Hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, Sydney Adedamola recently graduated in May 2018 with her Bachelors in Music from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music where she studied with Dr. Lina Bahn. During her time in Los Angeles she has held the position of principal second violin of USC Symphony, been a member of the Young Musician Foundation’s Debut Chamber Orchestra and performed in masterclasses taught my various distinguished musicians such as Midori Goto, Paul Watkins, Lawrence Dutton, and Michael Tree.

She spent the past summer in Breckenridge, Colorado as a soloist with and member of the National Repertory Orchestra. Sydney has won prizes in multiple international competitions including A-Muse the World: Young Promise and American Protégé and has performed in concert halls throughout the United States including Walt Disney Concert Hall, Carnegie Hall and Symphony Hall. In March of 2014, she was selected as a soloist on a tour throughout Ireland with the Milton Academy Chamber Orchestra.

Sydney is currently a recipient of the Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship, a collaboration between the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO), the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (ICYOLA) and the University of Southern California. As a Fellow, she is pursuing her Graduate Certificate at USC under the tutelage of Margaret Batjer and Bing Wang whilst playing with both LACO and ICYOLA.

Violinist and educator Sakura Tsai enjoys a multifaceted career having performed nationally and internationally as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician.

A native of Southern California, Dr. Tsai earned degrees (B.M., M.M., and D.M.A.) in Violin Performance from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music where she was honored the prestigious Order of Areté and became a member of Pi Kappa Lambda. Her mentors and teachers included Midori Goto, Kathleen Winkler, Hagai Shaham, and Alice Schoenfeld. Additional fields of study while pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree included Music Theory and Analysis, Violin Pedagogy with Endre Granat, and Kinesiology.

A dedicated educator, Dr. Tsai is Artist Teacher of Violin at the University of Redlands. She is also on faculty at California School of the Arts-San Gabriel Valley, California State Summer School for the Arts, Junior Chamber Music (Inland Empire), and most recently, Montecito International Music Festival. Dr. Tsai makes frequent appearances as an adjudicator and serves as a clinician in schools around Southern California where she mentors aspiring young musicians. In 2018, Dr. Tsai was selected to be the guest conductor of the San Bernardino County High School Honor Orchestra. She coaches instrumentalists in the Walnut Valley Unified School District at both Diamond Bar and Walnut High Schools while being actively involved with the Diamond Bar High School Performing Arts Academy Advanced Music Program. In addition, Dr. Tsai has a robust private studio and has previously held faculty positions at Marymount California University and Idyllwild Arts Academy.

As a performer, Dr. Tsai is currently a member of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra. She performs in several regional orchestras and has spent summers at the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland) and Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival (Germany) academies, and Music Masters Course Japan (Japan). Dr. Tsai maintains an active career as a chamber musician winning honors at international competitions such as the International Young Artists Peninsula Music Festival and the Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition. As a violinist with chamber ensembles Definiens, DuselForty58, and the What’s Next? Ensemble, Dr. Tsai has championed works of numerous living composers. An avid performer of contemporary music, extensive collaboration with young composers with these ensembles included residencies and performance projects at institutions such as Idyllwild Arts Academy, California State University, Northridge and Long Beach, University of California, Riverside, and University of Southern California. Dr. Tsai’s solo and ensemble performances have been featured live on world-wide television and radio broadcasts such as classical KUSC, KRTU-FM, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Germany), and Japan Broadcasting Corporation – NHK (Japan).

Alexander Knecht, violinist, and violist, born in 1991, is a Juilliard graduate with a passion for virtuosic arrangements of music across genres both old and new. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Southern California under full scholarship, where he studies with Bing Wang and Brian Chen. He holds a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Masao Kawasaki. Last year, he was awarded a Career Grant upon graduation from Juilliard for his work with original viola transcriptions including Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy. He is a proud alumnus of La Sierra University, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and violin in 2013, studying with Jason Uyeyama. During recent summers, he has been a fellow at the Astoria Music Festival, Montecito International Music Festival, the Music Academy of the West, and the Aspen Music Festival, and has played in masterclasses for Paul Kantor, Paul Coletti, and Donald McInnes. He was a member of the piano quintet Quintessential, winner of the 2013 JCM-USC Chamber Music Competition, and winner as soloist of the 2013 Redlands Bowl Young Artists auditions and La Sierra University Concerto Competition. Apart from school and concert performance, he has volunteered as a musician at the Jerry Pettis Memorial VA Hospital and LLU Medical Center in Loma Linda, and has been a mentor teaching strings in the CKC-Music community engagement program in San Bernardino, CA since its founding in 2008. Outside of music, he has recently worked as a mathematics instructor at La Sierra University. He maintains a busy private music teaching schedule and is also active as a private academic tutor.

Recent performances in Los Angeles include concerts with the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra where he is principal second violinist, and performances with the new, conductorless Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra. Recent concert appearances in New York City include performances with Juilliard alumni at the Center for Jewish History, the Apollo Music Café, and Subculture. Throughout his time at Juilliard, he was a member of the Church of the Advent Hope in Manhattan, where he served as a musician as well as organizer and performer in their Carnegie Hill Concert Series. He was invited to participate as a finalist in the second George Gershwin International Music Competition, in addition to the 2015 Hudson Valley Philharmonic Concerto Competition. He has also been featured as a chamber musician in the Focus! contemporary music festival in 2015 and 2014, and among other pieces, participated in the U.S. premiere of Akiko Yamane’s Plastic Babys for violin, viola, and cello. He is a devoted advocate of new virtuosic arrangements both for solo instrument and piano and for chamber groups, many of which are featured on his youtube channel.

Photo credit: Alice Qiao

Hyeree Yu, originally from South Korea, started playing the viola at the age of eleven when she was fascinated by the viola sound in her youth symphony orchestra in Seoul. After she earned her Bachelor of Music degree at Seoul National University with Professor Eunsik Choi, her passion for music brought her to the United States in 2012. She went to the Yale School of Music, completing both a Master of Music degree and an Artist Diploma with Mr. Ettore Causa. She won the 2015 Chamber Music Competition and performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. during her time at Yale. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Georgina Lucy Grosvenor Memorial Prize, which goes to the violist whose performances exhibit the highest potential for success as a soloist or chamber musician. From East to West Coast, she received an Artist Diploma at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Mr. Paul Coletti in 2017.

Ms. Yu joined the Long Beach Symphony in September of 2018. She began her orchestral career with the New West Symphony as a substitute violist in 2016 and then the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra as a section violist. In 2017, she won the seat for the Fresno Philharmonic as a principal violist.

Hyeree Yu’s love for playing solo, chamber, and orchestral music led her to the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival in Maine, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Connecticut, and the Gstaad String Academy in Switzerland. She attended the Music Academy of the West as a Zarin Mehta Fellow, performing Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 with the New York Philharmonic in January 2017.

She is an avid coffee drinker and dog lover. One of her cherished outside activities include sharing classic and gospel music at the local homeless shelter and at her church.

Steve Pence is a frequent soloist with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, having recently appeared with them in Bach’s Magnificat, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, and Handel’s Messiah. He has also performed solos in Bach’s B-Minor Mass with the Los Angeles Chamber Choir, in Elijahwith the Lark Society, and in Brahms’ Requiem with the Orange County Choral Society. Steve has performed several opera roles, including Alonzo in Hoiby’s The Tempest with USC Thornton Opera and Figaro in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with Pacific Repertory Opera. He lives in Long Beach with his wife and son.

Tenor Jason Francisco sings professionally with Los Angeles Opera and San Diego Opera. He has also soloed with Pacific Chorale, the John Alexander Singers, Pacific Symphony and the Corona Del Mar Baroque Orchestra.

Jason has appeared and/or toured with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under John Mauceri and John Williams, the Boston Pops Orchestra under Keith Lockhart, Musica Angelica under Martin Haselbock, the Munich Symphony under Ludwig Wicki, and Andrea Bocelli. Jason is also featured as vocal soloist in Roger Bellon’s soundtrack of the film 186 Dollars to Freedom.

Praised by the Boston Globe for her “lustrous” voice, German-born soprano Kala Maxym has performed on opera stages and in concert venues across the United States and abroad.

For much of her operatic career, Kala performed as a mezzo-soprano, playing such roles as Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel, Stéphano in Roméo et Juliette, Dorabella in Così fan tutte , Anna I in Die Sieben Todesünden, Flora in La traviata and Alisa in Lucia di Lammermoor, Giovanna in Rigoletto, Nancy in Albert Herring, and Nefertiti in Akhnaten. One of her first soprano roles, Elle in La voix humaine, remains one of her favorites.

Most recently, Kala performed with the Spokane Symphony as soprano soloist in the New Year’s Eve performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony under the baton of Maestro Eckart Preu, a role she will reprise with Long Beach Symphony in June 2019. Kala was a featured soloist in “UnSung Heroes” with Pacific Chorale and has also sang the soprano solo in Bernstein’s “Mass” with the Pacific Chorale & Pacific Symphony at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Recently, she presented Villa-Lobos’ beloved “Bachianas brasileiras No. 5” at Art Share-LA for a concert benefiting the ACLU of Southern California and also sang for the annual “Fire Bird” Dinner at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts with pianist Karolina Rojahn.

She has appeared in concert at Hawai’i Public Radio, the Chicago Cultural Center, Faulkner Library in Santa Barbara, the University of Albany, Wilton’s Music Hall in London, Deutsches Haus at New York University, Les Azuriales Opera in Cap Ferrat, France, and the Aspen Music Festival among others. She has also sung in many leading choirs, such as the Canterbury Cathedral Choir, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, Musica Viva, and San Francisco Choral Artists. Kala is currently a staff singer with the Pacific Chorale and the Long Beach Camerata Singers.

Dedicated to using her voice for good, Kala has organized and performed numerous recitals to benefit causes such as Doctors Without Borders, Colegio Insular Robinson Crusoe (Chilean Earthquake Relief), Pamoja Tunaweza (Together We Can, Tanzania), the ACLU of Southern California, and the Icla da Silva Foundation, among others. She has sung for Chilean Presidents Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera as well as at the London Inaugural Ball for President Barack Obama.

In addition to her life as a singer, Kala has also worked as a Senior Program Analyst for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice – OPDAT, as a gemologist, and as a Customer Success Manager for Smartling, a technology company in the translation/localization space. She is fluent in Spanish and German, is a certified Spanish-English translator (New York University), certified Grant Writer (San Diego State University), California Wine Appellation Specialist (San Francisco Wine School), and WSET Level 2 Certified through The Wine House LA.

Kala holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from Barnard College of Columbia University (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and a Master of Music degree in Opera Performance from The Boston Conservatory.

She lives in Los Angeles with her two orange Bronx street cats, Caspar and Ollie. Kala is a former bone marrow donor and proudly sits on the board of the Icla da Silva Foundation, the leading bone marrow recruitment center in the country for the National BeTheMatch registry.

Canadian-born violist Andrew Duckles leads a diverse musical life as a recording artist, soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. From a very tall family of musicians, Andrew is the “runt” of the
Duckles family, standing at mere 6’4”. Formerly principal viola of the Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet orchestras, Duckles now makes his home in Southern California and has just been appointed the principal violist of the Long Beach Symphony. Duckles began his orchestral career with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and has made appearances as principal viola of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra, among others. An enthusiastic chamber musician, Duckles appears regularly as a guest artist on a number of chamber music series throughout the United States and Europe, frequently sharing the stage with the Alexander String Quartet and the Los Angeles-based Debussy Trio. For over fifteen years, Mr. Duckles has been in high demand as a recording artist for a multitude of studio recording projects for television and motion picture soundtracks, including the recent Star Wars films.

Andrew Duckles is married to culinary genius, master educator, and French horn player extraordinaire Laura Strand. Together, they live in Long Beach, California with their two young sons, Aidan and Kiefer.

Violinist Simone Porter has been recognized as an emerging artist of impassioned energy, interpretive integrity, and vibrant communication. In the past few years she has debuted with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and with a number of renowned conductors, including Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Stéphane Denève, Nicholas McGegan, Ludovic Morlot, and Donald Runnicles. Born in 1996, Simone made her professional solo debut at age 10 with the Seattle Symphony and her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London at age 13. In March 2015, Simone was named a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

At the invitation of the composer, Simone has just concluded a busy season with an appearance at the New York Philharmonic’s presentation of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Foreign Bodies,” a multi-sensory performance experience involving live dance and a video installation. During the season she visited orchestras in Rhode Island, Albany (NY), Oregon, Texas, and Alabama with recitals in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and performances at U.S. summer festivals in Aspen and Bellingham as well as Dublin and Edinburgh’s International Festival.

This season she will join Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in subscription concerts honoring John Williams, in addition to concerts with orchestras in Oklahoma City, Boise, Orlando, Erie, Lexington, Fort Worth, Spokane, Asheville, Edmonton, Long Beach, and Costa Rica.

Simone’s emergence on the international concert circuit has occurred simultaneously with her studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel came in 2015 followed soon after by performances with orchestras in Detroit, Cincinnati, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Indianapolis, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Baltimore and Rochester. She also made her Ravinia Festival recital debut, her debut at the Grand Teton Music Festival, and multiple solo performances as a guest artist at the Aspen Music Festival. Having spent her formative years in Seattle, Simone made a rousing homecoming return engagement with the Seattle Symphony in 2016.

Internationally, Simone has performed with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra with Gustavo Dudamel; the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro; the Costa Rica Youth Symphony; the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong; the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the Milton Keynes City Orchestra, and the Royal Philharmonic in the United Kingdom; and the Opera de Marseilles.

Simone is a devoted chamber musician, and has most recently performed in the Seattle Chamber Music Society series with James Ehnes in January 2018. She has appeared in multiple Colburn Chamber Music Society Series concerts with artists such as violinists Arnold Steinhardt and Scott St. John; on the South Bay Chamber Music Society series with violist Paul Coletti; and at the Miami International Piano Festival. Internationally, she has participated in the Prussia Cove Open Chamber Music Sessions and the Koblenz International Music Festival in Germany.

A 2015/16 Performance Today Young-Artist-in-Residence, Simone’s performances and interviews have been broadcast nationally on the APM syndicated network on several different occasions. She has also been featured on the renowned syndicated NPR radio program From the Top, hosted by Christopher O’Riley and featuring America’s best young classical musicians. Her performance in July 2012 marked her third appearance on the program; her first was in 2007 at the age of 11. Simone made her Carnegie Zankel Hall debut on the Emmy Award-winning TV show From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall. In June 2016, her featured performance of music from Schindler’s List with Maestro Gustavo Dudamel and members of the American Youth Symphony was broadcast nationally on the TNT Network as part of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award: A Tribute to John Williams.

Raised in Seattle, Washington, Simone studied with Margaret Pressley as a recipient of the Dorothy Richard Starling Scholarship, and was then admitted into the studio of the renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, with whom she presently studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Summer studies have included many years at the Aspen Music Festival, Indiana University’s Summer String Academy, and the Schlern International Music Festival in Italy.

Simone Porter plays on a 1745 J.B. Guadagnini violin on generous loan from The Mandell Collection of Southern California

Joshua Roman has earned an international reputation for his wide-ranging repertoire, a commitment to communicating the essence of music in visionary ways, artistic leadership and versatility. As well as being a celebrated performer, he is recognized as an accomplished composer and curator and was named a TED Senior Fellow in 2015.

During the 17-18 season, Roman will make his Detroit Symphony Orchestra debut, and perform his own Cello Concerto, Awakening, with the Princeton Symphony in collaboration with conductor Teddy Abrams. In Europe, Roman will perform one of his favorite 20th Century Cello Concertos, that of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, with the Szczecin Philharmonic of Poland. Other season highlights include performances of Tornado with the JACK Quartet with San Francisco Performances, Town Hall Seattle, Interlochen and numerous presenters throughout the country.

Notable events from the 16-17 season include the premiere of Tornado, a new work composed by Joshua Roman and commissioned by the Music Academy of the West and Town Hall Seattle. The lauded premiere took place with the JACK Quartet at the Music Academy of the West in June of 2017. He also gave his debut at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, comprised of not only performances with high caliber musicians from the St. Lawrence String Quartet and other corners of the chamber music world, but a performance of his solo piece Riding Light. Orchestral highlights of the season included performances of the Mason Bates Cello Concerto with the Portland, Berkeley, Spokane, and Memphis Symphonies. The concerto is dedicated to the cellist, who gave its “world-class world premiere” (Seattle Times) with the Seattle Symphony in 2014, and has since performed it with orchestras around the U.S. At TED2017 in Vancouver, Roman opened the conference during its first-ever live simulcast to movie theaters around the world with a collaborative music and dance piece created and danced by Huang Yi, with the industrial robot KUKA as dance partner, followed by an original composition to kickstart the first session of speakers. In November of 2016, Roman’s musical response to the tension around the U.S. Presidential election – Let’s Take a Breath – brought almost one million live viewers to TED’s Facebook page to hear his performance the complete Six Suites for Solo Cello by J.S. Bach.

Prior seasons have seen Roman premiere Awakening, his own Cello Concerto, with the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, and subsequently perform it with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra; make his debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra playing Dvorák’s Cello Concerto; give a solo performance on the TED2015 main stage; perform a program of chamber works by Lera Auerbach at San Francisco Performances with Auerbach and violinist Philippe Quint; and make appearances with the Columbus, Fort Worth, New World, Seattle Symphonies as well as with the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He also served as Alumnus-in-Residence at the prestigious Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara.

Roman has demonstrated inspirational artistic leadership throughout his career. As Artistic Director of TownMusic in Seattle, he has showcased his own eclectic musical influences and chamber music favorites, while also promoting newly commissioned works. Under his direction, the series has offered world premieres of compositions by some of today’s brightest young composers and performances by cutting-edge ensembles. In the 2015-16 season at TownMusic, he presented his own song cycle, … we do it to one another, based on Tracy K. Smith’s book of poems Life on Mars, with soprano Jessica Rivera. He has also recently been appointed the inaugural Artistic Advisor of award-winning contemporary streaming channel Second Inversion, launched by Seattle’s KING-FM to cultivate the next generation of classical audiences. In the summer of 2016, the cellist took on the role of Creative Partner with the Colorado Music Festival & Center for Musical Arts. The same organization sponsored him in April 2016 at the 68th Annual Conference on World Affairs on the University of Colorado campus, where he contributed his innovative ideas about how classical music is conceived and presented.  Roman performed at the Kennedy Center Arts Summit that same month and was a member of the 2016 Kennedy Center Honors artists committee.

Roman’s cultural leadership includes using digital platforms to harness new audiences. In 2009 he developed The Popper Project, performing, recording and uploading the complete etudes from David Popper’s High School of Cello Playing to his dedicated YouTube channel (youtube.com/joshuaromancello). In his latest YouTube project, Everyday Bach, Roman performs Bach’s cello suites in beautiful settings around the world. He has collaborated with photographer Chase Jarvis on Nikon video projects, and Paste magazine singled out Roman and DJ Spooky for their cello and iPad cover of Radiohead’s Everything in Its Right Place, created for the Voice Project. For his creative initiatives on behalf of classical music, Roman was named a TED Fellow in 2011, joining a select group of next-generation innovators who show potential to positively affect the world. He acted as curator for an outdoor amphitheater performance at the TED Summit in Banff in the Canadian Rockies this past summer.

Beyond these initiatives, Roman’s adventurous spirit has led to collaborations with artists outside of the music community, including his co-creation of On Grace with Tony Award-nominated actress Anna Deavere Smith, a work for actor and cello which premiered in February 2012 at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. His outreach endeavors have taken him to Uganda with his violin-playing siblings, where they played chamber music in schools, HIV/AIDS centers, and displacement camps, communicating a message of hope through music.

Before embarking on a solo career, Roman spent two seasons as principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, a position he won in 2006 at the age of 22. Since that time, he has appeared as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Mariinsky Orchestra, New World Symphony, Alabama Symphony, and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Ecuador, among many others. An active chamber musician, Roman has collaborated with established artists such as Andrius Zlabys, Cho-Liang Lin, Assad Brothers, Earl Carlyss, Christian Zacharias and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as other dynamic young soloists and performers from New York’s vibrant music scene, including the JACK Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Derek Bermel and the Enso String Quartet.

A native of Oklahoma City, Roman began playing the cello at the age of three on a quarter-size instrument and gave his first public recital at age ten. Home-schooled until he was 16, he then pursued his musical studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Richard Aaron. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Cello Performance in 2004, and his Master’s in 2005, as a student of Desmond Hoebig, former principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra. Roman is grateful for the loan of an 1899 cello by Giulio Degani of Venice.