Alexander Kerr’s expressive and charismatic style has made him one of the most accomplished and versatile violinists on the international music scene today. In 1996 at the age of 26, Mr. Kerr was appointed to the prestigious position of Concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After nine successful years at that post, he left in June, 2006 to assume the endowed Linda and Jack Gill Chair in Music as Professor of Violin at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. In addition to his teaching responsibilities in Bloomington, he maintains a busy concert schedule appearing with orchestras and in recital and chamber music performances throughout the U.S., Asia and Europe. In 2008 he began his tenure as Principal Guest Concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and in September 2011, he assumed his role as Concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Regarded by the press as a masterful virtuoso with an elegant, old-world sound, Mr. Kerr has appeared as soloist with major orchestras throughout the United States and Europe, working with such renowned conductors as Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Chailly, Gustavo Gimeno, Fabio Luisi, Peter Oundjian, Donald Runnicles, Robert Spano, Alan Gilbert, Jaap van Zweden, Michael Tilson Thomas and David Zinman.

An active chamber musician, Mr. Kerr has collaborated with Martha Argerich, Leif Ove Andsnes, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Cho-Liang Lin, James Ehnes, Edgar Meyer, Truls Mørk, Menahem Pressler, Vadim Repin, Alisa Weilerstein, Kim Kashkashian and Maxim Vengerov in performances at festivals in Aspen, Santa Fe, Caramoor, La Jolla, Seattle, Stavanger, and throughout Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands.

Mr. Kerr’s CD releases include the Dvorak Piano Quintet with Sarah Chang and Leif Ove Andsnes on the EMI label, music by Dutch composer Julius Röntgen on the NM Classics label, Horn Trios of Brahms, Leshnoff and Lennox-Berkeley on Naxos and the Shostakovich Romance on a series of discs including “Violin Adagios” and “Evening Adagios” released by Decca. A live DVD and CD recording of Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben with Mr. Kerr, the RCO and Maestro Mariss Jansons was released in 2005 on the RCO’s own label: RCOLive!

A Cuban American, born in Miami, Florida and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, Mr. Kerr began his studies at age seven with members of the National Symphony Orchestra. He went on to study with Sally Thomas at the Juilliard School, and with Aaron Rosand at the Curtis Institute of Music where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1992.

Pianist Joy Cline Phinney, a native of Boulder, Colorado, has appeared in solo and chamber music recitals across the United States and in Europe.  She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in piano from The Juilliard School, where she studied with William Masselos, Adele Marcus, and Samuel Sanders, and a Doctor of Ensemble Arts from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she studied with Ellen Mack and Robert McDonald.

Joy has collaborated in chamber music concerts, recording projects, and radio and television programs with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, among others, and for two decades has appeared annually with headlined artists on the Faculty Showcase concerts at the Sarasota (Florida) Music Festival.  Some of the distinguished artists with whom she has performed are James Buswell, Lynn Chang, Timothy Cobb, Anyango Yarbo- Davenport,, Timothy Eddy, Anthony Elliot, Miguel Pérez-Espejo, Emmanuel Feldman, Karen Gomyo, Vanessa Holroyd, David Houston, Juliette Kang, Alexander Kerr, Nancy King, Julie Landsman, Ron Leonard, Lucia Lin, Phillippe Muller, Peter Stumpf, Richard Svoboda, Hsin-Lin Tsai, Ann Hobson Pilot, Alan Vogel, Carol Wincenc, William Winstead, Owen Young, and Rebecca Young.

Notable concerts of the past two years include return engagement on the New York Philharmonic Merkin Hall Concert Series (Brahms Piano Quintet), “Colour of Music” festival concerts in Houston, TX  and Richmond, VA, collaborative concerts at Stanford, Harvard, Seattle, Brandeis, and Tufts Universities, Sevenars Music Festival (MA),  Resident Artist and concerts with “Castle of Our Skins,” continuing engagements with musiConnects, and Boston University’s quartet-in-residence – Arneis Quartet.

Faculty appointments include the Cremona International Academy in Italy, Sarasota  International Music Festival in Florida, and Easton Chamber Music Festival  in Massachusetts.

Recording credits (available on amazon.com) “Our American Roots: Music for Cello and Piano” (Delos) with cellist Emmanuel Feldman, following up their successful collaboration “Rider on the Plains” (Albany Records), which was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Producer, Blanton Alspaugh.

Hailed by John Williams as “an outstanding cellist and truly dedicated artist,” Emmanuel Feldman is an award-winning cellist performing in the U.S. and internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. Described by Gramophone as “an artist who combines communicative urgency with tonal splendor,” his CD Our American Roots (Delos) includes Pulitzer Prize winning composer George Walker’s cello sonata and Feldman’s acclaimed arrangements of Gershwin pieces for cello and piano.

Revolutionizing modern cello playing, Feldman performs standing up using his patented TekStand™ pioneering a sensational new experience for listeners visually and sonically that engages fellow musicians and audiences alike. For collaborative concerts when sitting traditionally is needed, he uses his other invention, the TekPin™ vertical endpin that is used by cellists all around the world. He has been featured in articles in The Strad and in Strings Magazine and has been a presenter at the American String Teachers Conference.

His guest artist appearances include the Celebrity Series of Boston, Phillips Collection, Boston Pops, Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Mozart Society Orchestra and Greensboro Festival Orchestra among others. Feldman concerts throughout Europe including appearances at Salle Gaveau Paris, Altes Raathaus Vienna, Palazzo Scopoli, Tonadico (Italy) and he has toured in Taiwan.

An enthusiastic collaborator, he has partnered in a wide range of performances with artists including Gilbert Kalish, Paul Neubauer, Karen Dreyfus Richard Stoltzman, Elmar Oliveira, pop star Bobby McFerrin and groups including the Mark Morris Dance Group and Ballet Rhode Island. 

As co-founder of Duo Cello e Basso, along with bassist Pascale Delache-Feldman, they have given numerous residencies at universities across the U.S. The duo’s recently released CD “Let’s Tango!” (2024) has been entered by Parma Records in consideration for a Latin Grammy for Feldman’s arrangement of the Four Seasons of Buenos Aires of Piazzolla.  As a core member of the Aurea Ensemble and a guest artist with the Boston Public Quartet, Feldman, tours with these groups performing chamber music paired with poetry and the music of BIPOC composers. He also has performed as a guest with the Verona, Jupiter, Lark and Borromeo String Quartets.

An active advocate of new music, Feldman’s critically acclaimed recordings (Naxos, Delos, Albany and others) and world premiere performances have featured music by American composers John Harbison, Ned Rorem, Gunther Schuller, Steve Mackey and Richard Danielpour. Praised by the N.Y. Times as “exhilarating in this bracing and confident performance” Feldman’s “Rider on The Plains” CD earned a 2008 Grammy nomination for producer Blanton Alspaugh and features Virgil Thomson’s Cello Concerto along with the complete cello works of Thomson with pianist Joy Cline Phinney. Feldman’s own cello concerto “Standing Tall” that won a silver medal at the 2022 Global Music Awards, was written together with the debut of his TekStand™.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and Tufts University, he has taught at New England Conservatory and Brown University, is on the performance faculty of Tufts University and Project STEP and has given masterclasses at the National Taiwan Normal University (Taipei), Manhattan School of Music, Bienen School and Peabody Institute. He has been on the cello faculty of the International Cello Institute, Yellow Barn and Heifetz International Music Institutes and is a faculty member of the Trentino Music Festival (Italy) and Duxbury and Easton Chamber Music Festivals.  

Francisco Noya is a prominent figure in the Boston and New England music scene, where he has earned a reputation as a versatile interpreter of symphonic and operatic literature. He served as music director of the Longwood Symphony Orchestra in Boston and Symphony by the Sea in Manchester. Mr. Noya currently serves as resident conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, where he represents the Philharmonic artistically and educationally throughout the Rhode Island community. He is also the music director of the New Philharmonia Orchestra in Newton, MA.

Noya is also a respected member of the conducting faculty of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the fall of 2008, he began his tenure as music director of the Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra, where he is actively engaged in the exploration of cutting-edge orchestral repertoire.

Noya began his professional career in his native Venezuela, as conductor of the Youth Orchestra of Valencia, one of the original ensembles of “El Sistema.” After earning advanced degrees in composition and conducting from Boston University, Noya was appointed to serve as assistant conductor of the Caracas Philharmonic and assistant to the music director of the Teatro Teresa Carreño, one of the most prestigious theaters in Latin America. Noya continued his conducting career in the United States by serving as music director of the Empire State Youth Orchestra in Albany, New York for ten seasons. During his tenure, he led the group on two European tours as well as in concerts at both Carnegie Hall in New York City and in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood.

In the U.S., Noya has appeared as guest conductor of the Boston Pops, Baltimore, Nashville, San Antonio, and Omaha Symphony Orchestras, and the Cape Cod Symphony, among others. In addition, he has performed internationally with orchestras in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy and Russia. In Venezuela, Noya has collaborated with “El Sistema,” teaching Master Classes and conducting orchestral performances throughout the country. For the past three seasons, Noya has been a guest conductor with the Orquesta Académica of Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

Japanese-American conductor Ken Yanagisawa is the Music Director of the Boston Opera Collaborative and the Boston Annex Players, the Associate Conductor of the Boston Civic Symphony, the Assistant Conductor of the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music. He made his Japanese debut conducting Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Kansai Nikikai and the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra in February 2023 and will return in Fall 2026 to conduct Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito. A 2024 Aspen Conducting Academy Fellow and James Conlon Conductor Prize recipient, Ken has previously served as a Conducting Apprentice with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and has assisted/covered the National Symphony Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Berlin Academy of American Music, and Berlin Opernfest, among others.

Ken recently completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Orchestral Conducting at Boston University under the guidance of James Burton and also holds graduate degrees in conducting from the Manhattan School of Music and a B.A. in music from Yale University. Prior to Yale he attended the New England Conservatory as an Undergraduate Diploma candidate for Oboe Performance under the tutelage of John Ferrillo. His other teachers include George Manahan, William Lumpkin, Bernard Labadie, and Tatsuya Shimono. In masterclasses and festivals, he has been taught by renowned artists and pedagogues such as Robert Spano, Leonard Slatkin, Mark Stringer, Dame Jane Glover, Gerard Schwarz, and Jorma Panula. He is deeply grateful for all the excellent guidance and mentorship he has received thus far in his life as a musician.