Quartett-in-Residence

Cassatt String Quartet

Muneko Otani, violin

Muneki Otani is currently on the faculty of Columbia University, The Mannes College of Music and the Mozarteum Summer Festival in Salzburg.
She has performed as a soloist with the Tokyo Chamber Orchestra as well as the Norfolk Festival Orchestra. Ms. Otani has held fellowships at both the Banff and Tanglewood Summer Festivals. She received the Bachelor of Music degree in both performance and education from the Toho Academy of Music in Japan, where she studied with Toshiya Eto. She then continued her training at the New England Conservatory, where her principal teachers were Masuko Ushioda and Louis Krasner.
Ms. Otani plays a 1770 J.B. Guadagnini of Parma violin.

Jennifer Leshnower, violin

Jennifer Leshnower works with young students nationwide coaching chamber music.  She has concertized with members of the Cleveland, Orion and Amadeus Quartets and as a former member of the Thouvenel String Quartet, Ms. Leshnower has performed at the Festival Institute at Round Top and the String Seminar while touring throughout the country.  She has participated in the Meadowmount and Aspen Music Festivals as well as the National Repertory Orchestra and has coached with members of the Guarneri, Tokyo and Juilliard Quartets.
Ms. Leshnower trained at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the Peabody Conservatory with Sergiu Luca and Sylvia Rosenberg.
Ms. Leshnower's violin is a 1655 Jacobus Stainer.

Michiko Oshima, viola

For nearly a decade, Ms. Oshima was the violist of the Cassatt String Quartet, which was honored with many awards including the First Prize of the 1997 Slee Beethoven String Quartet Cycle Competition, the Wardwell Chamber Music Fellowship at Yale (where she was a teaching assistant to the Tokyo Quartet members), the 1995 CMA/ASCAP First Prize Award of Adventurous Programming. She has collaborated with David Schiffrin, Abby Simon, Lewis Kaplan and members of the Cleveland, Amadeus, and Concord Quartets among many others. As a member of the quartet, she was frequently invited to give performances and masterclasses at Bowdoin, Round Top and Swannanoa Summer Festivals as well as State University at Buffalo, Syracuse University, Rice University and Interlochen Arts Academy.
Since she left the quartet in summer of 2000, Ms. Oshima has moved her base to Tokyo and appears frequently as a solo and chamber music concerts. She is currently is on faculty of viola and chamber music at Toho School of Music Orchestra Academy. As a dedicated chamber music coach, she has coached several weekend chamber music workshops in Japan. In fall 2002, she joined the Tanner Chamber Ensemble, and she started teaching violin and chamber music at Yokohama International School.
Ms. Oshima holds BA from Toho School of Music, and Performers Certificate from Eastman School of Music. Her teachers include Kenji Kobayashi, Martha Strongin Katz and the Cleveland Quartet.

Nicole Johnson, cello

Nicole Johnson has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and Germany. She has appeared in performances with the Vermeer Quartet on their series in Chicago, on the Composers' Guild concerts in New York City and at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Most recently, she was the cellist of the Avanti Ensemble in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she also chaired the cello and chamber music departments at the Renaissance Music Academy.
Ms. Johnson holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. Her teachers have included Andrés Díaz, Alan Harris and Joel Krosnick.
Ms. Johnson plays an 1806 Nicholas cello.

...hailed as one of America's outstanding ensembles, the Manhattan based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East, with prestigious appearances at New York's Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Theater, the Kennedy Center and The Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and Maeda Hall in Tokyo. The group has frequently been heard on WGBH, WQXR and WNYC, and has also presented programs on CBC Radio and Radio France.

Formed in 1985 with the encouragement of the Juilliard Quartet, the Cassatt initiated and were the inaugural participants in Juilliard's Young Artists Quartet Program. Their numerous awards include a Tanglewood Chamber Music Fellowship, the Wardwell Chamber Music Fellowship at Yale (where they served as teaching assistants to the Tokyo Quartet), First Prizes at the Fischoff and Coleman Chamber Music Competitions, two top prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, two CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, a recording grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and two grants received in 2005 from Meet the Composer and the E. Nakamichi Foundation.

The Cassatt celebrates their twentieth Anniversary during the 2005-2006 Season with premieres of works by Libby Larsen for Quartet and Children's Choir at Syracuse University through a commissioning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Jay Reise's Piano Quintet with pianist Marc-André Hamelin at the University of Pennsylvania through a commissioning grant from the Barlow Foundation as well as Schafer Mahony's Piano Quintet with pianist Peter Basquin at New York's Hunter College. Other highlights include educational residencies at Canada's Music at Port Milford and in the Norwalk, Connecticut Public Schools as well as performances at the Syracuse International Film Festival, the Bessie Bartlett Frankel Chamber Music Festival at California's Scripps College and at New York's Kosciuszko Foundation with pianist Roman Markowicz.

Their ongoing residencies include the University of Pennsylvania and Syracuse University as well as summer residencies at Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Seal Bay Chamber Music Festival.

Recent CD releases include works by Pulitizer Prize-winner Steven Stucky on Albany Records, Quartets by Berlin Prize-winner Sebastian Currier on the New World label, Ezra Laderman's Flute Quintet with Ransom Wilson on Albany Records, and String Quartets by Daniel S. Godfrey on Koch International Classics which The New Yorker magazine recommended as one of the top eleven CD's in 2004.

The Cassatt has recorded for the Koch, New World, Point, CRI, Tadzik and Albany labels and is named for the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Permian Basin String Quartet

http://www.samfa.org/Chamber-07-08-pbsq.htm
The Permian Basin String Quartet is the string ensemble in residence with the Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale (MOSC). The quartet performs regularly in Midland, Odessa, and throughout west Texas. In addition to their duties with the quartet, all four members remain active as performers and teachers. They serve as principal and section players with the Abilene Philharmonic, and the Lubbock and San Angelo Symphony Orchestras.

Teaching is an integral part of the quartet's duties as they each maintain private teaching studios, and serve as adjunct faculty at Midland College. Members of the quartet have furthered their chamber music studies through coachings and master classes with such prestigious ensembles as the Juilliard, Cleveland, Orion, and Takacs quartets. The players are also veterans of reputable music festivals including Tanglewood, Domaine Forget, Music Academy of the West, Bowdoin, and Aspen.

John Madura, a native of Arden Hills, Minnesota, began studying the violin at the age of three and has been playing professionally since he was six years old.

Highlights of Mr. Madura's career include winning the 2004 Texas Tech University Concerto Competition and performing the Brahms Violin Concerto with the TTU Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gary Lewis. He was also invited to perform Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with the Caprock Pro Musica Chamber Ensemble in a concert celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. The following summer, Mr. Madura was selected as a finalist in the Schlern International Music Competition taking place in Schlern, Italy.

Mr. Madura has an extensive history in orchestral performance and has been part of symphony orchestras in Midland, Lubbock, Abilene, San Angelo and Big Spring in Texas and Baton Rouge and Lafayette in Louisiana. He was also Concertmaster of the Natchez Opera Orchestra and was Assistant Concertmaster for the Abilene Opera Orchestra. Mr. Madura has performed with Chamber Music Amarillo and was invited to participate in the Quartz Mountain Music Festival Orchestra. He has performed with major artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Brad Leali, The Smothers Brothers, Mercedes Ellington, Sarah Brightman, Sandi Patty and Smokey Robinson.

Key instructors for Mr. Madura include Dr. John Gilbert at TTU, James Alexander and Kevork Mardirossian at Louisiana State University and Elizabeth Ericksen of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Mr. Madura enjoys teaching, playing the violin in both chamber and orchestral ensembles and is also an avid painter. He is also a new father to a baby girl, Madeline Claire Madura.

Mario Dimitrov, violin, is a native of Sofia, Bulgaria where as a student won several violin competitions including the National Competition for Young Musical Talents and the Concerto Competition with his performance of Mozart Violin Concerto No.5. In 1993 he was admitted to the Summer Academy of Tibor Varga in Sion, Switzerland where he received a performance diploma.
Mr. Dimitrov holds a Master of Music degree and Doctoral Degree /ABD/ from Louisiana State University where he received several awards including the LSU String Scholarship, Louisiana Music Award, the Music Club Award, and the Concerto Competition Award for his performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto for Violin. He was a member of the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra and he was invited to attend the Hiber Spring Chamber Music Festival in 2004 and International Institute of Round Top in 2005. His teachers were Kevork Mardirossian, Ifrah Neaman, and Stefan Georgiu.

Colin Garner, viola, received undergraduate degrees in viola performance and music education from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a master of music degree in viola performance from the University of Southern California. His principal viola teachers were Donald McInnes, Ralph Fielding, and Erika Eckert. He studied chamber music with members of the Cleveland, Takacs, Juilliard, Cavani, Hungarian, and Manhattan string quartets.

Mr. Garner's music festival experience includes the Music Academy of the West, National Repertory Orchestra, Bowdoin, Encore, Aspen, and the Tanglewood music center where he served as principal violist for the festival of contemporary music orchestra. Prior to his appointment with the Midland/Odessa symphony as principal violist, Mr. Garner performed with the New World Symphony, the Colorado Music Festival, served as associate principal violist in the Colorado Springs Philharmonic, and was a member of the Colorado Ballet Orchestra. He also teaches privately, and is an adjunct faculty member at Midland College.

Sarah Wilson, cello, made her Carnegie Hall debut at age 17 as principal cellist of the National Youth Orchestra under the direction of Lukas Foss. Since then Ms. Wilson has performed throughout the Eastern, Southern and Midwest United States as well as Canada, Mexico, Holland, Italy, and Switzerland. Her festival appearances include orchestral, chamber, and solo performances at Zephyr Music Festival in Courmayeur, Italy, International Festival of Domaine Forget in Quebec, Canada, Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, Maine, Killington Music Festival in Killington, Vermont, Brevard Music Festival in Brevard, North Carolina, Texas Music Festival in Houston Texas, and Oberlin at Casalmaggiore in Casalmaggiore, Italy.

A firm believer in the importance of diversifying the musical canon, Ms. Wilson has dedicated herself to performing lesser known works from the Classical repertoire as well as works from the 20th and 21st centuries. To this end she has performed cello works of Leos Janacek, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, James MacMillan, Samuel Ades, and Elliott Carter. Ms. Wilson gave the world premier of "Gemini" for cello and piano, a piece which was written for and dedicated to her by Jacob Gotlib. As principal cellist of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, she collaborated with the new music ensemble Eighth Blackbird.

Ms. Wilson holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Cello Performance from the renowned Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and a Master of Music degree from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. Now a resident of Midland, Texas, Ms. Wilson serves as principal cello for the Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale, guest principal cello of the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra, and cellist for the Permian Basin String Quartet.

Ms. Wilson performs on an Italian instrument from 1757, attributed to the school of Calvarola.