About the Artists

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Graeme Steele Johnson

Praised as “technically and interpretively impeccable and passionately communicative” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Graeme Steele Johnson is an artist of uncommon imagination and versatility. The clarinetist, curator and “musical detective” (New York Classical Review) recently garnered international attention for his rediscovery and reconstruction of a 125-year-old Octet by Charles Martin Loeffler. Johnson’s world-premiere recording of the work was named one of The New York Times’ Best Classical Music Albums of 2024, nominated for a Gramophone Classical Music Award, and awarded BBC Music Magazine’s Chamber Choice.

 

Widely in demand as a chamber musician, Johnson has appeared recently at the Ravinia, Bridgehampton, Rockport, Moab and Orcas Island Chamber Music Festivals and performed with the Miró, Balourdet, Aeolous, Callisto and KASA Quartets, as well as the Twelfth Night, Copland House and New York New Music Ensembles. Since 2022, he has served as the clarinetist of the award-winning quintet WindSync, “a major force in the American chamber music landscape” (Arts and Culture Texas). He has presented a TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, authored chamber arrangements heard around the world, and serves as Artistic Director of the Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival in Houston.

 

Under the tutelage of Charles Neidich and Kofi Agawu, Johnson earned a doctorate from the CUNY Graduate Center. He has  two master’s degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with David Shifrin and Ricardo Morales, with undergraduate study at The University of Texas at Austin with Nathan Williams. He holds an exclusive recording contract with Delos/Outhere Music.

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Min Kwon

Korean-born American pianist Min Kwon’s versatile career encompasses concerti, solo recitals, and chamber music, while in high demand around the world as pedagogue, arts advocate, and administrator. She has held professional engagements in over 60 countries on seven continents and all 50 U.S. states.

 

Professor of Piano a Rutgers,  Dr. Kwon is also the founder and director of the Center for Musical Excellence (CME), a non-profit dedicated to supporting gifted young musicians. 

 

As soloist, Kwon has performed extensively worldwide with such orchestras as Philadelphia, North Carolina, Atlanta, New Jersey, and Fort Worth, Aspen Festival Orchestra, Orquesta Estaudo Mexico, Orquesta Sinfónica Venezuela, Wiener Residenz Orchester, Bacau Philharmonic, as well as all major orchestras in Korea. She has appeared with many of New York’s leading ensembles, under the batons of James Conlon, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Alan Gilbert, Vaktang Jordania, Gerhardt Zimmerman, and Xian Zhang.

 

As chamber  musician, Kwon has performed around the world, from Stavanger Concert Hall in Norway, Tartu Festival in Estonia, Sony Convention in New York, IMF Conference in Davos, Switzerland to recent appearances in New York, Madrid, Rome, Curaçao, Malaysia, Vienna, Prague, Luxembourg, and Serbia. Festivals include Aspen, Ravinia, Caramoor, Cape & Islands, Colmar (France), Freiburg (Germany), Kuhmo (Finland), and AMEROPA (Prague). With her sister, violinist Yoon Kwon, she has given over 200 recitals on Community Concert Tours. Recent chamber music partners include the Shanghai String Quartet, Harlem String Quartet, Jason Moran, Fred Hersch, Robert McDuffie, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer, Arnold Steinhardt, and Sara San’t Ambrogio.

 

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American String Quartet

Internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. It has performed in all fifty states and in concert halls worldwide. The group’s complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their Complete Mozart String Quartets, on a matched set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire. The American’s additional extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and RCA labels. .  

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Recent seasons featured performances of a major project together with the author Phil Klay and poet Tom Sleigh, examining the effects of war. The Quartet also collaborated with Salman Rushdie in a work for narrator and quartet by film composer Paul Cantelon built around Rushdie’s novel The Enchantress of Florence.

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The Quartet's diverse activities include a recent recording for the BBC, tours of Asia and South America, and performances with the New York City Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Highlights include the complete Beethoven quartets in Mexico and Israel.  

Champions of new music, the American has given numerous premieres, including quartets by George Tsontakis, Richard Danielpour,  Curt Cacioppo, Tobias Picker, and Robert Sirota.

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Formed in 1974 at Juilliard, the American String Quartet began its career by winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award. Resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival and Manhattan School of Music, the American has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music, Peabody Conservatory, and the Van Cliburn Piano Competition.

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Nadia Sirota

Nadia Sirota is a violist, conductor, and Peabody Award-winning producer. In all branches of her artistic life, she aims to open classical music up to a broader audience. Her singular sound and expressive execution have served as muse to dozens of composers, including Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, Marcos Balter, and David Lang.

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As a soloist, Nadia has performed with orchestras around the world, and released four albums of commissioned music. She is a member of the chamber sextet yMusic and has lent her signature sound to a dizzying array of projects, appearing on albums and concert stages with such popular artists as the National, David Bowie, Björk, Paul Simon, Ben Folds, and ANOHNI.

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Nadia is co-founder of Eclipse Projects, a boutique agency specializing in artist management and creative producing, based in Los Angeles and New York. She received a Peabody Award for her podcast Meet the Composer With Nadia Sirota on New York Public Radio’s WQXR/Q2 (2014-17). From 2018 to 2022, she served as the New York Philharmonic’s first Creative Partner. She received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Heidi Castleman, Misha Amory, and Hsin-Yun Huang. Nadia has been a Juilliard Creative Associate since 2019 and joined the Juilliard faculty in 2023, teaching Chamber Music and Graduate Studies, and becoming the school’s first Creative Associate at Large.

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Claire Bryant

Claire Bryant is a cellist, teacher and activist, whose passion and commitment shine brightly through all of her work.

 

A sought-after and distinctive performer, Claire has collaborated with such master artists as Emanuel Ax, Sir Simon Rattle and Dawn Upshaw, and worked closely with luminary composers from Meredith Monk to Steve Reich to Herbie Hancock. Over the past 25 years, she has enjoyed a prominent solo career, appearing with major orchestras around the world including the Spartanburg Symphony Orchestra, Finland’s Kuopio Symphony Orchestra and The National Symphony of Honduras.

 

Claire is a co-founder of Decoda, Carnegie Hall’s Affiliate Ensemble, and director of its initiative Music for Transformation, a criminal justice program which brings collaborative songwriting workshops to incarcerated communities. In this capacity, she was invited twice to share Decoda’s work with the Obama administration in the White House.

 

In 2019, Claire returned to her native South Carolina to join the University of South Carolina School of Music’s faculty, where she enjoys a robust studio of talented young cellists. She is the coordinator of Bridging Our Distances, the community engagement arm of the School of Music, and is the director of The Collective, a graduate ensemble dedicated to creative and innovative community performances and programming.

 

Claire attended the University of South Carolina, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and The Juilliard School, where her primary teachers were Robert Jesselson, Joel Krosnick, and Bonnie Hampton.