This season, Ms. Chuchman makes two important role debuts: Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi at Opera Omaha and Gilda in Rigoletto at Opera San Antonio. She will be debuting with Palm Beach Opera as Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore. She also appears in concert with both the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra.

Ms. Chuchman’s recent opera engagements have included Adina in L’Elisir d’Amore, Miranda in The Enchanted Island, Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, and Valencienne in The Merry Widow at the Metropolitan Opera; the title role in a new production of Orphée et Eurydice, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Yum-Yum in The Mikado, and Valencienne at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; Mary in Jake Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life at the San Francisco Opera; her house and role debut as Pat Nixon in Nixon in China and Michal in Handel’s Saul at the Houston Grand Opera; Micaëla in La tragédie de Carmen at the San Diego Opera; Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi at the Los Angeles Opera, Boonyi/India in the critically acclaimed world premiere of Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown at the Opera Theater of St. Louis, Gretel on the Glyndebourne Festival Tour, Magnolia in Show Boat and Marie in Fille du Regiment at the Washington National Opera, Magnolia at the Dallas Opera, John Adams’ A Flowering Tree at the Opera Omaha, Guinevere in Camelot at the Glimmerglass Festival, Yum-Yum, Cleopatra in Guilio Cesare, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, and staged performances of Orff’s Carmina Burana at the Michigan Opera Theater; Minka in Le Roi le Malgra at the Bard Music Festival, the title role in Flora, an Opera at the Spoleto Festival USA, and Alinda in Giasone and Dorinda in Orlando at the Chicago Opera Theater.

In concert, Ms. Chuchman has appeared in Lincoln Center’s White Lights Festival in staged performances of the Pegolesi Stabat Mater, and has also appeared at the Cincinnati May Festival in a performance of the Bach B minor Mass, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in performances of the Brahms Requiem, the Rhode Island Philharmonic in performances of Orff’s Carmina Burana, the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra in performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, and the Ravinia Festival as a guest on the Prairie Home Companion radio show.

In her native Canada, Ms. Chuchman recently sang the premiere of Larysa Kuzmenko’s Golden Harvest with the Winnipeg Symphony. She made her debut at the Canadian Opera Company as Olympia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann and most recently returned as Musetta in La bohème. She has also appeared at the Edmonton Opera as Yum-Yum and Marie in La Fille du Regiment; and at the Manitoba Opera as Susana in Le Nozze de Figaro and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte. Concert performances have included engagements with the Toronto Symphony, Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra. Prince George Symphony, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Winnipeg, Ms. Chuchman received her Bachelor’s Degree in Voice Performance from the School of Music at the University of Manitoba. She is also an alumna of the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program. Ms. Chuchman’s awards include the San Francisco Opera’s 2019 Emerging Star of the Year, Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ 2017 Mabel Dorn Reeder Award, and prizewinner at the Finals of the 2009 Neue Stimmen Competition in Germany.

Pouliot ventures into a spectacular 2022/23 season highlighted with debuts at the symphonies of Arkansas, Bangor, Elgin, North Carolina, Oregon, Tacoma, and Westmoreland. He returns to the stages of the Madison and Milwaukee symphonies as well as the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal performing the works of Beethoven, Saint-Saens, and Paganini. Pouliot also brings his recital programming to Temecula, Paris and to his debuts in Boston and at Toronto’s Koerner Hall; He widens his artistic lens in the Boston performance by commissioning the world premiere of Derrick Skye’s solo for violin and electronics, entitled “God of the Gaps”. A prolific collaborator, Pouliot rounds out this season with his debut at the Seattle Chamber Music Society and a return to La Jolla Summerfest. He also returns to the National Youth Orchestra of Canada to embark on his second year as Artist-in Residence, following last season’s inaugural residency in which the organization welcomed him to cultivate a curated program for students and faculty.

Recent highlights include debuts with the Boise Philharmonic, Omaha Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Plano Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra and Winnipeg Symphony; and being named Artist-in-Residence at Orchestre Métropolitain where he deepened his relationship with the orchestra’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Pouliot released his debut album on Analekta Records in 2019 to critical acclaim including a five-star rating from BBC MusicMagazine as well as a 2019 Juno Award nomination for Best Classical Album. Adding to his accolades that year, Pouliot won both the Career Development Award from the Women’s Club of Toronto and the Virginia Parker Prize Career Grant from the Canada Arts Council. He has been featured twice on Rob Kapilow’s What Makes it Great? series and was NPR’s Performance Today Artist-in-Residence for the 2017-18 season in Minnesota the 2018-19 season in Hawaii, and the 2021-22 season across Europe. In 2016, he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Manulife Competition and was named First Laureate of both the 2018 and 2015 Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.

Since his orchestral debut at age 11, Pouliot has performed with the orchestras of Aspen, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Madison, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, and Seattle, among many. Internationally, he has performed as soloist with the Sofia Philharmonic in Bulgaria, Orchestras of the Americas on its South American tour, and was the featured soloist for the first ever joint tour of the European Union Youth Orchestra and National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He has collaborated with many musical luminaries including conductors Sir Neville Marriner, David Afkham, Pablo Heras-Casado, David Danzmayr, JoAnn Falletta, Marcelo Lehninger, Nicholas McGegan, Alexander Prior, Vasily Petrenko and Thomas Søndergård.

Pouliot studied violin in Canada with Marie Bérard and Erika Raum, and he completed his training as an associate of The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He graduated from the Colburn School Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Robert Lipsett, the Jascha Heifetz Distinguished Violin Chair.

Pouliot performs on the 1729 Guarneri del Gesù on generous loan from an anonymous donor.

As a composer, his work has been performed by orchestras throughout the world; his first large scale orchestral work, Everything Must Go, received its world premiere with the New York Philharmonic, and its European premiere with the Antwerp Symphony, and he was the recipient of a 2019 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, for Outstanding Sound Design / Music Composition, for his work on More Forever, in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Caleb Teicher. He is the recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was named a Gilmore Young Artist—an honor awarded every two years highlighting the most promising American pianists of the new generation.

In the 2022-23 season, Tao returns to perform Mozart with the New York Philharmonic, for whom he will also curate a program for their Artist Spotlight series, featuring collaborations with vocalist, Charmaine Lee, and wind ensemble, The Westerlies. He will also return to the San Francisco Symphony both as a soloist in Gershwin’s Concerto in F major at Davies Symphony Hall, and as a curator for their Soundbox series. In Washington, DC, he will make his debut with the National Symphony Orchestra performing Shostakovich with Dalia Staveska, and, following Atlanta Symphony’s premiere of his Violin Concerto with Stefan Jackiw in 2021, he will appear as soloist with the orchestra performing Ravel with Ryan Bancroft. After their successful collaboration with the Finnish Radio Symphony, Tao will further re-unite with Hannu Lintu to perform Tchaikovsky with the Naples Philharmonic, as well as return to Finland to open the season with the Tampere Philharmonic and Santtu-Matias Rouvali.

In his first collaboration with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this Fall, Tao will curate and lead a program of music by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Gesualdo, CPE Bach, Feldman, and Mozart. Other upcoming collaborations include ongoing performances of Counterpoint  with dancer Caleb Teicher, and  performances of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Orchestra of St Luke’s, as part of Paul Taylor Dance Company’s season at Lincoln Center. The season will also include a multi-city tour with the Junction Trio, which includes the group’s Celebrity Series of Boston debut, alongside performances in New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, and more.

In the 2021-22 season, Tao opened Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart with Louis Langree at Damrosch Park performing Mozart, Gershwin, and William Grant Still. He also returned to perform with Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic at the Bravo! Vail Festival, and appeared with the Chicago Symphony performing Ravel at the Ravinia Festival. Further orchestral engagements included Ravel with Cincinnati Symphony; Rachmaninov’s Concerto No.4 with the Kansas City Symphony; and Tao’s own composition, “Spoonfuls”, with the  New Jersey Symphony. In the same season, Tao also made solo recital debuts at London’s Wigmore Hall,  Seattle’s Meany Center, and Celebrity Series of Boston, and also gave recitals in New York, Washington, and other cities throughout North America. Tao’s violin concerto, written for Stefan Jackiw, was premiered by the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Spano, and the Baltimore Symphony under Kirill Karabits. His recent performances also include multi-concert residencies with the Finnish Radio Symphony and the Swedish Radio Orchestra, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Santa Caecilia Orchestra and Antonio Pappano.

A Warner Classics recording artist, Tao’s debut disc Voyages was declared a “spiky debut” by The New Yorker’s Alex Ross. Of the album, NPR wrote: “Tao proves himself to be a musician of deep intellectual and emotional”. His next album, Pictures, with works by David Lang, Toru Takemitsu, Elliott Carter, Mussorgsky, and Tao himself, was hailed by The New York Times as “a fascinating album [by] a thoughtful artist and dynamic performer…played with enormous imagination, color and command.” His third album, American Rage, featuring works by Julia Wolfe, Frederic Rzewski, and Aaron Copland, was released in the fall of 2019. In 2021, Tao and brass quartet The Westerlies released Bricolage, an album of improvisations and experiments recorded in a small cabin in rural New Hampshire in June 2019.

Tao was born in Urbana, Illinois in 1994. He has studied piano with Emilio del Rosario in Chicago and Yoheved Kaplinsky in New York, and composition with Christopher Theofanidis.

In their most ambitious recording project to date, the Calidore are amidst recording the complete cycle of Beethoven’s String Quartets for Signum Records. The recording will involve multiple releases beginning in March 2023. The 22-23 season includes debuts in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Prague, Madrid, Vancouver and Key West. Their concert activities also see returns to Wigmore Hall, Kennedy Center, Copenhagen, Florence, Montreal, St. Paul, Houston and Los Angeles. In September 2022, the Calidore performs at Carnegie Hall with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, in a memorial concert honoring the late composer Andre Previn. They also enjoy collaborations this season with the Emerson Quartet, clarinetist Anthony McGill, bassist Xavier Foley, violist Matthew Lipman, harpist Bridget Kibbey and pianists Ivo Kahanek and Sophiko Simisive.

Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, the Calidore String Quartet first made international headlines as winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition. The quartet was the first and only North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Highlights of recent seasons have included performances in major venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, Konzerthaus Berlin, Brussels’s BOZAR, Cologne Philharmonie, Seoul’s Kumho Art Hall, and at significant festivals including the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia, Mostly Mozart, Music@Menlo, Rheingau, East Neuk, and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The Calidore has given world premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Hannah Lash and Mark-Anthony Turnage among others. Its collaborations with esteemed artists and ensembles include Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Marc-André Hamelin, Joshua Bell, David Shifrin, Inon Barnatan, Lawrence Power, Sharon Isbin, David Finckel and Wu Han. The Calidore has collaborated and studied closely with the Emerson Quartet and Quatuor Ébène, and has also studied with Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, Günter Pichler, Guillaume Sutre, Paul Coletti, and Ronald Leonard.

As a passionate supporter of music education, the Calidore String Quartet is committed to mentoring and educating young musicians, students, and audiences. In 2021 the Calidore joined the faculty of the University of Delaware School of Music and serve as directors of the newly established Graduate String Quartet Residency. Formerly, they served as artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto, University of Michigan and Stony Brook University.

The Calidore String Quartet was founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010. Within two years, the quartet won grand prizes in virtually all the major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions, and it captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg. An amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the ensemble’s name represents its reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its original home: Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”

Recent and upcoming highlights as soloist include appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Alexi devoted the first part of 2023 to the debut of his new project Shifting Ground, bringing it to the Celebrity Series of Boston, Cal Performances, Princeton University Concerts, and the Phillips Collection. Shifting Ground intersperses seminal works for solo violin by J.S. Bach with pieces by Matthew Burtner, Georges Enescu, Nicola Matteis, Steve Reich, Paul Wiancko, and Du Yun, as well as new commissions by composers Salina Fisher and Angélica Negrón.

Alexi has also performed as soloist with the Amarillo, Asheville, California, Charlotte, Columbus, Eugene, New Haven, Omaha, Oregon, Princeton, Santa Fe, and Virginia Symphonies, the Louisville and Sarasota Orchestras, the Las Vegas, Reno, and Rhode Island Philharmonics, and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, as well as in a play-conduct role as guest leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, on Carnegie Hall’s ‘Distinctive Debuts’ series, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, 92nd Street Y, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild Competition and laureate of the 2012 Menuhin Competition, Alexi has been profiled by Musical America, Strings Magazine, and The New York Times, and has written for The Strad.

Chamber music continues to be a major part of Alexi’s life, regularly performing at festivals including Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Chamber Music Northwest, Kronberg, La Jolla, Ojai, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Seattle, and Spoleto, and as a founding member of Owls—an inverted quartet hailed as a “dream group” by The New York Times—alongside violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko. He is an alum of the Bowers Program (formerly CMS 2) at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he received an Artist Diploma as a student of Miriam Fried and Donald Weilerstein. Previous mentors in the Bay Area include Wei He, Jenny Rudin, and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow by François-Nicolas Voirin.

Outside of music, Alexi enjoys hojicha, modernist design and architecture, baking for friends (especially thislumberjack cake), and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.

Ms. Cann’s 2022-23 season includes an appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, return engagements with the Cincinnati and New Jersey symphonies, and debut performances with the Baltimore, National, New World, Seattle, and Utah symphonies. She makes her debut at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony and performs recitals in New Orleans, Little Rock, Sarasota, Toronto, and Washington, D.C.

A champion of the music of Florence Price, Ms. Cann performed the New York City premiere of the composer’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with The Dream Unfinished Orchestrain July 2016 and the Philadelphia premiere with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in February 2021, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called “exquisite.” She has also performed Price’s works for solo piano and chamber ensemble for prestigious presenters such as Caramoor, Chamber Music Detroit, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, San Francisco Performances, and Washington Performing Arts.

Ms. Cann is the recipient of the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, and the 2022 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award. Embracing a dual role as performer and pedagogue, Ms. Cann frequently teaches master classes and leads residencies. She has served on the juries of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and at the Music Academy of the West. She has also appeared as cohost and collaborative pianist with NPR’s From The Top.

Ms. Cann studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, where she holds the inaugural Eleanor Sokoloff Chair in Piano Studies.