Chicago native Sang Mee Lee has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Korean Broadcasting Orchestra, and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. Her solo performances and recitals have been heard in the United States, Europe, and the Far East. She was the youngest artist to appear on Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts series and has performed on the Ravinia Festival’s Rising Stars series. Her many awards include First Prize of the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition, Leopold Mozart International Violin Competition, Irving M. Klein International String Auditions, Seventeen Magazine/General Motors Concerto Competition, William C. Byrd Competition, and the Stulberg International Strings Competition. As part of the Beethoven Project Trio, Sang Mee performed and recorded previously unknown chamber works of Beethoven, including one world premiere and two American premieres. Sang Mee earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in violin performance from the Julliard School. Her past teachers and mentors have included Dorothy DeLay, Roland and Almita Vamos, Robert Lipsett, Josef Gingold, and Betty Haag. Currently residing in the Chicago area, Sang Mee has been on faculty at the Music Institute of Chicago since 2000.

American violist Arturo Ziraldo is an engaging performer who believes deeply in the power of art to change the world for the better. Mr. Ziraldo is known as an intensely passionate musician and sensitive chamber collaborator. As a supporter of new music he has performed and premiered works by John Kennedy, Keith Murphy, Peter Askim, Haruhito Miyagi, Brett Dean, Curtis Curtis-Smith and others.

As a soloist, Mr. Ziraldo has performed across the U.S. and Europe and was a semi-finalist at the Washington International Competition and the Maine International Competition. Mr. Ziraldo studied at the New England Conservatory, Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève, Roosevelt University CCPA and a Western Michigan University. His principal teachers were Roger Chase, Marcus Thompson and Igor Fedotov. He has performed in the Deer Valley, Kent/Blossom, Casalmaggiore International and Spoleto USA Festivals.

As a chamber musician, Mr. Ziraldo has worked in a wide variety of ensembles across the globe. He was the founder of The Battery string quartet which was featured as an elite emerging quartet at the Deer Valley Music Festival in 2013. Arturo has also performed in less standard combinations, such as duos with marimba, bass and flute, and has performed extensively in a flute, harp and viola trio. He has studied chamber music intensively with Roger Tapping, the Muir Quartet, Paul Katz and Shmuel Ashkenasi. Mr. Ziraldo has held the principal seat in many orchestras since age 19 including the International Chamber Soloists, The Southwest Michigan Symphony and the Spoleto USA Festival Orchestras. He performed as a member of the viola section of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, Switzerland and is currently a member of the Kalamazoo Symphony. Mr. Ziraldo has been an invited guest performer for the Callisto Ensemble, the Orquesta Filarmonica de Jalisco, the Mainzer Virtuosi and and the vocal group “With One Voice”.

Mr. Ziraldo is an active teacher who maintains a private studio and gives college and high school masterclasses and clinics. He was also Professor of Viola in the Merit School of Music’s prestigious Tuition Free Conservatory in Chicago.

Born in 1985, Mr. Ziraldo began his music studies on the cello at the age of ten, and began studying viola in 1997. He gave his first solo performance two years later. He performs on a viola by Scott Tribby, “anno 2005 in Kalamazoo, MI and a bow by D. William Halsey, 2012.

MARINA HOOVER, The White Lake Chamber Music Society’s Artistic Director, was born in Edmonton. She studied cello under David Soyer and Felix Galimir at the Curtis Institute of Music, and obtained a Masters at Yale under Aldo Parisot. She was founding cellist of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, which rocketed to international prominence after winning both the Young Concert Artists auditions and the Banff International String Quartet Competition.

In her time with the St. Lawrence Quartet, Ms Hoover performed at The White House, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the 92nd Street “Y”, the Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall (London), Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) and Theatre De Ville (Paris). She performed at the Festival Consonance (St. Nazaire, France), Turku Festival (Finland), Tanglewood Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Rockport Festival, Santa Fe Music Festival, and at the Newport Festival for four consecutive years. The St. Lawrence was resident quartet at the Spoletto Chamber Music Festival for 7 years. With the quartet, Ms. Hoover played over 1000 concerts in North America, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Viet Nam, Brazil, Uraguay, Israel, and Australia. Ms Hoover’s solo career has included concerts with Toronto Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, Symphony Nova Scotia, Red Deer Symphony, Saskatoon Symphony, Belo Horizonte Symphony (Brazil), Yale Chamber Orchestra and Curtis Orchestra.

Pianist Kuang-Hao Huang performs throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Asia. Mr. Huang is most often heard as a collaborator with Chicago’s finest musicians, from instrumentalists of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to singers with the Lyric Opera. He has performed with the Avalon, Euclid, Spektral and Vermeer String Quartets and has been a guest of the Chicago Chamber Musicians. Mr. Huang can be heard in recordings on the Aucourant, Cedille, Innova and Naxos labels.

An advocate of new music, Mr. Huang gave the world premiere performances of solo works by Louis Andriessen and Chen Yi at Weill Hall as part of Carnegie Hall’s Millennium Piano Book Project. He has also premiered numerous ensemble works, including pieces by Laurie Altman, Mason Bates, Stacy Garrop, Geoffrey Gordon, John Harbison, Daniel Kellogg, Shulamit Ran and Laura Schwendinger. Mr. Huang is a member of Fulcrum Point New Music Project and has appeared with MusicNOW.

A dedicated teacher, Mr. Huang currently serves on the faculties of the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University and Concordia University-Chicago. Mr. Huang is Associate Artistic Director of Rush Hour Concerts at the International Music Foundation as well as Concerts/Artistic Director of Make Music Chicago, a day-long, citywide celebration of music on the summer solstice.