Pianist Mika Sasaki is an imaginative and versatile soloist, chamber musician, and educator whose performances have taken her around the world. Her debut album, Obsidian: Mika Sasaki plays Clara Schumann, released on Yarlung Records in 2016, was highly acclaimed by the Online Merker as “illuminat[ing] the artistic inspiration and creative exchange between three Romantic souls,” Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Her performances have been broadcasted on WQXR, WFMT, KQAC, and Radio Sweden. She has appeared as concerto soloist with the Sinfonia of Cambridge, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, 92Y Orchestra, and, more recently, with the InterSchool Symphony Orchestra of New York, performing Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto. She is the pianist of Ensemble Mélange and appears regularly with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, Manhattan Chamber Players, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and with her duo partners. Her festival appearances include Music@Menlo, Tanglewood, Chigiana, Taos, Yellow Barn, Aspen, Focus!, Icicle Creek, Mannes Beethoven Institute, Caramoor, Shandelee, Weekend of Chamber Music, Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival, and many others. An advocate of both old and new repertoire, she can be heard championing works from the Baroque to the present, and has commissioned chamber music and solo works by Max Grafe, Emily Cooley, Andrew Hsu, and Jonathan Dawe. An alumna of the Peabody Conservatory, Ensemble Connect, and the Juilliard School, Sasaki is now a faculty member at Juilliard. Her teachers have included Benjamin Pasternack, Gilbert Kalish, and Joseph Kalichstein.

Nicholas Canellakis has become one of the most sought-after and innovative cellists of his generation, praised as a “superb young soloist” (New Yorker) and for being “impassioned . . . the audience seduced by Mr. Canellakis's rich, alluring tone” (New York Times). A multifaceted artist, Canellakis has forged a unique voice combining his talents as soloist, chamber musician, curator, filmmaker, and composer/arranger. His recent highlights include solo debuts with the Virginia, Albany, Bangor, Stamford, and Delaware symphony orchestras; concerto appearances with the Erie Philharmonic, the New Haven Symphony as artist-in-residence, and the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall; Europe and Asia tours with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and recitals throughout the United States with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Canellakis is a regular guest artist at many of the world’s leading music festivals, including Santa Fe, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Bard, Bridgehampton, La Jolla, Hong Kong, Moab, Music in the Vineyards, and Saratoga Springs. He is the Artistic Director of Chamber Music Sedona in Arizona and is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and New England Conservatory. Filmmaking and acting are special interests of his; he has produced, directed, and starred in several short films and music videos. Canellakis plays on an outstanding Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello, circa 1840.