Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann

Artists

Nathan Chan Cello

Nathan Chan’s multifaceted career exemplifies his dedication to exploring the many dimensions of the cello, sharing his musical voice through solo, chamber, and orchestral performance. Guided by a belief in music’s power to connect and uplift, Nathan seeks to create meaningful experiences that foster community and empathy.

Currently Assistant Principal Cello of the Seattle Symphony, Nathan was named to Seattle’s Forbes 30 Under 30 for his efforts to expand classical music’s reach. He has embraced technology and social media to bring music to new audiences, with over 35 million views across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. His “Nathan Chan Chats for Change” series, launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflects his belief in using music as a force for dialogue and healing. He also released his first NFT in collaboration with AI artist Lia Coleman, merging classical performance with generative art.

As a soloist, Nathan has appeared with the San Francisco Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, and Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra under conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, James Gaffigan, and Laura Jackson. He was selected for Gautier Capuçon’s Classe d’Excellence du Violoncelle at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

In the 2024–2025 season, he performs DANCE by Anna Clyne with the Auburn Symphony, Gulda’s Cello Concerto with the Cascade and Olympia Symphonies, and premieres Karen P. Thomas’s The world is charged with Seattle Pro Musica.

A graduate of Columbia University and The Juilliard School, Nathan continues to deepen his artistry with curiosity, generosity, and purpose.

Visit nathanchan.com to learn more.

Artist's Website

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

Isabelle Ai Durrenberger Violin

American violinist Isabelle Ai Durrenberger is praised for her imaginative performances and her ability to communicate with sincere artistry. Based in New York City, she is first violinist of the Aeolus Quartet and a recent graduate of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect program.

An avid chamber musician, Durrenberger is recognized for her unique collaborative instincts. Recent engagements include concerts with Boston Chamber Music Society, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music Northwest, Jupiter Chamber Players, The Knights, A Far Cry, and Marlboro Music Festival.

Durrenberger grew up in a musical home in Columbus, Ohio, and began playing piano at age four, beginning violin lessons three years later. At age 13, she began her studies with Jaime Laredo at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She attended Meadowmount School of Music for four years, graduated from high school a year early, and at age 16 began her undergraduate program in Cleveland where she continued receiving mentorship from Laredo. Other influences include Jennifer Koh, Sharon Robinson, Joan Kwuon, Jinjoo Cho, Jan Mark Sloman, and Jun Kim.

In 2022, she completed her graduate studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston with Soovin Kim and Don Weilerstein. Durrenberger has a private violin studio in New York City and serves on the violin faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston, where she teaches violin and coaches chamber music.

Durrenberger performs on a 2020 Zygmuntowicz violin on private loan from a patron in New York City.

Artist's Website

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

Graeme Steele Johnson Clarinet

Praised as “technically and interpretively impeccable and passionately communicative” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Graeme Steele Johnson is an artist of uncommon imagination and versatility.

The clarinetist, curator and “musical detective” (New York Classical Review) garnered international attention for his rediscovery and reconstruction of a 125-year-old octet by Charles Martin Loeffler, profiled in a full-page spread by The Washington Post. Released on his debut album, Forgotten Sounds (Delos/Outhere Music), Johnson’s world-premiere recording of the work was named one of The New York Times’s Best Classical Music Albums of 2024, nominated for a Gramophone Classical Music Award, and critically acclaimed by BBC Music Magazine, The Times of London, and many others. Johnson led the octet’s first present-day performances at the Library of Congress, Morgan Library, Harvard Musical Association, Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, Emerald City Music, and other concert series around the country over three seasons of touring.

Since 2022, Johnson has served as the clarinetist of the award-winning quintet WindSync. Additional recent appearances include the Ravinia, Bridgehampton, Rockport, Moab, and Orcas Island Chamber Music Festivals and performances with the Miró, Balourdet, Aeolous, Callisto, and KASA Quartets, as well as the Twelfth Night, Copland House, and New York New Music Ensembles. Admired for his creative curation and engaging communication, he has presented a TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, authored chamber arrangements heard around the world, and in 2026 will assume the position of artistic director of the Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival in Houston.

Under the tutelage of Charles Neidich and Kofi Agawu, Johnson earned a doctoral degree from the CUNY Graduate Center, where his research won the Elebash Dissertation Award. Previously, he earned two master’s degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with David Shifrin and Ricardo Morales, and completed undergraduate study at The University of Texas at Austin with Nathan Williams.

Artist's Website

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

Braizahn Jones Bass

Braizahn Jones is the Assistant Principal Bassist of the Oregon Symphony and a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Hal Robinson and Edgar Meyer. Originally from Las Vegas, NV, he began his studies with Paul Firak before attending The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University under Jeffrey Weisner, later transferring to Curtis in 2014.

Braizahn has performed and toured with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony and is an active freelance musician, appearing at Chamber Music Northwest, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Bellingham Music Festival, and the Jackson Hole Chamber Music Festival.

A dedicated educator, he serves on the faculty of the National Orchestral Institute and Reed College, maintains a full private studio, and has taught at the Pacific Music Institute in Honolulu as well as various international double bass workshops.

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

Sooyun Kim Flute

Praised as “a rare virtuoso of the flute” by Libération, Sooyun Kim has established herself as one of the rare flute soloists on the classical music scene. Since her concerto debut with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, she has enjoyed a flourishing career performing with orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and Boston Pops. She has been presented in recital in Budapest’s Liszt Hall, the Kennedy Center, Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and Kobe’s Bunka Hall. Her European debut recital at the Louvre was streamed live on medici.tv. A winner of the Georg Solti Foundation Career Grant, she has received numerous international awards and prizes including the third prize at the Munich ARD International Flute Competition. She makes frequent appearances at music festivals like the Music@Menlo, Spoleto USA, Yellow Barn, Rockport, Olympic, Charlottesville, Ravinia, and Tanglewood festivals. Her special interest in interdisciplinary art has led her to collaborate with many artists, dancers, and museums around the world such as Sol Lewitt, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Glassmuseet Ebeltoft in Denmark. An Artist Member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, she studied at the New England Conservatory under the tutelage of Paula Robison. In addition, she studied Baroque dance with Melinda Sullivan. She teaches summer courses at Orford Musique and is recently appointed Assistant Professor of Flute at University Cincinnati College-Conservatory (CCM). Kim plays a rare 18-karat gold flute specially made for her by Verne Q. Powell Flutes.

Artist's Website

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

Anna Lee Violin

Delighting her listeners with “her warm, humane musicianship” and “sweet spot of grace,” Anna Lee is an active concert violinist, chamber musician, and teacher. She began violin studies at the age of four with Alexander Souptel and debuted as soloist performing the Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 a year and a half later with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Lan Shui. She spent a large part of her childhood in Japan and Singapore even though she was born in South Korea, and at the age of six moved to New York after being accepted to the Juilliard School Pre-College Division under the tutelage of Masao Kawasaki.

Concert venues that Anna Lee has appeared in are the Carnegie-Weill, Carnegie-Zankel, Wigmore, Beethoven-Haus, Avery Fisher, Victoria, Lotte, and Esplanade Concert Halls, as well as Merkin Hall and Peter Jay Sharp Theater. She has claimed top prizes in the 2019 Montréal Competition, 2018 Indianapolis Competition, 2011 Sion-Valais Competition, 2011 Kronberg Violin Masterclasses, 2010 and 2012 Menuhin Competition (Junior and Senior Divisions, respectively), and Aspen Music Festival AACA Competition. Anna Lee has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, awarded by Office for the Arts at Harvard, the Bernhard and Mania Hahnloser Violin Prize at the Verbier Festival Academy, and the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award.

Anna Lee was a Chamber Music Northwest Protégé Artist in 2022, and she has also been featured in music festivals around the world, such as the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and the Marlboro Music Festival, and on radio shows such as “From the Top” with host Christopher O’Riley and APM’s Performance Today with host Fred Child. She has also been the cover page feature of the Wall Street Journal Magazine.

Notable chamber music collaborations include Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet and Steven Isserlis in the Kronberg Academy’s “Chamber Music Connects the World” festival. Anna Lee was also presented by Sir András Schiff at the BeethovenFest in Bonn. As a soloist, Anna Lee made her New York Philharmonic debut in April 2011, as well as her Frankfurt debut in 2016 with maestro Christoph Eschenbach and the Hessische Rundfunk Radio Orchestra. She has also appeared with the Singapore, Indianapolis, Park Avenue Chamber, and Montreal Symphony Orchestras.​

Anna Lee’s teachers were Masao Kawasaki and Cho-Liang Lin at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division, Ana Chumachenco at the Kronberg Academy, and Miriam Fried and Don Weilerstein in Boston, where she recently completed her Comparative Literature degree at Harvard College. Currently, she is studying with Ani Kavafian at the Yale School of Music. She has also taught as a chamber music teacher, most notably at the Kronberg Academy’s Mit Musik—Miteinander festival and Festival MusicAlp in France.

Artist's Website

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

Emily Levin Harp

Praised for her “communicative, emotionally intense expression” (Jerusalem Post) and “technical wizardry and artistic intuition” (Herald Times), harpist Emily Levin has forged a multifaceted career as a soloist, orchestral musician, chamber collaborator, and advocate for new music.

Levin joined the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as Principal Harp in 2016. She has also served as guest principal harp with the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Houston Symphony, and appears regularly with the New York Philharmonic. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed at leading venues throughout North America and Europe, and her concerto engagements include performances with the Jerusalem, Dallas, Colorado, and West Virginia Symphonies, the Ojai Festival and Lakes Area Music Festival, and the Louisiana Philharmonic.

In 2021, she founded GroundWork(s), an initiative commissioning 52 American composers—one from each state, plus Washington, DC and Puerto Rico—to write new works centered on the harp. Recent and upcoming commissions have included works by Angélica Negrón, Reena Esmail, Michael Ippolito, Aaron Holloway Nahum, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate.

Levin is the only American to receive top prizes at two of the most prestigious international harp competitions: the USA International Harp Competition and the International Harp
Contest in Israel. She was also a winner of the 2016 Astral Artists National Auditions and was named the Classical Recording Foundation’s 2017 Young Musician of the Year for her debut album, Something Borrowed.

A committed educator, Levin is currently an adjunct associate professor of harp at Southern Methodist University, and a faculty member at the Aspen Music Festival and the Young Artist’s Harp Seminar. She received a Master of Music from the Juilliard School and holds undergraduate degrees in music and history from Indiana University. Her honors history thesis focused on the war songs of the French Revolution.

Artist's Website

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

Katie Liu Viola

Violist Katie Liu is a Master of Musical Arts student at the Yale School of Music in the studio of Ettore Causa. Liu received her Master of Music degree at the Colburn School and her undergraduate degree from Princeton University, concentrating in Operations Research and Financial Engineering with minors in Musical Performance and Computer Science; she has had corporate working experience in asset management and fintech consulting. She commenced her viola pursuits as winner of the Princeton University Concerto Competition; as a soloist, Liu has performed with the Princeton University Orchestra and Colburn Orchestra. Previously the principal violist of the American Youth Symphony, she is currently a section violist at the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and regularly performs with the New York Philharmonic as a substitute violist. An active chamber musician, she performs with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players and has participated in the NUME Academy and Verbier Festival Academy. Her engagements in 2024 included the Aspect Chamber Music Series, a BeethovenFestival Sweden tour, Kronberg Academy Chamber Music Connects the World, and North Shore Chamber Music Festival.

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)

David Shifrin Clarinet & Artistic Director Emeritus 1981–2020

Clarinetist David Shifrin graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in 1967 and the Curtis Institute in 1971. He made his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra having won the Orchestra’s Student Competition in 1969. He went on to receive numerous prizes and awards worldwide, including the Geneva and Munich International Competitions, the Concert Artists Guild auditions, and both the Avery Fisher Career Grant (1987) and the Avery Fisher Prize (2000).

Shifrin received Yale University’s Cultural Leadership Citation in 2014 and is currently the Samuel S. Sanford Professor in the Practice of Clarinet at the Yale School of Music where he teaches a studio of graduate-level clarinetists and coaches chamber music ensembles. He is also the artistic director of Yale’s Oneppo Chamber Music Society and the Yale in New York concert series. Shifrin previously served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Hawaii.

Shifrin served as artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1992 to 2004 and Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon from 1981 to 2020. He has appeared as soloist with major orchestras in the United States and abroad and has served as Principal Clarinet with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra (under Stokowski), the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Symphony Orchestras of New Haven, Honolulu, and Dallas. Shifrin also continues to broaden the clarinet repertoire by commissioning and championing more than 100 works of 20th and 21st century American composers. Shifrin’s recordings have consistently garnered praise and awards including three Grammy nominations and “Record of the Year” from Stereo Review.

Shifrin is represented by CM Artists in New York and performs on Backun clarinets and Légère reeds.

Artist's Website

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann  (currently selected)