Artists
Pianist Elizabeth Schumann has a diverse career portfolio of projects, recordings, and performances which have brought her all over the world as recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist. The Washington Post Magazine noted her playing as “deft, relentless, and devastatingly good—the sort of performance you experience not so much with your ears as your solar plexus.”
The first place winner of both the Bösendorfer International Piano Competition and the Pacific International Piano Competition, Elizabeth has won over 25 prizes and awards in other major national and international competitions, including the Cleveland International Piano Competition and the Hilton Head International Piano Competition. Elizabeth was honored with the prestigious Gilmore Young Artists Award, and was highlighted in a PBS Television documentary on the Gilmore Festival.
She has performed solo recitals and chamber music concerts worldwide, in such venues as the Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Bösendorfer Saal, Toronto’s Koerner Hall, and Montreal’s Place des Arts. Featured at the International UNICEF benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina Victims, the Cannes Film Festival, the Gilmore Festival, Australia’s Huntington Festival, the Musica Viva chamber music series, the Ravinia “Rising Stars” Series, and National Public Radio's “Performance Today”, her recitals have been broadcast live on public radio and television in cities around the world, including Washington D.C., New York, Sydney, Cleveland, Montréal, Dallas, and Chicago. Elizabeth gave the world premiere performance of Carl Vine's Sonata No. 3, which the composer dedicated to her.
Passionate about creating public access to the arts, Elizabeth founded Piano Theatre, an artist group formed to engage audiences with innovative combinations of classical music, theatre, literature, art and technology. Piano Theatre’s recent tours of the US, Canada and Australia were acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. Elizabeth founded and is president of Project Classical, Inc.¸ a 501(c)(3)organization whose mission is to support artist led initiatives that encourage public education and appreciation of classical music. Concerned with the declining funding for arts education in the United States, Elizabeth devised and directed Piano Carnival, a project to introduce free, high quality classical concert music to children in areas without arts education.
Carrying on the pedagogical tradition of her teacher, Sergei Babayan, Elizabeth has been on faculty at Itzhak Perlman’s Perlman Music Program and the Crowden Chamber Workshop, and she is the director of the Schumann Studio, a classical recording studio in San Francisco.
Since giving her Carnegie Hall debut in 1994, cellist Angela Lee’s “amazing finesse, control and coloration” [San Francisco Chronicle] and “astonishingly rich tone” [San Francisco Examiner] has been celebrated with recitals in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Victor Borge Hall at Scandinavia House in New York, Chicago’s Cultural Center, The Phillip’s Collection and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen’s Nationalmuseet and the Purcell Room at South Bank Centre in London. She has soloed with orchestras including the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, the San Francisco Concert Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, the CAMS Orchestra, the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, the Paraiba Symphony, São Paulo State Orchestra, the Chautauqua Symphony, and the Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra (UK), performing works of Boccherini to Barber to Kernis. Her solo and chamber performances have taken her throughout North and South America, Australasia, Europe and Asia. She is frequently invited to festivals including St. Petersburg’s Revelations, IMS at Prussia Cove, Cagayan Valley International Music Festival, Taipei Summer Festival, Pontino Festival, La Musica, Banff, Marlboro Music Festival, Anneberg Festival, Chelsea Music Festival, Music Mountain, and Mahler-Jihlava Festival, collaborating with the likes of Nobuko Imai, Bruno Giuranna, Frans Helmerson, Isabelle Faust, Lydia Artymiw, Andras Schiff, Alexander Lonquich, Anthony Newman, Franco Petracchi, the Hausmann Quartet, and members of the Beaux Arts Trio and Guarneri Quartet.
She is the recipient of the Ruth T. Brooks Achievement Award for Continued Excellence in the Arts, a grant from the Foundation for American Musicians in Europe, a Fulbright scholarship to study in London with William Pleeth, the Jury Prize in the Naumburg International Cello Competition, and a cello performance fellowship from The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Her cello is a 1762 Nicolo Gagliano from Naples.
Violinist Rebecca’s performances have been described as “riveting” and characterized by a “fierce spirit.” She is founder and artistic director of Music in May, an annual chamber music festival in Santa Cruz that has featured such notable musicians as Jennifer Koh, Michael Tree, Ron Leonard, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Cho-Liang Lin, and Martin Beaver. The festival celebrates its 19th season in 2026.
Rebecca has been a part of commissioning and premiering 12 chamber works. Most recently, she performed the San Jose and San Francisco premieres of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s, Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope [made possible by Music at Kohl Mansion and Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions]. She is a member of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and during her five seasons as acting member of Santa Fe Opera Orchestra the company won 2019 Grammy for Best Opera Recording for (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.
Believing strongly in the power of music to heal and unite, she has performed in marginalized communities across the U.S., Ukraine, Romania, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nepal, Costa Rica, and Lebanon. Ms. Jackson-Picht regularly brings colleagues together for performances at juvenile halls. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that this outreach “revives the evocative and visceral power of music that can be too often deadened in more formal concert environments.” In 2013, combining her passion for music and community engagement, she cofounded Sound Impact and Ensemble SF.
In 2018, Rebecca received a KSBW Jefferson Award in recognition of her volunteerism and public service. The following year, she and her father coauthored the biography of her mentor David Arben, Holocaust survivor and former associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The book, ARBEN: David Arben’s Life of Miracles & Successes, by Dr. John Jackson and Rebecca Jackson-Picht is available on Amazon and at www.davidarben.com. The story was recently featured on NBC News. Ms. Jackson-Picht received her Bachelor of Music from The Juilliard School and a Master of Music from University of California, Santa Cruz.
Taiwanese-American violist Jessica Chang leads a versatile career as a chamber musician and educator. As the Founder and Executive Director of Chamber Music by the Bay, Jessica directs and performs interactive concerts for diverse communities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area which reach over 2,000 young audience members annually. Her work as a teaching artist has led to concert residencies with Project 440, the Savannah Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, and Music Beyond the Chamber. She has also served as violist of the Afiara Quartet, with whom she toured North America, including a visiting faculty residency at The Banff Centre in Alberta and residency as the Glenn Gould School Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada.
Jessica has performed as a chamber musician in concert tours throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Her performances have been broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today, WYNC, WHYY, and WQXR Public Radio. Highlights include collaborations with Roberto Díaz, Pamela Frank, Scott Yoo, Christoph Richter, William Bennett, Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Silverstein, Toby Appel, James Campbell, members of the Orion and Guarneri Quartets, and members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Berlin Philharmonic. Her festival appearances include Festival Mozaic, Juneau Jazz and Classics, Bard Music West, Music from Angel Fire, International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, Open Chamber Music Prussia Cove, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Tanglewood Music Center, Taos School of Music, Verbier Festival, the National Arts Centre of Canada, and Aspen Music Festival.
Jessica is a graduate of Yale University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree with honors and distinction. She also holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music as the recipient of the William A. Loeb Fellowship, and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School. Jessica maintains a private studio in the San Francisco Bay Area, performs frequently with ensembles including Ensemble Illume, the Ives Collective, Ensemble SF, Chamber Music Silicon Valley, and has also performed as principal viola with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Cruz Symphony. She also leads a dual career in information security and is an industry-recognized speaker and presenter globally on building and scaling security culture.
Jennifer Choi has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo violin, chamber music, and the art of improvisation. Hailed by The New York Times as an “excellent violinist”, “soulful, compelling,” and “spectacular, virtuosic play” by the San Francisco Chronicle, she has performed worldwide in venues such as the Library of Congress in Washington D. C., the RAI National Radio in Rome, Hong Kong National Radio, and the Mozartsalle in Vienna since giving her debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall in 2000. A prominent chamber musician, Jennifer was a former violinist of the Miró String Quartet. With her involvement, the group won Grand Prize at Fischoff National Competition and First prize at Coleman chamber music competition. She has performed for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums, MOMA Summer Garden Series, Ravinia Festival, Barge Music, Caramoor Music, Strathmore Mansion series, Ridotto, and numerous other chamber music series across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. She joined ETHEL during their 2011-2012 season, and previous to that, was member of the Sirius String Quartet, and Classical Jam. Jennifer has premiered dozens of new works by composer/performers like MacArthur genius grant winner John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Susie Ibarra, Sergio Assad, and Richard Carrick and can be heard on numerous recordings on New World Records, TZADIK, New Focus, and Starkland record labels. Jennifer will be performing on the 1718 “Firebird” Stradivarius. www.jenniferchoi.com
Guitarist Marc Teicholz was awarded first prize at the 1989 International Guitar Foundation of America Competition, the largest, most prestigious contest of its kind in the United States. He was also a prize winner at the 1991 New York East-West Artists Competition.
Described by Gramophone as “arguably the best of the new young guitarists to have emerged,” and by Soundboard magazine as “among the best we have ever heard,” Teicholz’s performances throughout the world include tours of the United States, Canada, Russia, Poland, Switzerland, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Fiji. His recitals and master classes have received critical acclaim, and he has been featured in concert with orchestras in Spain, Portugal, California and Hawaii.
He has also had new works written specially for him. Most recently, Teicholz debuted Clarice Assad’s Concerto for Guitar, O Saci-Pererê, at the Biasini Festival in San Francisco. Teicholz tours the United States extensively with The Festival of Four. He is featured on the pilot soundtrack for George Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones, and has recorded solo CDs for Naxos, Sugo, Menus and Music, and most recently, Guitar Salon International. His latest solo disc, Valseana, presents works performed on historic guitars of the period of each musical selection. On Delos records, he has recently released “Open your Heart” with soprano Laura Claycomb, featuring mixed 19th and 20th century composers.
For Naxos, Marc Teicholz has made his mark with two collections of Sor’s music already committed to disc. In a show of his versatility, he has also recorded the fifth volume of the collected works for guitar by the 19th Century French virtuoso guitarist and composer Napoleon Coste.
Teicholz, currently on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory, teaches in the summer at the California Summer Arts Festival and the Weatherfield Music festival in Vermont. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Yale School of Music, and holds a J.D. from the University of California Berkeley Boalt School of Law.
Cellist and co-Founder and Director of the Valley of the Moon Music Festival, Tanya Tomkins is equally at home on historical and modern instruments. Passionate about chamber music, Tanya has been featured in recitals and at chamber music festivals across the United States, Canada, and Europe, and is a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Tanya is particularly renowned for her interpretation of the complete Bach Cello Suites, which she recorded for the Avie label and has performed many times at venues including New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Seattle’s Early Music Guild, Vancouver’s Early Music Society, Santa Fe’s Pro Musica, and the Library of Congress. For many years, Tanya was principal cellist and a frequent soloist for both San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Portland Baroque Orchestra. She has recorded the complete piano trios by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn with the Benvenue Fortepiano Trio (with Monica Huggett, violin and Eric Zivian, fortepiano) for the Avie label.
A strong believer in the positive impact of music on society, Tanya is now devoting more time to mentoring the next generation of musicians. She learned the importance of mentorship from the great cellist Anner Bijlsma, with whom she studied in the Netherlands. As Bijlsma’s student, she was welcomed into his family’s household, which was the center of rehearsals, lessons, and the musical lifestyle he shared with his wife, violinist Vera Beths. These experiences of musical friendship and mentoring are what inspired Tanya, together with VMMF co-Director Eric Zivian, to create the Apprenticeship, Laureate and Emerging Artists Programs at the Valley of the Moon Music Festival, where young musicians are absorbed into an intergenerational musical community and are exposed to the non-hierarchical, collaborative values of chamber music. Tanya has mentored young musicians in master classes at Yale, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and through her frequent appearances as a guest teacher at Juilliard’s Historical Performance Department.
SoJung Kim joined the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra as Associate Principal Bass in 2024. Prior to this, she held the section position for one season with the Santa Rosa Symphony.
Kim has had the opportunity to work under the batons of renowned conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Stéphane Denève, and Leonard Slatkin and in major halls such as Suntory, Walt Disney Concert Hall. She has also participated in several summer music festivals as a fellow, including the Music Academy of the West, the Pacific Music Festival, the Taipei Music Academy and Festival.
Originally from South Korea, SoJung earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Seoul National University, studying with Young-Soo Lee, and Professional Studies Certificate from the Colburn Conservatory of Music where she studied with Peter Lloyd.
Matt Young grew up on a farm in Kentucky, and began playing music at an early age with his family. He eventually studied at the University of Kentucky, the Yale School of Music, and the Cleveland Institute of Music with his mentor Robert Vernon.
Matt Young has played chamber music with members of the Cleveland, Juilliard and Takacs quartets, the Florestan Trio, members of the top orchestras of Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Concertgebauw, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. He was a founding member of the Verklärte Quartet, which won grand prize of the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition during his time with that group.
Young has performed with the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Minnesota and Saint Paul orchestras, among many others. He was the winner of a McKnight Fellowship for performing artists, as well as the Robert Vernon Prize in viola performance. In addition, Young has been featured as a soloist with the CIM Orchestra in Severance Hall, as a tenured member of the San Francisco Symphony in Beethoven's Opus 74 string quartet in a subscription concert, and as acting principal and soloist in Haydn's Symphony No. 6 under Raphael Frubeck de Burgos.
A founding member of Ensemble SF, he's very involved with community engagement throughout the Bay Area in low arts access communities, including Raphael House in the Tenderloin, the LGBT Center on Market, Juvenile halls in SF and Felton, and the Institute on Aging in SF.
Some of the students Young has taught and coached have won positions in the orchestras of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Saint Louis, as well as many regional orchestras. He is also on the faculty of the San Francisco Academy Orchestra and frequently at the National Orchestral Institute.
Young executed the Shostakovitch with gravitas. - Minneapolis Star Tribune