A chamber musician praised for his “virtuosic,” “dazzling,” and “brilliant” performances (New York Times) and his “bold, keen sound” (New Yorker), James Austin Smith is driven by the communicative nature of live performance. As an oboist and on-stage host he appears regularly at leading national and international chamber music festivals, at Carnegie Hall and on tour 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 he curates intimate evenings of food, drink, and music designed to engage audiences hungry for singular cultural experiences in New York, San Francisco, and Serenbe, Georgia. He mentors graduate-level musicians as a professor of oboe and chamber music at Stony Brook University and the Manhattan School of Music, and as a regular guest at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, he holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Music and bachelor’s degrees in political science and music from Northwestern University. He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany, and is an alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. Born in New York and raised in Connecticut, Smith’s principal teachers are Stephen Taylor, Christian Wetzel, Humbert Lucarelli, and Ray Still.

Acclaimed for her passionate, powerful performances, beautiful sound, and compelling command of her instrument, violinist Bella Hristova has performed extensively as a soloist with orchestras including the Charlotte, Milwaukee, and Kansas City symphonies as well as orchestras in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and New Zealand. Highlights of the 2023–24 season include performances of Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto with the Charleston Symphony and Eugene Philharmonic, Prokofiev’s Second Concerto with the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, and the Barber Concerto with the Orlando Philharmonic. Hristova was the featured soloist for a concerto commissioned by a consortium of eight major orchestras and written for her by her husband, acclaimed composer David Serkin Ludwig, which she continues to perform. A sought-after chamber musician at festivals, she has performed at Australia’s Musica Viva, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Northwest, and Marlboro Music. Following multiple tours of New Zealand with renowned pianist Michael Houstoun, she and Houstoun recorded the complete Beethoven Sonatas for Piano and Violin, and more recently the Brahms Sonatas, both released on Rattle. She received a 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant and first prizes in the Michael Hill International Violin Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, and is a Laureate of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Hristova attended the Curtis Institute of Music, where she worked with Ida Kavafian, and received her artist diploma with Jaime Laredo at Indiana University. She is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program and plays a 1655 Nicolò Amati violin.

Anthony Manzo’s vibrantly interactive and highly communicative music-making has made him a ubiquitous figure in the upper echelons of classical music, performing at noted venues including Lincoln Center, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston. He appears regularly with the Chamber Music Society, both in New York and across the country. He serves as the solo bassist of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra and as a guest with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and A Far Cry. He is a regular guest with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Society, and the Baltimore Symphony when he happens to be near his home in Washington, DC. Formerly the solo bassist of the Munich Chamber Orchestra in Germany, he has also been guest principal with Camerata Salzburg in Austria, where collaborations have included a summer residency at the Salzburg Festival and two tours as soloist alongside bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, performing Mozart’s “Per questa bella mano.” He is an active performer on period instruments, with groups including the Handel & Haydn Society of Boston (where his playing was lauded as “endowed with beautiful and unexpected plaintiveness” by the Boston Musical Intelligencer), Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco, and Opera Lafayette in Washington, DC. He is on the double bass and chamber music faculty of the University of Maryland. Manzo performs on a double bass made around 1890 by Jérôme Thibouville-Lamy in Paris (which now has a removable neck for travel!).