22-year old Japanese violinist, Ria Honda, was recently named a 2022 Rohm Music Foundation Scholarship recipient. In 2021, she was awarded the fourth prize at the 2021 Irving M. Klein International String Competition. Ria has won first prize at the MTNA Competition and DePaul Concerto Festival, among others. She was named a YoungArts Winner in 2017 and 2018. Additionally, she has been featured on WFMT’s Introductions, NPR’s “From the Top,” the Young Steinway Concert Series, “Heifetz on Tour”, the Evermay Concert Series in Washington D.C., and has performed with the Seattle Symphony, Cascade Symphony Orchestra, and the Oistrakh Symphony, among others. Ria has participated in the Meadowmount School of Music, The Heifetz Institute, Ishikawa Music Academy, Académie Musicale de Villecroze, Music Master Courses Japan, The Perlman Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West, to name a few. She recently participated in the Taipei Music Academy and Festival where she performed with Cho-Liang Lin. A passionate chamber musician, Ria has been a 1st prize winner in the M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition and has received the silver medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She currently plays on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Turin 1779, on generous loan from the Ryuji Ueno Foundation. Through the Columbia-Juilliard Exchange, Ria received a B.A. in Economics in 2022 from Columbia University and is currently a second-year M.M candidate at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Li Lin. She has served as concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra.

Most recently, 21 year old Umi Garrett was awarded 4th prize at the 2020 National Chopin Competition and 1st prize in the Juilliard School’s concerto competition, performing Ravel’s G Major Concerto. She was a finalist at the Young Concert Artists Competition in 2020 and the Canada International Piano Competition in 2021. She has also recently recorded for the Chelsea Music Festival in collaboration with other artists through Opus Illuminate. As a highly-regarded interpreter of contemporary works, she has also performed and premiered numerous solo and chamber compositions by composers such as inti figgis-vizuela, Leaha Maria Villarreal, Kyle Rivera, and more. As a soloist, she has also performed with many renowned orchestras, such as the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Wuhan Symphony Orchestra, Liepaja Symphony Orchestra, Symphonia Boca Raton, the Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the Pasadena Symphony and Pops, the Boston Pops, the Missouri Symphony Orchestra, and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. As a passionate collaborator and chamber musician, she has performed with prizewinners in the 2021 Primrose International Viola Competition and 2022 Sphinx Competition. Additionally, she made an appearance at the TEDxOC conference and the TEDxHarkerSchool conference in California as a performer and a speaker. Previously, Umi has given solo recitals in the 2013-2014 and the 2014-2015 seasons in total of nearly 60 cities throughout the United States. Umi has recorded 3 solo albums and will be releasing her debut chamber album in 2022 of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 5 Sonatas for Piano and Cello with Emily Mantone. Umi is a proud recipient of the Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School, where she currently studies with Hung Kuan Chen. Umi is a Young Steinway Artist.