THE FUTURE IS NOW: A Benefit Event with Young Artist Institute to Support our Education Programs

Artists

Young Artist Institute

Launched in 2022, Chamber Music Northwest’s Young Artist Institute (YAI) is an intensive education program for 16 talented string players from around the world, ages 14-18. For the 2024 cohort, the three-week program is held from June 15 to July 6 on the University of Portland campus.

During and just prior to CMNW’s 2024 Summer Festival, the young musicians are featured in performances throughout the community, including free showcases, pop-ups around town, and on the new mobile concert stage for a community concert. As well, during the first two weeks of the festival everyone is welcome to come see them in pre-concert prelude performances!

Artist's Website

Soovin Kim Violin & Artistic Director

Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart, and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season.

When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.

Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015.

In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became artistic directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.

Upcoming Concerts & Events

• Soovin Kim & Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė: Beethoven Sonatas

Jessica Lee 2025 YAI Faculty, Violin

Violinist Jessica Lee has built a multi-faceted career as soloist, chamber musician, pedagogue, former Assistant Concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, and now as Associate Concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony. She was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2005 Concert Artists Guild International Competition and has been hailed as “a soloist which one should make a special effort to hear, wherever she plays.”

Her international appearances include solo performances with the Plzen Philharmonic, Gangnam Symphony, Malaysia Festival Orchestra, and at the Rudolfinum in Prague. At home, she has appeared with orchestras such as the Houston, Grand Rapids, and Spokane symphonies. Jessica has performed in recital at venues including Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Ravinia “Rising Stars”, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., and the Kennedy Center.

A long-time member of the Johannes Quartet as well as of The Bowers Program (formerly the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Two), Jessica has also toured frequently with ‘Musicians from Marlboro’, including appearances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston’s Gardner Museum, and with the Guarneri Quartet in their farewell season.

Her chamber music festival appearances include Chamber Music Northwest, Bridgehampton, Santa Fe, Seoul Spring, Caramoor, Olympic, and Music@Menlo.  She also put together a six-video chamber music series during the pandemic which was a collaboration between the Cleveland Orchestra and the Cleveland Clinic to bring chamber music from iconic spaces in Cleveland to the greater Cleveland community.

Jessica has always had a passion for teaching and has served on the faculties of Vassar College, Oberlin College, and as Head of the Violin Department at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at age fourteen following studies with Weigang Li, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree under Robert Mann and Ida Kavafian. She completed her studies for a master’s degree at the Juilliard School.

Nicholas Cords 2024 YAI Faculty, Viola

For three decades, omnivorous violist Nicholas Cords has been on the front line of a unique constellation of projects as performer, educator, and cultural advocate, with a signature passion for the cross section between the long tradition of classical music and the wide range of music being created today.

Nicholas served for twenty years as violist of the Silkroad Ensemble, a musical collective founded by Yo-Yo Ma in 2000 with the belief that cross-cultural collaboration leads to a more hopeful world. This mission was poignantly explored by the recent Oscar-nominated documentary by Morgan Neville, The Music of Strangers, which makes a case for why culture matters. In addition, Nicholas served from 2017-2020 as a Co-Artistic Director for Silkroad, and previously as Silkroad’s Programming Chair. He appears on all of the Silkroad Ensemble’s albums including Sing Me Home (Sony Music), which received a 2017 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.

Another key aspect of Nicholas’s musical life is as founding member of Brooklyn Rider, an intrepid group which NPR credits with “recreating the 300-year-old form of the string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” Highly committed to collaborative ventures, the group has worked with Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, ballerina Wendy Whelan, Persian kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor, Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, Mexican singer Magos Herrera, and banjoist Béla Fleck, to name a few. Their most recent recording, Healing Modes, was lauded by The New York Times and received a 2021 Grammy Nomination.

His acclaimed 2020 solo recording, Touch Harmonious (In a Circle Records), is a reflection on the arc of tradition spanning from the baroque to today, featuring multiple premieres. A dedicated teacher, Nicholas currently serves on the viola and chamber music faculty of New England Conservatory.

Peter Stumpf 2025 YAI Faculty, Cello

Peter Stumpf is professor of cello at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Prior to his appointment, he was the principal cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 9 years following a 12-year tenure as Associate Principal Cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He received a bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and an artist’s diploma from the New England Conservatory of Music.

A dedicated chamber musician, he is a member of the Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio and has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, in Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Cologne. He has performed with the chamber music societies of Boston and Philadelphia, and at numerous festivals including Marlboro, Santa Fe, Bridgehampton, Spoleto, and Aspen. He has toured with The Musicians from Marlboro, and with pianist Mitsuko Uchida in performances of the complete Mozart Piano Trios. As a member of the Johannes Quartet, he collaborated with the Guarneri String Quartet on a tour, including premieres of works by Bolcom and Salonen.

Concerto appearances have included the Boston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Aspen Music Festival. He has also performed solo recitals at Jordan Hall in Boston, on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series, on the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series in Los Angeles, and at the Philips and Corcoran Galleries in Washington D.C. His awards include first prize in the Washington International Competition.

He has served on the cello faculties at the New England Conservatory and the University of Southern California.