Hailing from Skokie, Illinois, cellist David Caplan recently completed graduate studies at the University of Michigan, studying with Amir Eldan. Previous teachers include Daniel Mcdonough, Dmitry Kouzov, Jonathan Pegis, Benjamin Whitcomb, and Adelaide Hagari. David, along with Quartet Bellezza, won the junior division gold medal at the 2017 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, first prize at the 2017 Discover Chamber Music Competition, and first prize/audience prize in the junior division of WDAV’s Young Musician’s Chamber Competition. David was also a finalist in the 2020 Coltman Chamber Music Competition, with Trio Verite. David has appeared as soloist and chamber musician on NPR’s From the Top as a Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist in Longview, Texas, and Reno, Nevada. Recent chamber music engagements include concerts in Kansas City and the University of Kansas with the St. Petersburg String Quartet, a world premiere performance for mezzo-soprano and cello at Northwestern University, a performance of the Brahms Op. 114 trio at Oberlin College, a performance of Schubert’s Trout Quintet with Yaron Kohlberg, Fabiola Kim, Yizhak Schotten, and Nicholas Walker, and a performance of Brahms’ Bb Sextet with Amir Eldan, Yizhak Schotten, and Fabiola Kim at the University of Michigan. David is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has made appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, the Taos School of Music, the Chautauqua Festival, and the Grant Park Music Festival. David has a burning passion for teaching others and showcasing the power of music and has been a guest clinician at Midwest Young Artists’ Conservatory, ArtsAhimsa Chamber Music Festival, Lake Forest High School, Young Music Scholars, and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. This season, David is a cellist with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.

An active chamber musician and avid recital partner, Rick Ferguson was selected to be a senior fellow for the Chicago Chamber Musicians and has performed chamber music, solo, and concerto repertoire in the US and Europe. He maintains an active life as teacher, composer, and arts advocate as co-founder and artistic director of The Musical Offering in Evanston, Illinois, and formerly as classical piano instructor at the Chicago Academy for the Arts. On the composition side, Concerto Grosso on Dystopian Themes for youth orchestra is a commissioned work through Foundation 65 in Evanston, Illinois, which was premiered in May 2018. Additional pieces in the works are Equity Suite for concert band and Prelude, Toccata and Fugue for piano and percussion ensemble. Upcoming commissions include On Beauty for soprano, violin and piano on a text by Kahlil Gibran. Mr. Ferguson holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Birmingham-Southern College (magna cum laude) and earned a Master of Music degree from the University of Houston where he studied with world-renowned concert artist Abbey Simon. His studies have also taken him to the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA and Northwestern University, where he undertook postgraduate study. Teachers and mentors include Daniel Ericourt, Deborah Sobol, Ivan Davis, Joseph Block, Jörg Demus, Delores Hodgens-Howard and Roy McAllister.