Crowden 40th Anniversary
2023–2024 Artist Bios
Featured Artists
Samuel Carl Adams (’00, commissioned composer)
Samuel Adams (b. 1985) is an American composer whose music weaves acoustic and digital sound into “mesmerizing” (New York Times) orchestrations. Sought after by orchestras and contemporary ensemble alike, he has received commissions from a broad range of organizations including San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall, New World Symphony, The Australian Chamber Orchestra, and Spektral Quartet, and has collaborated with performers and conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, MTT, violinists Anthony Marwood, Jennifer Koh, Karen Gomyo, and pianists Emanuel Ax, Sarah Cahill, David Fung, and Joyce Yang.
The 2022-23 season highlighted several world premieres including Echo Transcriptions, a new work for electric violin and orchestra commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra for Richard Tognetti. The work was taken on a national tour of Australia in late 2022 and received North American performances in California and Toronto the following Spring. In February, pianist Conor Hanick and the San Francisco Symphony premiered a new work under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the following week, the Cincinnati Symphony premiered Adams’s Variations, a 2020 orchestral work co-commissioned by the CSO and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. Other season highlights include a performance of Adams’s 2017 Chamber Concerto with violinist Karen Gomyo and the release of a new record featuring the Chicago-based Spektral Quartet.
Adams was Mead Composer In Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2015 to 2018 and in the 2021-22 season was the Composer in Residence with Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has held residencies at Civitella Ranieri (Umbria, IT), Djerassi Resident Artists Program (California, USA), Ucross (Wyoming, USA), and Visby International Centre for Composers (Gotland, SE). He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and lives and works in Seattle, WA.
Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet (Karla Donehew Perez ‘99)
Hailed by The New York Times at its Carnegie Hall debut as “invariably energetic and finely burnished… playing with earthy vigor,” the Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet was founded by the internationally acclaimed Sphinx Organization in 2010. The ensemble (Karla Donehew Perez, violin (Crowden School ’99); Abi Fayette, violin; Paul Laraia, viola; and Karlos Rodriguez, cello) believes in the unity that can be achieved through music and imagine their programs and projects with this in mind, redefining and reimagining the classical music experience.
The Catalyst Quartet, known for “perfect ensemble unity” and “unequaled class of execution” (Lincoln Journal Star), has toured widely throughout the United States and abroad, including sold-out performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., at Chicago’s Harris Theater, Miami’s New World Center, and Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall in New York. The quartet has been guest soloists with the Cincinnati Symphony, New Haven Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, and has served as principal players and featured ensemble with the Sphinx Organization’s featured ensemble, the Sphinx Virtuosi, on six national tours. They have been invited to perform at important music festivals such as Mainly Mozart in San Diego, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Sitka Music Festival, Juneau Jazz and Classics, Strings Music Festival, and the Grand Canyon Music Festival, where they appear annually. The Catalyst Quartet was ensemble-in-residence at the Vail Dance Festival in 2016 and in the 2021-22 season were in residence with San Francisco Performances where they presented the complete series of works from their Uncovered Project. In 2014, they opened the Festival del Sole in Napa, California with Joshua Bell and participated in England’s Aldeburgh Music Foundation String Quartet Residency with two performances in Jubilee Hall. In 2022 the Catalyst Quartet was named ensemble in residence for the Chamber Music Northwest Festival in Portland and for the Met Museum's LiveArts series in NYC.
Recent seasons have brought international engagements in Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Puerto Rico, and expanded tours throughout the United States. The ensemble’s New York City presence has included concerts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, for Schneider Concerts at The New School, for Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Series, at the 92nd Street Y, and six concerts with GRAMMY Award-winning jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant for Jazz at Lincoln Center, for which the subsequent recording won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. The Catalyst Quartet launched its New York concert series CQ@Howl in 2018.
Highlights of past collaborations include Encuentros, featuring a commissioned work by innovative Cuban composer Jorge Amado Molina and other voices from across the Cuban diaspora; (Im)migration: Music of Change, a collaboration with the Imani Winds; and CQ Minute, a commissioning project of 10 miniature string quartets in commemoration of the quartet’s 10th anniversary with works by Andy Akiho, Kishi Bashi, Billy Childs, Paquito D’Rivera, Tania Leon, Jessie Montgomery, Kevin Puts, Caroline Shaw, Joan Tower, and two young composers selected from a national call for scores. The quartet premiered “Passage,” a chamber ballet by Jessie Montgomery in celebration of Dance Theater of Harlem on their 50th anniversary with Kennedy Center honoree Tania Leon, and was ensemble-in-residence for the Vail International Dance Festival, where they collaborated with members of the Silkroad Ensemble and some of the finest dancers in the world. Catalyst Quartet’s largest ongoing project, UNCOVERED, is a multi-volume set of albums on Azica records that celebrates composers of color whose works have been overlooked by the traditional canon. Volume 1, released February 2021, includes the string quartet and quintets of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with clarinetist Anthony McGill and pianist Stewart Goodyear. Volume 2 features works by Florence B. Price and Volume 3, released February 2023, features Coleridge-Taylor, Perkinson, William Grant Still, and George Walker.
“LIKE ALL GREAT CHAMBER GROUPS, THE CATALYST QUARTET IS BEAUTIFUL TO WATCH, LIKE A FAMILY IN LIVELY CONVERSATION AT THE DINNER TABLE: ANTICIPATING, INTERRUPTING, CHANGING SUBJECTS.” – THE NEW YORK TIMES (AUGUST 5, 2020)
The Catalyst Quartet’s recordings span the ensemble’s scope of interests and artistry. Its debut album, The Bach/Gould Project, features the quartet’s own collaborative arrangement of J.S. Bach’s monumental Goldberg Variations, the first ever 4-voiced version of the piece, paired with Glenn Gould’s rarely heard String Quartet Op. 1. The ensemble can also be heard on Strum (Azica 2015), the solo debut album of composer Jessie Montgomery, who was a member violinist from 2012 to 2020; Bandoneón y cuerdas (Progressive Sounds 2017), tango-inspired music for string quartet and bandoneon by JP Jofre; and Dreams and Daggers (Mack Avenue Records 2017), a two-CD GRAMMY-winning album with Cecile McLorin Salvant.
The Catalyst Quartet combines a serious commitment to diversity and education with a passion for contemporary works. The ensemble has served as principal faculty at the Sphinx Performance Academy at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Curtis Institute of Music. The Catalyst Quartet’s ongoing residencies include interactive performance presentations and workshops with Native American student composers at the Grand Canyon Music Festival. Past residencies have included concerts and masterclasses at The University Of Michigan, University Of Washington, Rice University’s Shepard School of Music, Houston’s Society for the Performing Arts, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, The Virginia Arts Festival, and Pennsylvania State University, and internationally at the In Harmony Project in England, The University of South Africa, and The Teatro De Bellas Artes in Cali, Colombia. The ensemble’s residency in Havana, Cuba for the Cuban American Youth Orchestra in January 2019, was the first by an American string quartet since the revolution.
The Catalyst Quartet members hold degrees from The Cleveland Institute of Music, Curtis Institute of Music, Juilliard School, and New England Conservatory. The Catalyst Quartet proudly endorses Pirastro strings.
Nora Chastain, violin
American violinist Nora Chastain was described by Sir Yehudi Menuhin as “...one of the most elegant and refined violinists I know.”
The granddaughter of American composer Roy Harris, Ms. Chastain was born in Berkeley, California. After beginning her violin studies with Anne Crowden, she continued at the Cincinnati Conservatory and the Julliard School with Dorothy Delay. Later, at the International Menuhin Music Academy Gstaad, she was a student of Alberto Lysy, Ana Chumachenco and Sir Yehudi Menuhin. She also worked intensively with Sandor Vegh.
At age sixteen, Ms. Chastain made her debut in Berlin with Barber Violin Concerto. Since then, she has been a regular guest soloist with such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Cincinnati Philharmonia, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Basel Chamber Orchestra, Württemburgisches Kammerorcheter Heilbronn, Orquestra Nacional do Porto, MDR Symphonieorchester Leipzig, Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, Bern Symphony Orchestra, and Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Peru. She has worked with conductors such as Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Sebastian Weigle, Jose Serebrier, Michael Sanderling, David Stern and Marc Tardue. In addition, many composers have written works for Ms. Chastain, among them Daniel Schnyder, Gerhard Samuel, Susanna Erding, and Georg Wörzer.
An avid chamber music player, Ms. Chastain is a founding member of the Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet and Trio Kreisleriana. With them, she has toured extensively, playing in concert halls in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn, Paris, Milano, Zürich, Geneva, Edinburgh, Washington DC, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Sydney.
Her chamber groups have performed at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestpiele, Schwetzingen Festspielen and Menuhin Festival Gstaad. She has collaborated in chamber music projects with, among others, Sharon Kam, David Geringas, Pascal Devoyon, Joshua Bell as well as with the Faure Piano Quartet, the Carmina Quartet, and the Merel Quartet.
Eugene Chukhlov, violin
Longtime Crowden faculty member Eugene Chukhlov has over 24 years of performance and teaching experience as a member of the Arlekin String Quartet (of which Crowden School faculty member Rem Djemilev is also a member). The quartet has been affiliated with the chamber music program at San Francisco State University for many years. In addition to his quartet duties, Eugene is applauded regularly as a soloist and orchestral player throughout the Bay Area. He counts Milly Rosner, Joan Balter, and the late Colin Hampton as his great mentors.
Eugene lives in El Sobrante with his daughter Alexandra Marie and wife Edith. He is an avid gardener, mainly roses and grapes (no wine this year though). He shares with his wife a passion for fishing California lakes and the South Pacific seas. They plan to retire in Kona, grow orchids, fish, paint watercolors, and perhaps give a few violin lessons to the local kids.
Grammy Award-winning jazz violinist Jeremy Cohen (Quartet San Francisco)
Need content
Crowden faculty conductor Rachel Durling
Rachel Durling grew up in Berkeley, started playing violin in the public schools, and studied with Anne Crowden. She received her B.Mus. from Mannes College of Music in New York City, where she studied with Ani Kavafian and Felix Galimir. She has performed with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Nel Dolce Tempo, Teatro Bacchino, California Symphony, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Jazz Composer's Orchestra, the nuevo-tango group New York-Buenos Aires Connection, Peter Apfelbaum's Hieroglyphics Ensemble, the cuban danzon group Orquesta La Moderna Tradicion, and Virginia Iglesias Flamenco Dance Academy. In addition to her work as a founding member of Baguette Quartette, Rachel plays regularly with many chamber groups, including the Armanino Trio and Corvo String Quartet. Rachel has been active as a violin teacher for the last twenty plus years; she is on the faculty at Crowden and Black Pine Circle School.
Crowden 40th Anniversary Concert Honoree, composer Gordon Getty
Need content.
San Francisco Chamber Orchestra Conductor Jory Fankuchen (‘91)
Need content.
Friction Quartet (Crowden faculty member Doug Machitz)
Friction Quartet, whose performances have been called “terribly beautiful” (San Francisco Classical Voice), “stunningly passionate” (Calgary Herald) and “exquisitely skilled” (ZealNYC), exists to modernize the chamber music experience and expand the string quartet repertoire. Friction achieves its mission by commissioning new works, curating imaginative programs, collaborating with artists, and presenting interactive educational outreach. Joshua Kosman (San Francisco Chronicle) declared that Friction Quartet is “an artist who should be discovered” and described their performance as “high-octane music making…a fine blend of rhythmic ferocity and tonal flair.”
Friction made their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2016 as participants in the Kronos Quartet Fifty for the Future Workshop. They returned in March of 2018 to perform George Crumb’s Black Angels as part of “The 60’s” festival and their performance was described as, “one of the truest and most moving things I’ve ever heard or seen.” (Zeal NYC).
Since forming in 2011, Friction has commissioned 43 works for string quartet and given world premiere performances of more than 80 works. They developed the Friction Commissioning Initiative in 2017 as a way to work together with their audience to fund specific commissions. The $14,000 raised to date has helped Friction commission a total of 12 new works, including six by young composers between the ages 16 and 21. They were awarded a 2019 Intermusic SF Musical Grant to develop a participatory educational program with composer Danny Clay that is designed to be accessible and sensory-friendly. The project is slated to premiere in the Fall of 2020 at the Pomeroy Recreation and Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco. Friction’s past grants include a grant from Chamber Music America that was used to commission a piano quintet from Andy Akiho, which debuted in November 2016, as well as project grants from Intermusic SF and Zellerbach Family Foundation supporting special projects involving the performance of commissioned works.
While Friction has garnered international attention as commissioners and interpreters of new music, they are also devoted to performing masterworks of the string quartet repertoire at the highest level. They won Second Prize in the 2016 Schoenfeld Competition, they were quarter-finalists in the 2015 Fischoff Competition and placed second at the 2015 Frances Walton Competition
Friction has held residencies at the New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark, Interlochen Arts Camp, Lunenburg Academy of Music in Nova Scotia, Napa Valley Performing Arts Center, Old First Concerts, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, and was the first ensemble in residence at the Center for New Music.
Friction Quartet is dedicated to building new audiences for contemporary music through interactive musical enrichment programs. They are participating for the third consecutive year in the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music program, visiting over 60 public schools annually. They are Ensemble Partners with Young Composers & Improvisors Workshop, workshopping and premiering new works written by young composers in the Bay Area. They have also given presentations at Oakland public schools through KDFC’s Playground Pop Up program. In collaboration with Meridian Hill Pictures, they created a short documentary, titled Friction, that profiles their early educational outreach in Washington DC’s Mundo Verde Public Charter School. Their presentations regularly utilize Doug’s adventurous arrangements of Pop songs alongside excerpts from standard string quartet repertoire to help young audiences build connections to musical concepts.
Friction appears on recordings with National Sawdust Tracks, Innova Records, Albany Records, Pinna Records, and many independent releases. They released their full-length debut album, resolve, in 2018 through Bandcamp. Friction has appeared on radio stations such as NPR, KALW, KING-FM, and KUT, among others.
Friction’s video of the second movement of First Quartet by John Adams was named the #2 video of the year in 2015 by Second Inversion. John Adams shared this video on his own homepage and called it “spectacular.” Their video for Andy Akiho’s In/ Exchange, featuring Friction and Akiho, was also chosen by Second Inversion for their Top 5 videos of 2016. The video was also featured on American Public Media’s Performance Today.
Friction Quartet takes risks to enlarge the audience’s understanding of what a string quartet can be using arrangements of pop music, digital processing, percussion, amplification, movement, and additional media. Their multimedia and interdisciplinary projects have received critical acclaim. In 2017 they produced Spaced Out, an evening-length suite of music about the cosmos that utilizes surround sound electronics and includes a Friction Commission written by Jon Kulpa. San Francisco Classical Voice called it “accessible, yet surreal.” No matter where their musical exploration takes them, they never lose sight of the string quartet’s essence–the timeless and endlessly nuanced interaction of four analog voices.
Ariana Kim, violin
Noted by The New York Times for giving "the proceedings an invaluable central thread of integrity and stylishness" and having "played with soulful flair," violinist Ariana Kim made her New York recital debut at Carnegie's Weill Hall during her graduate studies at Juilliard and is now a tenured professor at Cornell University. Together with the Aizuri Quartet, she was awarded the Gold Medal at the 2017 Osaka International Competition, the 2018 M-Prize, and a 2019 GRAMMY® nomination for their debut album, Blueprinting. At 16, Ariana made her debut with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and at 24 was appointed acting concertmaster of the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans and has since become one of the most respected artists of her generation.
A recipient of a Cornell University Affinito-Stewart Faculty Grant and a Society for the Humanities Grant, Ariana released her first solo album Routes of Evanescence in December of 2015 which features works for solo violin and violin + 1 written by American women composers including Ruth Crawford Seeger, Augusta Read Thomas, and Jennifer Curtis. While on sabbatic leave from Cornell in 2016, Ariana lived and worked in Italy, teaching at l'Istituto Stradivari, performing with Milano Classica, and curating a cultural diplomacy public art project involving the Cornell Composition Department, the Cornell Architecture Department, and a group of North African and Mid-East refugees. She performed two solo recital tours in Northern and Central Italy featuring works from J.S. Bach to Elliott Carter to bluegrass fiddle tunes; she is set to return to her “home away from home” this coming summer for a solo appearance with Milano Classica at the Paesaggi Musicali Toscani - a festival for which she became the newly appointed Co-Artistic Director in August 2019.
The 2022-23 concert season will bring the world premiere of a new concerto for two violins by Laura Schwendinger that Ariana will premiere alongside Eleanor Bartsch with the Dubuque Symphony and University of Wisconsin-Madison Symphony, respectively, as well as bluegrass concerts with her new band String Theory, the Beethoven concerto with the Cambrian Symphony in San Jose, Scottish Fantasy with the Wayzata Symphony in Minneapolis, solo recitals in Florida, and a Cornell residency with Dawn Upshaw. She will also serve, for the first time, as the PBS and MPR host for This is Minnesota Orchestra live broadcasts in October and April.
Ariana now marks her 17th season with The Knights, a New York-based imaginative and diverse musical collective that performs programs ranging from string quartets to bluegrass tunes and world folk music, to the great chamber orchestra masterpieces of the 20th century. In January of 2015, the group released its seventh album, …the ground beneath our feet – a collection of live performances from a recent U.S. tour – for Warner Classics, on which Ariana is a featured soloist in Steve Reich’s Duo for two violins and strings, alongside Guillaume Pirard; that track has since received much acclaim and was chosen as one of NPR's "Songs We Love” for 2015. The ensemble will begin a residency at Carnegie's Zankel Hall in the fall of 2023.
Ariana also served 10 seasons as a member of the New Yorker-acclaimed New York new music ensemble, Ne(x)tworks, which made their international debut at the John Cage Festival in Berlin performing Cage’s “Song Books” to a packed house alongside the Maulwerker Company in March 2013. Their dedication to the interpretation of graphic scores, open notation and collective improvisation led to a rare recording of the chamber music of Earle Brown, available on MODE Records.
Raised in Minnesota by parents Ellen and Young-Nam who were her teachers from age 3 to 17, Ariana finds another musical home in her native Twin Cities as she is now in her 18th season with the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota. Recent collaborations have included performances with Robert Mann, Fred Sherry, Peter Wiley, Samuel Rhodes, Nobuko Imai, Charles Neidich, and Leon Fleisher. The proud educational wing of the Society, CMSMnext brings her to Twin Cities schools, conservatories, and community programs to offer presentations, outreach workshops and master classes. She joined her father Young-Nam in a Co-Artistic Directorship of the CMSM in the 2019-2020 season.
Ariana has spent summers at Ravinia's Steans Institute, Yellow Barn, and Orford Centre d'Arts. A passionate pedagogue, Ariana spends much of the academic year teaching and mentoring a full studio of talented collegiate students at Cornell; this summer, she will join the faculty of the Palo Alto Chamber Music Workshop for the 20th consecutive year, the Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute for the 13th time, and the Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Institute for the sixth time. She volunteers annually with the Title One school, Castillero Middle in San Jose, CA and has presented master classes throughout the U.S. and abroad at such institutions as Kent State University, The MacPhail Center, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ariana received her masters and doctorate from the Juilliard School under the tutelage of the late Robert Mann, her undergraduate degree from the San Francisco Conservatory with Ian Swensen and Camilla Wicks, and usually co-resides in Ithaca and New York City. During the 2021 calendar year, she lived and worked in Seoul, South Korea studying ancient traditional Korean instruments and music, teaching as a visiting artist at Seoul National University, and rock-climbing many mountains.
La Nell Martin, All-Chorus Conductor
La Nell Martin is an Oakland, CA native who has taught grade levels K through 12 in the Bay Area for over 25 years in public and private schools. She holds a B.A. in Voice from California State University East Bay, M.A. in Music Education from San Jose State University, and a Level One Certificate in Kodály from Holy Names University. La Nell is the Artistic Director for the Oakland Youth Chorus and Director of Youth Programs at the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir. She served as pianist and choir director for the Bethany Baptist Church (Oakland, CA) for over 20 years. La Nell was an Adjunct Professor at Holy Names University for two years. Currently, she is the Supervisor for Student Teachers at San Jose State University. La Nell has served on the California Choral Directors Association (CCDA) board as the Resource and Representative to the Children and Youth Community Choir for four years. She now looks forward to working on the board as a Youth and Children's Choir Committee member. La Nell believes exposing young people to singing music from different cultures inspires tolerance in our communities. It allows young singers to build self-respect for their own culture and identity as well as respect for the world.
David McCarroll (Crowden School ’99), violin
David McCarroll has been appointed concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, holding the Rachel Mellon Walton Concertmaster Chair, beginning with the 2022-2023 season. He has been described by Musik Heute as “a violinist of mature musicality and deep understanding of his repertoire whose playing is distinguished by clarity of form and line.”
Winner of the 2012 European Young Concert Artists Auditions, he made his concerto debut with the London Mozart Players in 2002 and has since appeared as soloist with many orchestras including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich (Simone Young, Grafenegg), Hong Kong Sinfonietta (Christoph Poppen), Santa Rosa Symphony, and Philharmonie Zuidnederland. He regularly performs in major concert halls such as the Konzerthaus Berlin, Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, 92nd Street Y, and Carnegie Hall, while his performances have been broadcast on many radio stations including WGBH Boston, WQXR New York, National Public Radio, Ö1, BR-Klassik and the BBC.
Also an active chamber musician, he served from 2015 to 2022 as the violinist of the renowned Vienna Piano Trio with whom he toured and recorded extensively. The Trio’s recording of the complete Brahms piano trios was awarded the 2017 Echo Klassik prize and in 2020 the Trio’s Beethoven recording won the Opus Klassik award.
In addition, David has performed in many chamber ensembles with musicians including Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Miriam Fried, Pamela Frank, Anthony Marwood, Donald Weilerstein, Kim Kashkashian, Roger Tapping, Marcy Rosen, Peter Wiley, Charles Neidich, Jörg Widmann, and Radovan Vlatkovic, while he is a regular guest at festivals such as Marlboro, the Schubertiade, Heidelberger Frühling, Grafenegg, Lucerne Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Siete Lagos (Argentina), ChamberFest Cleveland, Portland Chamber Music Festival, and with the Israeli Chamber Project. Recent performances have included Stravinsky’s violin concerto at the Konzerthaus Berlin, touring with Musicians from Marlboro, and performances of György Kurtág’s “Kafka Fragments” for violin and soprano.
In demand as a teacher, David taught a full violin class for one year at Salzburg's Mozarteum University, and has taught both violin and chamber music at Ravinia's Steans Institute, at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, and at the San Francisco Conservatory.
David was born in Santa Rosa, California in 1986 and began studying the violin with Helen Payne Sloat at the age of 4. At 8, he attended the Crowden School of Music in Berkeley studying with Anne Crowden. When David was 13, he received an invitation to join an international group of 60 young music students at the Yehudi Menuhin School outside London where he studied for five years with Simon Fischer. David continued his studies with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston receiving a Master’s degree, and with Antje Weithaas in the Konzertexamen (Artist Diploma) program at the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin.
Kenneth Renshaw (Crowden School ’08), violin
Born and raised in San Francisco, violinist Kenneth Renshaw came to international attention in 2012 after winning First Prize at the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in Beijing. He was also a prize winner in the Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition of Belgium, and First Prize recipient of the inaugural Manhattan International Concert Artists Competition.
He has since performed extensively throughout many countries, both as soloist with orchestras including the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Lithuanian National Orchestra, the Jenaer Philharmonie and the China Philharmonic Orchestra, and recitals at notable venues such as the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspiele in Germany, and the Menuhin Festival Gstaad. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with many esteemed artists: pianist Leon Fleisher, violinists Itzhak Perlman, Pamela Frank and Cho-Liang-Lin, flautist Sir James Galway and violist Kim Kashkashian at festivals such as Caramoor, Verbier, Ravinia, and Music@Menlo.
Equally committed to teaching and mentoring the next generation of young musicians, Kenneth currently serves as Teaching Assistant to Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin at the Juilliard School. His students (both privately and through Juilliard) have won top prizes in the Yehudi Menuhin, Zhuhai, Leonid Kogan, Johansen, and Louis Spohr International Competitions and have been admitted to Juilliard, New England Conservatory, Colburn, the Perlman Music Program, and other prestigious programs and institutions.
He served as chamber music faculty at the Perlman Music Program's Summer Music School and Sarasota Winter Residency, and the Crowden Music Center's Chamber Music Workshop. In 2018 he participated in a cultural exchange and residency in São Paulo Brazil teaching masterclasses and mentoring students of the GURI Youth Orchestra programs.
Kenneth is committed to using technology to bring greater access to the highest level of string teaching to a wider audience, having served as content editor and pedagogical consultant for Itzhak Perlman's "Masterclass" series on masterclass.com.
He holds a Bachelors and Masters degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin as recipient of the Kovner Fellowship. Other important teachers and mentors include founding Cleveland Quartet violinist Donald Weilerstein, Ian Swensen, and Lynn Oakley.
During the pandemic, Kenneth discovered his interest in pre-60s Django jazz, joining San Francisco Bay Area based band The Hot Clams as a guest artist for outdoor socially-distanced water concerts on boats in the San Francisco Bay. He continues to perform with them to this day, most recently at the Cascais Jazz Festival in Portugal, and hopes to bring the sense of connection, joy, and spontaneity of live improvisation to his work as classical performer and educator.
Violinist, conductor, and composer Jory Fankuchen has built a reputation as an engaging performer of many genres, as well as a passionate pedagogue. His many ensembles include the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra where he was recently named Principal Conductor, the Magik Magik Orchestra, Squid Inc, the Musical Art Quintet, the Chamber Music Society of San Francisco, and he appears as a regular guest with the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Jory has appeared as soloist with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, the Berkeley Symphony, at the Tanglewood Music Center, and has the distinction of performing on Jascha Heifetz's Guarneri del Gesu violin at the Legion of Honor. Recently, he premiered his Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra with the PACO orchestra. In addition to being the Principal Conductor of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Jory appears as a regular guest conductor with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and is music director of the Civic Strings orchestra. Chamber music has always been the driving force behind Jory's passion for music. He has performed in concert with artists such as Robert Mann, Joseph Silverstein, Joel Krosnick, Bonnie Hampton, Mark Sokol, and Ian Swensen. As first violinist of the Kailas String Quartet, he performed throughout North America, winning first prize in the Chamber Music International Competition, and silver at the National Fischoff Competition. Jory serves on the faculty of the the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, Young Chamber Musicians, and has been a visiting lecturer at Cornell University. He holds a B.M. from the San Francisco Conservatory, and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Ian Swensen and Lucy Chapman, respectively.
Benjamin Simon, Conductor
A native of San Francisco and Anne Crowden’s immediate successor at Crowden, Benjamin Simon began his conducting studies in the Bay Area with Denis DeCouteau, continuing at Yale College and the Juilliard School with Otto Werner Mueller and at the Aspen Music Festival with Dennis Russell Davies. Ben has led orchestras and contemporary ensembles in the United States and Europe, and conducted performances for the theater as well as soundtracks for major motion pictures. He has taught at Harvard and Stanford Universities and has been a member of the music faculty at UC Berkeley since 1998.
In 1988 he joined the Naumburg-Award winning New World String Quartet, performing over eighty concerts a year in major venues and summer festivals in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The quartet recorded extensively for MCA Classics; they won a 1991 Grand Prix du Disque for their recording of the string quartets of Debussy, Ravel, and Henri Dutilleux. The New World SQ was quartet-in-residence at Harvard University and performed with artists David Soyer, Raphael Hillyer, Ursula Oppens, Gilbert Kalish, Donald McInnes, Joel Krosnick, Harold Wright, David Shifrin, Carol Wincenc, Christopher O’Riley, John Perry, and James Tocco.
Benjamin Simon, Conductor
Need content.
Gabriella Smith (Crowden School ’05, John Adams Young Composers Program)
Composer Gabriella Smith grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area playing and writing music, hiking, backpacking, and volunteering on a songbird research project. Described as “the coolest, most exciting, most inventive new voice I’ve heard in ages” (Musical America) and an “outright sensation” (LA Times), Gabriella’s music comes from a love of play, exploring new sounds on instruments, building compelling musical arcs, and connecting listeners with the natural world in an invitation to find joy in climate action. Recent highlights include the premiere of her organ concerto, Breathing Forests, written for James McVinnie and LA Phil, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen; performances of Tumblebird Contrails by San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen, both at home and on their European tour; and the release of her first full-length album, Lost Coast, recorded in Iceland with cellist Gabriel Cabezas, named one of NPR Music’s “26 Favorite Albums Of 2021 (So Far)” and a “Classical Album to Hear Right Now” by The New York Times. Gabriel and Gabriella have since debuted a (cello-violin-voice-electronics) duo version of Lost Coast at the Philharmonie de Paris, and in May 2023 Gabriel premiered the cello concerto version of Lost Coast with LA Phil, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.
Eugene Sor, Artistic Director, Conductor
Whether conducting, coaching chamber music, or teaching cello in his private studio, Eugene Sor has had a distinguished career working with music students of all ages and abilities. He has been a member of Crowden Music Center’s faculty since 1998 and is the resident conductor of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, with whom he has worked since 2001. He has been director of the Preparatory Division Chamber Orchestra at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and has also held teaching positions at San Francisco State University, California State East Bay University, Notre Dame de Namur University and Black Pine Circle School.
Eugene received his early musical training from renowned cello pedagogue Milly Rosner and completed his graduate studies in cello performance with Barry Gold at UCLA in 1996. He is a member of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and an avid chamber musician. He was formerly principal cellist of the Stockton Symphony and a founding member of the Chamberlain String Quartet. His wide range of performance experience has been integral in his background as a music teacher, providing him insights into how to maximize his students’ potential through challenging repertoire choices and strong rehearsal technique.
Eugene and his wife, violinist Karen Shinozaki Sor, happily reside in the East Bay with their son Kenji.
Nicole Targosz (16 year-old John Adams Young Composers Program student)
Need content.
Virtuoso pianist Audrey Vardanega (‘09)
Need content.
Alexander String Quartet founder and cellist Sandy Wilson
Need content.
SF Ballet Orchestra violinist Mariko Wyrick (‘06)
Need content.
Crowden students, faculty, alumni, and friends
Need content.
