Preliminary Judges
CATHERINE CHO, Head Judge
Co-Artistic Director, Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival
Violin, Viola,
Praised by the New York Times for her “sublime tone,” CATHERINE CHO has appeared worldwide as a soloist with many orchestras, including the National, Detroit, Buffalo, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Aspen Chamber Orchestras.
As a recitalist and chamber musician, she has performed at New York’s Lincoln Center, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Casals Hall in Tokyo, the Seoul Arts Center, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York 92nd Street Y, the Gardner Museum in Boston and at Ravinia in Chicago. With pianist Mia Chung, she has performed the complete cycle of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in the United States and Asia.
Ms. Cho has appeared at the Aspen, Marlboro, Chamber Music Northwest, and Santa Fe festivals, among others. She has also appeared regularly at the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival since 1998. She is a founding member of the ensemble La Fenice and a former member of the Johannes String Quartet.
A winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ms. Cho won top prizes at the Montreal, Hannover, and Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competitions. She has judged international competitions and taught master classes worldwide. She holds a Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School, and she is a member of their violin and chamber music faculty as well as their Community Engagement Seminar. Ms. Cho is Artistic Advisor for the Starling-DeLay Symposium where she curates programming and supports the artistic direction of this bi-annual event at the Juilliard School. She has taught at numerous Workshops and symposia, and she is also on the faculty of the Perlman Music Program. Devoted to the cause of promoting peace through music, Ms. Cho was V.P. of the Board of Musicians for Harmony for several years.
She is an artist member of Music for Food, a musician-led initiative to fight hunger in our local communities. Ms. Cho resides in Brooklyn with her husband, Todd Phillips, their son, Brandon, and their three cats, Orso, Livie, and Ella. She is the stepmom of Lia, Eliza, and Jason, and “Halmoni” (Korean grandma) to Baby Theo. When she is not performing or teaching, she enjoys baking, practicing yoga, catching up with her booklist, gardening, and knitting!
LAWRIE BLOOM
Clarinet
In 1980 Sir Georg Solti invited LAWRIE BLOOM to join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in the position of Clarinet and Solo Bass Clarinet. In that position he has toured the world, with more than 2 dozen trips to Europe, 5 to Asia, and appearances in Australia, and India. He has performed with virtually every notable conductor and soloist worldwide. He can be heard on CSO recordings of a vast repertoire. Previously, he held similar appointments with the Orchestra of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Phoenix, Vancouver and Cincinnati Symphonies.
Lawrie’s 40-year career with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was honored in 2020 by Riccardo Muti, who commissioned “Ophelia’s Tears” by the French composer Nicolas Bacri for him. The premiere performances with the CSO, Muti conducting, took place in February 2020. Lawrie was a part of the founding of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival and served as clarinetist and Co-Artistic Director for 34 years. He is also a founding member of the Civitas Ensemble in Chicago, with whom he presented a world premiere right after last year’s CMF. In addition, Lawrie is an Artist Performer for Buffet Crampon USA, and a Reed Design Consultant for D’Addario Musical Instruments.
Lawrie has presented master classes all over the world and was a Senior Lecturer in Clarinet at Northwestern University for 28 years. He has taught for Digital Clarinet Academy this year, trying like so many colleagues to figure out how to best utilize Zoom to help young musicians.
Lawrie and his wife Nan moved to Bend, Oregon in July 2020, and have been enjoying a very different life. During the pandemic they have welcomed to the world two grandchildren, and have hiked, skied, and biked the vast outdoor opportunities that drew them to Bend.
DANIEL PHILLIPS
Violin, Viola
Violinist DANIEL PHILLIPS enjoys a versatile career as an established chamber musician, solo artist, and teacher. A graduate of Juilliard, his major teachers were his father, Eugene Phillips, Ivan Galamian, Sally Thomas, Nathan Milstein, Sandor Vegh, and George Neikrug. He is a founding member of the 35-year-old Orion String Quartet, which is in residence at the Lincoln Center. Available on recording are the complete quartets of Beethoven and Leon Kirchner.
Since winning the 1976 Young Concert Artists Competition, Daniel has performed as a soloist with many orchestras over the years. He appears regularly at the Spoleto USA Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and has participated in the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England since its inception, and recently returned to the Marlboro Music Festival. Along with his wife Tara Helen O’Connor, he is the Co-Artistic Director of Music From Angel Fire. He also serves on the summer faculty of the Heifetz Institute and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar at Stanford. He was a member of the renowned Bach Aria Group and has toured and recorded in a string quartet for SONY with Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Daniel is a professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and on the faculties of Bard College Conservatory and The Juilliard School. He was a judge in the 2022 Leipzig Bach Competition and will be a judge in the World Bartók Competition in Budapest in September 2023. He lives with his wife, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, in Manhattan.
Mr. Phillips will play a violin made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz in 2017.
TODD PHILLIPS
Violin, Viola
TODD PHILLIPS is a violinist and founding member of the highly acclaimed Orion String Quartet. He made his solo debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony at the age of 13. He has since performed as guest soloist with leading orchestras throughout North America, Europe and Japan including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, of which he has been a member since 1983 and with whom he made a critically acclaimed recording of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Deutsche Grammophon.
Mr. Phillips has appeared at the Mostly Mozart, Ravinia, Santa Fe, Marlboro and Spoleto Festivals, and with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music at the 92nd St Y and New York Philomusica. His experience as a frequent leader of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has led to guest appearances as conductor/leader with chamber orchestras worldwide. He has collaborated with such renowned artists as Rudolf Serkin, Jaime Laredo, Peter Serkin and Pinchas Zukerman and has participated in eighteen “Musicians from Marlboro” tours.
Mr. Phillips has recorded for the Arabesque, Delos, Deutsche Grammophon, Finlandia, Koch International, Marlboro Recording Society, New York Philomusica, RCA Red Seal and Sony Classical labels. He serves on the violin and chamber music faculties of New York’s Mannes College of Music, Rutgers University, Manhattan School of Music, Bard College Conservatory of Music and Cleveland Institute of Music. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, violinist Catherine Cho, and is the father of Lia, Eliza, Jason and Brandon, and grandfather of Theo.
Mr. Phillips plays a violin made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz (2004).
DIANE WALSH
Piano
The award-winning Steinway Artist DIANE WALSH has performed throughout the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, Russia, China, and New Zealand. Highlights include solo recitals in major venues in New York, Washington, Chicago, London, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, and Prague.
Diane has appeared with the San Francisco, Indianapolis, Austin, Rochester, Delaware, Springfield, New Bedford, Portland, and American symphonies, toured with the Orpheus and St. Luke’s ensembles, and soloed with orchestras in Germany, Czechia, the Netherlands, and Brazil. She was the onstage pianist in the Broadway production of Moisés Kaufman’s award-winning play 33 Variations (starring Jane Fonda), during which she performed Beethoven’s Variations on a Waltz of Diabelli. She was also featured in three other productions of the play at Washington’s Arena Stage, the La Jolla Playhouse, and the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, for a total of over 200 performances.
Diane has been delighted to play at Chesapeake Music ever since the festival’s second season. She has also performed at the Marlboro, Bard, and Santa Fe festivals, and led the Skaneateles Festival as artistic director. She taught at Mannes College of Music in New York City for 32 years, has given master classes worldwide, and has been an adjudicator at international competitions. To date she has released nineteen recordings, most recently “The New Epoch,” which includes works by Debussy, Ravel, Fauré, and Lili Boulanger.
Finalist Judges
MARCY ROSEN, HeadJudge
Co-Artistic Director, Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival
Cello
MARCY ROSEN has established herself as one of the most important and respected artists of our day. Los Angeles Times music critic Herbert Glass has called her “one of the intimate art’s abiding treasures” and The New Yorker Magazine calls her “a New York legend of the cello.” She has performed in recital and with orchestra throughout Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South America, Switzerland, and all fifty of the United States. Sought after for her riveting and informative Master Classes, she has been a guest of the Curtis Institute of Music, the New England Conservatory, the San Francisco Conservatory, the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea and the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia.
2018 saw the release of two new recordings from Bridge Records: The Complete Works for Cello and Piano by Felix Mendelssohn with the pianist Lydia Artymiw, and the Sonatas of Richard Strauss and Edvard Grieg with pianist Susan Walters.
Ms. Rosen has collaborated with the world’s finest musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, Andras Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, Jonathan Biss, Peter Serkin, Marc-André Hamelin and Isaac Stern, among others, and with the Juilliard, Johannes, Emerson, Daedelus and Orion Quartets. She is a founding member of La Fenice as well as the Mendelssohn String Quartet. With the Mendelssohn she was Artist-in-Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts and for nine years served as Blodgett-Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University. Since first attending the Marlboro Festival in 1975, she has taken part in 25 “Musicians from Marlboro” tours and has performed in concerts celebrating the 40th, 50th, and 60th anniversaries of the festival.
Since 1986, Ms. Rosen has been Artistic Director of Chesapeake Chamber Music in Maryland and she is an artist member of Music for Food, a musician-led initiative to fight hunger in our local communities.
A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Ms. Rosen is currently professor of cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, also serving as Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Live concert series. She also serves on the faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City.
ROBERT MCDONALD
Piano
ROBERT McDONALD has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America. He has appeared with major orchestras in the United States and was the recital partner for many years to Isaac Stern and other distinguished instrumentalists.
He has participated in the Marlboro, Casals and Lucerne festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has broadcasted for BBC Television worldwide. He has appeared with the Takács, Vermeer, Juilliard, Brentano, Borromeo, American, Shanghai, and St. Lawrence string quartets as well as with Musicians from Marlboro.
His discography includes recordings for Sony Classical, Bridge, Vox, Musical Heritage Society, ASV, and CRI. Mr. McDonald’s prizes include the gold medal at the Busoni International Piano Competition, the top prize at the William Kapell International Competition and the Deutsche Schallplatten Critics Award.
He has studied with Theodore Rehl, Seymour Lipkin, Rudolf Serkin, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Beveridge Webster, and Gary Graffman. He holds degrees from Lawrence University, the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, and the Manhattan School of Music which recently awarded him an honorary doctoral degree in Musical Arts. A member of the piano faculty at The Juilliard School since 1999, Mr. McDonald joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 2007, where he holds the Penelope P. Watkins Chair in Piano Studies.
During the summer, he is the artistic director of the Taos School of Music and Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico.
TARA O’CONNOR
Flute
TARA HELEN O’CONNOR is a charismatic performer noted for her artistic depth, brilliant technique and colorful tone spanning every musical era. Recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, a two-time Grammy nominee and the first wind player chosen to participate in the Bowers Program, she is now a Season Artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. A Wm. S. Haynes flute artist, Tara is a regular participant at music festivals, including Santa Fe Chamber Music, Music@Menlo, Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Spoleto USA, Chamber Music Northwest, Mainly Mozart, Rockport Music, Bravo Vail Valley! and Chesapeake Music. Along with her husband Daniel Phillips, she is the newly appointed Co-Artistic Director of the Music from Angel Fire Festival in New Mexico.
Tara is a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape, the legendary Bach Aria Group, and is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble. She has premiered hundreds of new works and has collaborated with the Orion String Quartet, St Lawrence Quartet and Emerson Quartet. She has appeared on A&E’s programs and has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, and CMS Studio Recordings.
Tara has just been appointed to the Yale School of Music and will begin teaching in the Graduate School in the Fall of 2023. She is also on faculty at Purchase College Conservatory of Music, Bard College, the Contemporary Performance Program at Manhattan School of Music and is a visiting artist, teacher and coach at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, violinist Daniel Phillips, and their two miniature dachshunds, Chloe and Ava.
