Spanish-born violinist Francisco Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been hailed as an "amazing talent" (Gustavo Dudamel) and "frighteningly awesome" (Buffalo News). His solo violin album Bach’s Long Shadow, was named BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice of the Month. Its five star review stated: ‘Fullana manages to combine Itzhak Perlman's warmth with the aristocratic poise of Henryk Szeryng'

A native of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands of Spain, Francisco is making a name for himself as both a performer, fearless leader and a founder of innovative educational residencies. As a soloist, he has performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Bayerische Philharmonie led by the late Sir Colin Davis, the Sibelius Concerto with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, and the Brahms Violin Concerto with Venezuela’s Teresa Carreño Orchestra under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel. His versatility as a performer, both with and without conductor, has brought him to perform with numerous ensembles across the artistic spectrum: from major orchestras such as the City of Birmingham, Vancouver, Aachen, Pacific and Buffalo Symphony Orchestras, the chamber orchestras of Saint Paul and Philadelphia, to the baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire and the new music driven Metropolis Ensemble. Francisco has worked under the batons of Hans Graf, Pablo Mielgo, José Luis Gómez, Alondra de la Parra, Christoph Poppen, Jeannette Sorrell, Keitaro Harada and Joshua Weilerstein, among many others.

Fullana is one of the first international solo violinists to fully embrace and absorb the baroque language of historical performance. His passion for the gut strings has blossomed into fruitful collaborations with Baroque groups all over the world. Last season, Fullana was the Artist-in-Residence with the Grammy-winning ensemble Apollo’s Fire, performing 18 concerto performances on tour, including stops at Carnegie Hall and Severance Hall among many others. They recently released Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on Avie Records to great success: The album debut at #2 of the Billboard Charts and was named Top Ten Album Of the Year by the Sunday Times. BBC Music Magazine’s review stated: ‘Francisco Fullana reveals Vivaldi’s poetry with effortless refinement.’ The partnership continued this spring, performing Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on tour around the UK, including stops at Aldenburgh Festival & St. Martin in the Fields.

Highlights of Francisco’s upcoming orchestral engagements in 2024 include debuts with The Florida Orchestra, Budapest MAV, Lodz, Pasadena, Rosario, Saarbrucken Radio and Simón Bolivar Symphonies among many others, as well as returns to Austin and Xalapa Symphonies, Boulder Philharmonic and the Symphony of the Americas. Fullana will also return to play/conduct the Chamber Orchestras of Philadelphia and San Antonio and the Balearic Islands Symphony, leading programs from Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony and Chevalier de St. Georges’ concerti to Beethoven symphonies and Bartók Divertimento.  Recent and upcoming recital debuts include the Phillips Collection in Washington DC and Palm Beach’s Kravis Center, Barcelona’s L’Auditori  as well as recitals debuts at the Heidelberg, Darmstadt, Dresden, Mecklenburg-Vorlpolmmern and Geizeitenkonzerte festivals with his duo partner, pianist Matthias Kirchnerheit. In Asia, Fullana will make his awaited return this spring, performing recitals throughout western and southern Japan.

His passion for working with youth orchestras through the Fortissimo Youth Initiative will be at full display this season affter recently making his concerto debut at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Perelman Hall, where he performed  Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole with the Grammy-award winning New York Youth Symphony. This summer Francisco will embark on a month long tour with the Spanish National Youth Symphony JONDE, premiering a new concerto by Mikel Urkiza under the baton of Pablo Gónzalez and recording a new concerto album for Orchid Classics.

In 2018 Orchid Classics released Francisco’s acclaimed debut recording Through the Lens of Time performed with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Carlos Izcaray. Fullana’s new double album on Orchid, Bach’s Long Shadow, juxtaposes two of the monumental Bach’s Partitas on gut strings and baroque setup with virtuoso solo violin works from the next 3 centuries. His most recent project, Spanish Light, showcases staples and hidden gems of the Spanish repertoire alongside the Spanish pianist Alba Ventura.

Active as a chamber musician, Francisco is a performing artist at NYC’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and has participated in the Marlboro Music Festival, the Musicians from Marlboro tours, the Perlman Music Program, the Da Camera Society, and the LaJolla, Moab, Music@Menlo, Mainly Mozart, Music in the Vineyards, and Newport music festivals. He recently formed a musical duo with guitar extraordinaire Jason Vieaux, touring the United States through 2024-25. His musical collaborators have included Viviane Hagner, Nobuko Imai, Mitsuko Uchida, and members of the Guarneri, Juilliard, Takács, and Cleveland quartets. Francisco’s Spanish roots are also often explored in collaboration with Hispanic artists such as guitarist Pablo Sainz-Villegas and bandoneonist JP Jofre. Their recital for The Violin Channel’s Vanguard Concerts at Merkin Hall was just released for worldwide release on all major streaming platforms. Francisco Fullana has been named as the recipient of the 2023 the Darioush and Shahpar Khaledi Prize from the Festival Napa Valley.

Born into a family of educators, Francisco is a graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Madrid, where he matriculated under the tutelage of Manuel Guillén. He received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School following studies with Donald Weilerstein and Masao Kawasaki, and holds an Artist Diploma from the USC Thornton School of Music, where he worked with the renowned violinist Midori.

In 2015 Francisco was honored with First Prize in Japan’s Munetsugu Angel Violin Competition, as well as all four of that competition’s special prizes including the Audience and Orchestra awards. Additional awards include First Prizes at the Johannes Brahms and Julio Cardona International Violin Competitions, the Pro Musicis International Award, and the Pablo Sarasate National Competition.

Francisco is a committed innovator, leading new institutions of musical education for young people. He is a co-founder of San Antonio’s Classical Music Summer Institute, where he currently serves as Artistic Leader and Advisor. He also created the Fortissimo Youth Initiative, a series of music seminars and performances with youth orchestras, which aims to explore and deepen young musicians’ understanding of conductorless chamber orchestra playing. The seminars are deeply immersive, thrusting youngsters into the sonic world of a single period while inspiring them to channel their overwhelming energy in the service of vibrant older styles of musical expression. The results can be galvanic, and Francisco continues to build on these educational models.

Francisco Fullana performs on the 1735 "Mary Portman" ex-Kreisler Guarneri del Gesù violin, kindly on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.”

As a soloist, Lee has appeared with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Hawai’i Symphony, Tacoma Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Nordic Chamber Orchestra of Sweden, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, Singapore National Youth Orchestra, and many others.

She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Steinway Hall’s Salon de Virtuosi, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia’s World Cafe Live, (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery.

An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee became a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center after winning The Bowers Program audition and completing the program's three-year residency. Kristin performs at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season. For seven years, she was a principal artist of Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, sitting as The Bernard Gondos Chair. Lee has also appeared in chamber music programs at Music@Menlo, La Jolla Festival, Medellín Festicámara of Colombia, Moab Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, Chamber Music Sedona, Music in the Vineyards, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern of Germany, the Hong Kong Chamber Music Festival and the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, among many others.

In addition to her prolific performance career, Lee is also a devoted educator. She is on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music as an Assistant Professor of Violin. She has also been in residence with the Singapore National Youth Orchestra, the El Sistema Chamber Music Festival of Venezuela, and is a summer faculty member at Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute.

Kristin Lee will release her debut album, American Journey, with acclaimed pianist-composer Jeremy Jordan in the 2023-24 season. As a foreign-born citizen of America, she was compelled to create American Journey to express her pride in the country she now calls her own, showcasing works that have a distinct and recognizable sound of American music and its rich history. The album will include works by H.T. Burleigh, Kevin Puts, Amy Beach, Thelonious Monk, Scott Joplin, and George Gershwin. American Journey encapsulates both Kristin Lee's journey as an American, as well as the journeys of these composers in the United States.

Lee is the founding artistic director of Emerald City Music (ECM), a chamber music series that presents authentically unique concert experiences and bridges the divide between the highest caliber classical music and the many diverse communities of the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Since 2015, she has crafted unconventional and captivating programs that have led to Emerald City Music’s renown for its eclectic, intimate, and vibrant classical chamber music experiences. The series was recently deemed "the beacon for the casual-classical movement" (CityArts). Recent highlights for ECM include a national collaborative commission with Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams; performances of Steve Reich’s iconic Music for 18 Musicians; a pitch-black performance of Georg Haas’s quartet, In the Dark; and the West Coast debut of the Danish folk group, Dreamers’ Circus.

An advocate for living composers, Kristin Lee has collaborated with many of today’s prominent composers, including Vivian Fung, Andy Akiho, Patrick Castillo, Jakub Ciupiński, Shobana Raghavan, Steve Coleman, Jeremy Jordan, and more. She made the world premiere recording of Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto, written for her, which won a Juno Award and is available on Naxos. Current projects include commissioning a new double concerto for violin, piano, and strings from pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown. Of the new work, Brown says, "This work combines my love of intimate chamber music and the excitement of the concerto genre, exploring the totality of sonic possibilities with this combination of instruments.” Lee is also commissioning a new concerto for violin, saxophone, and spoken words from GRAMMY-award winning musician/producer/composer Anthony Tidd. Tidd’s concerto will incorporate the spontaneous and expressive nature of jazz, the groove and aesthetics which he learned as a hip-hop producer, and the compositional techniques, structures and orchestration skills he has learned by studying Western Classical music over the years. Of the new work, he says, “Kristin will not only execute any composition I write on the highest of levels, but also bring her own deep knowledge of music and the violin, her thirst for experimentation, her knowledge of classical repertoire, many welcome suggestions, and of course her passion, to any project.”

Kristin Lee’s honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions, and awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. Her performances have been broadcast on PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center,” the Kennedy Center Honors, WFMT Chicago’s “Rising Stars” series, WRTI in Philadelphia, and on WQXR in New York. She also appeared on Perlman in Shanghai, a nationally broadcast PBS documentary that chronicled a historic cross-cultural exchange between the Perlman Music Program and Shanghai Conservatory.

Born in Seoul, Lee moved to the United States and studied under prestigious teachers including Sonja Foster, Catherine Cho, Dorothy DeLay, Donald Weilerstein, and Itzhak Perlman. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Lee’s violin was crafted in Naples, Italy in 1759 by Gennaro Gagliano and is generously loaned to her by Paul & Linda Gridley.

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Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Taiwanese-American pianist Wayne Ching enjoys a diverse musical career. Dr. Ching completed his bachelor and master’s degrees in Piano Performance at the University of Texas at Austin and doctoral degree at the University of Minnesota, where his primary mentors were Gregory Allen, Anton Nel, and Lydia Artymiw. Other influential mentors include Norman Krieger and the late Seymour Lipkin. Dr. Ching has performed extensively across the United States, including music festival appearances at Sarasota, Kneisel Hall, Brevard, Sunflower, Garth Newel, Clear Creek, and Cactus Pear. His performances can be heard on Texas Public Radio, WQXR(NY), WSMR(FL), and KPAC(TX). Recent performance highlights include concerto appearances with New Horizons Symphony and the University of Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, and recital appearances with violinists Francisco Fullana, Sandy Yamamoto, and violist Jordan Bak. As a passionate chamber musician, Dr. Ching regularly collaborates with some of the most outstanding performers of his generation, including members of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center and principal musicians of Minnesota, St. Paul Chamber orchestras.

Dr. Ching resides in San Antonio, Texas. He is on the faculty at Trinity University and Resident Artist-Faculty for the Classical Music Institute in San Antonio, where he also serves as Fellowship Coordinator.