Stephanie Zyzak, violin
Kim Kashkashian, viola
Marcy Rosen, cello
Evren Ozel, piano

Praised for her sensitive musicianship and heartfelt playing, violinist Stephanie Zyzak is quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most soulful and profound musicians of her generation.

At the age of seven, Stephanie made her first solo appearance with the Starling Chamber Orchestra at the Aspen Music School and became the youngest recipient ever to be awarded the Aspen Music School New Horizon Fellowship. The following year, she performed in Germany as an invited guest of the Internationale Kunst – Akademie Liechtenstein (IKAL). Since making her debut in 2004 with the Louisville Orchestra, Stephanie has performed as soloist throughout Germany, Russia, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, and with orchestras including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, Southeast Missouri Symphony, and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra. Recent and upcoming season highlights include performances at Caramoor, Carnegie Hall, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert series, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Phillips Collection, among others.

A deeply passionate chamber musician, Stephanie has had the privilege of collaborating with renowned musicians including Jonathan Biss, Kim Kashkashian, Ida Kavafian, Alice Neary, Danny Phillips, Marcy Rosen, and Mitsuko Uchida. She has also performed at the Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Caramoor, the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, as well as on tour with Musicians From Marlboro.

Born in South Carolina, Stephanie is a graduate of New England Conservatory where she studied with Miriam Fried. Currently, she is studying at CUNY The Graduate Center with Mark Steinberg. She is also a founding member of ensemble132, a roster-based chamber music collective and was a 2020-22 Ensemble Connect fellow at Carnegie Hall.

Stephanie performs on a 1778 Joseph and Antonio Gagliano violin, generously on loan from Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, and a bow by François-Nicolas Voirin.

Kim Kashkashian, internationally recognized as a unique voice on the viola, was born of Armenian parents in Michigan. She studied the viola with Karen Tuttle and legendary violist Walter Trampler at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. Since fall 2000 she has taught viola and chamber music at New England Conservatory.

Following Grammy Award nominations for several previous recordings, Kashkashian received a 2012 Grammy Award in the "Best Classical Instrumental Solo" category for Kurtág and Ligeti: Music for Viola, on the ECM Records label. Kashkashian's recording, with Robert Levin, of the Brahms Sonatas won the Edison Prize in 1999. Her June 2000 recording of concertos by Bartók, Eötvös and Kurtág won the 2001 Cannes Classical Award for a premiere recording by soloist with orchestra.

In 2016, Kashkashian was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Kashkashian has worked tirelessly to broaden the range of technique, advocacy, and repertoire for the viola. A staunch proponent of contemporary music, she has developed creative relationships with György Kurtág, Krzysztof Penderecki, Alfred Schnittke, Giya Kancheli, and Arvo Pärt, and commissioned works from Peter Eötvös, Ken Ueno, Thomas Larcher, Lera Auerbach, and Tigran Mansurian.

Marlboro Music and the Viennese school represented by her mentor, Felix Galimir, were major influences in developing her love of chamber music. Kim Kashkashian is a regular participant at the Verbier, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Marlboro, and Ravinia festivals.

She has long-standing duo partnerships with pianist Robert Levin and percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, and played in a unique string quartet with Gidon Kremer, Daniel Phillips, and Yo-Yo Ma.

As a soloist, she has appeared with the great orchestras of Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, New York, and Cleveland, and in recital at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, Kaufmann Hall, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, as well as in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Athens, and Tokyo.

Kashkashian's musicianship has been well represented on recordings through her association with the prestigious ECM label in a fruitful collaboration that has been continuous since 1985.

Kim Kashkashian has taught in Bloomington, Indiana, and in Freiburg and Berlin, Germany, and now resides with her daughter in Boston. Kim is a founding member of Music for Food, an initiative by musicians to fight hunger in their home communities.

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." She has performed in recital and with orchestra throughout Canada, England, France, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and all fifty of the United States.

A consummate soloist, Ms. Rosen's superb musicianship is enhanced by her many chamber music activities. She has collaborated with the world's finest musicians including Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, András Schiff, Peter Serkin, Mitsuko Uchida, Isaac Stern, Robert Mann, Sandor Vegh, Kim Kashkashian, Jessye Norman, Lucy Shelton, Charles Neidich and the Juilliard, Emerson, and Orion Quartets. She is a founding member of the ensemble La Fenice, a group comprised of oboe, piano and string trio, as well as a founding member of the world renowned Mendelssohn String Quartet. With the Mendelssohn String Quartet 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. The Quartet, which disbanded in January of 2010, toured annually throughout the United States, Canada and Europe for 31 years.

Marcy performs regularly at festivals both here and abroad, including the Caramoor, Santa Fe, Ravinia, Saratoga and Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festivals, the Seattle International Music Festival, the Lockenhaus Kammermusikfest in Austria and the International Musicians Seminar in England. Since 1986 she has been Artistic Director of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival in Maryland and as a long time participant at the Marlboro Music Festival she has taken part in over 20 "Musicians from Marlboro" tours and performed in concerts celebrating the 40th, 50th, and 60th Anniversaries of the Festival.

Marcy Rosen was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and her teachers have included Gordon Epperson, Orlando Cole, Marcus Adeney, Felix Galimir, Karen Tuttle and Sandor Vegh. She is 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 and on the Faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. She has also served on the faculties of the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory and the University of Delaware.

American pianist Evren Ozel has established himself as a musician of “refined restraint” (Third Coast Review), combining fluent virtuosity with probing, thoughtful interpretations. Having performed extensively in the United States and abroad, Evren is the recipient of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2022 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and is currently represented by Concert Artists Guild as an Ambassador Prize Winner of their 2021 Victor Elmaleh Competition.

Since his debut at age 11 with the Minnesota Orchestra, Evren has gone on to be a featured soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony, Boston POPS Orchestra, and The Orchestra Now at Bard College with conductors including Jahja Ling, Courtney Lewis, Keith Lockhart, and Leon Botstein. In the 2023-24 season, he records Mozart Concertos with the Radio Symphonieorchester Wien and conductor Howard Griffiths for the Next Generation Mozart Soloists project based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Evren has performed solo recitals at important venues across the US, including The Gilmore’s Wellspring Theater, the Harvard Musical Association, and the Ordway.  In 2021 he delivered an all-Chopin recital under a joint collaboration between the Schubert Club and Chopin Society of Minnesota, to critical acclaim.  In the 2023-24 season, Evren performs the last three Beethoven Sonatas in recital, as well as a recital debut in Boston’s Jordan Hall. He also performs solo during select duo recitals, including 2024 concerts for Newport Classical in Rhode Island and People’s Symphony Concerts in New York.

An esteemed chamber musician, Evren has played at the Marlboro Music Festival and ChamberFest Cleveland, with artists such as Jonathan Biss, Franklin Cohen, Hsin-Yun Huang, Joseph Lin, Christoph Richter, Marcy Rosen, and Peter Wiley. He has also performed on Musicians from Marlboro tours at venues such as the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and New York’s Carnegie Hall. Most recently, he was selected as a Bowers Program Artist for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In the 2023-24 season, Evren debuts at the Gardner Museum in Boston and the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. with violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux. He frequently collaborates with violinist Geneva Lewis, including concerts for Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Capital Region Classical, and Washington Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center.

Evren began learning piano from the Suzuki method in his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, studying with Cindy Malmin.  He later studied for seven years with Dr. Paul Wirth in Minneapolis, and then moved to Massachusetts at age 15 to study with Wha Kyung Byun at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts and the New England Conservatory Preparatory School.  He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the New England Conservatory, and is currently a candidate in their prestigious and highly-exclusive Artist Diploma program, all under the tutelage of Wha Kyung Byun.  Other important mentors include Jonathan Biss, Imogen Cooper, Richard Goode, Dr. Sarah Miller, Tom Rosenberg, and Mitsuko Uchida.