Faculty — HARPA INTERNATIONAL MUSIC ACADEMY USA

HIMA USA 2023 Artist Faculty

Advanced String Quartet Intensive and Chamber Music Intensive Faculty

Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin
Mari Sato, violin
Eric Wong, viola
Amit Even-Tov, cello

Junior String Workshop Faculty

Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin
Karin Brown, violin and viola
Emelinda Escobar, violin
Katherine Floriano, violin
Daniel Levitov, cello
Javier Otalora, violin and viola
Mari Sato, violin
Tatiana Lokhina, collaborative pianist
Amber Scherer, collaborative pianist

Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin

*Artistic Director and faculty for all three programs (String Quartet Intensive, Chamber Music Workshop and Junior String Workshop)*
Icelandic violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson is Professor of Violin at Oberlin Conservatory. He was previously violinist for 17 years with the Pacifica Quartet, with which he won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, Musical America Ensemble of the Year honors, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant among other honors.
As a member of the Pacifica Quartet, Bernhardsson appeared in more than 90 concerts worldwide each year, including engagements in Wigmore Hall (London), the Vienna Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall (New York), and other major venues. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, and the Reykjavík Arts Festival, and has collaborated with Menahem Pressler, Yo-Yo Ma, Jörg Widmann, Lynn Harrell, Leon Fleisher, the Emerson String Quartet, Johannes Moser, and members of the Guarneri and Cleveland quartets. His television appearances include The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the MTV Europe Music Awards with Icelandic artist Björk. He appears on 16 recordings with the Pacifica Quartet and has recorded the violin music of Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson and the sonatas for violin and piano by Franz Schubert.
Bernhardsson serves as director of the Cooper International Violin Competition at Oberlin and as artistic director of Iceland’s Harpa International Music Academy. He gives regular concerts and master classes in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has appeared as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, and other ensembles.
Bernhardsson is a 1995 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory. His teachers include Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, Almita and Roland Vamos, Mathias Tacke, and Shmuel Ashkenasi. He previously served on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.
Photo credit: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

Amit Even-Tov, cello

*String Quartet Intensive and Chamber Music Workshop Faculty*
Israeli cellist Amit Even-Tov serves as Associate Professor of Cello at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, and she is a member of the Ariel String Quartet. Amit conducted her bachelor’s studies at the New England Conservatory under the guidance of Paul Katz and Laurence Lesser; she also had additional studies with Walter Levin (violinist of the famed former CCM quartet-in-residence The LaSalle Quartet) as well as Miriam Fried and Itzhak Perlman. Even-Tov has earned a great deal of success as a soloist. She won first prize in international competitions including Israel’s Ben-Haim Competition and the special Jerusalem Academy Competition; in addition, she received 3rd prize in a national competition held by Kol Ha Musica radio (a national classical radio station based out of Jerusalem). Her long list of guest appearances as soloist and chamber musician include performances at the Verbier Festival (Switzerland), Great Lakes Chamber Festival (Southfield, Mich.), Ravinia Festival (Highland Park, Ill.) and the Yellow Barn Music Festival (Putney, Vt.).
As a member of the Ariel String Quartet (CCM String Quartet-in-Residence since 2012), Even-Tov has shared in winning the Cleveland Quartet Award, Grand Prize at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition (South Bend, Ind.), First Prize International at the “Franz Schubert and the Music of Modernity” Competition (Graz, Austria) and 3rd prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition (Banff, Alberta, Canada). The group also received the Székely Prize at the Banff Competition for their performance of Bartók’s string quartet No.4. She has been honored to share the stage with notable performers including Menahem Pressler, Alisa Weilerstein, David Krakauer, the American String Quartet and the Jerusalem String Quartet. During their stay at CCM, the members of the Ariel Quartet have had the honor of giving a complete performance of all of Beethoven’s string quartets (dubbed “The Cycle”) in early 2014, a feat they have since repeated in the US and internationally five times.
Even-Tov and the other members of the Quartet are touring and concertizing extensively in North and South America, Canada, Europe, Israel and Asia; these travels have included multiple appearances in New York’s Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, as well as other prestigious American and international locations including The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts (Washington, D.C.), Kaisersaal (Frankfurt, Germany) and others.
Photo credit: Marco Borggreve

Mari Sato, violin

Faculty for all three programs (String Quartet Intensive, Chamber Music Workshop, and Junior String Workshop)
Violinist Mari Sato has enjoyed a rich and varied career as a solo, orchestra and primarily chamber musician based in Cleveland. Described as “a visceral and engaging storyteller,” by clevelandclassical.com, Mari was the second violinist of the award-winning Cavani String Quartet for twenty-four years. During her tenure with the Cavani Quartet (1995-2019), Mari gave concerts on major series, including Carnegie Hall, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Festival de L’Epau in France, and the Honolulu Chamber Music Society.
Ms. Sato is honored to have collaborated with many distinguished artists including members of the Cleveland, Juilliard, Miami, Ying, Emerson, Borodin, Amadeus, St. Lawrence and Colorado String Quartets, the Weilerstein Trio, Itzhak Perlman, Robert Mann, Anton Nel, Stephanie Blythe and Charles Neidich. Music festival appearances and residencies include The Aspen Music Festival, The New World Symphony, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, Interlochen Center for the Arts, The Perlman Music Program, ChamberFest Cleveland, and Encore Chamber Music.
Formerly on faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music 1995-2018, Mari Sato and her colleagues coached many outstanding young musicians in the Intensive Quartet Seminar and the Apprentice Quartet Seminar. Former chamber music students include members of the Jupiter, Daedalus, Aeolus, Miró, Fry Street, Verona and Afiara Quartets, as well as members of the Cleveland, St. Paul, Minnesota, Chicago, Detroit, and New York Philharmonic Orchestras. From 2018, Ms. Sato has worked with students at the Oberlin Conservatory and the MYCO chamber music program in North Carolina.
Since 2019, Mari has been fortunate to play chamber music with her colleagues in the Pantheon Ensemble as part of CityMusic Cleveland and No Exit New Music Ensemble. She performs regularly with her violinist friend, Andrew Sords and pianist, Elizabeth DeMio performing violin duo repertoire. Ms. Sato performs also as a substitute violinist in the Cleveland Orchestra and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
A strong supporter of new music, Mari Sato has been privileged to work closely with Margaret Brouwer, Joan Tower, Andrew Waggoner, Adam Roberts, and Hannah Kendall. She has recorded for Naxos, Albany Records, New World Records, Azica Records and Gasparo Records. Donald Rosenberg for Gramophone wrote in a review for Margaret Brouwer’s 2022 Naxos CD—“The stresses of the pandemic and the scourge of inequality are depicted in fervent terms in I Cry- Summer 2020, which Sato and Wang give an intensely compelling performance.”
Ms. Sato received her musical training at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Michigan. Her mentors include David Cerone, Paul Kantor, and Peter Salaff. Shaker Heights is her home where she lives with her husband and two sons.
Photo credit: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

Eric Wong, viola

*String Quartet Intensive and Chamber Music Workshop Faculty*
Described as possessing a “tone like toasted caramel. Amazing.” (Musical Toronto), Eric Wong is the violist of the Blair String Quartet and assistant professor of viola at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. He has appeared on the world’s most iconic stages including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Severance Music Center, Kings Place, Koerner Hall, Roy Thomson Hall, the Banff Centre, and as a featured guest artist at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Venue highlights from recent seasons have been the Seosomun Shrine History Museum, Musikhuset København, the Rozsa Centre, Koerner Recital Hall, and Merkin Hall.
Wong is a frequent guest clinician and lecturer in festivals and institutions of higher learning around the globe that have included Yale University, the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, American University, Montclair State University, the Royal Academy of Music of Århus, Middlesex University, Tongyeong International Music Festival, and the University of Toronto. During the summer season, he is on faculty artist rosters for Encore Chamber Music Institute’s Summer Academy, Pacific Crest Music Festival, Harpa International Music Academy, and Music at Port Milford and is a frequent guest artist at the Geneva Music Festival, Caroga Lake Music Festival, and Summer Music Vancouver. In 2017 Wong was among the first artist-clinicians and educators selected by D’Addario’s for the company’s innovative “Strings 101” program.
A lifelong quartet devotee, Wong has been a member of the Afiara and Cavani String Quartets and a founding member of the Linden String Quartet, winner of the 2010 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, Grand Prize and Gold Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Coleman-Barstow Prize at the Coleman National Chamber Ensemble Competition, ProQuartet Prize at the 9th Borciani International String Quartet Competition, and recipient of a 2011 A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Fellowship.
As a member of the Afiara Quartet, ensemble-in-residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) in Toronto, Wong had equal footing in both the worlds of Mozart and Beethoven and those of hip-hop and experimental multimedia. The Afiara album “Spin Cycle”, a collaboration with four Canadian composers and DJ Skratch Bastid, garnered a JUNO award nomination and was named one of Forbes Magazine’s ‘Best Classical Recordings of 2015’ and the CBC’s ‘Best Classical Albums of 2015’. The Guardian declared Afiara's contribution to the internationally-lauded “Nufonia Must Fall Live”, a multimedia theater adaptation of DJ Kid Koala’s graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall, both “emotionally stirring” and “lighthearted and humorous”. Afiara was also the ensemble-in-residence of McMaster University’s Department of Neuroscience and studies by McMaster neuroscientists and the Quartet have been featured on the Discovery Channel and in other national publications. With Afiara, Wong was a member of the Health Arts Society of Ontario whose mission was to bring live performances to audiences in chronic care residencies with limited budgets to provide quality-of-life programs.
During the Cavani Quartet’s residency at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) and alongside legendary Cleveland Quartet violinist Peter Salaff, Wong helped to curate one of the world’s leading chamber music programs of the era. The Cavani was also ensemble-in-residence at the Music Settlement and of Encore Chamber Music’s String Quartet Intensive with the mission of creating, strengthening, and uniting Cleveland communities with chamber music and teamwork as catalysts. In 2021, the Cavani completed a reimagined Beethoven Cycle called “Beyond Beethoven” that partnered Beethoven’s sixteen with nine other string quartet works, including two Cavani commissions, by living composers from underrepresented backgrounds. The project culminated in a performance at Severance Music Center bringing together more than 80 Cleveland public school music students to join their teachers and the Cavani in a large ensemble version of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 and the world premiere of a string quartet concerto by Josh Henderson.
Wong’s chamber music collaborators have included the Verona, Rolston, and Tokyo Quartets, Julie Albers, Jinjoo Cho, Clive Greensmith, Mathieu Herzog, Jaime Laredo, Geoff Nuttall, Itzhak Perlman, David Shifrin, Donald Weilerstein, and pianist and former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others. He previously served as principal violist of CityMusic Cleveland, Assistant Concertmaster of the Akron Symphony Orchestra, and Associate Concertmaster of the Canton Symphony Orchestra. He received both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from CIM, studying violin with Paul Kantor and viola with Kirsten Docter and Lynne Ramsey. Other transformative coaches and mentors have included Peter Salaff and the Cavani and Tokyo Quartets.

Angela Cheng, piano

*Performing Artist Faculty*
Consistently praised for her brilliant technique, tonal beauty, and superb musicianship, Canadian pianist Angela Cheng is one of her country’s national treasures.
During the 2019/2020 season, Ms. Cheng served as an Artistic Partner of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra where she performed three concertos throughout the season. Other highlights of the season include return engagements with the symphonies of Vancouver, Victoria, and Nova Scotia. In the U.S., Ms. Cheng performed with the symphonies of Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Richmond and Canton, as well as the IRIS Chamber Orchestra.
Angela Cheng has given concerts in Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and the 92nd Street Y in New York. She has also performed in the Musikverein in Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg and the Sydney Opera House. She has appeared at the Verbier, Edinburgh, Miyazaki, St. Petersburg/Stars of the White Nights, and Enescu/Romania Festivals.
An avid recitalist, Angela Cheng appears regularly on recital series throughout the United States and Canada and has collaborated with numerous chamber ensembles including the Takács, Colorado, and Vogler quartets. Festival appearances have included Banff, Bravo! Vail, Chautauqua, Colorado, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla’s SummerFest, Ravinia, Vancouver, the Festival International de Lanaudière in Quebec, Toronto Summer Music Festival, the Cartegena International Music Festival in Colombia and the Schleswig-Holstein festival in Germany.

Junior String Workshop Faculty

Karin Brown, violin and viola

Junior String Workshop faculty

Karin Brown received critical acclaim for her “strikingly rich and warm tone” (The Strad) after making her solo recital debut at Carnegie Weill Hall. Ms. Brown is Assistant Principal Violist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and performs frequently as soloist and chamber musician in the Baltimore/Washington area. She made her Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concerto debut performing the Britten Double Concerto, of which The Baltimore Sun noted “Karin Brown sculpted her phrases in a rich, subtly shaded tone.” Her Chicago recital debut took place with live radio broadcast at the Dame Myra Hess series. Ms. Brown was hailed “a notable soloist” by the Washington Post after her performance of Bach’s Sixth Brandenburg Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony. Recent performances include collaborations with the contemporary music group Alarm Will Sound, members of eighth blackbird and the Borromeo Quartet, as well as performances of Britten’s Lachrymae with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Brown has served as juror, Laureate recitalist, and masterclass clinician at the William Primrose International Viola Competition, and returned as Laureate recitalist and masterclass clinician. She has been a guest artist at the Oberlin Conservatory for a teaching and performance residency and serves as faculty at the National Orchestral Institute (NOI). More recently, she has collaborated with her viola section colleagues at the Baltimore Symphony as part of an online performance series called “Lunch Bachs” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ms. Brown has been a prizewinner in numerous competitions, including the William Primrose International Viola Competition and the National Federation of Music Clubs Competition. She has been featured in Caramoor’s “Rising Stars” series, and gives masterclasses and recitals across the country. An advocate for new music, she has performed several premieres, and strives to program music by women composers, lesser known masterworks, and American music. She has been a frequent performer and clinician at American Viola Society Festivals, most recently performing the world premiere of violist/composer Christian Colberg’s work The Rant. In addition, with violist Renate Falkner, she has performed and lectured on pedagogue Roland Vamos’s celebrated double stop exercises. While still a student at Juilliard, Ms. Brown was a frequent substitute with the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera, joining each for several international tours. She has performed on numerous major motion picture soundtracks.

She received her Bachelor’s degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and her Master’s degree from the Juilliard School, where she was a recipient of the Nathan Gordon Memorial Viola Award. Ms. Brown has studied with Cynthia Phelps, Roland and Almita Vamos, Lynne Ramsey, Samuel Rhodes, and Zoya Leybin. A committed teacher, she has been recognized as Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the American String Teachers Association, Maryland/DC chapter. She serves as faculty at the Baltimore School for the Arts, and previously at NOI/Pacific Music Institute in Honolulu, Catholic University, Apple Hill, Foulger International Music Festival and the Killington Music Festival. She maintains a private studio of violin and viola students, and her students have been accepted to the New World Symphony, the Juilliard School, Oberlin, Eastman, New England Conservatory, University of Michigan, Rice University, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and Peabody.

Emelinda Escobar, violin

Junior String Workshop faculty

Born and raised in Illinois, Emelinda is an established performer in the Chicago area. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Violin Performance from the University of Illinois in 2012, studying with The Pacifica Quartet and Sibbi Bernhardsson, and her Master’s degree in Music from Northwestern University in 2014, studying under Gerardo Ribeiro. During her school studies, Emelinda participated in the Green Mountain Music Festival, Meadowmount School of Music, Triada Music Festival, Camp Musical des Laurentides in Canada and a string quartet intensive in Iceland.

In 2014, Emelinda won the Concertmaster chair of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, launching her career as a violinist in the Chicago area. Her many accomplishments include performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, multiple performances at Carnegie Hall, radio performances in Chicago with Yo-Yo Ma, and performing with Chance the Rapper on his Magnificent Coloring World film. She has been a guest soloist with Trinity University Orchestra, the South Loop Orchestra, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago performing such works as the Sibelius violin concerto, Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, and the Brandenburg Concertos, among others. In addition, she has acted as teaching faculty at music festivals such as the Meadowmount School of Music, Illinois Summer Youth Music and is currently a chamber music coach with the Elgin Chamber Academy.

Emelinda currently performs with the Chicago Opera Theater Orchestra, the Elgin Symphony, the Chicago Philharmonic, and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. She is also currently a member of the Zafa Collective, an ensemble dedicated to performing new music composed by women of color. During the pandemic, Emelinda founded Lieta Music, a chamber music initiative that safely brought string quartet performances and masterclasses to neighborhoods and schools in and around Chicago’s northside area. In addition to performing, Emelinda also maintains a private studio of students in the Chicago area.