Machiko Ozawa (Violin)
Violinist Machiko Ozawa, the former concertmaster of Orquesta Sinfonica Sinaloa de Las Artes, gave her debut recital at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall in February 2002, as a winner of Artists International Competition. As a soloist, she has performed with Presidential Symphony Orchestra in Turkey, Pan American Symphony Orchestra, C.W. Post Chamber Orchestra, Henry Mancini Festival Orchestra, North Shore Symphony Orchestra, American Philharmonic, and Orquesta Sinfónica Sinaloa de Las Artes in Mexico. She commissioned and premiered her original concerto ‘Syrenes’ for violin, percussion and orchestra, by the North Shore Symphony Orchestra in 2004. She also performed Morton Gould’s Tap Concerto as a tap dancer soloist with this orchestra in 2007. She was a finalist of the New York International Tango Competition in 2004 as a member of M2duo (formally M2O). She received an artistic grant sponsored by the YAMAHA Foundation and released her first album, Vertical Voyage, in Japan in 2007.
Although trained classically at The Juilliard School, Guildhall Music School, and Tokyo National School of Fine Arts and Music (Tokyo Gei Dai). She now extends her musical range to a variety of styles including jazz, tango, improvisation, world music and dancing/acting. She was chosen one of the main cast members with the award winning musical AMOR LATINO, at Thalia Theatre in 2009, as a tapdancer/violinst. She created her own style of performance called tapdanceviolin. Recently she extends her musical world into Argentine tango and has performed at major venues such as Blue Note, Jazz Standard, Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, Joe’s Pub, and the Highline Ballroom, as well as at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, Symphony Space, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, and more.Website
Lynn Bechtold (Violin)
Violinist/composer Lynn Bechtold has appeared in recital throughout the U.S., Argentina, Canada, Denmark, France, Holland, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland, and has collaborated with composers such as Gloria Coates, George Crumb, Beatriz Ferreyra, John Harbison, Alvin Lucier, and Morton Subotnick. A member of various groups, including Miolina, North/South Consonance, Quartet Metadata, the SEM Ensemble, and Zentripetal, Lynn has performed around the world, and has been heard on CBC Radio, CBS-TV, NBC-TV, NHK-TV, WQED, and WNYC. Other programs have been with Absolute Ensemble, DJ Spooky, East Village Opera Company, Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance, Escort, Parsons Dance, Paul Taylor Dance Company, VisionIntoArt, and Pablo Ziegler, among others. In addition, she’s performed with artists such as Boyz II Men, Willie Colon, Sheryl Crow, Dead Can Dance, Roberta Flack, Left Banke, Smokey Robinson, SMAP, and Donna Summer. Lynn holds degrees from New England Conservatory, Tufts University, and Mannes-The New School for Music, where she was one of the last students of noted violinist Felix Galimir. She writes electroacoustic music, and is on the faculties of The Dwight School, Greenwich House Music School, and The Town School in NYC, as well as the Norwalk Youth Symphony in CT. Her compositions have been performed on various series and festivals, including Birmingham New Music Festival, Circuit Bridges, Composers Concordance, COMPOSERSFest XIII, Composers Voice, JUMP, Music With a View, NWEAMO, Soft Series, Sonic Circuits Festival, and Sound Traffic, and at venues such as the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, Bohemian National Hall, Institut Finlandais in Paris, and the National Opera Center. Her recordings with Miolina and Zentripetal are available worldwide on Composers Concordance Records/Naxos (U.S.), and ACEL Records (France). . Website
Jisoo Ok (Violloncello)
Jisoo Ok enjoys a multi-faceted and vibrant musical career as a cellist, festival director, arranger/orchestrator, and educator. Deeply committed to exploring connections with musicians from other backgrounds as well as artists of other disciplines, she has collaborated with distinguished artists such as latin jazz clarinetist/composer Paquito D’Rivera, tango pianist/composer Pablo Ziegler, bandoneonist Hector Del Curto, pianist Orli Shaham, jazz violinist Regina Carter, and bassist Ron Carter; performing at prestigious venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, Aspen Music Festival, La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, Laguna Beach Music Festival, the Chautauqua Institute, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, Soka Performing Arts Center, Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, Concerti di Mezzogiorno at Spoleto Festival in Italy, Copa Fest in Brazil, and National Concert Hall in Taiwan.
With her husband, Hector Del Curto, Ms. Ok co–produced and released two critically acclaimed albums, Eternal Piazzolla and Eternal Tango, which were featured on BBC News and Public Radio International’s The World. She also appears on Rojo Tango with bass-baritone Erwin Schrott, released on Sony Classical; on Horizon: Piano and Chamber Works by Gareth Farr with pianist Henry Wong Doe; on Django Festival Allstars with gypsy jazz guitarist Dorado Schmitt; and on Introducing Letizia Gambi with Lenny White, Chick Corea, Ron Carter, Gil Goldstein, and Patrice Rushen. Born in Seoul, Korea, Jisoo grew up in New Zealand and began cello studies at age eleven to escape from studying violin. Her early teachers included James Tennant and Natalia Pavlutskaya. She has participated in numerous Master Classes with Janos Starker, Bernard Greenhouse, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser and Anner Bylsma. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School as a recipient of the Irene Diamond Graduate Fellowship and the Heward Memorial Scholarship, studying with Bonnie Hampton and Fred Sherry. She studied chamber music with Itzhak Perlman and Robert Mann. Website
Edmundo Ramírez (Viola)
Edmundo Ramirez performs in major concert halls such as Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York City, Bellas Artes in México, the Konzerthaus in Vienna and Berlin, and The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Solo and chamber music collaborations are with the Absolute Ensemble, Ensemble InterContemporain, the Fine Arts Quartet, the Bremen Kammerphilarmonie, the Menninger Hofkapelle Orchestra, Jupiter Symphony, Voronezh Philharmonic and the Rebel and Dorian Baroque Orchestras. He has worked with noted artists such as Pierre Boulez, Kent Nagano, Mikhail Muntyan, Saleem Adbud-Askar, and in the world music and jazz genres with Paquito de Rivera, Pablo Ziegler and Joe Zawinul. He has performed at festivals in Aix-en Provence, Menton, Bolzano, the Recco Series at the Concertgebouw, and World Music Festival in Dubai, among others. Recordings include the Sony, Enya, and Arco labels.
Edmundo studied in his native Costa Rica and later at The New England Conservatory of Music, The Juilliard School, and the Academia Chigiana in Italy. His teachers include Yuri Bashmet, Heidi Castleman, Victoria Chiang, Walter Trampler, and Karen Tuttle on the viola, and chamber music with members of the Juilliard, Emerson, and Tokyo String Quartets. He also enjoys playing the viola d’amore and the baroque viola. Website
