Chamber Feast

Described as an “excellent soloist” of “great virtuosity” (NY Concert Review), with performances depicted as “thrilling” (Boston Globe), violinist Rubén Rengel is quickly gaining recognition as a remarkably gifted artist. Rengel has appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and Venezuela Symphony, among others. He was the winner of the Robert F. Smith Prize at the 2018 Sphinx Competition and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Severance Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Library of Congress. As an avid chamber musician, he has performed with artists such as Joseph Silverstein, Pamela Frank, Peter Wiley, David Shifrin, Joel Krosnick, Timothy Eddy, and Gilbert Kalish. He has appeared at the Brevard Music Festival, Music@Menlo, and the Perlman Music Program. He is an alum of Caramoor’s 2019 Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program. 

In addition to classical music, Rengel enjoys performing Venezuelan folk music, Latin American music, and Jazz. He also has a strong interest in conducting and performs as a violist. Rengel’s teachers and mentors include Iván Pérez Núñez, Jaime Laredo, Paul Kantor, and Mark Steinberg. Currently, he is a Fellow in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. 

To learn more about Rubén Rengel, please visit his website. 

Russian-American Maria Ioudenitch received First Prizes at the Ysaye International Music Competition, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition, and the Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition. She has recently performed with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Camerata Bern, Lithuania Chamber Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Israel Camerata, and Kansas City Symphony. She has also performed chamber music in a wide range of international venues.  

An alum of Caramoor’s 2019 Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program, Ioudenitch has participated in Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, the International Summer Academy at Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, the International Music Academy in the Principality of Liechtenstein, and the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont.    

Her teachers have included Gregory Sandomirsky and Ben Sayevich in Kansas City, and Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music. She recently graduated with her Master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, where she is now pursuing her Artist Diploma and continuing her studies with Miriam Fried. 

To learn more about Maria Ioudenitch, please visit her website. 

Hailed for her “magnetic, wide-ranging tone” and her “rock solid technique” (Philadelphia Inquirer), violist Ayane Kozasa is a sought-after chamber musician, collaborator, and educator. 

Since winning the 2011 Primrose International Viola Competition, Kozasa has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and Suntory Hall, and she has participated in the Ravinia, Aspen, and the Marlboro Music Festivals. She is also an alum of Caramoor’s 2012 and 2013 Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program. She is a passionate advocate for the expansion of viola repertoire, and has commissioned multiple new works featuring the viola, including American Haiku by Paul Wiancko and K’Zohar Harakia by Judd Greenstein. 

Kozasa is a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet, the 2015 – 16 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at Caramoor as well as the 2018 quartet-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum, grand prize winners of both the Osaka String Quartet Competition and M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition, and recipient of the 2022 Cleveland Quartet Award. The Aizuri Quartet’s debut album, Blueprinting, was nominated for a Grammy Award and named one of NPR’s top 10 classical albums of 2018.   

Ayane is also a member of the duo Ayane & Paul with composer and cellist Paul Wiancko, with whom she performed on Norah Jones’ recent album Pick Me Up Off the Floor. She is currently on the viola faculty at Adelphi University in Long Island, and she has served as guest faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  

To learn more about Ayane Kozasa, please visit her website. 

Having already performed as soloist with the Houston Symphony and the Boston Pops, cellist Alexander Hersh has quickly established himself as one of the most exciting and creative talents of his generation. He has received top prizes at competitions worldwide, including: the Astral Artists National Auditions, Salon de Virtuosi Career grant, National Federation of Music Clubs Biennial Young Artists Competition, New York International Artists Association Competition, and the Fischoff National Chamber Music competition, among others. 

A passionate chamber musician, Hersh has performed at music festivals worldwide, including Marlboro, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Music@Menlo, I-M-S Prussia Cove, Perlman Music Program Chamber Music Workshop, Amsterdam Cello Biennial, Kneisel Hall, Lucerne, and the New York String Orchestra Seminar. He participated in the 2017 and 2018 Evnin Rising Stars mentoring program at Caramoor. He serves as co-Artistic Director of NEXUS Chamber Music, an artist driven collective of musicians whose mission is to make classical music culturally relevant through live concerts and multimedia content.  

Raised in Chicago, Hersh began playing cello at age five. He received his B.M. and M.M. from New England Conservatory where he graduated with academic honors. In 2017, Hersh was a recipient of the Frank Huntington Beebe fund for studies at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule for Musik Berlin. His previous teachers have included Laurence Lesser, Hans Jørgen Jensen, Kim Kashkashian, and Paul Katz. He plays a G.B. Rogeri cello, courtesy of Guarneri Hall NFP and Darnton & Hersh Fine Violins.  

To learn more about Alexander Hersh, please visit his website. 

Born in Montréal, Canadian pianist Lucille Chung has been acclaimed for her “stylish and refined” performances by Gramophone. Since her debut at age 10 with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, she has toured with Charles Dutoit in Asia and performed with over 70 leading orchestras around the world including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, UNAM Philharmonic (Mexico), St. Louis Symphony, Dallas Symphony as well as all the major Canadian orchestras, including Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver among others. She has appeared with conductors such as Penderecki, Spivakov, Nézet-Séguin, Denève and Petrenko.

Ms. Chung has given solo recitals at the finest concert halls in over 35 countries including New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Washington’s Kennedy Center, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Wigmore Hall in London, and Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional. Festival appearances include the Verbier, Dresden, Incontri in Terra di Siena and Santander festivals.

She graduated from both the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School before she turned 20. She furthered her studies in London with Maria Curcio, at the “Mozarteum” in Salzburg, and in Weimar and Imola, Italy with Lazar Berman.

Chung has received excellent reviews worldwide for her discs of the complete works of Ligeti as well as Scriabin piano works on the Dynamic label, garnering 5 Stars from the BBC Music Magazine and Fono Forum in Germany, as well as R10 Classica-Répertoire in France. Her extensive discography includes Saint-Saëns Piano Transcriptions and “Mozart & Me” for Universal Canada. For Signum Records, she recently released Poulenc Piano Works, Liszt Piano Works as well as a piano duo CD with Alessio Bax.

She is fluent in French, English, Korean, Italian, German, and Russian. She and her husband, pianist Alessio Bax are co-artistic directors of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation and live in New York City with their daughter, Mila.

To learn more about Lucille, please visit her website.