Violinist Benjamin Beilman has won praise both for his passionate performances and deep, rich tone which the Washington Post called “mightily impressive,” and the New York Times described as “muscular with a glint of violence.” Highlights of recent seasons include debuts with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, return engagements with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and his return to the London Chamber Orchestra to play-direct. He has also performed with the Chicago Symphony, Antwerp Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Zurich Tonhalle, Sydney Symphony, Houston Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, and Minnesota Orchestra. In recital and chamber music, he performs regularly at major halls across the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Kölner Philharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Louvre (Paris), and Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo). In 2018 he premiered a new work dedicated to the political activist Angela Davis written by Frederic Rzewski and commissioned by Music Accord. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Beilman studied with Almita and Roland Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago, Ida Kavafian and Pamela Frank at the Curtis Institute, and Christian Tetzlaff at the Kronberg Academy, and has received many prestigious accolades including a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a London Music Masters Award. He has an exclusive recording contract with Warner Classics and released his first disc Spectrum for the label in 2016. He plays the “Engleman” Stradivarius from 1709 generously on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

Clive Greensmith has a distinguished career as soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. From 1999 until 2013 he was a member of the world-renowned Tokyo String Quartet, giving over one hundred performances each year in the most prestigious international venues, including New York’s Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, London’s Southbank Centre, Paris Châtelet, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. As a soloist, he has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, and the RAI Orchestra of Rome. He has also performed at Marlboro Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the Salzburg Festival, Edinburgh Festival, and the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. Over 25 years, he has built up a catalogue of landmark recordings, most notably the complete Beethoven string quartet cycle for Harmonia Mundi with the Tokyo String Quartet. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in England with American cellist Donald McCall. He continued his studies at the Cologne Musikhochschule in Germany with Boris Pergamenschikow. After his 15-year residency with the Tokyo String Quartet at Yale University, he was appointed Professor of Cello at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2014. In 2019, he became the artistic director of the Nevada Chamber Music Festival and was appointed director of chamber music master classes at the Chigiana International Summer Academy in Siena, Italy. Mr. Greensmith is a founding member of the Montrose Trio with pianist Jon Kimura Parker and violinist Martin Beaver.