The Amernet String Quartet, Ensemble-in-Residence at Florida International University, has garnered worldwide recognition as one of today’s exceptional young string quartets. First rising to attention after winning the Gold Medal at the Tokyo International Music Competition, they are also winners of the Banff International Competition and have performed in Japan, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, France, Korea, Mexico, and Romania. In 2004 and 2005 they served as the Stiefel Quartet-in-Residence for the Caramoor Center for the Arts. Prior to that, they had a residency at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. The group has recorded works by John Harbison, Morton Subotnick and Stephen Dankner, and made a recording of the Debussy String Quartet and the Chausson Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Quartet. They maintain a strong connection with today’s leading composers and have worked closely with Anthony Brandt, John Corigiliano, David Epstein, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Gerhard Samuel. Amernet members are Marcia Littley, Javier Arias, Misha Vitenson and Michael Klotz.

Born in Israel, violinist Shmuel Ashkenasi attended the Music Academy of Tel-Aviv and gave his first public performance while still very young. He came to the United States on a scholarship to study with Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute. The international music community discovered Ashkenasi quickly, at Belgium’s Queen Elizabeth Competition, at Washington’s Meriwether Post Competition (first prize) and at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962. Ashkenasi has toured the Soviet Union twice and concretizes every year throughout Europe, Israel and the Far East. He often performs with American orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, National Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Vienna Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, and the orchestras of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Zurich, Rotterdam, Geneva and Stockholm; Ashkenasi has been the choice of many of the world’s most distinguished conductors, including Stokowski, Boehm, Kempe, Leinsdorf, Kubelik, Skrowaczewski and Ancerl. In addition, as first violinist of the famed Vermeer Quartet, he has gained a reputation as one of the world’s outstanding chamber musicians. A noted pedagogue, he holds the posts of Professor of Violin at Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts and at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Hailed as "one of the most exciting young string quartets in America" (The Washington Post) the Avalon String Quartet has established itself as a leading chamber ensemble. Formed in 1995 at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Quartet came to the fore after participating in Isaac Stern's Chamber Music Workshop at Carnegie Hall in 1997, subsequently appearing in the Stern Chamber Music Encounters in Jerusalem and making a Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall in 2000. The quartet won First Prize, the Channel Classics Prize, and the Rockport Chamber Music Festival Prize at the 1999 Concert Artists Guild Competition, which led to the critically acclaimed recording "Dawn To Dusk," and top prize in the ARD Competition in Munich. Following residencies at the Juilliard School and at Indiana University South Bend, the quartet is now in residence at Northern Illinois University, a position formerly occupied by the venerated Vermeer Quartet. They have performed in many major halls, including Alice Tully, the 92nd Street Y, and Carnegie Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; Wigmore in London and Herculessaal in Munich as well as the Caramoor, La Jolla, Ravinia, and Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart festivals. Dedicated educators, they have taught at the Interlochen Quartet Institute and at the Britten-Pears School in England. The Avalon has been featured in live performances and conversation on Chicago's WFMT-FM, New York's WQXR-FM and WNYC-FM, National Public Radio's Performance Today, Canada's CBC, Australia’s ABC, and France Musique.

Violinist Yehonatan Berick, soloist, recitalist, chamber musician (violin and viola), and pedagogue, was a prizewinner at the 1993 Naumburg Competition and a recipient of the 1996-97 Prix Opus. He has performed with the symphony orchestras of Quebec, Winnipeg, Jerusalem, and Haifa, and the Israel, Cincinnati, Montreal, and Manitoba chamber orchestras. He has played recitals with such pianists as James Tocco, Louis Lortie, Stephen Prutsman, and Michael Chertock, and collaborates with artists including members of the Guarneri Quartet, and cellists Peter Wiley and Stephen Isserlis. Berick’s festival credits include Marlboro, Ravinia, Seattle, Great Lakes, Vancouver, El Paso, Maui, and Bowdoin; and he is a frequent guest performer with Close Encounter With Music. A member of Musicians from Marlboro, the Lortie-Berick-Lysy Piano Trio, and the Huberman String Quartet, he can be heard on recordings on the Summit, Gasparo, and Helicon labels. Currently Professor of Violin at the University of Michigan, his studies were at Tel Aviv University’s Music Academy and at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He plays on a violin by Honore Derazy Pere made in 1852 and a viola by Stanley Kiernoziak made in 2003.

Pianist James Tocco’s vast repertoire includes virtually the entire standard piano literature, and he is widely regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of American masterworks. He is associated particularly with Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety, which he recorded with Leonard Slatkin and the BBC London Symphony and performed with Marin Alsop and the New World Symphony, and with the Corigliano Piano Concerto, of which he is acknowledged to be the definitive interpreter. Recent engagements include his Royal Concertgebouw debut, performing the MacDowell Concerto and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, both under Leonard Slatkin. Mr. Tocco is Eminent Scholar/Artist-in-Residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is also the Artistic Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He has performed with the major American orchestras including those of Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Pittsburgh, and in Europe with the Berlin, London and Munich Philharmonics under David Atherton, Christoph Eschenbach, Lukas Foss, Neeme Järvi, Yoel Levi, Raymond Leppard, and Wolfgang Sawallisch. Festival appearances include Schleswig-Holstein, Wolf Trap, Blossom, Ravinia, Spoleto, Santa Fe, and Mostly Mozart. Mr. Tocco’s extensive discography, which reflects his varied tastes and astonishing versatility, includes the world premiere recording of Bernstein’s complete solo piano music, an all-Copland disc, the complete Chopin Préludes, the complete piano music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Erwin Schulhof ’s Cinq Etudes de Jazz, Bach-Liszt organ transcriptions, the four piano sonatas of Edward MacDowell, and a recently issued Corigliano Etude-Fantasy on the Sony Classical label.