Lyra festival artists are among the most inspiring
classical musicians in the world today

MEET OUR DISTINGUISHED
2024 FESTIVAL ARTISTS

Guest Artists

Min-Young Kim, Violin

Violinist Min-Young Kim is a passionate collaborator and versatile performer. As a founding member and first violinist of the Daedalus Quartet, she performs regularly throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia, and has been presented by many of the world’s leading musical venues including Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Concertgebeouw in Amsterdam.

Min is the concertmaster of Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and has performed as a guest leader with ECCO (East Coast Chamber Orchestra) and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as well as Orchestra 2001 and the Riverdale Sinfonietta. She appears annually at festivals across the United States and as a soloist, she has performed with the Boston Pops in Symphony Hall and with the Bard Festival Orchestra. Min enjoys working closely with composers and has commissioned and premiered many new works including those of Fred Lerdahl, Anna Weesner, Huck Hodge, and Wolfgang Rihm, and can also be heard on historical violin in the baroque orchestras, Tempesta di Mare and Apollo’s Fire.

In her quest to play many strings, Min also plays the violoncello da spalla, (a mini cello held up against the shoulder with a strap), the viola and the electric guitar. Recent and upcoming projects highlight Min’s versatility and virtuosity on multiple string instruments including her ‘Fantasia’ program at Penn’s ‘Music in the Pavilion’. In her collaboration with the radiant vocal ensemble Variant 6, she performed Bach’s Chaconne with hidden chorales, as arranged by Helga Thoene and Gabriel Jackson’s Ave Regina Caelorum on a six string electric violin with multi effects stomp.

A dedicated teacher, Ms. Kim holds degrees from Harvard, Juilliard and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. She taught previously at Princeton University, Columbia University and the School for Strings in New York, and was one of the first recipients of the Morse Fellowship at Juilliard as a teaching artist, integrating engaged listening with classroom curriculum in NYC public schools. Her major teachers include Donald Weilerstein, Robert Mann and Shirley Givens.


Clancy Newman, Cello

Cellist Clancy Newman has enjoyed an extraordinarily wide-ranging career, not only as a cellist, but also as a composer, producer, writer, and guest lecturer. He began playing cello at the age of six, and at twelve he received his first significant public recognition when he won a Gold Medal at the Dandenong Youth Festival in Australia, competing against contestants twice his age. In the years that followed, he won numerous other competitions, including the Juilliard School Cello Competition, the Astral Artists National Auditions, and finally the prestigious Naumburg International Competition.

He has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. A recipient of an Avery Fisher career grant, he can often be heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” and has been featured on A&E and PBS. A sought after chamber musician, he is currently a member of the Clarosa piano quartet, and he has also toured as a member of "Musicians from Marlboro" and performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

As a composer, he has expanded cello technique in ways heretofore thought unimaginable, particularly in his "Pop-Unpopped" project, where he writes solo cello caprices based on pop songs. He has also lectured on the Golden Ratio Method, a method of composition he invented, and has been featured on series by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. In March 2019 his piano quintet, commissioned by the Ryuji Ueno Foundation, was premiered at the opening ceremony of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC.

Also interested in other forms of expression, Newman produced an album entitled "From Hungary to Taiwan" for the Formosa String Quartet, which is available on Bridge Records. In 2021, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival commissioned him to produce four educational videos to assist school teachers as they navigate the covid-19 pandemic, a project that involved script writing, set designing, video editing, animation, and acting.

Mr. Newman is a graduate of the five-year exchange program between Juilliard and Columbia University, receiving a M.M. from Juilliard and a B.A. in English from Columbia. His teachers have included David Gibson, Joel Krosnick and Harvey Shapiro.


Fei-Fei, Piano

Praised for her “bountiful gifts and passionate immersion into the music she touches” (The Plain Dealer), pianist Fei-Fei is a winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition and a top finalist at the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She continues to build a reputation for her poetic interpretations, charming audiences with her “passion, piquancy and tenderness” and “winning stage presence” (Dallas Morning News), both in the US and internationally, including her native China.

Fei-Fei’s concert tours have taken her across the globe in concerto performances, recitals and chamber music collaborations alike. Recent projects include artist-in-residence with the Baden-Baden Philharmonic touring in Germany, a Carnegie Hall performance and tour of Spain with the New York Youth Symphony, a 19-city tour of China with her Aletheia Piano Trio, as well as concerto engagements with the Costa Rica National Symphony, Shenzhen Symphony, Pacific Symphony, and Amarillo Symphony orchestras. Her 2022-23 season highlights include performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at Lincoln Center with the Pegasus Symphony as well as performances of lesser-represented repertoire such as concertos by Leroy Anderson, Florence Price, Clara Schumann, and Xiaogang Ye.

Additional career highlights include performances with the Fort Worth Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Spokane Symphony, Corpus Christi Symphony, Austin Symphony, Denver Philharmonic, Anchorage Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, and the Juilliard Orchestra. Internationally, she has performed with Canada’s Calgary Philharmonic, Germany’s Rostock and Baden-Baden Philharmonic orchestras, and in China with the Hong Kong Philharmonic and China National Symphony orchestras.

Fei-Fei was showcased prominently as a Cliburn finalist in the documentary film, Virtuosity, about the 2013 Cliburn Competition, which premiered on PBS in August 2015. Deeply committed to sharing her joy for music and connecting with communities, Fei-Fei also engages students and community audiences through frequent school and outreach concerts and masterclasses. Born in Shenzhen, Fei-Fei began piano lessons at the age of 5. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she studied with Dr. Yoheved Kaplinsky, and is currently pursing Doctoral of Musical Arts degree with pianist Yefim Bronfman at Manhattan School of Music. Fei-Fei is also a member of the piano faculty at John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University and teaching associate of pianist Yefim Bronfman at Manhattan School of Music beginning in Fall 2023.