Adam Grabois

Adam Grabois (cello) has performed on five continents as a soloist and chamber musician. Recent highlights include a collaboration with Mikhail Baryshnikov in a dance by Jerome Robbins for solo dancer and on-stage cellist with performances in the capitals of Brazil, Argentina and in the Caribbean. In addition to the New York Chamber Soloists, Mr. Grabois performs regularly with the Eos Orchestra, the New York Chamber Symphony, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra as well as at the OK Mozart Festival as part of the Solisti New York Orchestra. He has appeared as a soloist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Adam Grabois was educated at the Kinhaven Music School, Lycée Henri IV and Swarthmore College. He studied with David Finckel and now teaches as his assistant.

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Allen Blustine

Allen Blustine (clarinet) is one of New York’s busiest and most versatile clarinetists. Mr. Blustine has performed with a broad spectrum of musical organizations in New York City, including the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He is a member of the Columbia University faculty, Director of Speculum Musicae, and a member of the North Country Chamber Players in New Hampshire.

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Andrew Schwartz

Andrew Schwartz (bassoon) has a wide-ranging career, encompassing frequent appearances with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Jazz recordings with Wynton Marsalis. He has also appeared with such ensembles as the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Orpheus Ensemble, the New York Chamber Symphony, and with many of the finest period-instrument ensembles, such as Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque, and the Wien Akademie in Austria. His extensive catalogue of recordings includes Mozart’s complete works for wind ensemble on the Decca/L’oiseau Lyre label.

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Elizabeth Metcalfe

Elizabeth Metcalfe (piano, harpsichord) made her solo debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the age of twelve, and subsequently performed with the Orchestra throughout eastern Canada. Mrs. Metcalfe has appeared as piano and harpsichord soloist and as a chamber musician across the United States and Canada, in repertoire ranging from 17th-century harpsichord music to piano works by Bartok and Crumb. With the New York Chamber Soloists she has been a featured artist at the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Caramoor Festival and on tours of France, Spain and South America. A founding member of the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, she also performs regularly with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, frequently as piano or harpsichord soloist. She was educated in Canada at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music, and was on the music faculty of the University of Vermont from 1966 to 1999.

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Jean-Claude Pennetier

From the time he began his piano studies at the age of three and a half, M. Pennetier has distinguished himself, winning two first prizes at the Paris Conservatory, and going on to win major international awards, including the Prix Gabriel Fauré and first prizes at the Concours Geneve and Concours International de Montréal. When he was 30, he interrupted his performing career to broaden and deepen his musical experience. He composed, conducted, expanded his piano repertoire (to include such diversity as musical theater, opera for children, works for pianoforte, and contemporary music). After several years of exploration and enrichment, M. Pennetier resumed his performing career, and has recently appeared with l'Orchestre de Paris, l'Orchestre National de Bordeaux Aquitaine and at the festivals of Prades, Naantali, Kuhmo and Seattle.

Recital appearances throughout Europe have recently included performances in Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburgh, Munich, and Copenhagen. In the 2004-2005 season, his recital schedule included New York, Los Angeles, and a tour of Central America. M. Pennetier also records and tours worldwide as a member of the Paris Piano Trio (“Les Musiciens”). He frequently conducts and performs chamber music in Paris and throughout France. This season, he tours the United States with his Ensemble Pennetier (two pianos and percussion).

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Jean-François Latour

The vibrant young Canadian pianist Jean-François Latour has established a reputation as a poetic and imaginative artist with brilliant technique and a strong personal voice who can communicate across cultures and generations. Leon Fleisher, with whom he studied at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, calls Latour “a highly gifted and intelligent young artist with fine musical instincts.” Recognized as one of Canada’s most talented young pianists, Jean-François Latour has performed throughout Canada. He was recently named Young Soloist of the Year by the French Language Public Radio Network. As a result, M. Latour’s live performances have been broadcast by the Radio Suisse-Romande, Italian National Radio-RAI, Belgian Radio-Television, and the Société Radio-Canada.

Jean-François Latour made his orchestral debut at the age of eleven with the Orchestre Symphonique de Trois-Rivières. Since then, he has performed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Hilton Head Orchestra and the Orchestre Symphonique de la Montérégie among others. He has played under the direction of Timothy Vernon, Christopher Wilkins, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Victor Pull, Agnes Grossman, Marc David, Christopher Warren-Green and Lara Webber. His festival appearances include the Orford Music Festival, the Festival d’été de Québec, the Festival du Domaine Forget, the Festival de musique de Lanaudière, the Fontana Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, and the Vermont Mozart Festval. As a chamber musician, Jean-François Latour has collaborated with Alain Trudel, Philippe Magnan, Jens Lindeman, and the Pacifica Quartet.

In May 2002, Jean-François Latour completed the prestigious Artist Diploma program at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he was a full scholarship student of Leon Fleisher. He also holds a Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody and an Artist Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he was a student of Marc Durand and Leon Fleisher. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Montréal, where he studied with Marc Durand. Mr. Latour has also worked with John Perry, André Laplante, Ellen Mack, Marek Jablonsky and Gilbert Kalish.

M. Latour is the recipient of a Career Grant from the Canadian Council for the Arts. He resides in Montreal.

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Jennifer Grim

Hailed by the New York Times as “a deft, smooth flute soloist,” Jennifer Grim has performed across the United States as an active solo and chamber musician of both the classic literature and contemporary music. In addition to the New York Chamber Soloists, Ms. Grim performs with the Zéphyros Quintet and the Proteus Ensemble and has performed with such groups as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum Musicae, Ensemble Sospeso, Ensemble 21 and the American Festival of Microtonal Music. As a soloist, she has performed with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Yale, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, and the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Grim has two B.A.s from Stanford University and a M.M., a M.M.A. and a D.M.A. from Yale University, where she studied with Ransom Wilson. She is currently on the faculty of Franklin and Marshall College, the Pennsylvania Academy of Music in Lancaster, PA, and the Newark School of the Arts in Newark, New Jersey.

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Lisa Stokes Chin

Lisa Stokes Chin (double bass) graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 1996. She currently performs with various orchestras and ensembles in the New York City area. In the spring of 1997, she participated in the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences’ “Grammys in the Schools” program, performing with the Brooklyn Philharmonic strings in elementary schools throughout the five boroughs. The following summer she toured in Europe with the American Institute of Musical Studies Festival Orchestra. She has also appeared with the Riverside Symphony, the Allentown Symphony, the Seoul Symphony of New York, and the Manhattan Virtuosi. Ms. Chin has recorded on Newport Classics label.

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Matthew Herren

Matthew Herren (cello) has appeared as a chamber musician, recitalist, and concerto soloist throughout the United States and in Singapore, Puerto Rico, and Europe. He is a founding member of the Concertante Chamber Players, the Yellowstone Music Festival, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Mr. Herren has performed at the Norfolk, Ravinia, Sarasota, and Vermont Mozart Festivals, and in collaboration with such distinguished artists as Menahem Pressler, Dawn Upshaw, Albert Fuller, and Robert White. In New York, Mr. Herren performs regularly with the New York Virtuosi, the Bronx Arts Ensemble, the New York Oratorio Society, and the Westchester Philharmonic. As a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, he has recorded for Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, Atlantic, and London Decca records. He is on the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of Music.

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Melvin Kaplan

Melvin Kaplan (oboe), founder/artistic director of the New York Chamber Soloists and the Festival Winds, has been for more than 40 years one of America’s most influential forces in chamber music, both as a renowned performer and as a manager, teacher, lecturer and writer. As a soloist, he has premiered works by Vaughan Williams, Ezra Laderman, Hugh Aitken, Gunther Schuller, Mel Powell, Heitor Villa-Lobos and Jean Francaix. On the faculty of the Juilliard School for 30 years, Mr. Kaplan was also for many years featured regularly as a lecturer/performer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He founded and is the Artistic Director of the Vermont Mozart Festival.

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Menahem Pressler

Honored and decorated by the French and German Government respectively with the highest honors those countries award to civilians, Menahem Pressler was made a Commander of Arts and Letters by France, and from Germany received the Deutsche Bundesdienstverkreuz, Erste Klasse. A founding member and the pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio for all of its thus far 51 years, he has established himself among the world’s most distinguished and honored musicians, with a career that spans more than five decades. Both an outstanding chamber and solo performer, Pressler’s talents have brought him to all of the world’s major music capitals. His musical precision and overwhelming knowledge of piano and chamber music literature have also gained him an international reputation as a remarkable teacher.

Born in Magdeburg in 1923, Germany, Menahem Pressler received most of his musical training in Israel, to which his family, fleeing the Nazis, immigrated in 1939. His life has always been completely devoted to his music. When not on tour with the Beaux Arts Trio, giving solo performances, or teaching master classes, Pressler can be found in his studio at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he holds the rank of Distinguished Professor. In 1994, Mr. Pressler was honored with Chamber Music America’s Distinguished Service Award and in 1998 he received the prestigious Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award. Menahem Pressler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October 2000.

Menahem Pressler’s world-renowned career was launched after he was awarded first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San Francisco in 1946. This was followed by his successful American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Eugene Ormandy, and appearances with the New York, Washington, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, London and Paris Symphony Orchestras. He also became a recording artist for MGM. Since then, Pressler’s extensive tours of North America and Europe have included performances with the orchestras of New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Dallas, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Oslo, Helsinki and many others.

In 1955 he co-founded the Beaux Arts Trio with Daniel Guilet and Bernard Greenhouse. It has since become one of the most enduring and widely acclaimed chamber music ensembles, and has been credited with giving rise to the enormous popularity of the piano trio repertoire.

Menahem Pressler’s other chamber music collaborations have included multiple performances with the Juilliard, Emerson, Guarneri and Cleveland Quartets as well as the Israel Quartet and the Pasquier String Trio. In addition to over fifty recordings with the Beaux Arts Trio, Menahem Pressler has compiled over thirty solo recordings, ranging from the works of Bach to Ben Haim.

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Scott Thornburg

Trumpeter Scott Thornburg has performed as a soloist and chamber musician around the world. Following undergraduate and graduate study at the University of Miami and the Juilliard School, Mr. Thornburg lived in New York City where he was principal trumpet with the New York City Symphony, the Summerfare Opera Orchestra, Philharmonia Virtuosi, the Stamford Symphony, Musica Sacra, and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He performed at the Caramoor Festival as principal trumpet with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, and toured South America, Europe, and the United States with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Thornburg is a member of the New York Trumpet Ensemble and has performed with the Canadian Brass, Parnassus and the New York Brass. He was invited to fill in for one of the regular members of the American Brass Quintet who was on leave during the fall 1997 season. Mr. Thornburg spent two months performing around the country with the group and conducting masterclasses and chamber music coaching at the Juilliard School where the American Brass Quintet is in residence. For four years he toured the U.S. and Canada for Columbia Artists with the trumpet and organ duo "Toccatas and Flourished". He has also appeared as soloist with the Vermont Mozart Festival Orchestra, Philharmonia Virtuosi, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, the Juilliard Symphony, the Brass Band of Battle Creek and, most recently, on U.S., European, and South American tours in Spain and Russia and in the Spring of 2000, a tour with the Summit Brass.

Mr. Thornburg's recordings with pianist Silvia Roederer is to be released in 2002 and he has recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's Philharmonia Virtuosi, the New York Trumpet Ensemble, and with organist Richard Morris.

Visit the Scott Thornburg web site

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Ynez Lynch

Ynez Lynch (viola), an original member of the New York Chamber Soloists, has been viola soloist with the Musica Aeterna Orchestra and the Festival Orchestra of New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She has also performed with the Festival Winds and appeared as guest artist with the American and Emerson String Quartets and the Paris Piano Trio. Ms Lynch toured the United States and Europe as a member of the original cast of New York Pro Musica's production of The Play of Daniel, which was recorded by Decca. She has also recorded for CRI and Nonesuch, and has made many radio and television appearances in North America and Europe.