JEFFREY SYKES, Artistic Director, Piano  Click here for full bio

SCOTT CUELLAR, PIANO  In reviewing pianist Scott Cuellar’s debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, David LaMarche of the New York Concert Review described Mr. Cuellar’s performance as “virtuosic in scope and expression, like a great man of the theater,” and praised his “ability to illuminate both the external structure and the emotional core of the work he plays.” He has been described by Cleveland Classical as possessing “nerves of steel, a formidable technique, and an architect’s understanding of structure.” The San Antonio Express-News praised his “luxuriant exploration” of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, adding that his “technique was clean, his melodies and cadenzas were expressive, but most noticeable was his keyboard fluidity.”  •  Mr. Cuellar has given solo recitals at major venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, the Newport Music Festival, the Polytheatre Chongqing and the Shenyang Conservatory of Music in the People’s Republic of China, and has been a guest recitalist at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, the Gijón International Piano Festival in Asturias, Spain, the  Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Lima, Peru, Boston Conservatory, and at the University of Washington. He has presented masterclasses at Renmin University in Beijing, Lee University, Grand Valley State University, and has lectured by invitation at the Juilliard School. He has appeared as a soloist with the San Antonio Symphony, the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Rochester Symphony Orchestra, the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, the Oberlin Orchestra, the Lima Symphony Orchestra, and several others.  •  Cuellar is featured on composer Gity Razaz’s debut album, The Strange Highway (2022) with violinist Francesca DePasquale, released on BIS Records. He has performed with many of the world’s great artists, including Cho-Liang Lin, Jennifer Koh, Chee-Yun, Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, Mark Nuccio, Desmond Hoebig, the Miró Quartet, and Timothy Jones.  He is a founding member of the Rodin Trio, along with assistant concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Philip Marten and current Karajan Fellow Joshua Halpern. He has performed at the La Jolla Music Society’s Summerfest, the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival and the Cactus Pear Chamber Music Festival. He has been heard on WQXR in New York, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Seattle’s King FM, Houston Public Media, and others.  •  Mr. Cuellar won the gold medal at the 2016 San Antonio International Piano Competition, where he also received prizes for the best performance of both a Romantic work (Schumann’s Humoreske), as well as of a Russian work (Prokofiev’s 4^th Sonata). He was the gold medalist in the solo division of the 2013 Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, where he was also awarded the silver medal in the concerto division and was the winner of the Krenek Prize for the best performance of a sonata by Ernst Krenek. Additionally, he was the bronze medalist at the 2016 New Orleans International Piano Competition.  •  Mr. Cuellar is an assistant professor of piano at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where he studied with Jon Kimura Parker; he earned a Master of Music from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Julian Martin, and he received a Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Alvin Chow. During his time at Oberlin, he won three of the largest prizes offered to pianists: the Oberlin Concerto Competition, the Arthur Dann Competition, and the John Elvin Prize for Juniors. He was previously an assistant professor at the Oberlin Conservatory of music, where he taught chamber music, secondary piano, and class piano.  

LAUREN EBERHART, TRUMPET Currently Assistant Principal/Second Trumpet with the San Antonio Philharmonic, she previously served for many years as Second Trumpet with the San Antonio Symphony. Lauren holds the position of Second Trumpet with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California. She has also held the positions of Co-Principal Trumpet in the San Antonio Opera Orchestra and Acting Principal Trumpet in the San Antonio Symphony for the 2007-08 season. She has performed with Charleston, Dallas, Houston and San Diego, FT. Worth, Austin, Phoenix, and Dallas Chamber Symphonies and was a member of the Savannah Symphony for two and a half seasons.Solo performances include Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.2 with the San Antonio Symphony and solo recitals throughout the country. •  In addition to her playing duties, Lauren has been an adjunct instructor of trumpet at San Antonio College and has previously served as adjunct faculty at Texas A&M University, Kingsville and Savannah State Colleges. She has also performed extensively over the years with the San Antonio Brass and was a founding member of the Hemisphere Brass Quintet.  •  Lauren holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, and a Master of Music degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her principal teachers were the late Mary K. Squire, James Darling and Thomas Booth.

TIMOTHY JONES, BASS BARITONE    American Bass-Baritone Timothy Jones enjoys a reputation as a charismatic presence on operatic and concert stages throughout the United States, Europe and South America. The Boston Globe hailed his voice as “stentorian and honeyed” and the Chicago Tribune called his “complete connection with the text extraordinary.” The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review praised him for his theatricality, noting that he “relished the dramatic possibilities of the songs' text and music.” His eagerly anticipated performances combine intelligent musicianship, commanding vocal technique and a unique ability to connect with audiences.  •  Highlights of the 2018-2019 season include performances with Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Ars Lyrica Houston as Claudio in Agrippina, the one-man opera Soldier Songs by David Little with Alamo Opera, Schostakovich Symphony Number 14 with Madison Chamber orchestra, and the world premiere, Canciones a mis Muertos by Alejandro Basulto, with The River Oaks Chamber Orchestra.  •  A distinguished concert performer, Mr. Jones has soloed with the Cleveland Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Houston Symphony, Colorado Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, and the Virginia Symphony. He is also a frequent guest of chamber music festivals in Wisconsin, Florida, California, and Texas.  •  Mr. Jones is widely celebrated as an enthusiastic champion of new and contemporary music. His tour de force performance of “Eight Songs for a Mad King” by Peter Maxwell Davies was called “an amazing feat, making unnatural demands seem natural … bizarre behavior coalesced into a sympathetic portrayal” (The Salt Lake Tribune).  He has commissioned and premiered numerous compositions by composers, including Derek Bermel, John Vasconcelos Costa, Kevin Puts, Marcus Maroney, Pierre Jalbert, Karim Al-Zand, Anthony Brandt, Kieren MacMillian, David Cutler, and Jeffrey Nytch. His annual appearances with Kevin Noe and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble are a highpoint of the season. The Salt Lake Tribune raved over his performance of Argento’s “A Waterbird Talk” conducted by Keith Lockhart, stating “Jones was a marvelous singing actor…his wry enjoyment was contagious.” His performance of Pulitzer Prize Winning Composer Kevin Puts’ Einstein on Mercer Street is featured on PNME’s recent recording “Against the Emptiness.”  Other recordings include “Love Comes In at the Eye,” “Drunken Moon,” and “The World of Ruth Crawford Seeger.”  •  Mr. Jones is an alumnus of Centenary College and the University of Michigan. He is currently a professor of voice at the University of Houston Moores School of Music.

STEPHANIE JUTT,  FLUTE  Stephanie Jutt's elegant artistry and passionate intellect have inspired musicians and audiences around the world. Her groundbreaking performances of new music, transcriptions, and traditional repertoire have made her a model for adventurous flutists everywhere. Her recordings are available on Centaur, GM, and University of Wisconsin Press. Her recent recording, “Latin American and Spanish Masterpieces for flute and piano” has recently been released on Albany Records, and is a result of extensive travels in South America. As described in the Boston Globe, “With an infallibly lovely tone and a strong, inquisitive musical personality, Jutt gave it all of her considerable all.”  •  Ms. Jutt received first prize at the Concert Artist Guild and Pro Musicis International Soloist competitions, and was a finalist in the International Walter W. Naumburg Competition. She has performed in recital throughout the United States, Europe, South America and Asia. She received Bachelor and Master’s degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music, where her teachers were James Pappoutsakis and Paula Robison. She completed an additional year of study with the legendary Marcel Moyse. New editions of three Brahms sonatas, the Reineke Sonata and the Karg-Elert Caprices, edited by Stephanie Jutt, are published by International Music Publishing. An anthology of the Latin American pieces on her recent recording is in process.   •  Ms. Jutt has served as a board member and Program Chair for the National Flute Association, and is currently a member of the Career and Artistic Guidance committee as well as the New Music Advisory committee. A dedicated teacher, Ms. Jutt is on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she performs with the Wingra Wind Quintet, and she is principal flutist of the Madison Symphony. A lifelong entrepreneur, she is the creator of UW-Madison Arts Enterprise, which provides career guidance, viable life strategies and support for emerging artists.   •   Stephanie Jutt is co-founder and artistic director, with pianist Jeffrey Sykes, of the critically acclaimed three-week chamber music festival, the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society: www.bachdancinganddynamite.org. The festival presented its twenty-fifth season in June, 2016.

SO JIN KIM, VIOLIN  Korean-American violinist So Jin Kim has been praised by critics and audiences alike for her “powerful interpretation…[and] flawless sound” (Cuxhavener Nachrichten) and for “creating tones of poetry” (The Strad). Following her successful solo debut with the Juilliard Orchestra in Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in 2006, she has appeared as a soloist throughout North America, Europe, and Asia with ensembles such as the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, I Musici de Montreal, Seoul Chamber Ensemble, and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. • Her debut CD recorded in Leipzig Gewandhaus was released worldwide in 2018 under Genuin Classics with raving reviews from publications including Klassik Radio Austria, Klassik Heute, and Das Orchester. Her second album of Mozart Violin Concertos with Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim under Ars Produktion was nominated for the 2020 OPUS KLASSIK award. • An experienced orchestral musician, she was appointed as a concertmaster of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in Switzerland at the age of 24, a post she held until 2013, and currently serves as the associate concertmaster of Munich Radio Orchestra. From 2014-2020 she served on the faculty of Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover in Germany. Since 2016 until 2022, she has served as the artistic director of Yeosu International Music Festival & Ensemble in South Korea, of which she is the founder. She currently resides in Southern California and holds the Temianka Endowed Professor of Violin Studies at Chapman University and serves on the faculty at The Colburn School. • She received both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, and her Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from Rice University. She studied with Cho-Liang Lin, Naoko Tanaka, Hyo Kang, and Donald Weilerstein. She also studied with Krzysztof Wegrzyn at Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover as part of the prestigious Solo Klasse program.

LACHEZAR KOSTOV, CELLO   Associate Principal Cellist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and holder of the Marshall Levine Endowed Chair, Lachezar Kostov has appeared as a soloist in some of the world's leading concert venues such as Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Gewandhaus in Leipzig, and Oji Hall in Tokyo. He was the National Winner at the 2006 MTNA Young Artists Competition and has won numerous prizes including the Cello Award at the Kingsville Competition in 2005, the Grand Prix at the International Music and Earth Competition in Bulgaria, and the concerto competitions at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Rice University. In October 2011 Lachezar Kostov and pianist Viktor Valkov won the First Prize and all the special prizes at the Third International Liszt-Garrison Piano and Duo Competition in Baltimore, MD. • Mr. Kostov has appeared as a guest soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States, Japan, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria. Mr. Kostov is represented as a member of the Kostov-Valkov Duo by Pro-Piano Management. Hailed by European and American critics for “the awesome purity of his playing”, and described as “prodigiously skilled protagonist”, he made his official debut at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in 2009, performing rarely heard works for cello and piano by Ellen Zwilich, Nikolay Roslavets, and Dimitri Kabalevsky. • Lachezar Kostov has appeared as a guest artist at the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Summer Fest, Cactus Pear Music Festival. His major teachers include Bogomil Karakonov, Aldo Parisot, Norman Fischer, David Grigorian and Zvi Plesser; he has appeared in master-classes with Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Isserlis, and Bernard Greenhouse. Currently Mr. Kostov teaches at the Catholic University in Washington DC, and at the Baltimore School for the Arts. • Mr. Kostov is a world ambassador of Larsen Strings, and performs exclusively with “Il Cannone”. He played on a cello made by Joseph Hill in 1860 and uses a Sartory bow, graciously on loan by Marin Alsop.

CRAIG SORGI, EDUCATION DIRECTOR   Currently, Craig is a 1st violinist with the new San Antonio Philharmonic. He was a member of the San Antonio Symphony First Violin section from 1982 until 2022 when it ceased operations. During the 2004-06 and 2012-13 concert seasons he was appointed Acting Assistant Concertmaster. Craig was also the Concertmaster of the San Antonio Opera from 1999 until it ceased operations in 2012. In 2005, he was invited by then Music Director David Mairs to be the Concertmaster of the Mid-Texas Symphony. Craig has been very active as a chamber musician and solo recitalist since his arrival in the South Texas area. In 2011 Craig founded, and began performing with, the Mid-Texas Symphony Chamber Players and has also served as their Artistic Director. Music education has also played an important part in Craig’s career. In 2003 he joined the music faculty of Trinity University where he served as Adjunct Professor of Violin until 2016. And since 2008 Craig has served as the Director of the Cactus Pear Music Festival’s Young Artist Program. Craig is married to Melanie, a career music educator. He and his wife are the proud parents of two wonderful sons: Baltimore Symphony violist Colin; and Los Angeles-based visual effects artist Cameron. They are also pretty crazy about their granddaughters, Clara and Chloe, and their daughters-in-law, Jaclyn and Jenna.

JEFFREY SYKES, PIANO & CPMF ARTISTIC DIRECTOR    Acclaimed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as "a commanding solo player, the most supportive of accompanists, and a leader in chamber music," pianist Jeffrey Sykes has performed across four continents and collaborates regularly with leading instrumentalists and singers. In the fall of 2018 he gave a recital on Chicago’s prestigious Dame Myra Hess concert series, and he recently returned from a tour of France that culminated in performances of French solo and chamber music at the Musée des Impressionismes in Giverny, home of Claude Monet. He was recently a guest artist at the African American Art Song Alliance conference in Irvine, California.  •  Together with violinist Axel Strauss and cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Sykes is a founding member of the San Francisco Piano Trio, an ensemble noted for its virtuosic interpretations of works ranging from the trios of Haydn and Beethoven to those of Leon Kirchner and Astor Piazzolla. He is the co-founder and artistic co-director of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society of Wisconsin (www.bachdancing.org), a highly-acclaimed and innovative chamber music festival now in its 32^nd season. The festival is noted for integrating dance, drama, and visual art into the concert setting and creating an approach to chamber music that makes it more easily accessible to audiences. He is a regular guest artist with the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society; the Olmos Ensemble in San Antonio, Texas; and Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley, California; and in 2007, he served as the guest artistic director of Music in the Vineyards. In the fall of 2022, he was honored to be selected as the interim artistic director of San Antonio’s Cactus Pear Music Festival (www.cpmf.us), now in its 27th season. He has recorded for the Albany, CRI, Mandala, Centaur, and Cactus Pear record labels, and in spring of 2018 released the world premiere recording of Kevin Puts' song cycle In at the Eye on the Albany label.  •  For eighteen years, Dr. Sykes served as the Music Director of Opera for the Young, a preeminent producer and presenter of opera for children that has introduced more than two million children to opera. He teaches piano, voice, and chamber music at the University of California at Berkeley and California State University, East Bay. He coaches regularly for professional and adult amateur chamber music groups across California. A recipient of the Fulbright and Jacob Javits Fellowships, he completed his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.