Him Sophy

HIM SOPHY (composer; Cambodia) was born into a musical family in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia in 1963. He started learning the piano in 1972 in Phnom Penh, but was forced out of the city in 1975 for the duration of the Khmer Rouge regime. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, he returned to his musical studies at Cambodia’s Secondary School of Fine Arts. In 1985, he won a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where he studied and earned his PhD. He returned to Cambodia in 1998, and opened the Him Sophy School of Music in 2013. His previous works, including the acclaimed rock opera Where Elephants Weep, have demonstrated an unparalleled facility for bringing Western and Khmer musical worlds into intimate conversation. This time, Sophy combines a Western chamber orchestra and chorus with Khmer instrumentalists and vocalists. These traditional musical forms are crucial for honoring the dead; unfortunately, live performances are seldom heard in the capital and rapidly disappearing in the countryside.

Rithy Panh

RITHY PANH (director, designer, filmmaker; Cambodia) was born in Phnom Penh, but expelled from the capital by the Khmer Rouge as an 11-year-old in 1975. He escaped to Thailand in 1979, and lived for a time in a refugee camp in Mairut. He later made his way to Paris, and graduated from the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He returned to Cambodia in 1990, and splits his time between Paris and Phnom Penh. An internationally-acclaimed documentary director and screenwriter, he was named Asian Filmmaker of the Year by the Busan International Film Festival in 2013. He

is the first Cambodian filmmaker nominated for an Oscar for The Missing Picture (2013). The same year, he received a prize in the “Un Certain Regard” category at the Cannes Festival. His documentary S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine was awarded the prestigious Albert Londres Prize in 2004. Most recently, he worked as producer for Angelina Jolie’s film First They Killed My Father, based on Loung Ung’s memoir, released in September 2017. Panh is also the founder of the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh, which makes film, photography, and sound archives on Cambodia publicly available, and trains a new generation of Cambodian filmmakers and multimedia technicians.

Trent Walker

TRENT WALKER (librettist; USA) is a young scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhist music. Trained in jazz and Western classical music, he spent several years in Cambodia studying with vocal masters Prum Ut, Koet Ran, and Yan Borin while working with Cambodian Living Arts. A former Buddhist novice monk, he regularly performs and gives lectures on the Cambodian Dharma song (smot) tradition of Buddhist chant. At present he is a PhD student in Buddhist studies at the University of California, Berkeley where his research focuses on Southeast Asian Buddhist liturgies in Khmer, Lao, Pali, and Thai.

Gideon Obarzanek

GIDEON OBARZANEK (director of staging; Australia) is a director, playwright, and choreographer. He is also an artistic associate with the Melbourne Festival, chair of the Melbourne Fringe, and board member of Critical Path choreographic research center based in Sydney. In 1995, he founded the Australian dance company Chunky Move and was CEO and artistic director until 2012. Under his leadership the company established itself as one of the country’s most innovative, awarded, and internationally-recognized performing

arts companies. Awards include Best Short Documentary for Dance Like Your Old Man (Melbourne IFF, Cinedans Festival), a Bessie Award for outstanding choreography and creation, and Australian Helpmann Awards for Glow and Mortal Engine (2009 Next Wave).

Chhorn Sam Ath

Chhorn Sam Ath is a well-known singer and actor who also teaches at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. In 2007, Sam Ath was invited to perform at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Both singers hail from famous artist families and have performed extensively in Cambodia, New Zealand, and the US.

Cambodian Ensemble

KEO DORIVAN, KEO SONANKAVEI, KEO SOPHY, POV REAKSMEYMONY, SAY TOLA, SNGOUN KAVEI SEREY ROTH

The ensemble features some of the leading instrumentalists and vocalists in Cambodia.
They have traveled and performed extensively around the world, in addition to some emerging musicians. Previous performances took members of the ensemble to China, Korea, Singapore, and the US. At present, some ensemble members work as independent artists while others teach at the Faculty of Music at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh.

Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir

Chi-Chun Hsu, Soprano
You-Jhong Liang, Soprano
Yi-Wu Lin, Soprano
Chia-Hsin Chen, Alto
SzuYun Hsieh, Alto
Hsiao-Shu Liu, Alto
Yung-Jye Lee, Tenor
Ming-Che Lu, Tenor
Yu-Chia Chen, Tenor
Fu-Hung Chuang, Bass
Ming-Mou Hsieh, Bass
Tzeng-Ming Li, Bass

TAIPEI PHILHARMONIC CHAMBER CHOIR (Taiwan) was founded in 1972 and, through the efforts of its conductors, has put together an extensive repertoire and cultivated a reputation as one of the most prestigious choirs in Taiwan. From among 140 members of the larger chorus, a smaller 30-voice chamber choir has been established to tour and perform more selective musical works. The Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir (TPCC) has been to all continents of the world and performed in more than 30 cities.

Chumvan "Belle" Sodhachivy

CHUMVAN “BELLE” SODHACHIVY (performer and assistant to the director of staging; Cambodia) is a dancer/choreographer with Amrita Performing Arts, a contemporary dance and producing organization from Cambodia. Trained in Cambodian classical dance, Sodhachivy graduated in 2007 from the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA) in Phnom Penh. With Amrita, she has participated in numerous contemporary dance workshops and residencies around the world and has been a featured dancer in many works by international directors and choreographers including Peter Sellars. Currently, Sodhachivy is also a dance lecturer at RUFA’s Faculty of Choreographic Arts.

Sean Statser

Sean Statser

Performer, composer, and educator Sean Statser (b. 1983) has been called “Lithe, muscular, and mesmerizing" by the New York Times. As an advocate for new music, Mr. Statser actively collaborates with several New York City artists and ensembles including: the Grammy-nominated Metropolis Ensemble, Ensemble LPR, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, and Iktus Percussion. He has premiered over 150 works to date by composers Jason Treuting, Timothy Andres, Caleb Burhans, Kati Agocs, Vivian Fung, Angelica Negron, John Luther Adams and Elliot Carter (NY Premiere), among others.

He has performed with the American Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, and New York Pops as a section percussionist, and has appeared at several venues around New York City including: Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Symphony Space, Fisher Center at Bard College, Galapagos Art Space, (Le) Poisson Rouge, and Roulette. Sean has also appeared at the Alba Music Festival, In Tune Music Festival, Ecstatic Festival, three appearances at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (2007, 2008, 2010), and recently performed with Metropolis Ensemble as part of Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival, under the baton of Maestro Tan Dun.

Sean has recorded with a variety of artists, such as: jazz pianist Kenny Werner (No Beginning, No End - Winner of the 2010 Guggenheim Award), Metropolis Ensemble, Harmonie Ensemble New York, Harold Farberman, and Cadillac Moon Ensemble. He has appeared on Naxos, Nonesuch, Orange Mountain Music, Innova Records, Half Note Records, Albany Records and New Dynamic Records. Also active as a composer and arranger, his compositions are available through Bachovich Music Publications.

He received his MM in Instrumental Performance from NYU and holds a BA in Music Performance from Fort Lewis College, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. Upon graduating in 2010, Sean joined the Percussion Studies faculty at New York University.

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Andrew Roitstein

Andrew Roitstein

A native of Valencia, California, bassist Andrew Roitstein has been featured in chamber music concerts in New York’s Zankel Hall and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, and has performed with the New York Philharmonic and Hong Kong Philharmonic. He is a founding member of the award-winning Toomai String Quintet, an ensemble that has appeared in chamber music series at Carnegie Hall and the 92ndSt. Y, among others. Mr. Roitstein has recorded for artists such as Joanna Newsom (Drag City) and Jessica Pavone (Tzadik Records). In 2007, he won second prize in Juilliard’s Double Bass Concerto Competition and was a semifinalist in the 2011 International Society of Bassists Solo Competition. He has participated in the Lucerne, International Ensemble Moderne Academy, Aspen, and Sarasota music festivals. Mr. Roitstein enjoys playing Latin American music and performs with Argentinian Tango greats Hector Del Curto and Pablo Ziegler. In addition to performing, Roitstein is dedicated to education and serves as Senior Music Curriculum Specialist for Juilliard Global Ventures and faculty of the New York Philharmonic’s “Philharmonic Schools” program. As an arranger, his works have been performed by members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, members of the New York Philharmonic, and Joshua Bell. Mr. Roitstein received his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Eugene Levinson.

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Ashley Jackson

Ashley Jackson

Praised for her “soulful” and “eloquent” playing (Musical America), harpist Ashley Jackson enjoys a multifaceted career as a highly sought-after musician and collaborator in New York and beyond. 

As a soloist, she has performed at Lincoln Center, Celebrate Brooklyn! and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. She has also performed with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolis Ensemble, the Qatar Philharmonic, and is the principal harpist of NOVUS NY, the contemporary music orchestra of Trinity Wall Street led by Grammy-nominated conductor Julian Wachner. She is a member of the Harlem Chamber Players, with whom she has developed a number of projects, including her first film, In Song and Spirit and the Harlem Walking Tour Series.

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Sofia Nowik

Sofia Nowik

Cellist Sofia Nowik is a recent graduate of the Juilliard School where she received both her Bachelor and Master's Degrees, studying with David Soyer, Bonnie Hampton, and Darrett Adkins. Sofia served for five years as one of the principal cellists of the Juilliard Orchestra.

During her graduate studies Sofia worked for the Juilliard Pre-College Division as both a chamber music and orchestral mentor, coaching individual chamber groups and leading string sectionals. She now continues her educational outreach teaching cello in New York City with Opportunity Music Project, a non-profit music mentoring program, which offers full tuition scholarship for private instrumental lessons, chamber and orchestral training to kids from families who would otherwise be unable to afford the costs of a music education. In the fall she will join the faculty at the Great Neck Music Conservatory in Long Island.

Sofia was the recipient of the Samuel Mayes Cello Award for her participation as an orchestral fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center this past summer, and has been invited back as a returning fellow for this coming summer season.

An active freelance musician in the New York and New Jersey Area, Sofia enjoys a diverse career as a chamber, orchestral, and studio musician. She recently joined the roster of the Shuffle Concert Ensemble, the Exponential Ensemble, and has performed as principal cellist with the Arcos Chamber Orchestra, the Arco Ensemble, and is a substitute cellist for Symphony in C and the New World Symphony. As a soloist she has performed concerti with local orchestras in New Jersey, including the Livingston Symphony, Manalapan Symphony, The Tim Keyes Consort, Central Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and the New Jersey Youth Orchestra. This coming fall she will perform the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra in New York City.

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Michael Katz

Hailed by the press for his “bold, rich sound” (Strad Magazine) and “nuanced musicianship,” (New York Times), Grammy nominated Cellist Michael Katz has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in venues such as Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Kimmel Center, the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center (Sarasota, FL), Oji Hall (Tokyo, Japan), Philips Hall (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Teatro Cervantes (Malaga, Spain), Lucerne KKL (Lucerne, Switzerland), and Henry Crown Auditorium (Jerusalem, Israel). He has performed at music festivals such as Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Mostly Mozart, Festival Mozaic, Yellow Barn, Lucerne, Holland Music Sessions, Sarasota, Methow Valley, Classical Bridge, Cooperstown, Green Box, Bard, Copenhagen, Malaga Clasica, Perlman Music Program, Orford, and Kol Hamusica, and has collaborated as a soloist with conductors such as James DePriest, David Stern, Barbara Yahr, and Dongmin Kim. His musicianship has been recognized with many awards, among them all three awards at the 2011 Aviv Competition, first prizes at the 2010 Juilliard School’s Concerto Competition, and the 2005 Turjeman Competition, as well as awards from the America Israel Cultural Foundation and the Ronen Foundation.

High in demand as a chamber musician, Mr. Katz has collaborated and performed with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Donald Weilerstein, Daniel Philips, Peter Wiley, Anthony Marwood, Peter Frankl, Charles Neidich, Roger Tapping, Lucy Chapman.  As the cellist of the Lysander Piano Trio, he was a winner of the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and was awarded first prizes at the 2011 Coleman Competition and 2011 J.C. Arriaga Competition. Their first album “After a Dream” was released in 2014 on CAG Records and was praised by the New York Times for its “polished and spirited interpretations.”

Deeply committed to community outreach and education, from 2014-2016 Mr. Katz was a Fellow in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. He was previously selected to be part of a special string quartet led by Midori to present formal and outreach concerts in Myanmar and Japan as part of the 2013-2014 International Community Engagement Program, and was invited to return to the program in 2016-2017 for concerts in Nepal and Japan.  Mr. Katz is a faculty member at the Csehy Summer School of Music and the Chamber Music Institute in Stamford, CT and has served as an adjunct cello professor at Nyack College from 2015-2017.

Mr. Katz has a great passion for expanding the cello repertoire with both lesser known and contemporary works. He has premiered Works by Timo Andres, Ofer Ben-Amots, Christopher Cerone, Jakub Ciupinski, Ann Cleare, Gilad Cohen, Bryce Dessner, Mohammed Fairouz, Daniel Felsenfeld, Vivian Fung, Him Sophy, Juan Pablo Jofre, David T. Little, Zhou Long, Eric Moe, Reinaldo Moya, Sergiu Natra, Olga Neuwirth, Jonathan Newman, Malcolm Payton, Paola Prestini, Chris Rogerson, Huang Ruo, Caroline Shaw, Zhou Tian, Julian Wachner, Yehudi Wyner, and others.

Born in Tel-Aviv Israel, Mr. Katz began his cello studies at age 7. Among his teachers in Israel were Zvi Plesser, Hillel Zori and the late Mikhail Khomitzer. Mr. Katz received his Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory where he studied with Laurence Lesser, his Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School where he studied with Joel Krosnick, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from SUNY Stony Brook as a student of Colin Carr.

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Andrew Yee

Andrew Yee

GRAMMY Award winning cellist Andrew Yee has been praised by Michael Kennedy of the London Telegraph as “spellbindingly virtuosic”. Trained at the Juilliard School, they are a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet who have released several albums to Critical acclaim including Andrew’s arrangement of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” which Thewholenote.com praised as “ . . .easily the most satisfying string version of the work that I’ve heard.” They were the quartet-in-residence at the Met Museum in 2014, and have won the Osaka and Coleman international string quartet competitions. Their newest recording of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw won a GRAMMY for best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble performance.As a soloist last season Andrew performed John Taverner’s The Protecting Veil and Strauss Don Quixote. In 2019 they won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for their pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing. They like to make stop-motion videos of food, draw apples, cook like an Italian Grandma and have developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City.

Their solo project “Halfie” draws on their experience as a bi-racial and non-binary person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. The works commissioned and on the concerts will feature a wide range of composers all for solo cello.

 They play on an 1884 Eugenio Degani cello on loan from the Five Partners Foundation.

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Caitlin Mary Lynch

Caitlin Mary Lynch

Violist and Grammy Award recipient Caitlin Lynch has performed across the globe in collaboration with artists from Itzhak Perlman to Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. She is violist of the Aeolus String Quartet, and a member and co-Artistic Director of the conductorless chamber orchestra A Far Cry. Ms. Lynch’s performances as a chamber and orchestral musician, soloist with orchestra, and recitalist have spanned fourteen countries across five continents - from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House to the United Nations - and include appearances with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland, Juilliard, and Guarneri String Quartets. Passionate about collaborations with other art forms, she enjoys performing with dancers (Mark Morris Dance Group, Wendy Whelan), artists from other musical genres (Bjork, The National), and on film (Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!). Ms. Lynch is the founder and Artistic Director of Project Chamber Music: Willamette Valley, a nonprofit organization that supports public school music programs and provides funds for private instrumental lessons for students for whom the cost would be otherwise prohibitive. She was an Artist in Residence at Cleveland’s Judson Manor senior living community, an intergenerational relationship that continues today and has been celebrated by CBS and NBC News, The Plain Dealer, and the New York Times. Recent and upcoming highlights include performances at the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center and Lincoln Center’s Great Performers Series with the Aeolus Quartet, the Kennedy Center with A Far Cry, and BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Ms. Lynch performs on an 18th century viola made by English luthier William Forster, and thanks to the generosity of the Five Partners Foundation, a viola by Samuel Zygmuntowicz.

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Nate Schram

Nate Schram

Hailed by the New York Times as an “elegant soloist” with a sound “devotional with its liquid intensity,” Nathan is a GRAMMY Award-winning composer, entrepreneur, and violist of the Attacca Quartet. Nathan has collaborated with many of the great artists of today including Björk, James Blake, Sting, David Crosby, Becca Stevens, David Byrne, Trey Anastasio, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Simon Rattle, and others. He has premiered music by Steve Reich, Nico Muhly, Timo Andres, Elliot Cole and Gabriel Kahane.

Nathan is the Founder and Artistic

Director of Musicambia, a non-profit organization bringing music education and ensemble performance to the prisons and jails of the United States. Nathan is also a violist in the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, Decoda and an Honorary Ambassador to the city of Chuncheon, South Korea.

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Erin Wight

Erin Wight

Violist Erin Wight, a Midwestern transplant to New York City, is an active chamber musician and avid performer of new music. Described by the NY Times as “engrossing” and “surehanded,” she performs frequently as a member of the Red Light New Music Ensemble and Either/Or, has played with Talea, Signal, the Wordless Music Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Axiom, the Juilliard Electric Ensemble, FiRE, and worked closely with members of the Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Intercontemporain. In addition, Ms. Wight is a founding member of the Toomai String Quintet, 2007 winners of the 92nd St. Y’s Music Unlocked! competition for emerging ensembles dedicated to educational outreach. Ms. Wight is deeply committed to community engagement and is on the teaching artist faculty of the New York Philharmonic’s School Partnership Program and the Weill Institute at Carnegie Hall. Ms. Wight completed her Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School where she studied with Paul Neubauer.

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Rachel Lee Priday

Rachel Lee Priday

Violinist RACHEL LEE PRIDAY (PRY-day) is a passionate and inquisitive explorer in all her musical ventures, in search of contemporary relevance when performing the standard violin repertoire, and in discovering and commissioning new works. Her wide-ranging repertoire and eclectic programming reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives.

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Keiko Tokunaga

Keiko Tokunaga

Winner of the 2019 GRAMMY Award for Best Chamber Music/ Small Ensemble Performance, Japanese-born violinist Keiko Tokunaga (she/her) spends most of her days touring and performing globally as a soloist and chamber musician. Keiko has been praised by the Strings Magazine for possessing a sound “with probing quality that is supple and airborne” and for her “pure, pellucid bow strokes”. She has soloed with various orchestras including the Spanish National Orchestra, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya and Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Orchestra.

In 2021, Keiko founded INTERWOVEN, an intercultural ensemble whose mission is to elevate the visibility of the AAAPI (Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander) artists by integrating the musical traditions of the East and West. 

Keiko holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, as well as Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School. She currently plays on a J. B. Vuillaume violin from 1845, generously loaned by an anonymous donor.

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