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José Maria Blumenschein, a native of Freiburg (Germany) born of Brazilian parents, currently serves as 1st Concertmaster of the WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra in Cologne after serving as Associate Concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra for three seasons. During his tenure with WDR he also took two Seasons off to perform as first Concertmaster of the Vienna State Opera and Philharmonic.

As a passionate leader he regularly performs with many Orchestras and Ensembles such as the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, London Symphony Orchestra, Bayerische Staatsoper, Dresden Staatskapelle, NDR Radio Orchestra and many more.

Blumenschein is also a founding member of ‘Kammermusik Köln’, a chamber music series in Cologne founded by members of WDR Radio, Gürzenich Orchestra, and Cologne Conservatory members to be the first all year chamber music series.

Born in 1985, Blumenschein received his first violin lesson at the age of four in Freiburg, Germany, at the “Pflüger Institute for Highly Gifted Children”. In 1990 he began studies with Vera Kramarowa in Mannheim. In 2001 Blumenschein was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with conductor and violinist Joseph Silverstein and served as Concertmaster of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra.

Blumenschein has been performing with the Mahler Orchestra for almost two decades. Since 2023, he has shared the MCO’s concertmaster position with Matthew Truscott.

Vicente Alberola is the Artistic Director of Music Masters Course Valencia (MMCV), principal clarinetist of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and solo clarinetist of Les Dissonances and the Utopia Orchestra.

Alberola studied with Walter Boeykens at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, Belgium. At the same time, he took lessons with George Pieterson (of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra) and Larry Combs (of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). For more than 20 years, Alberola was principal clarinetist of the opera orchestras in Madrid and Galicia. During the last decade, he has been a guest principal clarinetist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, and the MMCK Tokyo Orchestra. He has played under the baton of Claudio Abbado, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Daniele Gatti, Daniel Harding, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert, Nicola Luisotti, among others.

In 2003, he was appointed conductor of the Madrid Opera Youth Orchestra, and in 2007, conductor of the Soria Youth Orchestra. He was the chief conductor of the Orquesta 430 of Vigo. He has conducted the Oviedo Filarmonía, the Orquesta de Castilla y León, the Madrid Symphony, the Real Filarmonía Santiago, the Orquesta del Valles, the Valencia Symphony, the National Youth Orchestra of Spain, the Youth Orchestra of the Canary Islands, and the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Galicia. Alberola has also conducted the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Beijing Festival and the Musikfest Hamburg.  Recently, he has been invited by the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia and the MMCJ Tokyo.

In the field of chamber music, he is a regular guest at the Beethoven Festival Bonn, the Alélla Festival, and the Rachmaninoff Conservatory in Paris. 

Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and teacher. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season and serves as the Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival.

Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and London Philharmonia. Upcoming concerto projects include the world premiere of a new duo concerto by Dai Fujikura for Chase and the violinist Patricia Kopachinskaja, which the pair will premiere with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, with subsequent performances with Ensemble Resonanz at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and on tour in Switzerland, Belgium, Turkey, and Greece. In the 2022-23 season, Chase premiered a new duo concerto by Felipe Lara with the vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding and the conductor Susanna Mälkki, which was named one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by The New York Times.

In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036, described by The New Yorker as “a quarter-century journey with little precedent.” Now in its 12th year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, educational initiatives, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. In 2023, Chase performed all ten Density programs to date in a weeklong series of events co-produced by Carnegie Hall and The Kitchen.. Central to the Densityproject is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in bold new interpretive directions. The Density Fellowsprogram, launched in 2023 in celebration of the 10th anniversary, provides an international cohort of emerging flutists with the resources to make the Density repertoire their own. Chase is the artistic director of Density Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute in the 21st century.

As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017 and as an ensemble member on performance and educational projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that resulted in the premieres of over 1,000 new works and earned the group multiple Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and the Ensemble of the Year Award from Musical America Worldwide.

A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Chase is also Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, where she mentors young artists and engages students in a range of interdisciplinary projects. With her longtime colleague Steven Schick, she cofounded Ensemble Evolution at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, a three-week intensive for the next generation of interdisciplinary artists, curators, and teachers. Chase’s Debs Creative Chair residency at Carnegie Hall encompassed programming for all ages, including a “Day of Listening” for children and families inspired by the listening philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. Chase will partner with the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to expand her Pauline Oliveros project as part of the PST ART x Science Collide festival in 2024-25.

Claire Chase’s extensive discography includes eight solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres. Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of  becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She now lives in Brooklyn with her partner, the author Kirstin Valdez Quade, and their two-year-old daughter.

Visit Claire Chase’s Website

Rick Stotijn studied double bass at the Conservatory in Amsterdam with his father Peter Stotijn and graduated with the highest distinction. He continued his studies with Bozo Paradzik at the Hochschule in Freiburg. He won several first prizes at competitions and was awarded the highest accolade for a musician in the Netherlands, the Dutch Music Prize. According to the jury, “Rick is a versatile musician with moving musicality and overwhelming virtuosity.”

Among the many solo appearances that followed worldwide was a Carte Blanche series in the Recital Hall of the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Stotijn performs regularly as a soloist with orchestras such as the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest Den Haag, South Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Toulon Opera Symphony Orchestra, Musica Vitae Sweden, and Joensuu Symphony Orchestra. He was principal double bassist in the Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester Berlin (RSO) and Amsterdam Sinfonietta and is currently principal in the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

As guest principal, he plays regularly in the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Orchestra Mozart. He is also a member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In chamber music, he has worked with Janine Jansen, Christianne Stotijn, Liza Ferschtman, Julius Drake, Cecilia Bernardini, Vilde Frang, Julian Rachlin, Lawrence Power, Tabea Zimmermann, Lars Vogt, Christian Tetzlaff, and many others.

Stotijn is a regular guest at festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, Delft Chambe Music Festival, and the International Chamber Music Festival in Utrecht. Stotijn is a Professor for Double Bass at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. He performs on a Raffaele & Antonio Gagliano double bass, generously loaned by the National Musical Instrument Foundation.

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Julie Smith Phillips, principal harpist of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, is one of the most prominent American harpists today, performing as both an orchestral musician and concert artist. She is a two-time medalist in the USA International Harp Competition having received the silver medal in 2004 and bronze in 2001. She made her National Symphony Orchestra debut in 2003 and has been honored in numerous other competitions throughout the country.

A recitalist and soloist with orchestra, Phillips’s appearances include multiple solo performances with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, the New World Symphony, the South Dakota Symphony, the West Los Angeles Symphony, the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, the National Repertory Orchestra, and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, among others. She has been a featured soloist for American Harp Society National Conferences, the USA International Harp Competition, Lyon & Healy’s 150th Birthday Celebration & Harptacular Concert series, the International Harp Festival, Harp Oklahoma Workshop, and has served as a guest artist at the Young Artist Harp Seminar.

Equally experienced as a chamber and orchestral musician, Phillips collaborates with renowned musicians across the country. A founding member of The Myriad Trio, she regularly appears in chamber concerts across the country and has performed abroad as well. Her chamber and orchestral festival credits include the Piedmont & Kingston Chamber Music Festivals, Breckenridge Music Festival, La Jolla SummerFest, Mainly Mozart, Mozaic Festival, Sun Valley Summer Symphony, Tanglewood Music Festival, and numerous others.

Prior to her post in San Diego, she served as acting principal harpist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (2006–07) and principal harpist for the New World Symphony (2004–06). Phillips is an avid promoter and performer of new music. Numerous pieces have been written for and premiered by Phillips including Tree Suite for Harp by Hannah Lash; Cactus, a double concerto for harp and violin by Michael Torke; The Eye of Night by David Bruce; Variations on a Simple Theme by Avner Dorman; Petal by Petal Lei Liang; andSonata by Jeremy Cavaterra. She is also a recipient of the Mario Falcao Prize for Best Performance of Mischa Zupko’s Despedida (contemporary music selection at the
2004 USA International Harp Competition). Formerly head of the Harp Department at Arizona State University (2013–17), Phillips is the founder and director of the Nebraska Harp Workshop and maintains a private studio out of her home working with harpists on skills and career guidance. She is a certified instructor in the Suzuki harp method and is president of the San Diego Harp Society. She has recorded two albums: The Rhapsodic Harp and The Eye of Night. Phillips received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in harp performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Yolanda Kondonassis. Julie Smith Phillips is a native of Hastings, NE, and now resides in San Diego with her husband and three children.

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Aliisa Neige Barrière is a French-Finnish conductor with a broad repertoire ranging from early to contemporary music, who puts special emphasis on carefully curated programs around engaging dramaturgies and bringing previously silenced voices to the forefront. Her passion for making new voices heard has also led her to actively commission new works. In her still young career, Barrière has already collaborated with numerous orchestras and ensembles including Sinfonia Lahti, Avanti!, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Oulu Sinfonia, Tampere Philharmonic, BIT20 and the Swedish Radio Orchestra, to name a few.

In 2023, Barrière graduated from the Sibelius Academy orchestral conducting class, where she studied under the tutelage of Sakari Oramo. Previously, she was a student of Jorma Panula at the Panula Academy. She has since regularly worked as an assistant to conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Susanna Mälkki, Sakari Oramo and Pekka Kuusisto.

In 2021-2023 she served as the assistant conductor to Dalia Stasevska with Sinfonia Lahti and held the position of Young Conductor in Residence with the Århus Sinfonietta. In 2023, she was awarded the Young Artist Award at the Mikkeli Festival.

Originally a violinist, Barrière honed her leadership skills as a guest concertmaster or section leader in ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Secession Orchestra, Barokksolistene and the Oslo Sinfonietta. Her violin studies took her from Paris, as a student of Suzanne Gessner and Richard Schmoucler, to New York, where she studied with Renee Jolles, Laurie Smukler and Lewis Kaplan. She then moved to Oslo where she finished her studies as a student of Peter Herresthal and Isabelle van Keulen.

She also studied baroque violin under Nancy Wilson in New York and Bjarte Eike and Catherine Martin in Oslo.

In the 2023–2024 season, Barrière will make her debut at the Ojai Festival, leading the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and make her return to the Mikkeli Festival with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. She will also be the Artist-in-Residence of the Turku Music Festival, curating a series of concerts ranging from chamber music to orchestral music around the concept of uchrony or alternate history.

Visit Aliisa Neige Barrière’s Website

Sae Hashimoto (sa-eh ha-shee-moh-toh) is a Japanese-born percussionist. Her wide range of expertise and ever-growing musical curiosity have contributed to her multifaceted career that continues to evolve. Her virtuosity and unwavering commitment make her a sought-after performer in classical, baroque, contemporary and experimental music.

Hashimoto is passionate about performing music by living composers. As a member of piano/percussion quartet Yarn/Wire, as well as Talea Ensemble, she has worked closely with today’s leading voices in contemporary and experimental music including Tyshawn Sorey, Michael Gordon, Øyvind Torvund, Agata Zubel, and Annea Lockwood. A long time collaboration with John Zorn has resulted in premiering over a dozen of his works for the vibraphone, which are recorded on two albums on the Tzadik label. 

As an orchestral musician Hashimoto has performed with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, New Jersey Symphony, and the American Composers Orchestra. She also performs baroque music on her 19th century period timpani with ensembles like TENET Vocal Artists and Clarion Music Society.

Her original music can be heard on a self-titled album by Archipelago X, an improv-based trio consisting of Brian Marsella on keyboards and 2022 MacArthur Fellow Ikue Mori on electronics. Hashimoto and Brian are currently working on a new project for the vibraphone and piano, with a new album set to be released in 2025. 

Her love for percussion originated by chance in her 5th grade music class in Osaka, Japan, when she won her first drum set part in an epic game of rock-paper-scissors. She moved to New York City in 2012 to attend the Juilliard School, where she studied with Daniel Druckman and Markus Rhoten, with comprehensive scholarship support from the Kovner Fellowship.

Upon completing her Masters in 2018, she was selected as the percussion fellow for Ensemble Connect, a prestigious program of Carnegie Hall that combines musical excellence with education, advocacy and entrepreneurship.

She currently resides in West Orange, NJ.

Visit Sae Hashimoto’s Website

Originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ljubinka Kulisic received her Bachelor’s and Master of Arts in Music Performance from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland in Lugano. After graduating in Switzerland, she moved to Canada for the Doctor of Musical Arts program at the University of Toronto, where she also worked as a teaching assistant for the Contemporary Music Ensemble. In 2017 she participated in Google Talks in San Francisco where she presented music for accordion to Google engineers. Kulisic participated in numerous concerts across Europe and North America. She has performed as a soloist with the New World Symphony in Miami and at the New England Conservatory in Boston as a member of the organization “Music for Food,” collaborated with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and violist Kim Kashkashian.

In addition to music, she is known in her country of birth for her political engagement. As a reward for her activism, in 2017 she was awarded the “Super Woman” award in her hometown, from which she had to escape with her parents as a one-year-old girl due to civil war.

She speaks four languages: Serbian, English, German, and Italian.