Chamber Music 2026

Dr. Joel Brennan enjoys a diverse career as a performer and teacher. He has performed with orchestras around the globe, including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (Australia), Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (Korea), Rotterdam Philharmonic (Netherlands), Winnipeg Symphony (Canada), Malaysian Philharmonic, and Bilkent Symphony Orchestra (Turkey), and has served as principal trumpet of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra (Japan) and Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra (Netherlands).

A proponent of contemporary music and chamber music, Joel has commissioned and premiered dozens of new works, with a particular emphasis on working with emerging composers and those from underrepresented demographics. He is a member of Ensemble Three, a unique trio of trumpet, trombone, and guitar which has been praised as “an inspiring example of forward-thinking classical music culture” and won the 2017 Melbourne Recital Centre Contemporary Masters Award. He is also a member of Lyrebird Brass, a collective of players dedicated to performing the finest brass chamber music.

Joel received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music before pursuing graduate studies at the Yale School of Music from which he is a recipient of the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Awarded a Fulbright Grant 2007, Joel spent a year performing, teaching, and studying in the Netherlands.

Deeply devoted to education, Joel is Associate Professor of Music Performance at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (University of Melbourne, Australia). He has also served on the faculty of Brandon University (Canada) and the Juilliard School's campus in Tianjin (China) where he worked with students in the pre-college program and graduate school in addition to performing with the Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble. He has been a guest teaching artist at the Australasian Trumpet Academy, Danish/German Brass Academy, and Oberlin Trumpet Workshop. He is the creator of "Poper's Game," a unique practice app for trumpet players.

Joel is a Yamaha Performing Artist.

Daniel Chong, violin | Ken Hamao, violin | Jessica Bodner, viola | Kee-Hyun Kim, cello

Internationally recognized for their “fearless, yet probingly beautiful” (The Strad) performances, the Grammy Award-winning Parker Quartet has rapidly distinguished itself as one of the preeminent ensembles of its generation, dedicated purely to the sound and depth of their music. Inspired performances and exceptional musicianship are hallmarks of the Quartet, having appeared at the world’s most illustrious venues since its founding in 2002.

Recent seasons included performances around the United States and Europe, including Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, Music Toronto, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Strathmore, San Antonio Chamber Music Society, University of Chicago, the Schubert Club, and Kansas City’s Friends of Chamber Music.

This season the Quartet marks their 20th anniversary with The Beethoven Project, a multi-faceted initiative which includes performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven’s string quartets; the commissioning of six composers to write encores inspired by Beethoven’s quartets; the creation of a new video library spotlighting each Beethoven quartet; and bringing Beethoven’s music to non-traditional venues around the Quartet’s home base of Boston, including homeless shelters and youth programs.

The Quartet is committed to working with composers of today — recent commissions include works by Augusta Read Thomas, Felipe Lara, Jaehyuck Choi, and Zosha di Castri. Celebrating the process of creation, the Quartet recorded three new commissions by Kate Soper, Oscar Bettison, and Vijay Iyer as part of Miller Theatre’s Mission: Commission podcast.

Additionally, the Quartet regularly collaborates with a diverse range of artists, including pianists Menahem Pressler, Orion Weiss, Shai Wosner, Billy Childs, and Vijay Iyer; members of the Silk Road Ensemble; clarinetist and composer Jörg Widmann; clarinetists Anthony McGill and Charles Neidich; flutist Claire Chase; and violist Kim Kashkashian, featured on their recent Dvořák recording. The Quartet also continues to be a strong supporter of Kashkashian’s project Music for Food, participating in concerts throughout the United States for the benefit of various food banks and shelters.

Recording projects continue to be an important facet of the Quartet’s artistic output. Described by Gramophone Magazine as a ”string quartet defined by virtuosity so agile that it’s indistinguishable from the process of emotional expression,” their newest release for ECM Records features Dvořák's Viola Quintet as well as György Kurtág's Six Moments Musicaux and Officium breve in memoriam. The Strad also declared the album as “nothing short of astonishing.” Under the auspices of the Monte Carlo Festival Printemps des Arts, they recorded a disc of three Beethoven quartets, of which Diapason “admired the group’s fearlessness, exceptional control, and attention to detail.” The Quartet can also be heard playing Mendelssohn on Nimbus Records, Bartók on Zig-Zag Territoires, and the complete Ligeti Quartets on Naxos, for which they won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.

The members of the Parker Quartet serve as Professors of the Practice and Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Department of Music. The Quartet also holds a visiting residency at the University of South Carolina and spends its summers on faculty at the Banff Centre’s Evolution: Quartet program.

Founded and currently based in Boston, the Parker Quartet’s numerous honors include winning the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Grand Prix and Mozart Prize at France’s Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, and Chamber Music America’s prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award.

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan

Trombonist Lee Allen has performed with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Diego Symphony. As acting principal trombone of the Las Vegas Philharmonic, he has performed with the Santa Monica Symphony, Riverside Symphony, San Bernardino Symphony, Long Beach Opera, Burbank Philharmonic, and Los Angeles Jewish Symphony . Allen toured as a member of award-winning smooth jazz artist Brian Culbertson’s band in 2008 and also performed with Adele at the Academy Awards in 2013. Allen has worked on numerous recording projects including a project at The Bridge Recording in L.A. with Jay Friedman. He is a founding member of the critically acclaimed MOMUS trombone quartet, and a member of the Pacific Trombone Project, which comprises some of the leading players in Thailand, South Korea, China, and Australia.

A dedicated and sought-after teacher, Allen currently serves as trombone faculty and chair of brass and percussion at The Tianjin Juilliard School. There he is also a member of the Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble, an all-faculty ensemble performing chamber concerts throughout Asia. Allen is a member of the summer faculty at RondoFest in Penang, Malaysia. He has taught at the Oberlin Conservatory, University of Southern California, and Colburn School for the Performing Arts. During his tenure as assistant professor of trombone at the Oberlin Conservatory from 2013 - 2019, Allen was soloist with many large ensembles. He performed the US premiere of Christopher Starks’ Nanokonzert for solo trombone and contemporary ensemble in 2015. He also led the Oberlin Brass Quintet on a month-long tour of China and took students to Uganda, Africa as part of a collaboration with Brass for Africa. Allen has presented master classes throughout the United States, South Korea, and China.

Allen earned a DMA and MM in trombone performance from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, and a bachelor’s of music education from the

University of Kentucky. His primary mentors have included Terry Cravens, Dale Warren, Bill Watrous, and Per Brevig.

Lee Allen is a Shires Performing Artist.

Dai Fujikura is a composer based in London, UK. Born in 1977 in Osaka, Japan, Dai was fifteen when he moved to the UK and then studied under Sir. George Benjamin. 

In recent years, his activities have been diverse. His opera, “A Dream of Armageddon,” based on a short story by H.G. Wells, which draws attention to the threat of totalitarianism, had its world premiere at the New National Theatre Tokyo in 2020. The opera was selected as the "Best of the Year" by numerous music magazines. In the same year, his Fourth Piano Concerto (Akiko's Piano), inspired by a piano owned by a woman who was a victim of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, had its world premiere. This was the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing and was released by Sony Music. 

Following that year, “Entwine” was performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and Hong Kong Sinfonietta. The Orchestre National de Bretagne and the New York Philharmonic are also scheduled to perform it in 2024. 

Another recent orchestral work, “Wavering World,” was commissioned and performed by the Seattle Symphony, Pacific Philharmonia Tokyo, Musikalische Akademie des Nationaltheater-Orchesters Mannheim, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. 

Unique works such as “Metamorphosis of a Living Room,” a music theatre piece created in collaboration with theatre director Toshiki Okada, was commissioned and staged by Wiener Festwochen. This piece was later performed in Hanover and Amsterdam, and it is planned to be staged in Japan. Additionally, “Green Tea Concerto” for flauto traverso and baroque ensemble was commissioned by the B’Rock Orchestra, and “Comic Breath” was commissioned by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and the New World Symphony Orchestra.

Over the past few years, French clarinettist Nicolas Baldeyrou has naturally established himself as one of the most remarkable soloists of his generation. Carving a unique path in today's musical landscape, this "concert artist armed for any challenge" (Diapason) demonstrates a mastery and versatility that transcends eras and styles, navigating with ease through all repertoires, on both historical and modern instruments.

Winning prestigious competitions like the Munich ARD Competition in Munich (Germany), the Dos Hermanas Competition in Sevilla (Spain), and finally, the ICA Young Artist Competition (United States) opened to Nicolas the doors of the most prestigious concert halls all over the world - Carnegie Hall in New York, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Philharmonie de Paris, Salzburg Mozarteum, Wiener Konzerthaus, Bunkamura Orchard Hall in Tokyo, Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.

As a soloist he is regularly invited to perform with renown orchestras: Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Czech Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia and Saint-Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Starting his career at a very young age he had the chance to work with the legendary conductors – Carlo-Maria Giulini, Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur. Nowadays, Nicolas performs with Myung-Whun Chung, Alain Altinoglu, Pablo Heras Casado, Mikko Franck, Fabien Gabel.

Today Nicolas is one of the most demanded partners for chamber music – he shared the stage with such musicians as the pianists Bertrand Chamayou, Nikolai Lugansky; violinists Renaud Capuçon, Svetlin Roussev; violist Antoine Tamestit; Modigliani, Ébène, and Chiaroscuro quartets.

Andrew Johnson has been Principal Percussionist of the National Arts Centre Orchestra since June 2025, and was previously in the same position with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and l’Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec. Andrew is a former fellow at the New World Symphony, and has appeared professionally with the Toronto Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Sarasota Orchestra, and the Boston Philharmonic. He has performed with conductors Christoph von Dohnanyi, Michael Tilson Thomas, Robert Spano, and Stéphane Denève, and has attended a variety of summer festivals including Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival USA, Texas Music Festival, and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.

In addition to orchestral playing, Andrew enjoys performing contemporary solo and chamber music, and within this context has worked under the guidance of Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Steven Drury, and Steve Mackey. Andrew grew up in Nova Scotia and studied at New England Conservatory and Boston University. He is a student of Will Hudgins, Timothy Genis, and Mark Adam. In his spare time, he enjoys playing and watching hockey, and spending time with his wife, Lia, and their dog, Henry. Andrew is an endorser of Zildjian cymbals and Freer Percussion products.

Please check back regularly for additions to the faculty list.