SEAN GAO & FRIENDS

Named as Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year in 2021, Sean Gao is one of the world’s most successful presenters, producers, composers and pedagogues. As a concert violin soloist, his musical integrity and virtuoso technique have gained accolades from audiences and reviewers around the world. He has also been a featured soloist performing with more than 100 orchestras worldwide and many world leaders. In 2014, he was granted the Delaware Governor’s Award for his contribution in the arts.

As a composer and songwriter with a focused mission to attract new and younger audiences to performing arts, Sean Gao created “Shanghai Sonatas,” a hybrid new musical that combines musical theatre, live classical music and visual art. It is based on the memoirs of Jewish refugee musicians who escaped Nazi Germany and found refuge in Shanghai and how music helped them to survive the war. This production is currently being developed by Tony award-winning producers and touring as a concert production.

As a solo violinist and founder of 6-WIRE trio (violin, erhu and piano) — a world-traveling crossover ensemble — highlights of Sean’s recent season’s engagements include Carnegie Hall solo and chamber performances; commissioning and world premiere of Bright Sheng’s piano quartet for 6-WIRE in New York and Hong Kong; the North American premiere of Eduard Tubin’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Detroit Symphony; China and Israel tour of the world premiere of Mark Hagerty’s concerto “Beyond These Horizons” for 6-WIRE and orchestra; China and U.S. tour of the world premiere of Kristin Kuster’s “Two Jades” for solo violin and symphony band in Disney Hall, Los Angeles and the National Center for Performing Arts, Beijing, China; solo performances with orchestras worldwide including the Czech Philharmonic, the Gothenburg Symphony-National Orchestra of Sweden, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic of Russia, the Estonia National Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, the Memphis Symphony, the Aspen Music Festival orchestras and the Knoxville Symphony.

Gao lives in Newark, Delaware, where he is the Trustees Distinguished Professor of Music and the founding director of the Master Players Concert Series at the University of Delaware, a flagship presenting organization in the Mid-Atlantic region. He performs on a fine violin made by master maker G.B. Ceruti of Cremona, Italy in 1794. The University of Delaware purchased this rare instrument to support Gao’s international performing career. In 2007, the Stradivari Society in Chicago selected Gao to be a recipient of world famous Stradivarius violins for his international solo career. Gao is represented by the California Artists Management and a proud alumnus of the University of Michigan (B.M. and M.M.).

Between his busy music activities worldwide, Gao enjoys mentoring and teaching violin and performing arts management students the most. He can also be found cooking Chinese cuisine, golfing, fishing, hiking, watching college football or skiing with wife Renee, an accomplished researcher and college professor in linguistics and Chinese language education. They share their home with daughter Samantha, who is a young violinist, and two Tonkinese cats, Luna and Mika.

www.xianggao.net | Shanghai Sonatas | www.6-wire.com | www.Youtube.com/user/xianggaomusic

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James Stern is a multi-faceted musician whose violin playing has been heard worldwide and cited by the Washington Post for “virtuosity and penetrating intelligence.” He has performed at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Banff and Bowdoin festivals as well as at New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall. Well-known to Washington, D.C., audiences, he has performed as a member of VERGE ensemble—with whom he has toured internationally—the 21st Century Consort, the Smithsonian Chamber Players and the Axelrod Quartet, at such venues as the Corcoran Gallery, the German and French Embassies, the Smithsonian Institutions, the Library of Congress, the National Gallery, the Phillips Collection, Strathmore Mansion and the White House. In frequent appearances at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland he has brought innovative programming that includes performing in multiple capacities (as violist, pianist, conductor, reciter and arranger), and providing program annotations that are integral to the performance. Stern’s recordings can be heard on Centaur, CRI, New Focus, New World and Sono Luminus. 2015 saw the release of his complete Sonatas and Partitas by Bach on Albany Records.

Stern has served on the faculty of the Cleveland Institute and is in his 26th year as professor at the University of Maryland School of Music, where he has been named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher. Prior to this he has served on the faculties of the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

He has taught masterclasses throughout North America and throughout China, as well as in Norway and Italy, and has published numerous articles on violin pedagogy for such journals as American String Teacher. Summer festival activities have included the National Orchestral Institute (conducting and coaching unconducted chamber orchestras), California Summer Music, Master Players Festival, the Starling/Delay Symposium at Juilliard, the Eastern Chamber Music Conference, the Siletz Bay festival, the Brian Lewis Young Artist Program, and the Schlern and Orfeo Festivals in Italy.

Stern is a member of three critically acclaimed ensembles, the Stern/Andrist Duo with his wife, pianist Audrey Andrist, Strata, a trio in which they are joined by clarinetist Nathan Williams, and the Andrist-Stern-Honigberg Trio with cellist Steven Honigberg. The duo has performed throughout the United States, Canada and China, with additional recitals in Munich and Paris. Strata has received enthusiastic repeat engagements at San Francisco Composers Inc (for which they were listed as one of San Francisco Classical Voice’s “highlights of 2005”), the Piccolo Spoleto Festival and New York’s historic Maverick Concerts. Strata has recently commissioned new works from Kenneth Frazelle and the late Stephen Paulus, giving the world premieres at, respectively, the Secrest Artist Series in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and New York’s Merkin Concert Hall. The Andrist-Stern-Honigberg Trio has produced three CDs on Centaur Records.

Stern holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Juilliard School where he also did his earlier degrees studying violin with Joseph Fuchs and Lewis Kaplan, and chamber music with members of the Juilliard Quartet. He plays on a violin by Vincenzo Panormo, built in 1781.

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Violist Sheila Browne is from Philadelphia and also holds Irish citizenship. Known as a versatile and dynamic performer with a unique viola voice, she enjoys an international career of solo, chamber collaborations and concerto appearances. She has performed in major venues on six continents, including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Concertgebouw, Royal Festival Hall, Teatro Colon and the National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing. She has recorded for the Sony, Nonesuch, Bridge, Albany and MSR labels, premiered several concerti written for her and has worked closely with many living composers on their music.

Browne was violist of the internationally prize-winning Arianna String Quartet, as well as the Pelligrini and Gotham quartets. Additionally, she is a founding member of the Fire Pink Trio. Browne has collaborated/recorded with Audra MacDonald, Gilbert Kalish, David Krakauer, Paul Katz, Anton Kuerti, Ruth Laredo, Shenyang, Richard Stolzman, Carol Wincenc, the Diaz Trio and members of the American, Amernet, Attacca, Audubon, Borromeo, Brentano, Calidore, Guarneri, Juilliard, Shanghai, Stamitz and Vermeer quartets. As principal violist of the New World Symphony, she was selected by Artistic Director Michael Tilson-Thomas to be featured in the PBS documentary "Beethoven Alive!" For two years she was co-principal of New York String Seminar, was awarded a solo residency at the Banff Center, and has participated in Evian, Jeunesses Musicales, Music Academy of the West, BUTI- Tanglewood and Donaueschingen music festivals, among others.

Ms. Browne is also a dedicated teacher who believes in a holistic approach and has given viola and chamber music masterclasses at most major music schools in the U.S. (Juilliard, Eastman, Cleveland Institute, New England Conservatory, U.of Michigan, Manhattan School, Rice University) and many in Europe and Asia. She was the Teaching Assistant of famed pedagogue Karen Tuttle at Juilliard while receiving her bachelor's degree and continued her Aufbau studies with Kim Kashkashian in Germany after being awarded a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship. She also received a Master of Music at Rice University with Karen Ritscher and Paul Katz in his Quartet Program. Browne's students have gone on to almost every major viola program in the U.S. as well as in Europe and Asia, and they can be found to be musically employed all over the world.

Browne was honored to be chosen as the inaugural viola faculty of the Tianjin Juilliard School (graduate and pre-college programs) and Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble—performing and giving masterclasses in 16 countries on four continents.

She also served as Associate Professor of Viola at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where she taught for a decade, University of Delaware, University of Tennessee as well as part- time at Duke University and New York University. Currently she is Associate Professor of Viola at Lynn Conservatory.

Chosen as faculty for the founding year of National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, she was the first viola professor ever to give a masterclass in Iraqi Kurdistan. She is currently Director of the popular international January Karen Tuttle Viola Workshop and is the Interim Artistic Director of Techne Music, also teaching at Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival. She has served on the Executive Board of the American Viola Society and has participated in many viola congresses (Eastman, Oberlin, Colburn, South Africa, Australia). She was honored to be named the William Primrose Recitalist of 2016.

Browne is a huge art, nature and animal lover, and believes in the power of music to bring people of all cultures together in peace around the world.

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Cellist Lawrence Stomberg enjoys a varied career of performance as soloist and chamber musician, pedagogue, and in community outreach through music. Hailed for "style and elegance" and "drama and rhetoric" (Strings Magazine) and “lyrical yet impassioned interpretation" (Fanfare Magazine), he has been a featured performer at the Eastern Music Festival and Texas Music Festival, and Serafin Summer Music and Master Players Festival, and performs and teaches annually at the Techne and SummerKeys Festivals.

Currently a member of the Philadelphia-based mixed ensemble, The Halcyon Consort, he also served 13 years as the cellist of the acclaimed Serafin String Quartet, having toured around the United States. Stomberg is invested in presenting the music of the old masters, including performances of the cycle of the six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello of J.S. Bach and the complete Cello and Piano works of Beethoven, as well as bringing new works and compositional voices to life, with recent and upcoming premiers, commissions and recordings of solo, sonata, chamber and concerto works by composers Kirk O'Riordan, David Osbon, Richard Prior, Mazz Swift, Alisa Rose and Ketty Nez. Concerts have taken him across four continents with solo and chamber music performances in the cities of London, Vienna, Bogotá as well as across the United States. He has recorded for the Centaur, Naxos, Albany, Parma, Ravello, VAI and Meyer Media labels.

As a recipient of the 2018 Delaware Division of the Arts Established Artist Fellowship, Stomberg turned much his performance activity to musical outreach and community engagement through his project, Bach in Wilmington, which paired the six Suites for Solo Cello of J.S. Bach with recorded interviews of residents of Wilmington, Delaware (his current home), and commissioned works responding both to Bach and Wilmington by violinists and crossover artists Mazz Swift and Alisa Rose. This work continues with continuing performance and teaching artist appearances in community centers, churches, food pantries and re-entry programs around the city; an online video series through Ankos Films; and an upcoming recording release (summer 2026) of the new works on the Meyer Media label.

Stomberg is a busy and dedicated pedagogue, having served on the faculties at Truman State University in Missouri and Oklahoma State University before joining the music faculty at the University of Delaware School of Music in 2004, where he is currently professor of cello and associate director for performance studies. He is a frequent guest at schools across the United States and abroad giving cello and chamber music masterclasses, and finds the work of teaching a vital companion to that of performing.

Lawrence Stomberg lives in Wilmington, Delaware with his wife, cellist and celebrated pedagogue Jennifer Crowell Stomberg. They have three adult children, as well as an animal menagerie of three cats, a dog and a turtle.

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Classical pianist Futaba Niekawa seeks true expression in music through her artistry as a versatile pianist, chamber musician and mentor. Her performance has taken her throughout the United States, Canada, England, Spain, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. To date, she has released five recordings encompassing solo, four-hands, duo and chamber music from classical to newly composed works.

Praised as “a beautifully balanced duo” by Gramophone Magazine, duo526 is a shared passion for Niekawa and violinist Kerry DuWors since 2011. The duo reaches further than performing onstage, extending to their Sonata Seminar where they mentor and nurture the love of collaboration in the next generation as well as their scholarly research and innovative projects on esoteric duo works.

Her love of collaboration led her to performances with Atar Arad, James Campbell, Charles Castleman, Mark Kaplan and members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra among others, and at international venues such as at the Regina Chamber Music Festival, the Festival of the Sound and the Busan Maru International Music Festival.

She has served on faculty as a collaborative pianist at the Banff Centre, New England Conservatory, Boston Ballet School, Meadowmount School of Music, Indiana University’s Summer String Academy and the Perlman Music Program. An advocate of sharing live classical music beyond concert halls, Niekawa has performed many series of house concerts in various areas across North America. She was a founding member of Chamberfest Brown County in Nashville, Indiana, a community music outreach initiative for the local area.

A native of Japan, Niekawa studied with Sumiko Mikimoto, Keiko Takeuchi and Takako Tsumura while she studied at Toho Gakuen School of Music. Niekawa holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (B.M. and D.M.A.) and New England Conservatory (M.M.), where she studied with Natalya Antonova, Jean Barr, William Porter, Thomas Schumacher and Patricia Zander.

Her passion for pedagogy and mentoring is shown through her appearances as a guest teacher and performer at universities across North America. From 2015–2025, she taught and served as a lecturer in chamber and collaborative music at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Her students have pursued further studies at the Julliard School, New England Conservatory, the University of South California, the University of Colorado-Boulder and more. Since fall 2025, she has been appointed as an assistant professor of collaborative piano at the University of Maryland in College Park.

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