Image by Jürgen Frank

Since winning the 1991 Naumburg Viola Award, Misha Amory has been active as a soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with orchestras in the United States and Europe, and has been presented in recital at New York’s Tully Hall, Los Angeles’ Ambassador series, Philadelphia’s Mozart on the Square festival, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Houston’s Da Camera series and Washington’s Phillips Collection. He has been invited to perform at the Marlboro Festival, the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Vancouver Festival, the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center and the Boston Chamber Music Society, and he has released a recording of Hindemith sonatas on the Musical Heritage Society label. Mr. Amory holds degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School; his principal teachers were Heidi Castleman, Caroline Levine and Samuel Rhodes. Himself a dedicated teacher, Mr. Amory serves on the faculties of the Juilliard School in New York City and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

Image by Jürgen Frank

A native of New York City, violinist Serena Canin is an active chamber musician, teacher and presenter.As a founding member of the Brentano Quartet, she has performed to critical acclaim around the world;she has also been heard at the Marlboro Festival, Chamber Music Quad Cities, Salt Bay Chamberfest,the Festival Internacional de Cartagena, the Continuum Series at Alice Tully Hall, and on tour with Music from Marlboro and the Brandenburg Ensemble. She has worked with young musicians at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Mannes Beethoven Institute, and the Chamber Music Center of New York. Serena is the director of Music Middays, a noontime series promoting young musicians in New York, where she lives with her husband, pianist Thomas Sauer, and their two sons.She holds degrees from Swarthmore College and The Juilliard School, where she studied with Robert Mann.

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Through a public school program, Nina Lee began

learning cello in Chesterfield, MO at the age of ten.

Six years later, she left home to study with David

Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia,

PA. She went on to complete her Bachelors and

Masters of Music at the Juilliard School in New York

City with Joel Krosnick, attended the Tanglewood

Music Festival, and toured with the Marlboro Music

Festival where she collaborated with Mitsuko Uchida,

Andras Schiff, Felix Galimir and Samuel Rhodes.

In 1999, Ms. Lee joined the Brentano Quartet with

whom she has been privileged to perform throughout

North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand,

China, and Japan. In addition, she has not only

recorded the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

but has also championed the new music represented in

her quartet’s commissioned works of Stephen Hartke,

Steve Mackey, Vijay Iyer, James MacMillan, Bruce

Adolphe, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Shulamit Ran (to

name a few). Ms. Lee has recorded for the Azica,

Naxos, Mode, Cantaloupe, Albany and Tzadik labels.

Among the various projects the Brentano Quartet has

undertaken, it was asked to record the soundtrack to

the 2012 film, “A Late Quartet” which centeredaround Beethoven’s Op. 131. The film, starring Philip

Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine

Keener also features Ms. Lee playing herself in a

cameo.

As important to her life as a musician, Ms. Lee has

made a commitment to teaching chamber music. She

has been on the faculty at Princeton and Columbia

Universities and is currently coaching chamber music

at the Yale School of Music where the Brentano

Quartet has been in residence since 2014.

In 2026, Ms. Lee joined the cello faculty at The

Juilliard School.

Regular summer appearances in performing and

teaching include the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival

and the Taos School of Music. Ms. Lee has also

participated as a guest faculty member at the St.

Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar, the

Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Kneisel Hall

and the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Portland,

ME. Additionally, she has made numerous

appearances at the Spoleto Festival USA and the La

Jolla SummerFest. Ms. Lee has also served on the jury

of the Salzburg International Quartet Competition in2023 and the Wigmore Hall International String

Quartet Competition Jury in 2025.

Ms. Lee makes her home in Brooklyn, New York

where she lives with her husband and two children.

When she isn’t playing the cello or teaching, she loves

spending time with her family, cooking, entertaining,

organizing chamber music salons and finding new

ways to be creative!

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Mark Steinberg has been first violinist of the Brentano Quartet since its inception in 1992. The quartet is ensemble in residence at Yale University, has performed around the world, has recorded extensively, and has won many awards, such as the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the inaugural Cleveland Quartet award and the Royal Philharmonic Society award for best debut in the UK. Mr. Steinberg has been soloist with the London Philharmonia, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kansas City Camerata, the Auckland Philharmonia, and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, with conductors such as Kurt Sanderling, Esa- Pekka Salonen and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Steinberg has appeared often in trio and duo concerts with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, with whom he presented the complete Mozart sonata cycle in London's Wigmore Hall in 2001, with additional recitals in other cities, recording several of the sonatas for Philips. He revisits the complete Mozart Sonatas starting in 2025 with pianist Jonathan Biss, at Wigmore Hall in London and in Philadelphia, amongst other cities. He has also toured in Europe and the US as guest concertmaster of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Mark Steinberg has a BM degree from Indiana University and an MM from The Juilliard School; his principal teachers have been Louise Behrend, Josef Gingold, and Robert Mann. Steinberg has been on quartet competition juries at the Banff International Quartet Competition, twice at the Wigmore Quartet Competition, and twice at the Mozart International Quartet Competition in Salzburg as well as the Naumburg Violin Competition and Chamber Music Competition, and will be on the jury for the 2027 Joseph Joachim violin competition. Steinberg has been and will be mentor-in-residence for the Banff International Quartet Competition, in 2022, 2025 and 2028. Steinberg is on the faculty of the Juilliard School and the CUNY Graduate Center, and has been on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. He has taught often at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Aspen Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, and the Taos School of Music and has given master classes at Rice University, the Eastman School of Music, the Cleveland Institute of Music, New England Conservatory, the Glenn Gould School, the Britten- Pears Institute in Aldeburgh, England, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Guildhall School in London, the Amsterdam Conservatory, the Basel Music Academy, Paris Pro Quartet, and numerous other schools.