Featured Musicians

We are honored to present a truly exceptional roster of musicians who are known worldwide for their mastery, artistry, and profound interpretations– promising an unforgettable series of performances.

Wendy Sutter

Renowned soloist and chamber musician, praised as “one of the great leading cellists of the classical stage” (The Wall Street Journal).

  • Heralded as “one of the great leading cellists of the classical stage” by The Wall Street Journal, Wendy Sutter has proven herself as one of the foremost and most versatile soloists of her generation. Having performed extensively across five continents, she has been acclaimed by critics worldwide, with praise from The New York Times, Strad Magazine, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle.

    Ms. Sutter has appeared frequently as soloist with major orchestras including The Dallas Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Brussels Philharmonic, Shanghai Symphony, Shenzhen Symphony, Royal Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, Tucson Symphony, Northern Netherlands Orchestra, Juilliard Symphony, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, and La Jolla Symphony.

    She has toured internationally as soloist with The Youth Orchestra of the Americas and the Shanghai Symphony, performing throughout China, South America, Europe, the UK, and the United States. Her solo appearances include many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including The Kennedy Center, The Barbican, David Geffen Hall, and Bozar. She has collaborated with some of the world’s most esteemed conductors, including Jaap van Zweden, Marin Alsop, Gerard Schwarz, Dante Anzolini, Mikhail Jurowski, Michel Tabachnik, and Tan Dun.

    A highly sought-after chamber musician, Ms. Sutter appears regularly at major festivals including Marlboro, Mostly Mozart, Spoleto, Ravinia, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, and the Gingold Festival. She has performed countless solo recitals worldwide, in venues such as The Barbican, Carnegie Hall, Bargemusic, Lincoln Center, and the Death of Classical series in New York City.


    Equally accomplished in the world of contemporary music, Ms. Sutter has been the dedicatee of nearly 20 new works for solo cello by some of the most significant composers of our time, including Philip Glass, Don Byron, John King, and Martin Matalon. In 2025, she was awarded the prestigious Koussevitzky Commission Grant from the Library of Congress, supporting the creation and premiere of a new cello sonata by composer Don Byron.


    Of particular note, Philip Glass’s Songs and Poems—his first-ever solo cello work, written for Ms. Sutter in 2007—earned worldwide acclaim from both critics and audiences. The recording was voted Best New CD of the Year by National Public Radio listeners and became the second-best-selling classical download on iTunes. The Wall Street Journal praised her performance:

    “Sutter throws herself into the music with something like ferocity, playing each repetition as if she’s never played the one before. Or maybe she’s just so intense that everything feels new. And so the music never stands still.”

    Immediately following her studies at The Juilliard School, Ms. Sutter was invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to serve as the onstage solo cellist for the creation and world premiere of A Suite of Dances, choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Sutter and Baryshnikov went on to perform the piece over 100 times together, across every continent, including frequent guest appearances with the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center.

    Among her many notable solo recital appearances, Ms. Sutter was invited to perform for Bill and Melinda Gates at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and has presented the complete Britten Suites for solo cello in a single evening in both Seattle and New York City, as well as at The Winspear Opera House in Dallas. She also performed the complete Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano at Bargemusic in New York City.

    During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ms. Sutter performed and livestreamed the complete Bach Cello Suites in a single day from Judson Church in New York City, reaching an online audience of over 10,000 viewers worldwide. The event was named “The Musical Event of the Week” by The New York Times and was widely praised for its emotional resonance, depth, and stamina during an unprecedented moment for the arts.

    In addition to her performing career, Ms. Sutter is a 2025 participant in the prestigious Stanford University Graduate School of Business LEAD Program in Corporate Innovation and Leadership, deepening her commitment to transformative leadership in the arts and expanding her work at the intersection of artistic excellence, entrepreneurship, and social impact.

    Ms. Sutter plays on a Giovanni Battista Ceruti Circa 1810.

    She is also the Founder & Artistic Director of Chamber Music at Churchtown– you can learn more here.

Todd Phillips

Founding member of the acclaimed Orion String Quartet, with a 37-year career as quartet-in-residence at Lincoln Center and beyond.

  • Todd Phillips made his solo debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony at the age of thirteen and has appeared with many orchestras throughout the United States, Europe and Japan since then, including the Brandenberg Ensemble, the Jacksonville and Honolulu Symphonies, Camerata Salzburg and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1982 with the New York String Orchestra and conductor Alexander Schneider.

    Mr. Phillips is a founding member of the highly acclaimed Orion String Quartet, which recently concluded their 37-year career as a group. The Orion Quartet has been the quartet-in-residence at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Mannes College of Music and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Their television appearances have included PBS’ “Live from Lincoln Center”, three performances on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, and A&E’s “Breakfast with the Arts”. The Quartet’s recordings of the complete Beethoven quartets have received unanimous acclaim from critics and audiences alike. They are in the process of preserving their legacy of music-making by posting both commercial recordings and recordings of live performances on their YouTube channel. So far, there are more than forty works available to listen to.

    Todd Phillips’ experience as a frequent leader of the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has led to engagements as conductor/leader with the Camerata Nordica of Sweden, the New World Symphony, the Brandenberg Ensemble, the Tapiola Sinfonietta of Finland, and the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra.

    Mr. Phillips serves on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he is also co-director of the new chamber music workshop, CMI@CIM.

    Mr. Phillips lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, violinist Catherine Cho, and is the father of four children: Lia, Eliza, Jason, and Brandon, and the grandfather of Theo and Mila.

Catherine Cho

Celebrated recitalist, chamber musician, and Avery Fisher Career Grant Winner, performing on renowned stages worldwide including Lincoln Center, Salzburg, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.

  • Catherine Cho is recognized for her remarkable virtuosity, combining technical mastery of her instrument with an extraordinary and distinctive musicality. Praised by The New York Times for her "sublime tone", she has appeared worldwide as soloist with many orchestras and chamber ensembles as well as in recitals. Her repertoire ranges from the traditional works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms to those of Bartók, Korngold and Berg, in addition to music of our time.

    Catherine Cho's orchestral engagements have included performances with the Detroit and National Symphony orchestras, the Buffalo Philharmonic and Virginia Symphony, the Montreal, Edmonton, and National Arts Centre Orchestras in Canada, the Korean Broadcasting Symphony, the Barcelona Symphony, the Het Gelders Orkest in Holland, the Orchestra of the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and the Aspen Chamber Symphony. She has performed with the symphony orchestras of La Coruna and Mallorca in Spain; Caracas, Venezuela; and Daejon, Korea. Ms. Cho has toured Israel with the Haifa Symphony, and was the soloist on a concert tour in Japan and Korea with the Juilliard Orchestra and Hugh Wolff conducting. In 2002, she appeared as a special guest soloist with the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center for two ballets by renowned choreographer Peter Martins including the New York premiere of his ballet Viva Verdi. A regular guest on tour with "Musicians from Marlboro", Ms. Cho has also been a participant in their summer Music Festival in Vermont since 1993. In January 1999 she appeared as soloist with the Jeunesse Musicale World Orchestra including a concert at the Berlin Philharmonie Hall, and was immediately re-invited to be the soloist for a special New York concert at Riverside Church during the orchestra's North American concert tour in August 1999. Her collaborations with distinguished conductors include Mstislav Rostropovich, Robert Spano, Sixten Ehrling, Franz-Paul Decker, and Hugh Wolff.

    In broadcasts heard around the world, Catherine Cho has appeared on such stations as Radio Frankfurt (Germany), CBC (Canada), WQXR (New York City), and National Public Radio. Ms. Cho's concert performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in December 2000, with the Buffalo Philharmonic under the baton of Jo-Ann Falletta, was taped live and broadcast nationwide on PBS in January 2002. Her live recording of the Vivaldi Four Seasons with the Korean Chamber Ensemble was released in June 2003.  She has also recorded works by Harbison, Lerdahl, and Moravec for Bridge Records.

    As a recitalist and chamber musician, Catherine Cho has performed on the prestigious stages of Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society at New York's Lincoln Center, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Casals Hall in Tokyo, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the 92nd St. "Y", the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, and on Ravinia's "Rising Stars" series in Chicago. In 2003, Ms. Cho opened the season in Seoul, Korea with performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven's violin sonatas. She has appeared at the Aspen and Marlboro music festivals, as well as Chamber Music Northwest, Bridgehampton, Eastern Shore, Rockport, Skaneateles, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festivals. She has participated in eleven Music from Marlboro tours, and is a founding member of the chamber ensemble, La Fenice.  She was a member of the Johannes String Quartet from 2003-6.

    Among her various awards, scholarships, and achievements, Ms. Cho was a recipient of both the 1995 Avery Fisher Career Grant designed to recognize outstanding American instrumentalists who exhibit strong potential for solo careers, and Korea's 1995 World Leaders of Tomorrow Award as presented by the Korea Central Daily News in recognition of outstanding achievement and commendable leadership in the Arts. She was the recipient of the 1994 Sony ES Award for Musical Excellence; a top prize winner at the 1991 Hannover International Violin Competition, the 1989 Queen Elizabeth Music Competition of Belgium, the 1987 Montreal International Music Competition; and a 1988 Presidential Scholar in the Arts. In 1995, Catherine Cho served on the jury of the Montreal International Violin Competition. In 1996, she was selected for the Janet and Avery Fisher Music Residency Program at Goucher College. Ms. Cho holds a Masters Degree from the Juilliard School where she studied with Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang, and coached chamber music with Felix Galimir. Her former teachers include Ruggiero Ricci, Franco Gulli, and Michael Avsharian. Now a member of the violin and chamber music faculty at the Juilliard School, Ms. Cho has also taught at the Starling-DeLay Symposium, Heifetz Institute, New York String Seminar, Seoul Music Festival and Academy, and the Perlman Music Program. Devoted to the cause of promoting peace through music, Catherine Cho is VP of the Board of Musicians For Harmony.

    Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Catherine Cho gave her first public performance at the age of four, and made her official concert debut at age eleven with the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra in Copenhagen, Denmark. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Todd Phillips, and their son, Brandon.

Jesse Mills

Two-time Grammy-nominated violinist known for versatility across classical, contemporary, and improvised music.

  • Two-time Grammy nominated violinist Jesse Mills enjoys performing music of many genres, from classical to contemporary, as well as composed and improvised music of his own invention.  

    Since his concerto debut at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, Mr. Mills has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada. He has been a soloist with the Phoenix Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony, the Green Bay Symphony,  Juilliard Chamber Orchestra,  the Denver Philharmonic, the Teatro Argentino Orchestra (in Buenos Aires, Argentina), and the Aspen Music Festival's Sinfonia Orchestra.

    As a chamber musician Jesse Mills has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, including concerts at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, the Metropolitan Museum, the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Boston's Gardener Museum, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, and the Marlboro Music Festival. He has also appeared at prestigious venues in Europe, such as the Barbican Centre of London, La Cité de la Musique in Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Carré Theatre, Teatro Arcimboldi in Milan, and the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Mills is co-founder of Horszowski Trio and Duo Prism, a violin-piano duo with Rieko Aizawa, which earned 1st Prize at the Zinetti International Competition in Italy in 2006. With Ms. Aizawa, Mills became co-artistic director of the Alpenglow Chamber Music Festival in Colorado in 2010.

    Mills is also known as a pioneer of contemporary works, a renowned improvisational artist, as well as a composer. He earned Grammy nominations for his performances of Arnold Schoenberg's music, released by NAXOS in 2005 and 2010. He can also be heard on the Koch, Centaur, Tzadik, Max Jazz and Verve labels for various compositions of Webern, Schoenberg, Zorn, Wuorinen, and others. As a member of the FLUX Quartet from 2001-2003, Mills performed music composed during the last 50 years, in addition to frequent world premieres. As a composer and arranger, Mills has been commissioned by venues including Columbia University’s Miller Theater, the Chamber Music Northwest festival in Portland, OR and the Bargemusic in NYC. 

    Jesse Mills began violin studies at the age of three. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School in 2001.  He studied with Dorothy DeLay, Robert Mann and Itzhak Perlman. Mr. Mills lives in New York City, and he is on the faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College and at Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College. In 2010 the Third Street Music School Settlement in NYC honored him with the ‘Rising Star Award’ for musical achievement.

Alex Fortes

Versatile violinist known for his warmth and global collaborations with leading ensembles including A Far Cry and the Knights.

  • A native of San Diego, violinist Alex Fortes is recognized for his versatility and warmth. Recent orchestral and chamber music performances have included performances in France, Germany, Denmark, Austria, and Indonesia, as well as throughout North America with groups such as the Henschel Quartett, Dalí Quartet, Franklin String Quartet, Momenta Quartet, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Knights, Quod Libet, and A Far Cry.  His playing is featured on A Far Cry’s 2014 Grammy-nominated album, Dreams and Prayers, as well as on Law of Mosaics, which The New Yorker’s Alex Ross hailed as one of the top ten albums of 2014. He can also be heard on a forthcoming album with the Henschel Quartett and pianist Donald Berman featuring the music of Chris Theofanidis.

    Fortes holds a strong interest in finding new contexts in which to experience familiar music. His recent arrangements of Schubert lieder and chamber music were hailed by the Boston Globe as “uniformly resourceful and complementary…smart, subtle.” In May 2016, A Far Cry premiered his arrangement with Sarah Darling of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in collaboration with pianist Simone Dinnerstein.

    Alex has participated in educational residencies in both English and Spanish related to entrepreneurship, music performance and education,  at colleges and public schools throughout the United States. He holds degrees from Harvard College and Mannes College, and his teachers include Mark Steinberg, Peter Zazofsky, Hernan Constantino, Mary Gerard, and Michael Gaisler.

Milan Milisavljević

Principal Viola of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and acclaimed chamber musician, appearing at Carnegie Hall and beyond.

  • Milan Milisavljević is Principal Viola with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Dubbed “the engine propelling the performance forward” by the New York Classical Review, his performances combine intense expression with an immediate and profound link to the listener and have won much critical acclaim.

    The Strad magazine has described his playing as “very imaginative, with a fine, cultured tone.” Milan’s solo album Sonata-Song, released by Delos Music, has received glowing reviews, with the recording of A. Khachaturian’s Solo Sonata on the album hailed as “definitive”. Milan has appeared as soloist throughout the world, with orchestras such as the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Philarmonic Orchestras of Belgrade, Medellín, and Boca del Río, Aspen Sinfonia, New York Classical Players, Classical Tahoe, and others. In chamber music, he has collaborated with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Augustin Hadelich, Cho-Liang Lin, Joseph Kalichstein, members of the Guarneri and Mendelssohn String Quartets, and performs regularly at Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Chamber Music Series at Carnegie Hall.

    Milan has been heard worldwide on countless recordings and broadcasts of the MET. He previously served as its Assistant Principal Viola for eleven seasons. Formerly of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, he has served as guest Principal Viola of many orchestras, such as the Toronto Symphony.

    Milan is on the viola faculty at Mannes School of Musicand New York University. He has given classes at universities and conservatories worldwide, such as at the Juilliard School and the Rubin Academy of Music, as well as at Verbier Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, the Music Academy of the West, and the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Deeply committed to works of underrepresented composers, Milan gave the world premiere of Afro-Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s Solo Viola Sonata in 2020, and regularly performs new music by Ana Sokolovic, Jessie Montgomery and others. One of his recent projects has been Slow Beethoven, collaborating with Lara St. John, Miranda Cuckson and Jeffrey Zeigler, in a unique creation of a lush sonic landscape based on the world of Beethoven’s late string quartets.

    He is also increasingly in demand as a conductor, serving on the conducting faculty of the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division as head of one of its orchestras.

    Milan’s teachers include Jutta Puchhammer, Atar Arad, James Dunham, Nobuko Imai and Samuel Rhodes. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Rice University. Milan is a Larsen Strings Artist.

Matthew Christakos

Newly appointed Associate Principal Cello of the New York Philharmonic at age 23.

  • At age 23, Matthew Christakos was appointed as Associate Principal Cello of The New York Philharmonic in January 2024, becoming one of the youngest musicians ever to hold this prestigious position,  in January 2024. 

    Originally from Toronto, he studied with Peter Wiley and Gary Hoffman at the Curtis Institute of Music, and has served as principal cello of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Canada, and Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra.

    Christakos’s recent honors include the 2019 Canada Council for the Arts’s Michael Measures Prize, second prize in the Canadian Music Competition’s 2019 Stepping Stone, and first prize in the 2017 Toronto Kiwanis Music Festival President’s Trophy Competition. CBC Music included him in its 2019 edition of 30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30.

    Before attending Curtis, Christakos studied in Toronto at the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists, where he won the concerto competition and performed as soloist with the Academy Chamber Orchestra. In 2019 he toured Canada and Spain as a featured soloist with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He is an alumnus of the Morningside Music Bridge program. He previously studied with David Hetherington and Hans Jørgen Jensen. He began cello at age four.