Titus Underwood is the Principal Oboe of the Nashville Symphony, having previously served as Acting Principal Oboe since September 2017. Prior to performing with the Nashville Symphony, he served as Acting Associate Principal of the Utah Symphony. He received his Master of Music from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Elaine Douvas, with additional studies with Nathan Hughes and Pedro Díaz. He earned his Bachelor of Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a pupil of John Mack, legendary principal oboist of The Cleveland Orchestra. While there, he also studied with Frank Rosenwein and Jeffrey Rathbun.

Underwood has performed as Guest Associate Principal of Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and as Guest Principal of Miami Symphony Orchestra and Florida Orchestra. He has also played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Puerto Rico Symphony and San Diego Symphony. He was an Oboe Fellow at Aspen Music Festival and has performed at the Grand Tetons Festival. He will serve as Principal Oboe at the Bellingham Music Festival in summer 2019. Other festivals he has attended include Music Academy of the West, National Repertory Orchestra and Domaine Forget.

Praised for his “virtuosic,” “dazzling" and “brilliant” performances (The New York Times) and his “bold, keen sound” (The New Yorker), oboist James Austin Smith performs new and old music across the United States and around the world.  Mr. Smith is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and Decoda, co-principal oboist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Artistic and Executive Director of Tertulia, a chamber music series that takes place in restaurants in New York and San Francisco  He is a member of the oboe and chamber music faculties of Stony Brook University and the Manhattan School of Music.

Mr. Smith’s festival appearances include Marlboro, Lucerne, Music@Menlo, Spoleto USA, Bowdoin, Bay Chamber Concerts, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Orlando; he has performed with the St. Lawrence, Parker, Rolston and Orion string quartets and recorded for the Nonesuch, Bridge, Mode and Kairos labels.

Mr. Smith received his Master of Music degree in 2008 from the Yale School of Music and graduated in 2005 with Bachelor of Arts (Political Science) and Bachelor of Music degrees from Northwestern University.  He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Leipzig, Germany at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy” and is an alumnus of Ensemble Connect, a collaboration of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, the Weill Music Institute and the New York City Department of Education.  Mr. Smith’s principal teachers are Stephen Taylor, Christian Wetzel, Humbert Lucarelli and Ray Still.  Follow him on Instagram @jaustinsmith.

A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-­Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the­mill instrumentalists from true artists.” Kristin Lee has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Tacoma Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Nordic Chamber Orchestra of Sweden, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, and many others. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live, (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season.

Performance highlights include concerts presented by the San Francisco Symphony with Itzhak Perlman, Amarillo Symphony, Chamber Music Sedona, a tour with the Silk Road Ensemble, Parlance Chamber Concerts, Moab Music Festival, Music in the Vineyards, Lyra Music Festival, Olympic Music Festival, North Carolina New Music Initiative, the Leicester International Music Festival, the Musicians Emergency Fund at Lincoln Center, as well as performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Camerata Pacifica. Reflecting on both her personal journey and her professional journey, Kristin Lee has developed a new project, Americana, which showcases a spectrum of illustrious composers and the American musical styles which influenced them, as well as their own musical styles which influenced generations of composers to come. As a foreign-born citizen of America, Lee was compelled to select this unique collection of works to express her pride of the country she now calls her own, and offers recital programs that have a distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history. Lee’s many honors include awards from the 2015 Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, 2011 Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. She is also the unprecedented First Prize winner of three concerto competitions at The Juilliard School – in the Pre-­College Division in 1997 and 1999, and in the College Division in 2007.

Born in Seoul, Lee began studying the violin at the age of five, and within one year won First Prize at the prestigious Korea Times Violin Competition. In 1995, she moved to the United States and continued her musical studies under Sonja Foster. Two years later, she became a student of Catherine Cho and Dorothy DeLay in The Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. In January 2000, she was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. She is a member of the faculty of the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and the co-founder and artistic director of Emerald City Music in Seattle.

Ling Ling Huang started violin at the age of 4 with her mother, Lilan Z. Huang. She continued studying violin with Fredell Lack until her admission to the Cleveland Institute of Music at the age of 15. There, while studying with Paul Kantor, she won the concerto competition and performed the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the CIM Orchestra. While at CIM, Ms. Huang was a member of the Ariadne String Quartet, with whom she won the bronze medal at the 2012 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition Barstowe Prize. For her Master of Music graduation, she was awarded a special commendation for her comprehensive exams from Susan McClary.

Ms. Huang performed the Britten Violin Concerto with the Shepherd School Symphony as a result of winning the Concerto Competition in 2014 at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music where she continued her studies with Paul Kantor in the Artist Diploma Program. Her Artist Diploma projects included recitals of all ten Beethoven Sonatas for Violin and Piano and the Beethoven Violin Concerto and partnerships with various shelters in Houston to bring classical music to people experiencing homelessness.

Ms. Huang is a current substitute violinist in the New York Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, Opera Columbus, ProMusica Columbus, and the Oregon Symphony. While at Rice University, she played frequently with the Houston Symphony, participating in their 2018 European Tour, the Houston Grand Opera, most recently for Siegfried and Götterdämerung, and has been the substitute concertmaster of the Houston Ballet Orchestra. In New York, she plays with the Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy award in 2021, Music Kitchen, an organization that has partnered with Carnegie Hall to bring commissioned concerts to shelters, the Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, and the Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared on The Tonight Show backing Gunna and Metroboomin and can be heard on various recordings, most recently the movie soundtrack for Judas and the Black Messiah. She has spent summers at Artosphere, Sunset Chamberfest LA, and for the last 6 years, the Grand Teton Music Festival.

Hailed for her "magnetic, wide-ranging tone" and her "rock solid technique" (Philadelphia Inquirer), violist Ayane Kozasa is a sought-after chamber musician, collaborator, and educator. Since winning the 2011 Primrose International Viola Competition—where she also captured awards for best chamber music and commissioned work performances—Ayane has appeared on stages across the world, from Carnegie, Wigmore, and Suntory Hall to Ravinia, Aspen, and the Marlboro Music Festival. She is a passionate advocate for the expansion of viola repertoire, and has commissioned multiple new works featuring the viola, including “American Haiku” by Paul Wiancko and “K’Zohar Harakia” by Judd Greenstein.

Ayane has developed a career that revolves around the art of chamber music. As a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet for 11 years, she developed her skills of launching a brand new ensemble. The quartet was the 2018 quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum and the grand prize winners of both the Osaka International String Quartet Competition and MPrize Chamber Arts Competition. The Aizuri Quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting—which features the music of 5 American composers, all commissioned by the quartet—was nominated for a Grammy Award and named one of NPR’s top 10 classical albums of 2018. With collaboration being a deep part of their identity, they performed with artists such as Wilco, Marcy Rosen, Michi Wiancko, Jonathan Biss, and Maeve Gilchrist. Their devotion to education brought them to young musicians around the world, and they crafted a unique student composer workshop format that they implemented at institutions such as the University of Southern California, Princeton University, and New York Youth Symphony. In 2020, the quartet launched AizuriKids, an interactive web series for children that explores relationships between music and themes ranging from astrophysics to cooking. Their dedication to the art of the string quartet for 11 years was recognized by Chamber Music America, and in 2022 the quartet received the Cleveland Quartet Award.

Currently, Ayane is a member of the duo Ayane & Paul with composer and cellist Paul Wiancko, with whom she collaborated on Norah Jones’ album “Pick Me Up Off the Floor.” The duo has appeared at several festivals, including Spoleto Festival USA, Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar. Ayane’s most recent passion project Owls is a quartet collective with violinist Alexi Kenney and cellists Gabriel Cabezas and Paul Wiancko. Owls share an uncommonly fierce creative spirit, weaving together new compositions with original arrangements of music ranging from the 1600s to the present, and have played at series such as the Baryshnikov Arts Center in NYC and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

Other collaboration highlights include performances with world-renowned artists such as Tessa Lark, Steven Banks, Nobuko Imai, and the Kronos Quartet. As a seasoned orchestral performer, Ayane has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, A Far Cry, Philadelphia Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well as the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, where she served as principal violist from 2012 to 2016.

Much of Ayane’s current work involves mentoring aspiring young musicians through programs like the Meadowmount School of Music, Green Lake Chamber Music Camp, and Olympic Music Festival. She is currently on the viola faculty at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and has been guest faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Northwestern University. Taking inspiration from her mentors the Cavani Quartet, Ayane has developed several education-based music shows curated especially for the youth in a festival’s community including Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts and Spoleto Festival. Ayane is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Kronberg Academy in Germany, and Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied viola with Misha Amory, Roberto Díaz, Nobuko Imai, and Kirsten Docter. Aside from music, she enjoys hiking, drawing, and creating animation.

Icelandic-American cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir enjoys a varied career as a performer, collaborator and teaching artist.  She has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony, among others, and her recital and chamber music performances have taken her across the US, Europe and Asia.  Sæunn has performed in many of the world’s prestigious venues including Carnegie Hall, Suntory Hall, Elbphilharmonie, Barbican Center and Disney Hall and the Los Angeles Times praised her performances for their “emotional intensity”.

In the 2018-2019 season, Sæunn made her debut with the BBC and Seattle Symphonies performing the award-winning cello concerto, Quake, written for her by Páll Ragnar Pálsson. Chamber music appearances took her to Carnegie Hall in New York City, Glasgow, and Los Angeles, as well as recitals in Reykjavík, Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago following the Spring 2019 release of “Vernacular”, her recording of Icelandic solo cello music on the Sono Luminus label.

Highlights of the 2017-2018 season include the US premiere of Betsy Jolas’ Wanderlied and the Hong Kong premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Canticle of the Sun, as well as recitals and chamber music appearances in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Glasgow, London and Reykjavík. In addition to collaborating with Daníel Bjarnason on his award-winning composition Bow to String, Sæunn enjoys working with composers of our time such as Páll Ragnar Pálsson, Halldór Smárason, Þuríður Jónsdóttir and Melia Watras.

An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated in performance with Itzhak Perlman, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode and members of the Emerson, Guarneri and Cavani Quartets and has participated in numerous chamber music festivals, including Prussia Cove and Marlboro, with whom she has toured. Formerly Artist-in-Residence at Green Music Center’s Weill Hall in Sonoma as well as cellist of the Manhattan Piano Trio, she is currently cellist of the Seattle-based chamber music group, Frequency, and cellist and Co-Artistic Director of Decoda, The Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall.

Sæunn has garnered numerous prizes in international competitions, including the Naumburg Competition in New York and the Antonio Janigro Competition in Zagreb, Croatia. She received a Bachelor of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master of Music from The Juilliard School and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from SUNY Stony Brook. Her principal teachers include Richard Aaron, Tanya L. Carey, Colin Carr and Joel Krosnick.

Sæunn is an alum of Ensemble ACJW (now known as Ensemble Connect)— a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education—performing chamber music at Carnegie Hall and bringing classical music to students in the New York City Public Schools.

Born in Reykjavik, Iceland, Sæunn serves on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle, teaching cello and chamber music.

Celebrated for her proficiency as both a pedagogue and a performer, Rachel Calin has been called “a lyrical soloist in command of her instrument,” by the New York Times. In 1994 she won the Juilliard Concerto Competition, making her concerto debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with the Juilliard Orchestra. Subsequently, she has made concerto appearances with the Burlington Ensemble, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, and the Sejong Soloists.

As a chamber musician, Calin has appeared in concert throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States. She can be heard on NPR’s Performance Today, both in live and recorded broadcasts, and has collaborated with Myung-Wha Chung, Lawrence Dutton, Leon Fleisher, Frank Huang, Ron Leonard, Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham, among others.

She has performed frequently with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and has made appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, Live from Lincoln Center, Mostly Mozart, and Ravinia. Calin can also be heard on numerous movie and commercial soundtracks, including The Departed and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. She has given the world premieres of works by composers such as Lera Auerbach and D. Edward Davis, and has performed with many contemporary music ensembles including Sequitur, Composers Concordance, and Metropolis Ensemble.

Calin received a BM and MM from the Juilliard School, where she studied with both Homer Mensch and Eugene Levinson. In addition to Juilliard, she also trained with Jeff Bradetich, Paul Ellison and Denise Searfoss. She was the recipient of an instrument loan from the Karr Foundation, and currently performs on a double bass crafted by Carlo Giuseppe Testore in 1690.

Pianist Oksana Ejokina appears frequently on concert series across the United States and abroad. She has soloed with the Seattle Symphony, Symphony Tacoma, Olympia Symphony and St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and performed at numerous distinguished venues in the US. She has premiered works by Marilyn Shrude, Laura Kaminsky, Wayne Horvitz, Bern Herbolsheimer, and has been featured on multiple live radio broadcasts on WFMT-Chicago, KUOW and KING FM in Seattle, and Maine Public Radio. Oksana is the pianist of the Volta Piano Trio, whose recordings for Con Brio label received accolades in The Strad, Gramophone, and American Record Guide. A sought-after teacher, she is an Associate Professor of Piano at PLU. For the last 22 years, she has been an integral part of the Icicle Creek Center for the Arts in her capacity as Artistic Director of several flagship classical music programs.