2025 Guest Artists

Tianxu An · Wael Farouk · Karen Leistra-Jones · Alexander Kobrin · Millena Mollova · John Perry · Mina Perry · Christopher Shih · American String Quartet · Duo Althea

An Tianxu is an outstanding young pianist. In 2019, at the age of 20, he won the 4th place and the only "Special Prize" in the piano category of the 16th Tchaikovsky International Music Competition. Orchestras he has performed with include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Tonkünstler Symphony Orchestra, Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra, China Symphony Orchestra, China Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the oldest newspapers in the U.S., has featured him twice. He is the New Artist of the Month for August 2021 in the Musical America, the oldest classical music magazine in the U.S., and he was interviewed by the world-renowned piano specialization magazine, Pianist (UK).

In April 2022 his debut solo album "Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev" was released worldwide by the French classical music label Alpha, winner of Gramophone Magazine's 2020 World Label of the Year. Gramophone Magazine (UK) released a review of his debut solo CD, "He has an innate affinity with the three composers ", “the helter-skelter triplets of the ‘Scherzo-fantaisie’ from the 18 pieces of Op 72. I prefer Tianxu An’s more measured approach to Pletnev’s”; “Best of all is a top-drawer account of Rachmaninov’s Chopin Variations with some sparkling and colorful playing ". The French classical music magazine Classica commented that "with the release of this album, An Tianxu occupies a leading position in his field of expertise." On August 17, 2023, his second album, An Tianxu: Piano Recital in NCPA, was released worldwide by NCPA Classics on the NCPA Music Label, as part of the "Debut Series for Young Chinese Musicians", and is a recording of a solo piano concert performed by An Tianxu on August 18, 2022 at the NCPA Concert Hall.

He has participated in masterclasses with Klaus Bessler, Andrea Bonatta, Barry Douglas, Yefim Bronfman, Emanuel Ax. In 2022, as one of four pianists selected worldwide, he participated in the Piano-Conducting Masterclass with Mikhail Pletnev under the auspices of the Géza Anda Foundation, Switzerland. In 2023, An was the only invited pianist to participate in the entire Masterclass program at Lake Como in Oberlin, where he was coached by five internationally renowned pianists, including Jeremy Denk and Stanislav Ioudenitch.

An Tianxu got his master's degree at the Juilliard School in New York under the tutelage of Prof. Robert McDonald.  He also receives occasional coaching from renowned pianists such as Mikhail Voskresensky, Dang Thai Son, and Dmitri Alexeev. He graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in the United States in 2022 under the tutelage of Prof. Meng-chieh Liu. He is an alumnus of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where he studied with Prof. Chang Hua.

Egyptian-American pianist Wael Farouk has performed internationally in such venues as the

White Hall in St. Petersburg, Schumann’s house in Leipzig, and Carnegie Hall in New York,

where his solo debut in 2013 was described as “absolutely masterful.”

Praised as a “formidable and magnificent pianist” by the New York Concert Review, Dr. Farouk is

known for his groundbreaking performance projects. In the spring of 2021, he gave a

performance of Rachmaninoff’s concerti Nos. 1, 2, and 3 in a single evening with the New

Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Kirk Muspratt, which the Chicago Tribune music critic

described as a “history-making concert.” The entirety of the performance was also broadcast on

WFMT, Chicago’s Classical Music station. In the 2023-2024 season, Dr. Farouk will be

performing the two Brahms piano concerti in one evening with the New Philharmonic Orchestra

and Conductor Kirk Muspratt.

Since 2014, Dr. Farouk has performed 30 different recital programs featuring the complete solo

piano works of Rachmaninoff and Brahms, as well as Brahms’s complete piano chamber music.

Other programs included works by Chopin, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Ravel, Bolcom,

Busoni, and Godowsky; the complete Transcendental Etudes by Liszt; and Bach’s The Art of

Fugue and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier. He has also performed the complete piano concertos of

Rachmaninoff, Brahms, and Beethoven (including all five Beethoven concertos in a single

concert). In 2017, he gave the African premiere of the monumental Busoni piano concerto with

the Cairo Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Farouk commands a vast repertoire of more than 70 concertos and 60 solo programs,

spanning from Scarlatti to Bolcom and including the complete piano works of J.S. Bach,

Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff as well as the complete sonatas of Prokofiev,

Scriabin, and Schubert. He has appeared as a soloist with such orchestras as the North Czech

Philharmonic Orchestra, the Saint-Etienne National Orchestra, the Academy of the Arts

Orchestra, the Manhattan Symphony, and the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, led by Christoph

Mueller, Steven Lloyd, Patrick Fournilier, and Philippe Entremont, among others.

David Dubal described his 2013 debut solo album Russian Portraits (Carlock Records) as “piano

playing that brings chills to the flesh, performed with a rare virtuoso technique.”

Dr. Farouk is on the piano faculty at the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 2021.

Prior to that, Dr. Farouk was on the piano faculty at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at

Roosevelt University in Chicago from 2012-2022.

Dr. Farouk received his Bachelor of Music degree at the Cairo Conservatory as a student of

Samir Aziz, Edgar Davelienadze, and Vselod Demidov, then came to the United States on a

Fulbright Fellowship to study with Marilyn Neeley at the Catholic University of America. After

receiving a Master of Music degree from Converse College as a student of Douglas Weeks, he

continued his studies with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and the

Chicago College of Performing Arts. He completed his studies with Daniel Epstein, receiving a

DMA degree from Rutgers University.

Karen Leistra-Jones received her Ph. D. in Musicology from Yale University in 2011, and is currently Associate Professor of Music at Franklin & Marshall College. Her research interests include the history and aesthetics of musical performance, the Schumann-Brahms circle, art song, and song cycles. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, 19th-Century Music, and the Journal of the American Musicological Society. Current projects include a book-length study of Beethoven performance in the long nineteenth century and a study of lullabies and cultural constructions of motherhood from the eighteenth century through the present day.

“He surrendered neither the smoothness nor the dynamic fluidity that the modern piano allows, and he gave his sense of fantasy free rein, and creating an almost confessional spirit ." — The New York Times Called the “Van Cliburn of today” by the BBC, pianist Alexander Kobrin has placed himself at the forefront of today's performing musicians. His prize winning performances have been praised for their brilliant technique, musicality, and emotional engagement with the audience. The New York Times has written that Mr. Kobrin was a “fastidious guide” to Schumann’s “otherworldly visions, pointing out hunters, flowers, haunted corners and friendly bowers, all captured in richly characterized vignettes.” “This was a performance that will be revered and remembered as a landmark of the regeneration of exceptional classical music in Central New York.”-critic wrote after Mr. Kobrin’s performance of Second Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms with Syracuse Symphony in Syracuse,NY.

In 2005, Mr. Kobrin was awarded the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, TX. His numerous successes in competitions also include top prizes at the Busoni International Piano Competition (First Prize), Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (Top Prize), Scottish International Piano Competition in Glasgow (First Prize)

Mr. Kobrin has performed with many of the world’s great orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Verdi, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Moscow Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Berliner Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Swedish Radio Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with such conductors as Mikhail Pletnev, Mikhail Jurovsky, Mark Elder, Vassiliy Sinaisky, James Conlon, Claus Peter Flor, Alexander Lazarev, Vassiliy Petrenko and Yuri Bashmet.

He has appeared in recital at major halls worldwide, including Carnegie Zankel Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Louvre Auditorium,Salle Gaveau and Salle Cortot in Paris, Munich Herkulesaal and Berliner Filarmonia Hall in Germany, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, Sheung Wan Civic Centre in Hong Kong, as well as Sala Verdi in Milan and many others. Other past performances have included recitals at Bass Hall for the Cliburn Series, the Washington Performing Arts Society, La Roque d'Antheron, the Ravinia Festival, the Beethoven Easter Festival, Busoni Festival , the renowned Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Festival Musique dans le Grésivaudan ,the International Keyboard Institute & Festival, annual concert tours in Japan, China and Taiwan.

Though widely acclaimed as a performer, Mr. Kobrin’s teaching has been an inspiration to many students through his passion for music. From 2003 to 2010 he served on the faculty of the Russian State Gnessin’s Academy of Music. In 2010 Alexander Kobrin was named the L. Rexford Distinguished Chair in Piano at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, and since 2013 until 2017 has been a member of the celebrated Artist Faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School. In July 2017, Mr.Kobrin has joined the faculty of the renowned Eastman School of Music in Rochster,NY. Mr. Kobrin has also given masterclasses in Europe and Asia, the International Piano Series and at the Conservatories of Japan and China.
Mr. Kobrin has been a jury member for many international piano competitions, including the Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano,Hamamatsu International Piano Competion, the Blüthner International Piano Competition in Vienna, E-Competition in Fairbanks, AK and the Neuhaus International Piano Festival in Moscow.

Mr. Kobrin has released recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and Centaur labels, covering a wide swath of the piano literature. His Schumann album,released on Centaur Records has been included into top-5 albums of the year in 2015 by Fanfare Magazine. Gramophone Magazine raved about his Cliburn Competition release on Harmonia Mundi, writing that “in [Rachmaninoff’s] Second Sonata (played in the 1931 revision), despite fire-storms of virtuosity, there is always room for everything to tell and Kobrin achieves a hypnotic sense of the music’s dark necromancy.”

Mr. Kobrin was born in 1980 in Moscow. At the age of five, he was enrolled in the world-famous Gnessin Special School of Music after which he attended the prestigious Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. His teachers have included renowned professors Tatiana Zelikman and Lev Naumov.

With an immensely prolific and successful 70-year-long career, Prof. MILENA MOLLOVA is the leading and most successful Bulgarian concert pianist and pedagogue today. ”This artist was created to convey all that is most elegant and spiritual in music. And she achieves that with a charming skill.” (Jacques  Steman, La Lanterne, Brussels, Belgium)

Prof. Milena Mollova is a graduate of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory and is among the very few pianists, fortunate enough to study with the legendary Russian pianist Emil Gillels. She completed her college studies at the Sofia Academy of Music at the age of 19, in the piano studios of Prof. Panka Pelishek and Prof. Dimitar Nenov. From that point onwards, her performing career has been an endless chain of awards, guest performances all over the world, and conquering of new artistic peaks, relevant to her original goals as an artist. She is a prizewinner of some of the most prestigious international competitions including the First Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibault Competition in Paris, the ARD International Contest in Munich, and the Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna. She has toured the concert stages of Europe, USA, Cuba, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and India.

Her repertoire is impressive, includes different styles and eras and covering the wide range between solo, concerto and chamber music. She has performed in various formations and in partnership with all Bulgarian symphony orchestras under the batons of the greatest Bulgarian conductors, as well as of international celebrities such as Kondrashin, Akiyama, Baumgartner, and Tzipin.

An emblematic landmark in Milena Mollova’s repertoire is her performance of the cycle of 32 piano sonatas by Beethoven, a series of 9 concerts, performed on numerous occasions in Bulgaria and Germany. Prof. Mollova has also played numerous times the complete Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano, the last one featuring the Austrian violinist Mario Hossen. Alongside her interpretation of the classical repertoire, she is well-known for her powerful premiere performances of works by contemporary American, European and Bulgarian composers. Her remarkable experience as a performer forms the foundation of her extremely successful 60-year-long teaching career. Prof. Milena Mollova is currently a Distinguished Piano Professor at the Department of Music of  the New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria. For many years she was a Piano Professor at the Pancho Vladigerov Sofia State Academy of Music in Bulgaria as well as at the Northern Greece Conservatoire in Thessaloniki, Greece. Her former students are prize-winners of numerous international piano competitions and are currently teaching and performing in Europe, Asia, and North America. She has presented piano master classes in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Turkey, Bulgaria, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, and the USA. Prof. Mollova has been invited to be a jury member of many leading international piano competitions including the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow, Russia.  Prof. Mollova is the President of the Bulgarian chapter of the EPTA (European Piano Teachers Association) and the Vice President of the Chopin Society in Bulgaria.

Prof. Milena Mollova’s skills as a performer, teacher and organizer of festivals are mutually complementary, helping her to bring her teaching and performing projects up to such a perfection as to reflect her enormous experience while outlining the far-teaching horizons of her ability and ambition.

John Perry, distinguished artist and teacher, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Eastman School of Music where he was a student of Cecile Genhart.  During those summers, he worked with the eminent Frank Mannheimer.  Recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, he continued studies in Europe for four years where he worked with Wladyslav Kedra, Polish concert artist and professor at the Akademie für Musik in Vienna, and Carlo Zecchi, renowned conductor, pianist, and head of the piano department at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome.

Mr. Perry has won numerous awards including the highest prizes in both the Busoni and Viotti international piano competitions in Italy and special honors at the Marguerite Long International Competition in Paris. Since then he has performed extensively throughout Europe and North America to great critical acclaim. Also a respected chamber musician, Mr. Perry has collaborated with some of the finest instrumentalists in the world.

He also enjoys an international reputation as a teacher, presenting master classes throughout the world. He often is a jury member at some of the most prestigious international piano competitions. His students have been prize winners in most major competitions and include two first-prize winners in the Rubinstein, four first-prize winners in the Music Teacher's National Association national competition, and first-prize winners in the Naumburg National Chopin competition, the Cleveland Competition, Beethoven Foundation competition, the Federated Music Clubs, and the YKA, AMSC, and YMF competitions, and finalists in the Chopin International in Warsaw, the Van Cliburn, the Queen Elisabeth, Leeds, Dublin, Busoni, Viotti and the Three Rivers competitions.

Mr. Perry is professor at the Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, professor of piano at Mason Gross Schoo of the Arts, Rutgers University, and Professor Emeritus of the USC Thornton School of Music.  In addition, he recently founded a music school, John Perry Academy of Music in Los Angeles, where he serves as Artistic Director.  During the summer he is artist professor at the Lake Como International Piano Academy, the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada, the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida, the Orford Music Festival in Quebec, the Morningside Music Bridge Program in Calgary, Alberta, the Internationaler Klaviersommer Cochem, Germany, the International Music Festival in Perugia, Italy, the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy, Montecito International Music Festival in Santa Barbara, and the John Perry Academy Summer Piano Festival in California.  In January he is main guest artist at the Sydney Piano Festival in Australia.

His recordings are available on the Telefunken, Musical Heritage Society, CBC, ACA and Fox labels. 

Mina Hirobe-Perry has performed in recitals as soloist, chamber musician in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, North America, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. She also enjoys concertizing two piano/four hand repertoire. She earned her Bachelor and Master Degrees with honor at Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo, where she studied with Prof. Tetsushige Maruyama and Prof. Konstantin Ganev, who was the assistant professor of the eminent pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus at Moscow Conservatory. After three years of concertizing throughout Japan and teaching piano privately, she moved to Germany where she earned her Artist Diploma and served as a correpetitor at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. She continued advanced study at the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto, Canada.

Ms. Perry’s priority is to enable her students to discover their unique style in music making, along with developing their technique for beautiful sound production.  As a dedicated teacher, her students have won numerous competitions locally and nationally, including three CAPMT (MTNA California division) state winners. Her students also have been accepted to prestigious music conservatories and universities such as Juilliard, Manhattan, San Francisco, Eastman, Cleveland, Peabody, USC, UCLA, Indiana, and Hochschüle für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin.

In 2013, Ms. Perry founded the Southern California Music Institute, a non-profit organization 501(c)(3), where she serves as the president. The institute’s mission is to provide an opportunity for all youth to receive a quality musical guidance. In conjunction with the institute, she founded the John Perry Academy of Music International Piano Festival, which is a summer program that is carefully designed for exceptionally gifted young students. She was also a Founder and Director of the Honors Piano Performance Seminar at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, where she taught private piano lessons, two piano/four hand ensemble, and piano chamber music. Currently, she focuses on guiding exceptionally gifted young pianists at her private studio in Princeton, NJ.

In summer, Ms. Perry enjoys performing and teaching at summer festivals world wide such as Summer Music on the Shannon in Ireland, Academie Internationale de Courchevel in France, Vianden International Music Festival in Luxembourg, Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy, Duxbury Music Festival in Massachusetts, Hotchkiss School Summer Portal Piano Program in Connecticut, and John Perry Academy Summer festival in California. She is also frequently invited to give master classes as well as to judge piano competitions nationally and internationally. 

Physician and pianist Christopher Shih has a remarkable dual career as both full-time practicing physician and actively concertizing pianist. Hailed by the New York Times as "an intelligent and thoughtful musician," with "effortless performances" and "consummate control," he has performed in major venues worldwide and has soloed with numerous orchestras, including repeated engagements with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington DC. His performance with the National Symphony on the Capitol Lawn for an audience of 50,000 prompted the Washington Post to declare, "If Shih is as gifted in medicine as he is in music, he has some serious career decisions to make. His performance was fluent, gracious, miraculously light, and a joy to the ear." Other orchestral engagements include the Georgetown, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, New England Conservatory, Harvard-Radcliffe, Newton, Lancaster, and Paris Garde Republicaine symphony orchestras.

Christopher is the winner of the sixth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in Fort Worth, Texas. He was also a press and audience favorite at the professional tenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram raved, "He demonstrated a magical touch in voicing and a fine Chopinesque rubato...a total sense of style across three centuries. For Shih, technical control supports impeccable musicianship." Christopher is also the grand prize winner of the amateur competitions in Paris, Boston, and Washington DC. His playing and interviews have been featured in television and radio programs worldwide, including NPR's All Things Considered, APM's Performance Today, WGBH's Inner Voice, WQXR, WETA, WGMS, WBJC, Radio France, Radio Classique, Canadian CBC, Taiwan CTV, and Pianist Magazine.

Christopher is currently a board-certified gastroenterologist with U.S. Digestive Health in Lancaster, PA. He received his B.A. cum laude from Harvard University and his M.D. from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He did his internal medicine residency training at the University of Pennsylvania and his gastroenterology fellowship training at Johns Hopkins. He is also active in community and charitable services, formerly sat on the GI board exam committee of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology. An avid chamber musician, he regularly performs with world-class artists, ensembles, and principals of major orchestras across the nation. In recent seasons he has appeared with violinists Nurit Bar-Josef, Alexander Kerr, David Kim, Elizabeth Pitcairn, Michael Shih, and Scott Yoo; cellists Narek Hakhnazaryan and Amit Peled; clarinetist Anthony McGill; pianist Jon Kimura Parker; the American, Daedalus, Dover, Escher, Miró, Pacifica, and Ying Quartets; and the string quintet Sybarite5. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Chamber Music America.

Christopher performs only selectively now due to ongoing struggles with focal dystonia.

“…luxurious, beautifully sculpted performances”

— THE NEW YORK TIMES 

 Internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The Quartet celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.  

Recent seasons featured performances of the Quartet’s major project together with the National Book Award-winning author Phil Klay and the poet Tom Sleigh, which offers a groundbreaking program combining music and readings that examines the effects of war. The Quartet also collaborated with the renowned author Salman Rushdie in a work for narrator and quartet by the film composer Paul Cantelon built around Rushdie’s novel The Enchantress of Florence. These tremendously imaginative collaborations cement the American String Quartet’s reputation as one of the most adventurous and fearless string quartets performing today, as comfortable with the groundbreaking as with the traditional. 

The Quartet's diverse activities have also included numerous international radio and television broadcasts, including a recent recording for the BBC; tours of Asia; and performances with the New York City Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recent highlights include performances of an all-sextet program with Roberto and Andrès Díaz, many tours of South America, and performances of the complete Beethoven cycle of string quartets at the Cervantes Festival in Mexico and the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel.  

The American’s additional extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and RCA labels. Most recently the group released "Schubert's Echo," which pairs Schubert's monumental last quartet with works bearing its influence by Second Viennese masters Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This repertoire posits that the creative line from the First to the Second Viennese Schools is continuous – and evident when these works are heard in the context of each other.  

As champions of new music, the American has given numerous premieres, including George Tsontakis’s Quartet No. 7.5, “Maverick,” Richard Danielpour's Quartet No. 4, and Curt Cacioppo's a distant voice calling. The premiere of Robert Sirota’s American Pilgrimage was performed around the U.S. in the cities the work celebrates. The Quartet premiered Tobias Picker’s String Quartet No. 2 in New York City in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Manhattan School of Music.  

Formed when its original members were students at The Juilliard School, the American String Quartet’s career began with the group winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award in the same year.  Resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival since 1974 and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 1984, the American has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Nicola Possenti and Paolo Pellegrini began their artistic collaboration in 2019 in Tallinn, at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, while Possenti was an intern in the chamber music class and accompanist of the cello class, and Pellegrini was graduating in Chamber Music. After this experience, they met again in their home country of Italy and decided to continue their artistic journey together, performing in concert for the first time in Flero (BS).

In September 2021, they participated in the International Competition of Chamber Music with Piano organised by the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn, reaching the finals and winning the special jury prize for their performance of J. Widmann's Fünf Bruchstücke. They were winners in all categories (Soloists and Chamber Music) of the “Novecento” prize at the 2021 ‘Luigi Nono’ International Chamber Music Competition in Venaria Reale, the ‘Elio Peruzzi’ Competition organised by the Omizzolo Peruzzi Music Foundation and the 2nd Prize at the ‘Gasparo da Salò’ European Chamber Music Competition in 2023. In November 2022 they performed at the Waldensian Temple in Turin, performing in the program also the world premieres of two pieces written especially for them, “The difference bewteen Space and Oblivion” by Andrew Tholl and “Dawnings’ by Eden Londsdale”.

Since 2023 they have played in the Sala dei Giganti at the Liviano, in Padua, in Brescia, at the Ateneo Veneto in Venice, at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome, for the Borgomusica Festival 2023 and 2024 in Bassano in Teverina, for the ‘Festival delle Nazioni’ in Città di Castello and for the 15th edition of the Reate Festival . They played as guests on the Rai Radio 3 radio programme “La stanza della musica” at the Rai studios in Milan.

In 2023 they were semi-finalists in the International Chamber Music Competition in Pinerolo and finalists in the ‘Concurso Internacional de Música de Cámara Antón García Abril’, the ‘Alberto Burri’ National Competition and the ‘Luigi Nono’ International Chamber Music Competition. In 2024 they won First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 6th International Chamber Music Competition ‘Amics Cambra Romanica’ in Andorra and Second Prize at the International Chamber Music Competition ‘Giulio Rospigliosi’.

In collaboration with Portuguese violinist Giulia Guarini, they won the "Culture Moves Europe – Second Call for Individual Mobility of Artists and Cultural Professionals" grant, co-financed by Creative Europe and the Goethe Institute, which supported the organization of masterclasses and concerts at the Conservatòrio Regional da Horta (Azores, Portugal) in July 2024, and in the same year they have been ensemble in residence for the Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini of Jesi, with four concerts in the Marche region.

Nicola Possenti is an eclectic pianist with experience as a soloist, accompanist and chamber musician, appearing in concert halls in Italy, Estonia, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Hungary and Spain. He has successfully participated in numerous national and international competitions, performed and recorded music by Kancheli, Tihanyi, Lang, Procaccini, and has shared the stage with musicians such as Ilya Grubert, Carlo Maria Parazzoli, Giulio Rovighi, Mario Montore and the Krulik Quartet.

Paolo Pellegrini graduated with distinction in Clarinet at the Bolzano Conservatory and then in Chamber Music at the Estonian Academy of Music. He cultivates a deep interest in contemporary music, and has premiered many works by Hong Kong composer Yung Sin Kan. Paolo is also an active orchestral player, specialising in Eb clarinet, and a passionate teacher. In the 2021-22 season, he was first clarinet of the Pori Sinfonietta (Finland).