Performer, curator, and on-stage host James Austin Smith “proves that an oboist can have an adventurous solo career.” (The New Yorker). Smith appears at leading national and international chamber music festivals, as Co-Principal Oboe of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and as an artist of the International Contemporary Ensemble. As Artistic and Executive Director of Tertulia Chamber Music, Smith creates intimate evenings of music, food, and drink in New York and San Francisco, as well as an annual festival in a variety of global destinations. He serves as Artistic Advisor to Coast Live Music in the San Francisco Bay Area and mentors graduate-level musicians as a professor of oboe and chamber music at Stony Brook University and as a regular guest at London’s Guildhall School. A Fulbright scholar and alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and CMS’s Bowers Program, he holds degrees in music and political science from Northwestern and Yale University.

Born in Taiwan, Cho-Liang Lin moved to Sydney at age 12 to further his violin studies with Robert Pikler. After playing for Itzhak Perlman in a master class, the 13-year-old decided that he must study with Mr. Perlman’s teacher, Dorothy DeLay. At age 15, he traveled alone to New York, auditioned for the Juilliard School, and spent the next six years working with Ms. DeLay. His concert career launched in 1980 with his debut playing the Mendelssohn Concerto with the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta. He has since performed as soloist with virtually every major orchestra in the world. At the age of 31 he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School, and in 2006 was appointed professor at Rice University. He was music director of La Jolla SummerFest for 18 years, currently serves as artistic director of the Hong Kong International Chamber Music Festival, and recently founded the Taipei Music Academy and Festival. Many of today’s composers have written for him, including John Harbison, Christopher Rouse, Tan Dun, John Williams, Steven Stucky, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bright Sheng, Paul Schoenfield, Lalo Schifrin, Joan Tower, and others. Recently, he was soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Nashville Symphony, and Royal Philharmonic. Lin performs on the 1715 “Titian” Stradivari and a 2000 Samuel Zygmuntowicz. His many recordings can be heard on the Sony Classical, Decca, BIS, Delos, and Ondine labels. His albums have won Gramophone Record of the Year, Grammy nominations, and Penguin Guide Rosettes.

Called “superb” by the Washington Post and “stunningly virtuosic” by the New York Times, Peter Kolkay is the only bassoonist to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant. In addition to performing with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he regularly appears at the Music@Menlo and Bridgehampton summer festivals, and has performed on the Emerald City, Tertulia, and String Theory series. He actively engages with composers in the creation of new music for the bassoon and has premiered solo works by Joan Tower, Mark-Anthony Turnage, and Tania León, among others. His 2022–23 season included the premiere of a new work for bassoon and piano by Reinaldo Moya, and the release of two recordings: an album of contemporary works performed with the Calidore Quartet, and the Christopher Rouse Bassoon Concerto with the Albany Symphony. He is a member of the IRIS Collective in Germantown, Tennessee, and has also served as guest principal bassoon of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. A dedicated teacher, he is Associate Professor at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University and has given master classes throughout the United States and Mexico. Kolkay is an alumnus of CMS’s Bowers Program, and holds degrees from Lawrence University, the Eastman School of Music, and Yale University. A native of Naperville, Illinois, he currently calls the Melrose neighborhood of Nashville home, and is the recipient of a 2022–23 Individual Artist Fellowship in music performance from the Tennessee Arts Commission.

Kenneth Weiss has worked as a soloist, conductor, chamber musician, and teacher for several decades. Born in New York City, he attended the High School of Performing Arts, later studying with Lisa Goode Crawford at the Oberlin Conservatory and with Gustav Leonhardt at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.

His recordings for Satirino records have been widely acclaimed. They include Bach’s Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, Books 1 & 2 of The Well-Tempered Clavier, a recording of Rameau operas and ballets transcriptions, two Scarlatti albums, and two CDs devoted to Elizabethan keyboard music—A Cleare Day and Heaven & Earth.

He was professor of harpsichord at the Juilliard School (2007–11) and at the Haute Ècole de Musique de Geneva (2015–21), and is currently Professor of Chamber Music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, a position he has held since 1996. 

Highlights of the 2024–25 season include performances of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Berkshire Bach Society, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, the Orchestre National Avignon-Provence, and the North County Chamber Players. He will make his debut at the prestigious Music@Menlo in Atherton, California, and perform solo recitals of Bach’s Art of Fugue in Paris, San Francisco, Saintes, Santander, Santiago de Compostela and the Palau de la Música in Barcelona. The 2024–25 season also sees the release of a new recording with flutist Sooyun Kim, a tour of Australia with violinist Lina Tur Bonet, and the debut of a new recital program A Handful of Keys, celebrating keyboard ingenuity and innovations with works spanning the Renaissance to stride piano.