Artistic director Peter Rejto is committed to presenting the finest chamber music, both well-loved works and new, unfamiliar ones, performed by some of the world’s finest musicians. Highlights of his international career as a cellist include the world premiere of Gerard Schurmann’s Gardens of Exile with the Bournemouth Symphony broadcast live over the BBC, and the recording of Miklós Rózsa’s Cello Concerto in Hungary. Mr. Rejto is a founding member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet and a former professor of the University of Arizona School of Music as well as professor emeritus at the Oberlin College Music Conservatory. He has directed the programming and selected the musicians for every Festival, beginning with the first in 1994.

Acclaimed international pianist, Bernadette Harvey, was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2000 by then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, for her contribution to Australian Music. Bernadette has won many accolades since her first medal in a Sydney Eisteddfod at the age of two and a half, including the ABC ‘Young Performer of the Year’ in 1987. She appeared with the Tokyo Quartet and the Shanghai Quartet in the premiere of Carl Vine’s Piano Quintet, Fantasia in 2013. She and the Shanghai Quartet later presented the Australian premiere of the Bright Sheng Piano Quintet, Dance Capriccio. Bernadette is renowned for championing new solo piano works, many of which are recorded on the Tall Poppies label. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She now joins Artistic Director Peter Rejto as Co-Director of the Festival.

Korean-born pianist Jeewon Park made her debut at the age of twelve performing Chopin’s First Concerto with the Korean Symphony Orchestra and came to the U.S. in 2002 after having won all the major competitions in Korea. Since that time, she has performed in such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd Street Y, and Seoul Arts Center in Korea. Ms. Park is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Yale University, and she holds the DMA degree from SUNY Stony Brook. Her teachers include Young-Ho Kim, Herbert Stessin, Claude Frank, and Gilbert Kalish. She currently teaches piano at the Department of Music and Dance at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Married to cellist Edward Arron, this year marks her second Festival appearance.

At the age of seventeen, Axel Strauss won the silver medal at the Enescu Competition in Romania and has been recognized with many other awards, including top prizes in the Bach, Wieniawski, and Kocian competitions, and in 1998 he won the international Naumburg Violin Award in New York. Later that same year he made his American debut at the Library of Congress and his New York debut at Alice Tully Hall. Mr. Strauss studied with Dorothy DeLay at The Juilliard School, and since 2012 he has been Professor of Violin at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University in Montreal. He previously took part in our twenty-sixth Festival in 2019, and this year marks his eighth Festival appearance.

Two-time GRAMMY nominee and Avery Fisher career grant recipient violinist Jennifer Frautschi has appeared as soloist with innumerable orchestras including the Cincinnati Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and St Paul Chamber Orchestra. As chamber musician she has performed with the Boston Chamber Music Society and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and appeared at Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla Summerfest, Music@Menlo, Tippet Rise Art Center, Toronto Summer Music, and the Bridgehampton, Charlottesville, Lake Champlain, Moab, Ojai, Santa Fe, Seattle, and Spoleto Music Festivals.

Her extensive discography includes several discs for Naxos: the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, conducted by the legendary Robert Craft, and two GRAMMY-nominated recordings with the Fred Sherry Quartet, of Schoenberg’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra , and the Schoenberg Third String Quartet. Her most recent releases are with pianist John Blacklow on Albany Records: the first devoted to the three sonatas of Robert Schumann; the second, American Duos, an exploration of recent additions to the violin and piano repertoire by contemporary American composers Barbara White, Steven Mackey, Elena Ruehr, Dan Coleman, and Stephen Hartke. She also recorded three widely praised CDs for Artek: an orchestral recording of the Prokofiev concerti with Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony; the violin music of Ravel and Stravinsky; and 20th-century works for solo violin. Other recordings include a disc of Romantic Horn Trios, with hornist Eric Ruske and pianist Stephen Prutsman, and the Stravinsky Duo Concertant with pianist Jeremy Denk.

Born in Pasadena, California, Ms. Frautschi attended the Colburn School, Harvard, the New England Conservatory, and the Juilliard School. She performs on a 1722 Antonio Stradivarius violin known as the “ex-Cadiz,” on generous loan from a private American foundation with support from Rare Violins In Consortium. She currently teaches in the graduate program at Stony Brook University.

Praised for his “burnished sound” (The New York Times) and described as an “electrifying, poetic, and sensitive musician,” the Grammy Award-winning, Japanese-Norwegian violist Masumi Per Rostad hails from the gritty East Village of 1980s New York. He was raised in an artist loft converted from a garage with a 1957 Chevy Belair as the remnant centerpiece in their living room. Masumi began his studies at the nearby Third Street Music School Settlement at age three and has gone on to become one of the most in demand soloists, chamber musicians, teachers. In addition to maintaining an active performance schedule, he serves on the faculty of the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. As a member of the Pacifica Quartet for almost two decades (2001-2017), Masumi regularly performed in the world’s greatest halls. This year marks his first Festival appearance.

Cellist Edward Arron has garnered recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since that time, he has appeared in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras, and as a chamber musician throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

The 2021-22 season marks Mr. Arron’s 13th season as the artistic director and host of the acclaimed Musical Masterworks concert series in Old Lyme, Connecticut. He is also the co-artistic director with his wife, pianist Jeewon Park, of the Performing Artists in Residence series at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Mr. Arron tours and records as a member of the renowned Ehnes Quartet, and he appears regularly at the Caramoor International Music Festival, where he has been a resident performer and curator of chamber music concerts for over a quarter of a century. In 2013, he completed a ten-year residency as the artistic director of the Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, a chamber music series created in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Museum’s prestigious Concerts and Lectures series. In January of 2021, Mr. Arron’s recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano with pianist Jeewon Park was released on the Aeolian Classics Record Label. The recording received the Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists Award from the Classical Recording Foundation.

Mr. Arron has performed numerous times at Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and Avery Fisher Halls, New York’s Town Hall, and the 92nd Street Y, and is a frequent performer at Bargemusic. Festival appearances include Ravinia, Salzburg, Mostly Mozart, Bravo! Vail, Tanglewood, Bridgehampton, Spoleto USA, Santa Fe, Seattle Chamber Music, Kuhmo, PyeongChang, Evian, Charlottesville, Bowdoin, Telluride Musicfest, Seoul Spring, Lake Champlain Chamber Music, Chesapeake Chamber Music, La Jolla Summerfest, and Bard Music Festival. He has participated in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project as well as Isaac Stern’s Jerusalem Chamber Music Encounters. Mr. Arron’s performances are frequently broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today.

Edward Arron began playing the cello at age seven in Cincinnati and continued his studies in New York with Peter Wiley. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Harvey Shapiro. In 2016, Mr. Arron joined the faculty at University of Massachusetts Amherst, after having served on the faculty of New York University from 2009 to 2016.

Clarinettist Romie de Guise-Langlois has appeared on major concert stages throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. An avid chamber musician, Ms. de Guise- Langlois received prizes at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition and at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association. She is an alumnus of The Bowers Program at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and has toured with Musicians from Marlboro. A native of Montreal, she earned degrees from McGill University and the Yale School of Music, where she studied under David Shifrin, Michael Dumouchel, and André Moisan. Also a Yamaha Artist, she is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We last heard her at our 2022 Festival.

Randall Scarlata has appeared on concert stages throughout Europe, North America, South America, Australia, and Asia. He has been a soloist with the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, and with the Pittsburgh, San Francisco, American, Sydney, Ulster, Tonkünstler, National, New World, and BBC Symphonies, as well as the early music groups Wiener Akademie, Grand Tour, Tempesta di Mare, and Musica Angelica, among others. Many of the world's great music festivals have sought him out as a soloist, including the Ravinia, Marlboro, Edinburgh, Norfolk, Vienna, Music at Menlo, Gilmore, Salzburg, Norfolk, Aspen, and Spoleto (Italy) festivals.

Mr. Scarlata is co-artistic director of the Alpenkammermusik Chamber Music Festival in Carinthia, Austria during the summer, and gives masterclasses throughout the United States and abroad. In 2019, he joined the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center, and the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. He has also served on the faculties of West Chester University and SUNY Stony Brook.

Violinist Timothy Kantor enjoys performing around the globe at some of the world’s greatest concert halls and chamber music series. As a member of the Afiara Quartet in Toronto, Mr. Kantor has performed hundreds of concerts and helped to develop several innovative projects. One of the quartet’s projects, Spin Cycle with DJ Skratch Bastid, culminated with a Juno Award-nominated album and a solo performance with the Toronto Symphony. Collaborations include those with such varied artists as scratch DJ Kid Koala, Academy Award-nominated producer KK Barrett, and jazz virtuoso Uri Caine.

Before joining the Afiara Quartet, Mr. Kantor was concertmaster of the Evansville (Indiana) Philharmonic and a founding member of the Larchmere String Quartet, in residence at the University of Evansville. He has performed as a member of the Kuttner String Quartet in residence at Indiana University, the chamber music and Quartet in the Community residencies at the Banff Centre, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar. He has also performed chamber works with many of today’s leading musicians, including Joshua Bell, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Atar Arad, William Preucil, Alexander Kerr, Mark Steinberg, and the Pacifica Quartet. Mr. Kantor has been featured as an artist on American Public Media’s “Performance Today”, CBC Radio, and local classical radio stations in Cleveland, Toronto, and Tucson. He is devoted to the performance of new music and has participated as soloist, concertmaster and chamber musician with the new music ensembles at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Indiana University.

A dedicated teacher and coach, Mr. Kantor is the Associate Professor of Violin at the University of Arizona’s Fred Fox School of Music. Mr. Kantor also teaches at the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont and the Programa Gabriel del Orbe in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). Mr. Kantor graduated with honors from Bowdoin College, earned a Master of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and pursued doctoral studies at Indiana University. His former teachers include Jaime Laredo, Paul Kantor, Stephen Kecskemethy, Andrew Jennings, and Mark Kaplan. Off the clock, Mr. Kantor enjoys auto racing and basketball.