14th Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC) (BISQC)

Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, cellist Estelle Choi has garnered top prizes as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She has gained international recognition as a founding member of the Calidore String Quartet, an ensemble that celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2020. Praised by the New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” the Calidore won the Grand-Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition. Choi is an Avery Fisher Career Grant winner, recipient of the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist award, BBC 3 New Generation Artist and Borletti-Buitoni Trust recipient, a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and alumni of the Bowers Program. Choi’s artistry has been broadly praised by critics like Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times who wrote that “her tone is rich, deep and powerful, giving the impression that music and the room are a single living being.” Choi studied with John Kadz in Calgary, Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music and Ronald Leonard at the Colburn Conservatory. She instructed cello performance and chamber music at the University of Houston. Choi teaches and performs at the University of Delaware. She holds a Masters degree from the Yale School of Music, and a Bachelor and Artist Diploma from the Colburn Conservatory of Music. 

James Ehnes is one of the world’s foremost violinists and a favorite guest of many of the world’s most celebrated orchestras and concert halls. Recent orchestral highlights include the National Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre National de France, Sydney Symphony, and Hong Kong Philharmonic. Alongside his concerto work, Ehnes maintains a busy recital schedule and is the Artistic Director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society. His extensive discography has won many awards, including two Grammys, three Gramophones, and 11 Junos. He began violin studies at the age of four, debuted with l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal at age 13 and graduated from The Juilliard School in 1997, winning the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Member of the Order of Canada, and is a professor at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. James Ehnes plays the “Marsick” Stradivarius of 1715.

Photo by Ben Ealovega

The Washington Post has praised violist Juan-Miguel Hernandez as having "...the sweetest, most sonorous tone...” (Charles T. Downey). The Atlanta Journal Constitution describes him as "...tender, lyrical, loaded with personality” (Pierre Ruhe). Performances as soloist and chamber musician have seen Juan-Miguel Hernandez on some of the world's leading halls, including Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Disney Hall (Los Angeles), Salzburg Mozarteum, King's Place (London), Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Wigmore Hall (London) and The White House.

As a soloist Juan-Miguel has made appearances with orchestras, including the Rochester Philharmonic, San Fransisco Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Sinfonietta, iPalpiti Orchestra, as well as the Colorado and Atlanta Symphonies. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Lynn Harrell, Ralph Kirshbaum, Kim Kashkashian, Gérard Caussé and Itzhak Perlman.

Chamber music being at the forefront of his career, Juan-Miguel was a member of the legendary Fine Arts Quartet (2013-2018) and original member of the Harlem Quartet (2006-2012), as well as a founder of the "Boreal Trio” (2012-2018) and ”Trio Virado" (2012-2021), both specialized in the creation of new repertoire. He has been a member of the UK based Kaleidoscope chamber collective since 2018.

Festival and program appearances as guest artist and pedagogue include the Festival Pablo Casal (Prades, France), the Festival Des Arcs (France), the Amalfi Coast Music Festival (Italy), Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (South Africa), the Brevard Summer Institute (USA), the Mozaic Festival (USA), Festicamara (Colombia), Montreal Jazz & Panama Jazz Festivals and Musica Mundi International Festival (Belgium), Borromeo (Switzerland) & Madeline Island (USA) Music Festivals, Toronto Summer Music & Orford Academy. In the summer of 2021 he was appointed Associate Artistic Director of the Festival Del lago International Music Festival (Mexico).

He has been featured on radio airwaves and television broadcasts throughout Canada, and the United States including NBC's Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR radio, PBS and the Telemundo Network and Radio-Canada. His collaborative recordings have been released by Cedille records, the White Pine, Navona, chandos and Naxos music labels.

Juan-Miguel was born in Montreal, Canada and began his musical studies at the age of seven. Among his teachers were Paul Coletti at the Colburn Conservatory and Kim Kashkashian at the New England Conservatory. He also worked with Paul Neubauer, Karen Tuttle, Steven Dann, James Dunham, Barbara Westphal, Garth Knox and Pinchas Zukerman.

Juan-Miguel won the first Prize at the International Johannes Brahms Competition (Austria), adding to other top prizes won at the National Canadian Music Competition, and the 9th National Sphinx Competition, presented by JPMorgan Chase. He was honoured with the medal of the National Assembly of Quebec for his significant international achievements.

His strong commitment to educate and engage new audiences all around the globe have brought him to reach young musicians and various communities through art convoys in South Africa and Venezuela, various music festivals in South America and outreach projects in Europe and North America.

In 2016 Juan-Miguel was appointed as Professor of Viola at the Royal Academy of Music (London) where he now remains as visiting professor after moving back to Montreal. In September 2021, he joined the faculty of music at Montreal university as invited Professor of Viola. He was invited to serve on the Jury of the Johannes Brahms International Competition/Austria (2017), the Sphinx National Competition/USA (2018, 2022 & 2023) and the Banff International String Quartet Competition (2022).

Beyond his extensive classical repertoire he has regularly performed with Jazz living legends Gary Burton, Stanley Clark, Paquito D'Rivera and Chick Corea. Further collaborations include Nora Jones" album "Broken Little Hearts” as well as the album "Hot House" playing alongside Chick Corea and Gary Burton for which a Grammy was awarded.

Juan-Miguel plays on a 2008 Miralles viola from Altadena/California.
 

Violinist Barnabás Kelemen has conquered the most famous concert halls in the world with his virtuoso technique and dynamic, passionate playing style. Versatile and open-minded, he is an outstanding soloist and chamber musician, as well as an artistic director of festivals and a teacher at renowned institutions. In recent years he has also worked as a conductor. 

He regularly performs at the world’s most prominent concert venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Royal Festival Hall, the Palais de Beaux Arts, Suntory Hall, and the Berliner Philharmonie. He is a frequent guest of such eminent ensembles as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Estonian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Hannover’s NDR Radiophilharmonie, to name but a few. 

He has recorded all of Bartók’s works for violin in the series of albums produced under the aegis of Zoltán Kocsis, and many received international acclaim, especially his CD comprised of Sonatas for Violin and Piano Nos 1 and 2 (featuring Kocsis) and Sonata for Solo Violin, which won the 2013 Gramophone Award. So far, he has released a total of 20 albums – 17 solo and three with his quartet – as well as a double DVD of live performances of Mozart’s complete violin concertos. 

Barnabás Kelemen has achieved outstanding results in prestigious contests, including first prizes at both the 1999 International Mozart Violin Competition in Salzburg and the 2002 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, and third prize at Brussels’ 2001 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition. His artistry has been recognized with the highest professional and state honours: he has been awarded Liszt and Kossuth Prizes and Prima and Gramophone Awards, and is the holder of the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. 

Together with Katalin Kokas, he is the founder and artistic director of the Festival Academy Budapest Chamber Music Festival, which regularly features artists such as Vilde Frang, Maxim Rysanov, Shlomo Mintz, and Joshua Bell. From 2010 to 2018 he was the leader of the Kelemen Quartet, which enjoyed a stellar international career and which recently started up again with a new formation. 

Barnabás Kelemen performs on the “ex-Dénes Kovács” Guarneri del Gesú violin of 1742, generously loaned to him by the Hungarian State.

Catherine Manson enjoys a versatile performing career as a soloist and chamber musician.  

As first violinist of the classical London Haydn Quartet she has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, London’s Wigmore Hall and the Sydney Opera House. The quartet’s series of recordings of the Haydn quartets on the Hyperion label has met with high critical acclaim internationally. 

She was appointed as leader of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in 2006. Together with the orchestra's director, Ton Koopman she has recorded the six obbligato sonatas by Bach, Haydn's concerto for violin and organ and the complete chamber music by Buxtehude. They have given many concerts together throughout Europe.  

She is frequently invited as guest leader of ensembles such as The Orchestra of the 18th Century, Collegium Vocale, the Smithsonian Chamber Players in USA and Arcangelo in the UK. She has also appeared as soloist and director with Tafelmusik in Canada and with the Orquesta Barrocca de Sevilla.  

Teaching has always been an important part of her musical life; in 2001 she co-founded and now directs MusicWorks, presenting chamber music courses for young musicians.  She has given masterclasses and workshops at conservatories in London, Lyon, Barcelona, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore as well as at Juilliard School, Yale and Indiana Universities.  

Grammy award-winning violinist and educator Károly Schranz has performed at some of the most prestigious venues in the world while mentoring the next generation of classical music luminaries.  Schranz co-founded the Takács Quartet in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest.  The quartet first received international attention in 1977, winning first prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The quartet also won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and first prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet (1978), London International String Quartet (1979), and the Bratislava (1981) competitions. The Takács Quartet made its North American debut in 1982 and has been in residence at the University of Colorado Boulder since 1983. 

During is 43-year tenure with the Takács Quartet, Schranz earned numerous awards, including the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance (2002), three Gramophone Awards for Best Chamber Music Album, BBC Record of the Year (2005), the Classical Brits Award for Best Chamber Music Album (2005), three Japanese Recording Academy Awards, and the Wigmore Hall Medal (2014), in addition to five Grammy Award nominations and four Gramophone Award nominations.  The Takács Quartet was the first string quartet to be inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame in 2012.   

Schranz previously served as co-founder and instructor of the University of Colorado Graduate String Quartet Program from 2006-2018, where he earned the Excellence in Research, Scholarly, and Creative Work Award, as well as Guest Professor and Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Faculty and Guest Artist at the Music Academy of the West and Aspen Music Festival and School.   

Notable collaborations include All the World for Love, a fourteen-city tour with poet laureate Robert Pinsky combining music and the spoken word, and Everyman, a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winning author Philip Roth and Oscar-award winning actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep combining readings from Roth’s novel of the same name and Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden”, as well as a long-standing relationship with the Hungarian folk group Muzsikás.   

Schranz has served as co-concertmaster of the Hungarian National Opera and the Budapest Philharmonic.  He has served on the juries of the London International String Quartet Competition and the International String Quartet Competition of Geneva, Switzerland.  He earned Artist and Teaching diplomas from the Franz Liszt Academy where he studied with Mihály Szücs, György Kurtág, and András Mihály.  

Born in Korea, Sung-Won Yang graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and was assistant to Janos Starker at Indiana University in the United States. He is regularly invited to be in the jury of the International Competitions such as International String Quartet competition in Banff, Canada, the International Cello Competition André Navarra in France, the International Cello Competition Cassado Japan and the Tongyeong International Competition in Korea. Recipient of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, he is currently a professor of cello at the School of Music Yonsei University in Seoul, visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and Artistic Director of the Festival Beethoven à Beaune, in France, as well as Music In PyeongChang Festival.

Violinist Aaron Boyd has established an international career as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral leader, recording artist, lecturer and pedagogue. Since making his New York recital debut in 1998, Boyd has appeared at the most prestigious venues throughout the United States, Europe, Russia and Asia and has participated in the Marlboro, Tippet Rise, La Jolla, Rockport, Aspen and Hong Kong and Music@Menlo festivals. Boyd has been a regular season artist of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 2012.  

A member of the Escher String Quartet for five seasons, Boyd was a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Martin E. Segal prize from Lincoln Center. As a passionate advocate for new music, Boyd has been involved in numerous commissions and premieres in concert and on record, and has worked directly with such legendary composers as Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter and Charles Wuorinen.  

Recently featured on Live From Lincoln Center’s “ODYSSEY: The Chamber Music Society in Greece”, Boyd has been broadcast in concert by PBS, NPR, WQXR and WQED, and was profiled by Arizona Public Television. Formerly on the violin faculties of Columbia University and the University of Arizona, Boyd now serves as Director of chamber music and Chair of Strings at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and makes his home in Plano, Texas, with his wife Yuko, daughter Ayu and son Yuki.  

Boyd plays on violins crafted by Matteo Goffriller in Venice, 1700, and Samuel Zygmuntowicz, Brooklyn, 2018

Concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO) since 2008, Andrew Wan is also Associate Professor of Violin at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University, Artistic Director of the OSM Chamber Soloists, member of the Juno and Opus award-winning New Orford String Quartet (NOSQ), and for the 2017-18 season, served as Artistic Partner of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

As a soloist, he has appeared in Canada, the United States, China, New Zealand, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, and Switzerland under conductors such as Maxim Vengerov, Peter Oundjian, Vasily Petrenko, the late James DePreist, and Rafael Payare. His live recording of the three Saint-Saëns Violin Concerti with Kent Nagano and the MSO was released by Analekta in the fall of 2015 to wide critical acclaim, garnering a Prix Opus and an ADISQ nomination. His next album release with Nagano and the MSO of concerti by Ginastera, Bernstein and Samy Moussa was released in the Fall of 2020 and won the 2021 Juno Award for Best Classical Album for Large Ensemble.

Mr. Wan has concertized extensively throughout the world, appearing in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Taipei’s National Theatre and Paris’ Salle Gaveau in chamber music performances with artists such as the Juilliard Quartet, Daniil Trifonov, Vadim Repin, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Marc-André Hamelin, Jörg Widmann, Menaham Pressler, and Cho-Liang Lin. He serves as guest concertmaster for the Pittsburgh, Houston, Indianapolis, Toronto, National Arts Centre and Vancouver symphonies, and has appeared as artist and faculty at the St. Prex, Seattle, Aspen, La Jolla, Toronto Summer, Morningside Music Bridge, Olympic, and Orford Music Festivals. Discography includes releases on the Analekta, Onyx, Bridge, ATMA, and Naxos labels with James Ehnes and the Seattle Chamber Music Society, the Felix award-winning OSM Chamber Soloists ensemble, the Grammy award-winning Metropolis Ensemble, and the Juno award-winning NOSQ. He recently completed his recordings of all of the Beethoven Piano and Violin Sonatas with Charles Richard-Hamelin, winning Opus, Felix prizes as well as receiving a Juno nomination.  

Mr. Wan received his Bachelor of Music, Master of Music and Artist Diploma degrees from the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Masao Kawasaki and Ron Copes. In the spring of 2019, he received the Part-Time Teaching Award from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University.

Andrew Wan performs on a 1744 Michel’Angelo Bergonzi violin, and gratefully acknowledges its loan from the David Sela Collection. He also enjoys the use of an 1860 Dominique Peccatte bow from Canimex.

GRAMMY Award winning cellist Andrew Yee has been praised by Michael Kennedy of the London Telegraph as “spellbindingly virtuosic”. Trained at the Juilliard School, they are a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet who have released several albums to Critical acclaim including Andrew’s arrangement of Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” which Thewholenote.com praised as “...easily the most satisfying string version of the work that I’ve heard.” They were the quartet-in-residence at the Met Museum in 2014, and have won the Osaka and Coleman international string quartet competitions. Their newest recording of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw won a GRAMMY for best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble performance. As a soloist last season Andrew performed John Taverner’s The Protecting Veil and Strauss Don Quixote. In 2019 they won the first prize at Oklahoma University’s National Arts Incubation Lab for their pitch of a wearable garment that translates sound into vibrations for the hard of hearing. They like to make stop-motion videos of food, draw apples, cook like an Italian Grandma and have developed coffee and cocktail programs for award-winning restaurants (Lilia, Risbobk, Atla) in New York City. 

Their solo project “Halfie” draws on their experience as a bi-racial and non-binary person in having access to multiple communities at once, while not feeling at home in any of them. The works commissioned and on the concerts will feature a wide range of composers all for solo cello. 

They play on an 1884 Eugenio Degani cello on loan from the Five Partners Foundation.