2027 Guest Artists

Ya-Fei Chuang · Wael Farouk · Emanuela Friscioni · Alexander Kobrin · Jeffrey Langford · Robert Levin · Antonio Pompa-Baldi · Victor Rosenbaum · American String Quartet

Distinguished pianist Alexander Kobrin, has received wide acclaim for his emotional, technically inspired performances, placing him at the forefront of today’s performing musicians. 

He has appeared in recital at major halls worldwide, including Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, the Louvre Auditorium, la Salle Gaveau and Salle Cortot in Paris, Herkulesaal in Munich and Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, National Auditorium in Madrid, Esplanade Hall in Singapore and the Sala Verdi in Milan.

Mr. Kobrin has been an active guest soloist with leading orchestras throughout his career, including the New York Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, Orchestra Verdi, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Deutsche Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra and English Chamber Orchestra. Conductors collaborations include Mikhail Pletnev, Mikhail Jurovsky, Sir Mark Elder,  James Conlon, Vassiliy Petrenko.

In addition to his international performing career, Mr. Kobrin has also been an active figure in music education for many years.  His masterclass schedule has included engagements with Conservatories in three continents, as well as jury participation for international piano competitions including the Cliburn, Busoni, Hamamatsu, Seoul and Michelangeli international piano competitions. After holding positions at Gnessin State Academy of Music and New York University, Mr. Kobrin joined the faculty of the renowned Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY in 2017. In the summer of 2026, he accepted the appointment of the Chair of Piano Department. 

Alexander Kobrin has released recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and Centaur labels, covering a wide swath of the piano literature to critical acclaim. His discography includes works by Haydn, Beethoven, (complete piano sonatas), Schubert, Schumann, Russian composers, alongside complete Hindemith violin and piano sonatas. 

Mr. Kobrin is the top prize winner of numerous international piano competitions including Van Cliburn, Hamamatsu, Chopin, Busoni and Glasgow.

Jeffrey Langford is recently retired from his position as Chair and Professor of Music History and as Associate Dean for Doctoral Studies at Manhattan School of Music.    

Dr. Langford is the author of several books including Berlioz: A Guide to Research (Garland Publishing), Evenings at the Opera: An Exploration of the Basic Repertoire (Amadeus Press), History of the Symphony: The Grand Genre (Routledge Press), and his latest book, Opera: A History of the Impossible Genre (also published by Routledge).  He has also published numerous articles in journals such as Musical Quarterly, Music and Letters, The Journal of Musicology, and others on interdisciplinary connections in Berlioz’s music. A special interest of Dr. Langford and has been the literary aspects of Italian and French opera in the nineteenth century with special emphasis on text setting in the French operas of Verdi. 

Dr. Langford has presented pre-concert lectures at the Metropolitan Opera for the past 15 years, has appeared as a guest lecturer at the New York Philharmonic, and has written program notes for the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center.  During past summers he has served as Administrative Director of Manhattan in the Mountains, a summer chamber music festival held in conjunction with the Catskill Mountain Foundation in Hunter, New York.

Xinyuan Wang is a young Chinese pianist. He was awarded Third Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition. He is a Young Artist of the Joint Institute of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. Currently he serves as a faculty member of the Piano Department at Sichuan Conservatory of Music and a Yamaha Artist.

Mr. Wang began his piano studies at age eight. At ten, he began his training under Professor Wang Yan at Sichuan Conservatory of Music. At twelve, he was admitted to the Affiliated Middle School of Sichuan Conservatory of Music. During his studies there, he won numerous prizes in national youth piano competitions, including three first‑place awards and one second‑place award. He later pursued studies at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań, Poland. At nineteen, he enrolled at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar in Germany, studying piano performance under distinguished professors Balázs Szokolay, Peter Waas and Grigory Gruzman. 

Xinyuan won the  Third Prize & Audience Prize in the 19th Leeds International Piano Competition (UK) in 2018. He completed five demanding rounds with extensive repertoire, then he attained third prize together with the Audience Prize at one of the world’s most prestigious classical piano competitions.

Since 2019, Xinyuan Wang has embarked on an international recital tour with performances across continents. His international engagements include solo recitals at Salle Cortot in Paris (France), appearances at the Sintra Festival (Portugal), as well as recitals at the University of Leeds, Harrogate Festival and Chetham’s International Summer Piano Festival in the United Kingdom. He has collaborated with renowned orchestras such as The Hallé Orchestra (UK) and MÁV Symphony Orchestra (Hungary).

Within China, he has performed with the Chengdu Symphony Orchestra, Chengdu City Concert Hall Orchestra, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra and Kunming International Philharmonic Orchestra. He has given solo recitals worldwide in cities including London, Paris, Budapest, Saratov (Russia), Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Suzhou, Shenyang and Hangzhou.

On December 11 of 2019, Xinyuan gave his solo recital premiere at Wigmore Hall, London. The concert was streamed globally by medici.tv, the world’s leading classical‑music streaming platform. Following the performance, he was featured in exclusive interviews by BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and Global Times. International Piano magazine commented that his interpretations of Schubert and Bartók are distinctive and compelling.

On July 190, 2020, he gave an online solo recital at the Meiningen State Theatre (Germany) in partnership with premium classical streaming platform Qchamberstream, earning wide acclaim from critics and audiences. 

Starting in summer 2023, he returns annually to the UK for solo performances and masterclasses at the Classical Madness Festival, receiving enthusiastic reception. 

In 2026, Xinyuan Wang collaborated with UK‑based Classical‑D Records to complete a live‑recorded album featuring works by Robert Schumann, scheduled for worldwide release at the end of the year.

“…luxurious, beautifully sculpted performances”

— THE NEW YORK TIMES 

 Internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The Quartet celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.  

Recent seasons featured performances of the Quartet’s major project together with the National Book Award-winning author Phil Klay and the poet Tom Sleigh, which offers a groundbreaking program combining music and readings that examines the effects of war. The Quartet also collaborated with the renowned author Salman Rushdie in a work for narrator and quartet by the film composer Paul Cantelon built around Rushdie’s novel The Enchantress of Florence. These tremendously imaginative collaborations cement the American String Quartet’s reputation as one of the most adventurous and fearless string quartets performing today, as comfortable with the groundbreaking as with the traditional. 

The Quartet's diverse activities have also included numerous international radio and television broadcasts, including a recent recording for the BBC; tours of Asia; and performances with the New York City Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recent highlights include performances of an all-sextet program with Roberto and Andrès Díaz, many tours of South America, and performances of the complete Beethoven cycle of string quartets at the Cervantes Festival in Mexico and the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel.  

The American’s additional extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and RCA labels. Most recently the group released "Schubert's Echo," which pairs Schubert's monumental last quartet with works bearing its influence by Second Viennese masters Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This repertoire posits that the creative line from the First to the Second Viennese Schools is continuous – and evident when these works are heard in the context of each other.  

As champions of new music, the American has given numerous premieres, including George Tsontakis’s Quartet No. 7.5, “Maverick,” Richard Danielpour's Quartet No. 4, and Curt Cacioppo's a distant voice calling. The premiere of Robert Sirota’s American Pilgrimage was performed around the U.S. in the cities the work celebrates. The Quartet premiered Tobias Picker’s String Quartet No. 2 in New York City in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Manhattan School of Music.  

Formed when its original members were students at The Juilliard School, the American String Quartet’s career began with the group winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award in the same year.  Resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival since 1974 and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 1984, the American has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.