Violinist Aaron Boyd enjoys a versatile career as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, recording artist, lecturer, and teacher. Since making his New York recital debut in 1998, he has concertized throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Formerly a member of the Escher String Quartet, he was a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Martin E. Segal prize from Lincoln Center, and was also awarded a Proclamation by the City of Pittsburgh for his musical accomplishments. A passionate advocate for new music, he has been involved in numerous commissions and premieres, and has worked directly with such legendary composers as Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Charles Wuorinen. He is also founder of the Zukofsky Quartet (quartet-in-residence at Bargemusic); the only ensemble to have played all of Milton Babbitt's notoriously difficult string quartets. As a recording artist, he can be heard on the BIS, Music@Menlo Live, Naxos, Tzadik, North/South and Innova labels. He has been broadcast in concert by NPR, WQXR, and WQED, and was profiled by Arizona Public Television. Born in Pittsburgh, Mr. Boyd began his studies with Samuel LaRocca and Eugene Phillips and graduated from The Juilliard School where he studied with Sally Thomas and coached extensively with Paul Zukofsky and cellist Harvey Shapiro. He now serves as Director of Chamber Music and Professor of Practice in Violin at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and lives in Dallas with his wife Yuko, daughter Ayu, and son Yuki.

Violist Paul Neubauer has been called a “master musician” by the New York Times. He recently made his Chicago Symphony subscription debut with conductor Riccardo Muti. He also gave the US premiere of the newly discovered Impromptu for viola and piano by Shostakovich with pianist Wu Han. In addition, his recording of the Aaron Kernis Viola Concerto with the Royal Northern Sinfonia was released on Signum Records, and his recording of the complete viola/piano music by Ernest Bloch with pianist Margo Garrett was released on Delos. Appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at age 21, he has appeared as soloist with over 100 orchestras including the New York, Los Angeles, and Helsinki philharmonics; National, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, and Bournemouth symphonies; and Santa Cecilia, English Chamber, and Beethovenhalle orchestras. He has premiered viola concertos by Bartók (revised version of the Viola Concerto), Friedman, Glière, Jacob, Kernis, Lazarof, Müller-Siemens, Ott, Penderecki, Picker, Suter, and Tower, and has been featured on CBS's Sunday Morning and A Prairie Home Companion as well as in Strad, Strings, and People magazines. A two-time Grammy nominee, he has recorded on numerous labels including Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA Red Seal, and Sony Classical, and is a member of SPA, a trio with soprano Susanna Phillips and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. Neubauer is the artistic director of the Mostly Music series in New Jersey and is on the faculty of the Juilliard School and Mannes College.

Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a first-prize winner of the Dr. Luis Sigall International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile, as well as the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He has also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer. He is a founding member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet. A recent collaboration with dancer Lil Buck brought forth new pieces for solo cello written by Yevgeniy Sharlat and Patrick Castillo. He recently joined the acclaimed Apollo Trio. Marica studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music, where he was awarded master's and artist diploma degrees. He is an alum of CMS's Bowers Program.

Pianist Shai Wosner has attracted international recognition for his exceptional artistry, musical integrity, and creative insight. His performances of a broad range of repertoire—from Beethoven and Schubert to Ligeti and the music of today—communicate his imaginative programming and intellectual curiosity. Wosner is Resident Artist of the New York–based Peoples’ Symphony Concerts from 2020 to 2023. In spring 2023, he curated a second annual festival devoted to the music of György Kurtág at Bard Conservatory, where he is on faculty. Additional highlights of his season include a European tour with clarinetist Martin Fröst and violist Antoine Tamestit; concerts with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Columbus Symphony, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra; and performances as part of the Zukerman Trio with violinist Pinchas Zukerman and cellist Amanda Forsyth. He performs regularly at chamber music festivals, including Chamber Music Northwest, Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. His acclaimed recordings for Onyx Classics range from Schubert sonatas, to chamber works by Bartók and Kurtág, to concerti by Haydn and Ligeti. He is the recipient of Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Born in Israel, Wosner enjoyed a broad musical education from a very early age, studying piano with Opher Brayer and Emanuel Krasovsky, as well as composition, theory, and improvisation with André Hajdu. He later studied at The Juilliard School with Emanuel Ax.

Stephen Taylor, one of the most sought-after oboists in the country, holds the Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III solo oboe chair at the Chamber Music Society. He is a solo oboist with the New York Woodwind Quintet, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble (for which he has served as co-director of chamber music), the American Composers Orchestra, the New England Bach Festival Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae, and is co-principal oboist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. His regular festival appearances include Spoleto, Aldeburgh, Caramoor, Bravo! Vail Valley, Music from Angel Fire, Norfolk, Santa Fe, Aspen, and Chamber Music Northwest. Among his more than 200 recordings is Elliott Carter's Oboe Quartet for which Mr. Taylor received a Grammy nomination. He has performed many of Carter's works, giving the world premieres of Carter’s A Mirror on Which to Dwell, Syringa, and Tempo e Tempi; and the US premieres of Trilogy for Oboe and Harp, Oboe Quartet, and A 6 Letter Letter. He is entered in Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities and has been awarded a performer's grant from the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University. Trained at The Juilliard School, he is a member of its faculty as well as of the Yale and Manhattan schools of music. Mr. Taylor plays rare Caldwell model Lorée oboes.

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.

Randall Ellis served as principal oboist of Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra from 1988 until 2016. He is principal oboist of the Little Orchestra Society and the Mozart Orchestra of New York and is solo English horn in the New York Pops Orchestra. He is a member of the Emmy award-winning All-Star Orchestra and also the Windscape Woodwind Quintet, artists-in-residence at the Manhattan School of Music. Principal oboist and faculty member of the Eastern Music Festival, he was principal oboist of the New York Chamber Symphony and received two Grammy nominations, including one for his recording of Howard Hanson’s Pastorale. He has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Florida Orchestra, and the American Symphony Orchestra. He has been a soloist with the New England Bach Festival, the International Bach Festival of Madeira, the Philharmonia Virtuosi of New York, and Chamber Music at the 92nd Street Y. In addition to many appearances on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, he has recorded for EMI/Angel, Columbia, Sony, RCA, Vox, Nonesuch, CRI, Pro Arte, Delos, and Deutsche Grammophon. Ellis attended the North Carolina School of the Arts and Stony Brook University where he studied with Ronald Roseman. He teaches oboe and chamber music at Skidmore College and coaches in the graduate orchestral performance program at the Manhattan School of Music.

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.

Julia Pilant is the Assistant Principal Horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and a horn instructor at Bard College. Before joining the Met, she was Principal Horn with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra for ten years. She then returned to New York City where she performed frequently with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Symphony Orchestra, the Stamford Symphony, and various Broadway shows. In addition, she has played principal horn for the Saito Kinen and Tokyo Opera Nomori music festivals and the Mito Chamber Orchestra in Japan under music director Seiji Ozawa. She has also been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as well as a participant in the Classical Tahoe, Affinis (Nagaoka, Japan), Santa Fe, Mainly Mozart, La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Steamboat Strings, Festivale di Due Mondi (Spoleto, Italy), Bard, and OK Mozart music festivals. In 1994 she won the American Horn Competition. As an equally enthusiastic music educator, she has given several master classes in schools and festivals across the country including the Juilliard School, Interlochen Arts Camp, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Pilant received her bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music as a student of Verne Reynolds, and her master’s and doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School where she studied with Julie Landsman.