Lyra festival artists are among the most inspiring
classical musicians in the world today
MEET OUR DISTINGUISHED
2025 FESTIVAL ARTISTS
Guest Artists
New York based violinist and pedagogue Amy Schroeder is a founding member of the two-time GRAMMY award winning Attacca Quartet and has been hailed by the Washington Post as ‘an impressive artist whose playing combines imagination and virtuosity.’ As first violinist of the versatile and genre bending group Attacca Quartet, Ms. Schroeder can be heard on Billie Eilish’s most recent album, ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ which they recorded the same week they performed live with Miss Eilish and her brother Finneas on Saturday Night Live. The quartet is also featured on two soundtracks released this fall: one written by Finneas on the Apple TV+ mini series ‘Disclaimer’ directed by Alfonso Cuarón, and the other written by Caroline Shaw for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary ‘Leonardo da Vinci.’ With the Attacca Quartet, Ms. Schroeder can be heard on several critically acclaimed recordings: Nonesuch Records: GRAMMY award winning Caroline Shaw/Attacca Quartet ‘Evergreen,’ Nonesuch/New Amsterdam Records the GRAMMY award winning album, Shaw/Attacca Quartet 'Orange,' Sony Classical: ‘Of All Joys,’ and ‘Real Life,’ as well as Azica Records: “Fellow Traveler” the complete works of John Adams, Haydn: “Seven Last Words,” and “Songlines,” works of Michael Ippolito.
Ms. Schroeder has soloed with orchestras across the globe including the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, the Spanish National Orchestra, the Colombia National Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the Amherst Symphony, the Clarence Symphony, and the Hilton Head Symphony. An avid chamber musician she plays in the Schroeder Umansky Duo with her husband, Felix Umansky and Trio Raconteur with Umansky and their friend and colleague Yalin Chi. In 2002 Schroeder was the recipient of the Henrietta and Albert J. Ziegle Jr. Scholarship, which provided the tuition for her studies at Juilliard where she was a student of Sally Thomas and the Juilliard String Quartet. Growing up in Buffalo, NY, Ms. Schroeder began her violin studies with Karen Campbell and Thomas Halpin. She currently plays on two different violins, a Fernando Gagliano made in 1771 on loan to her from the Five Partners Foundation, and a violin made by Nathan Slobodkin in 2012. In New York Ms. Schroeder teaches violin and piano to students of all ages, and in her spare time she enjoys being with her baby daughter and husband, composing, doing crafty things, and when given the opportunity - scuba diving.
Photo Credit: Vicky Lee
Praised for “her sense of joyful virtuosity” as concerto soloist (South Florida Classical Review), Julia Yang is a courageous and soulful cellist, multi-faceted performer, and founding member of the “riveting” (Reading Eagle) and “impeccably elegant” Merz Trio (All About the Arts).
Yang’s Merz Trio are first prize winners of the prestigious Naumburg Chamber Music Prize as well as the Concert Artists Guild, Fischoff and Chesapeake International Chamber Music competitions. Alongside frequent concert tours managed by Epstein Fox Performances, the Trio presents innovative multidisciplinary concert experiences that interweave repertoire of the traditional piano trio genre with diverse art forms ranging from the visual arts, literature and dance to theatre and the culinary arts. With the Trio, Yang released a debut album “INK” (August 2021), described as “entrancing” (BBC), which brings together the words and music of Parisian composers and writers around 1914.
On stage as soloist and chamber musician, Yang has been described as the “stunning find of the evening” (New York Classical Review) and has been noted for her “dark voluminous tone” and “utterly compelling” performances (South Florida Classical Review). Yang maintains a very active concertizing solo and chamber performance schedule with recent and forthcoming recitals in Carnegie Hall, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Houston’s Dacamera, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and Amsterdam’s Het Concertgebouw. She has performed throughout the United States and internationally in Europe, Australia, Canada and Mexico and has been featured as a Young Artist in Residence on Performance Today with Fred Child. Top prizes at competitions include the Lennox International Competition and the Union League of Chicago’s Young Artist Competition. As concerto soloist, she has performed with the New World Symphony Orchestra, Central Florida Symphony Orchestra, and Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra with forthcoming concerti performances with the Newark-Granville Symphony Orchestra and The Ohio State University Symphony Orchestra.
Yang has collaborated with numerous artists including Jonathan Biss, Mitsuko Uchida, and Kim Kashkashian at festivals such as the Marlboro Music Festival, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Yellow Barn, Perlman Chamber Music Program, the Taos School of Music, Britten-Pears’ Young Artist Program, and Poland’s Krzyzowa-Music. Her solo and chamber music performances have been broadcast on national radio throughout the United States as well as in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and BBC Radio 3.
Having recently served as principal cellist of the Colorado Music Festival under Peter Oundjian, Yang holds extensive orchestral leadership experience and has toured as principal of the New World Symphony where she was a fellow for two seasons. In addition, she has performed as principal cellist under conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Susanna Malkki, James Gaffigan, John Adams, and Leonard Slatkin and many others in halls including Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, the Kennedy Center and Miami’s New World Center and Arsht Center.
As educator and pedagogue, Yang finds particular joy in working with the younger generation of musicians as the Visiting Assistant Professor of Cello at The Ohio State University. Her former teaching positions include cello instructor and chamber music coach at the University of Pennsylvania and at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA), and she regularly gives cello and chamber music masterclasses throughout the United States. While a fellow of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect (2016-18), Yang worked with NYC public schools’ music programs and gave dozens of interactive performances for wide-ranging communities. Yang has held educational residencies as a guest artist for New England Conservatory’s Prep Division and as artist faculty at C’est Bon Chamber Music Camp, and has coached as a mentor at the Four Seasons Chamber Music Institute and as an Interactive Performance Coach at Carnegie Hall’s Audience Engagement Intensive.
Yang holds degrees from Northwestern University and the New England Conservatory, studying with Hans Jørgen Jensen, Laurence Lesser and Yeesun Kim as well as former teachers Greg Sauer and Lubomir Georgiev. Away from the cello, you’ll find her reading or checking out the local arts scene, enjoying the outdoors, or cooking and crafting cocktails.
Photo Credit: Anela Bence Selkowitz
Winner of an Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and an Avery Fisher Career Grant, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown performs recitals and concertos worldwide and receives commissions from leading orchestras, performers and chamber music festivals. Recent highlights include a solo recital at Alice Tully Hall for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, concerts with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis, collaborations with Pinchas Zukerman, and an Asia recital tour with violinist Arnaud Sussmann. As a composer, Brown was recently in residence at the Yaddo artist colony and performed his Piano Concerto with orchestras across the US and Poland. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra commissioned and premiered his new orchestration of Brahms' Handel Variations in Carnegie Hall. Connection, an album of original works featuring a large cast of performers, including the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Osmo Vänska and Erin Keefe, Jerome Lowenthal and Ursula Oppens, and Susanna Phillips, along with Mendelssohn+, are set for release in 2025. His recently premiered symphonic work American Diaries draws inspiration from words by Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, his own grandfather’s World War II diary. He earned dual degrees in piano and composition from the Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composer Samuel Adler. Additional mentors have included András Schiff and Richard Goode. Brown is an Artist Ambassador for Creatives Care, an organization helping artists access affordable mental healthcare. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, Brown resides in New York City with his two 19th-century Steinway D pianos, Octavia and Daria. He will not reveal which is his favorite, so as not to incite jealousy.