed world-wide and have won awards at the major film festivals. He has worked directly with some of the most important figures in the arts such as Leonard Bernstein, Yo-Yo Ma, Beverly Sills, Stephen Sondheim, Midori, Martha Graham, Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Van Cliburn, Claudio Arrau, and I. M. Pei. In 1990, he won the prestigious Directors Guild of America Award for his production Here to Make Music: The Eighth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which also won a prime-time Emmy Award. The Cliburn—Playing on the Edge, sponsored by ExxonMobil, won the prestigious Peabody Award. A six-part series developed from the performances during the Van Cliburn Competition, Concerto, aired on PBS, hosted by conductor James Conlon. Other recent PBS national prime-time broadcasts of his films include: In the Key of G: The Gilmore International Keyboard Festival for PBS; Master of the House, a short film broadcast on PBS as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s tribute to Joseph Volpe; A Workshop for Peace, an hour-long documentary commissioned by the United Nations; Great Conversations in Music commissioned by the Library of Congress; and Who Gets to Call it Art?, a feature-length documentary on curator Henry Geldzahler. Mr. Rosen produced and directed the documentary Khachaturian about the Russian/Armenian composer on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, which won Best Documentary Award at the Hollywood Film Festival. Additional programs he produced and directed include Enrico Caruso: Voice of the Century and The Museum on the Mountain, on I. M. Pei’s Miho Museum in Kyoto. Peter Rosen received a BA in Architecture from Cornell University and a BFA and MFA from Yale University.

Jeffrey Swann enjoys an international performing career which has taken him throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. He won first prize in the Dino Ciani Competition sponsored by La Scala in Milan, a gold medal at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, and top honors at the Warsaw Chopin, Van Cliburn, Vianna da Motta and Montreal Competitions, as well as the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York City. His large and varied repertoire includes more than 60 concertos as well as solo works ranging from Bach to Boulez. In addition to presenting lecture/recitals worldwide, Mr. Swann has performed with the symphonies of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Dallas, Saint Louis, Phoenix, Houston, Baltimore and Minneapolis; and in Europe with the orchestras of Rotterdam, The Hague, Belgian National, La Scala, Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Prague Philharmonic, and the London Philharmonia, among many others. The conductors with whom he has performed include Zdenek Macal, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Marek Janowski, Riccardo Chailly, Daniele Gatti and Leonard Slatkin. In addition, he continues to lecture regularly at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany, and at Wagner Societies in the United States and Italy. Mr. Swann has also served as a judge at many competitions, most recently at the Utrecht International Liszt Competition. A native of northern Arizona, Jeffrey Swann studied with Alexander Uninsky at Southern Methodist University and with Beveridge Webster and Adele Marcus at The Juilliard School, where he received his B.M., M.M. and D.M.A. Degrees. His CD, “The Virtuoso Liszt” (Music & Arts) won the Liszt Society’s Grand Prix, and his first volume of the Complete Beethoven Sonatas (Agorá) was chosen one of the Best of the Year by Fanfare magazine. Since 2007 Jeffrey Swann has been Artistic Director of the Dino Ciani Festival & Academy in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Arve Tellefsen is one of the most highly regarded violinists in Europe and performs with leading orchestras across the globe. Mr. Tellefsen has worked with conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Herbert Blomstedt, Naeme Järvi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Paavo Berglund, and Vladimir Ashkenazy. In the UK, he has appeared with the Royal Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Hallé, BBC Scottish, BBC Welsh, the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Royal Scottish National orchestras. His discography includes concertos by Carl Nielsen, Shostakovich, Bach, Beethoven, Bruch and Sibelius, as well as concertos by Scandinavian composers: Tor Aulin, Franz Berwald, Lars-Erik Larsson, Johan Svendsen, Christian Sinding, Fartein Valen, Arne Nordheim and Alfred Janson. In 1997 he gave the world premiere of the Violin Concerto dedicated to him by Arne Nordheim, Norway’s foremost contemporary composer, with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra on Sony Classical. As a chamber musician, Tellefsen has taken part in festivals all over the world, including the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Bath Festival, Lockenhaus, Montreux and the Pablo Casals Festival in Prades. Arve Tellefsen is founder of the Oslo Chamber Music Festival, which is held annually and attracts the cream of international artists, including Anne Sofie von Otter, Leif Ove Andsnes, Yuri Bashmet, Gidon Kremer, Angela Hewitt, Hagen Quartet, and Maria João Pires. Born in Norway, Tellefsen studied at the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music before moving to New York to study with Ivan Galamian. He has recently recorded Edvard Grieg: Complete Violin Sonatas with pianist Håvard Gimse at Grieg’s home, Troldhaugen, for Sony Classical.

With its unique constellation of leading continuo and solo players, Tragicomedia has been an important influence in the field of early music since 1987, when Stephen Stubbs and Erin Headley co-founded the group. Their common interest was in rediscovering and realizing the musical riches of the basso continuo era. In 1600, Agostino Agazzari described the enormous palette of instrumental color—including lutes, chitarrones, harps, keyboards and lirones—necessary for the effective realization of an accompaniment. This—and “tragicomedia” as an important seventeenth-century genre and aesthetic principle representing dramatic contrast—was the inspiration for the group. In repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Bach, Tragicomedia has explored every musical genre from lute song to fully-staged Baroque opera. Many of the group’s recordings for EMI, Teldec, Virgin, Hyperion, and Harmonia Mundi USA have won prestigious prizes. Tragicomedia has been the continuo team for the Boston Early Music Festival since 1997 in productions of Cavalli, Rossi, Lully, Conradi, and Mattheson operas, and in Vancouver Early Music’s Monteverdi cycle. The group returned to Leiden annually from 1997 to 2003 to perform Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 at the Pieterskerk in the Netherlands. In 2002 they made a live recording for ATMA Classique of the performance, which was chosen as Record of the Month by Das Alte Musik Aktuel. Many of their award-winning Teldec recordings have been re-issued on Warner’s APEX label. Since 2007 they have been exploring the rich repertoire of the Italian Cantata, particularly those of Steffani and Handel, with an array of leading singers.

Soprano Jennifer Zetlan is swiftly garnering recognition for her artistry and captivating stage presence. She has debuted on the stages of New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Florida Grand Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, returning to the Met as Xenia in a new production of Boris Godunov, broadcast worldwide as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s “LIVE! in HD” series. She made her debut with Santa Fe Opera as Sardula in The Last Savage, her Spoleto Festival USA debut in a performance of Mozart’s Coronation Mass, and was heard in performances of Messiah at Carnegie Hall with the Oratorio Society of New York and Musica Sacra. Ms. Zetlan was featured with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in performances of Haydn’s Harmoniemesse and appeared with Nashville Opera as Madeline Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher. In concert, she has performed Tan Dun’s Silk Road for percussion and soprano and sang the North American premiere of Tavener’s Requiem for the Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series in New York City. She performed the role of the Boxer’s Wife in Schwergewicht, oder Die Ehre der Nation at Juilliard Opera Center under James Conlon, and made her Avery Fisher Hall debut with the Juilliard Orchestra in Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony, conducted by Alan Gilbert. Her New York recital debut was under the auspices of the Marilyn Horne Foundation’s On Wings of Song series at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church. For her performances with New York City Opera in the 2008-2009 season, Ms. Zetlan received the Dr. Marcia Robbins-Wilf award.

Violinist Itamar Zorman is winner of the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia, where he subsequently performed in the winners’ concerts with Maestro Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra. He previously won the first prize at the 2010 Freiburg International Violin Competition in Germany, and, in April 2011, as winner of the Juilliard Berg Concerto Competition, he made his Avery Fisher Hall debut with the Juilliard Orchestra led by James DePreist. Mr. Zorman has performed as a soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, the Het Gelders Orkest at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Philharmonie Baden-Baden, and Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he has appeared at Lincoln Center, in Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and at the Kennedy Center. A founding member of the Israeli Chamber Project, Mr. Zorman has toured with the internationally-acclaimed group across Israel and North America for the past four seasons. This past summer, he made his debut at the Verbier Festival and returned to the Marlboro Music Festival for the second season. Born in Tel-Aviv to a family of musicians, he holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Jerusalem Academy of Music where he studied with Nava Milo and Hagai Shaham. He received his Master’s degree from The Juilliard School and Artist Diplomas from Manhattan School of Music and from The Juilliard School. He has been supported by the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and the Ilona Feher Foundation and plays on a 1737 Pietro Guarneri violin from the private collection of Yehuda Zisapel.