South Korean cellist Stella Cho grew up in the United Kingdom, where she made her London solo debut at the Royal Albert Hall at fifteen years old. Since then, she has concertized in South Korea, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Croatia, and the U.S.A. She has been featured on national television and radio on numerous occasions. Stella was also selected as one of the Holland Music Sessions’ “New Masters on Tour” and gave solo recitals across Europe, including prestigious venues Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Slovak Philharmonic Hall in Bratislava.

Stella has been invited to numerous renowned music festivals around the world, including Yellow Barn, Ravinia Steans Institute, Aspen Music Festival, Casals Festival, La Jolla SummerFest, Banff Chamber Music Festival, the Perlman Music Program, and IMS Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music. She has also collaborated with eminent musicians such as Ralph Kirshbaum, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Joseph Kalichstein, Joseph Silverstein, and Borromeo Quartet.

Stella earned her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees with honors at the respected Gregor Piatigorsky Studio at USC’s Thornton School of Music under Ralph Kirshbaum and furthered her studies at the New England Conservatory with Laurence Lesser. She recently completed her Doctorate of Musical Arts degree at University of Southern California and was honored as the 2021 Outstanding DMA Graduate and inducted into the Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honors Society.

Stella is a teacher and performer in the Los Angeles area. She holds positions as cello faculty at Loyola Marymount University and Fried Music. She was most recently appointed director of the LA branch for Junior Chamber Music. As an active performer, she regularly performs in the SAKURA Cello Quintet and Delirium Musicum Chamber Ensemble.

Stella Cho

An exciting cellist exploring various facets of the classical music scene, Michael Kaufman has recorded works by Tigran Mansurian for ECM Records and has performed at prestigious venues such as Zankel and Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall. Concerto performances and chamber music engagements have taken him across the United States and Western Europe to festivals such as Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove, Yellow Barn, Music@Menlo, and Verbier. His diverse performance projects have included chamber music concerts with Midori, Brett Dean’s 12 Angry Men in Disney Hall at the Piatigorsky Festival, the premiere of a concerto written by Sean Friar with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and leading as principal cello of La Monnaie in Brussels. Founder and artistic director of Sunset ChamberFest and founding member of the cello quintet SAKURA, Michael champions eclectic juxtapositions of music from the classical and contemporary canon and is an advocate for guiding and cultivating future generations of composers. He received his bachelor’s degree from Eastman studying with Steven Doane, and his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Southern California under the mentorship and guidance of Ralph Kirshbaum. Michael is a member of LA Opera and is on the chamber music faculty of Colburn Community School of Performing Arts.

Michael Kaufman

Cellist YOSHIKA MASUDA is fast emerging as one of the most unique and versatile artists of his generation. Praised by the press for possessing a sound that is ‘ravishing’, ‘vibrant’ and ‘sensitive’, his recent Tokyo debut garnered critical acclaim. Yoshika has performed throughout his native Australia, Japan, the US and Europe in prestigious venues such as the Solitär at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Opera House in Sydney, the Dai-ichi Seimei Hall in Tokyo and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Yoshika is the 1st prize winner of the 40th Midland-Odessa National Young Artist Competition (strings) in the USA and the 25th Australian Concerto & Vocal Competition, but his most recent success was at the 11th All-Japan VIVA HALL cello competition, the premier cello competition in Japan, where he won the 1st prize and the audience prize. In 2010, he was awarded the prestigious Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe String Award. His other accolades include 2nd prizes at the Sydney Cello Award and the J&A Beare International Solo Bach Competition. He has performed as soloist with orchestras such as the Juarez Symphony (Mexico), Milton Keynes City Orchestra, Manchester Beethoven Orchestra, North Queensland Symphony, Sheffield Chamber Orchestra and the YMF Debut Orchestra with conductors such as Sian Edwards, Nicholas Milton and Lucas Richman. His performances were broadcast on ABC Classic FM (Australia), BBC Radio 3 (UK), Klassik Radio (Germany) and Concertzender Radio (The Netherlands). A keen advocate of contemporary music, Yoshika has given the world premiere of works by Michael Cutting (‘Epitaph’ with RNCM Orchestra), Xander Rodzinski (‘Inhale/Exhale’ for solo cello) and more recently, Bent Sørensen (‘In the mist’ with Katrine Gislinge and Copenhagen Girls’ Choir). He also performed the Italian composer Michele Dall’Ongaro’s ‘Linea Nigra’ for cello and orchestra with the World Youth Chamber Orchestra on their tour of Italy. In 2015, Yoshika made the US Westcoast premiere of Stephen Hartke’s newest composition for piano trio entitled ‘Blue Studio’. Yoshika is an avid chamber musician and is a founding member of the cello quintet SAKURA. He has performed with artists such as Guy Ben-Ziony, Brian Che-Yen Chen, Natalie Clein, Nicholas Daniel, Charmian Gadd, Bruno Giuranna, Alissa Margulis, Vincent Peirani, Paul Roczek and Qian Zhou. He. In recent years, Yoshika was invited to perform at the festivals of Aldeburgh and Leicester in the UK, Festival Amfiteatrof in Italy, Kirishima Music Festival in Japan, and the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Music Mountain Chamber Festival and Piatigorsky International Cello Festival in the USA. His interests outside of the classical genre have led him to perform with artists such as Ben Folds at the Sydney Opera House and Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl. Yoshika is also featured on Leonard Cohen’s last album ‘You Want It Darker’, which was released in October 2016 on Colombia Records. Born in Kobe, Japan, Yoshika first started playing the cello at the age of five, but moved to Australia as a young child where he began his studies with Georg Pedersen at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He then studied extensively with Hannah Roberts and Ralph Kirshbaum, whilst also receiving close musical guidance from Thomas Demenga and David Geringas. Yoshika graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music in the UK with distinction and received the Principal’s Prize along with the Leonard Rose Cello Award for outstanding achievement. He recently gained his Doctorate of Musical Arts from the USC Thornton School of Music and was inducted into the Pi Kappa Lambda national music honours society. Yoshika is currently an adjunct professor of cello at Loyola Marymount University and California Lutheran University in Los Angeles. YOSHIKA MASUDA

A native of Princeton, NJ, cellist Zachary Mowitz made his solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in July 2018 as winner of the Greenfield Competition. An artist who wears many hats, Zachary is Artistic Director of ensemble132 and Nodality Music, and associated artist at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, and co-founded Trio St. Bernard – the 2018 Gold Prize winner of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition. He has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, and has played as Guest Principal Cello with the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra and Princeton Symphony Orchestra. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, he appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival and in Fall of 2024, he will join the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Zachary graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2018, where he studied with Carter Brey and Peter Wiley and served as principal cello of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. He subsequently studied at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Gary Hoffman in Belgium, and at the Royal College of Music with Richard Lester. Having played with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Lin, Tara Helen O’Connor, Hsin-Yun Huang, and Robert McDonald, Zachary has an intense passion for chamber music. In 2019 he co-founded ensemble132, a chamber music collective that presents innovative programs of their own exciting, original transcriptions of classical masterworks, paired with staples of the traditional chamber music repertoire. Zachary has appeared throughout the United States, visiting halls such as the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall and Perelman Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, Alice Tully Hall, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, and Johns Hopkins’ Shriver Hall. He has also toured extensively in Europe playing in venues such as the Salzburg Mozarteum, both halls of the Berlin Konzerthaus, Krzysztof Penderecki European Center for Music, Vienna Konzerthaus, Helsinki Music Centre, and London’s Cadogan Hall. As a young musician he performed as soloist with orchestras throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He also appeared on Heifetz on Tour and the radio show From the Top, and has had performances broadcast by PBS and Philadelphia’s WHYY. In 2017, he was the subject of a feature story in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Invested in expanding the impact of classical music, Zachary has dedicated considerable time and energy to a community engagement programs, including: organizing a benefit concert for immigrant families in partnership with ACLU and the Shut Down Berks Campaign, featuring musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Daedalus Quartet, and Curtis Institute; performing for Music For Food; extensive touring to schools throughout New Mexico with Music From Angel Fire; an education residency at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, DE; and song-writing workshops at Philadelphia’s Project HOME. In 2022-23, he was a Community Artist Fellow at the Curtis Institute, where he led a climate justice education program in the Philadelphia school district and served people living with dementia in partnership with Penn Memory. A fervent advocate for new music and innovative programming, Zachary has premiered an array of new works by prominent and young composers alike, including the world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s string quintet Shattered Vessel at Music from Angel Fire in 2019. He has presented two newly commissioned works for solo cello by Nick DiBerardino and Zachary’s own father, Ira Mowitz, in a series of interactive lecture-recitals named Suite Talk. Nick and Zach have since captured the best of this program in a video series with Guarneri Hall and launched the nonprofit Nodality Music, a nonprofit that cultivates direct links between artists, audiences, and broader culture with narrative-driven musical experiences. Zachary was awarded First Prize in the 2020 World Bach Competition and is the cellist of Philadelphia’s Gamut Bach Ensemble. He is based in New York and co-teaches a class on social entrepreneurship and climate justice at the Curtis Institute. In his spare time, Zachary enjoys exploring the endless world of podcasts and tossing a frisbee. Zachary Mowitz

Praised for the warmth and color of his sound, American cellist, composer, and arranger Peter Myers (b. 1985, St. Louis) has served as Assistant Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Opera since 2017, and is internationally known as a chamber musician. He is a founding member of SAKURA, a unique and innovative quintet of cellos, as well as the Saguaro Piano Trio, which placed first in the 2009 International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg, and he has concertized in the US, Germany, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Laos, Pakistan, and Mongolia. He is a regular participant at the Marlboro Music Festival (including appearances on tour with Musicians from Marlboro), and has also appeared as guest principal cellist of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Myers studied at the Colburn Conservatory with Ronald Leonard and completed his graduate studies with Ralph Kirshbaum at the University of Southern California. For several years, he served as Co-Director of Music for the American Contemporary Ballet (Los Angeles), and was a Young Artist in Residence of the Da Camera Society (Los Angeles). He lives in San Francisco and plays an 1876 cello by Claude-Augustin Miremont. Peter Myers