Leading International Composers: Paul Wiancko

Paul Wiancko is an acclaimed composer and cellist. The Washington Post describes Wiancko as “a restless and multifaceted talent who plays well with others”—a reference to his substantial collaborations with artists like Max Richter, Chick Corea, Norah Jones, Arcade Fire, and The National. “Even with this chronically collaborative spirit,” the Post continues, “Wiancko maintains a singular voice as a composer.” In 2023, Paul was named Director of Chamber Music at Spoleto Festival USA.

As cellist of the internationally-celebrated Kronos Quartet, Wiancko regularly appears on the world's foremost stages—including Carnegie Hall, the Barbican, and the Sydney Opera House. Wiancko first collaborated with the Kronos Quartet in 2018 when he was invited to compose a piece for 50 For The Future: The Kronos Learning Repertoire, and soon after toured with the quartet as guest cellist. Upon officially joining the group in 2023, violinist and Kronos artistic director David Harrington stated, "We look forward to soaring into the future with the catalytic, super-charged vitality of Paul’s playing. It will be so much fun to explore the vast world of music together with Paul.”

A serial chamber musician, Wiancko is a founding member of the viola and cello duo Ayane & Paul, as well as Owls, a quartet-collective dubbed a “dream group” by The New York Times. He has shared the stage with many of today’s most prominent artists, including Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, Yo-Yo Ma, Terry Riley, Caroline Shaw, and members of the Emerson, Guarneri, St. Lawrence, and JACK quartets. From 2009 to 2011, he was cellist of the Harlem Quartet, with whom he performed and taught extensively throughout the US, Europe, South America, and Africa.

Wiancko’s own music has been described as everything from “dazzling” and “compelling” (Star Tribune) to “joyous, riotous” and “delicate” (NY Times). NPR writes, “If Haydn were alive to write a string quartet today, it may sound something like Paul Wiancko's LIFT”—a work that “teems with understanding of and affection for the string-quartet tradition” (NY Times) and is featured on the Aizuri Quartet’s Grammy-nominated album, Blueprinting. Wiancko is a recipient of the S&R Foundation’s Washington Award for composition, and was named one of The Washington Post's “22 for ‘22: Composers and Performers to Watch.” He has served as composer-in-residence at Spoleto Festival USA, Music from Angel Fire, Portland Chamber Music Festival, Caramoor, and the Banff Centre, and has composed works for the St. Lawrence, Kronos, Aizuri, Parker, Calder, and Attacca Quartets, yMusic, Alisa Weilerstein, Alexi Kenney, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and many others.

In addition to a full performance and composition schedule, Wiancko is a dedicated teacher, mentor, and advocate for music education at all levels. He has taught at the St. Lawrence Chamber Music Seminar, Festival del Lago, and the Banff Centre, and is regularly invited to give masterclasses at institutions including Stanford, Peabody, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Wiancko’s commitment to supporting future generations of performers and composers has led him to assist in the development of forward-thinking programs like Evolution Classical at the Banff Centre and the Green Lake Chamber Music Institute.

Violinist Alexi Kenney is forging a career that defies categorization, following his interests, intuition, and heart. He is equally at home creating experimental programs and commissioning new works, soloing with major orchestras around the world, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of our time. Alexi is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.

Highlights of Alexi’s 2024/25 season include touring the complete Violin Sonatas of Robert Schumann on period instruments with pianist Amy Yang, as well as playing concertos by Bartók, Beethoven, and Stravinsky with the San Diego Symphony, Florida Orchestra, and Reno Philharmonic, among others. The 2023/24 season saw Alexi perform as soloist with the Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee Symphonies, lead a program of his own creation with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and debut a new iteration of his project Shifting Ground at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Ojai Festival, in collaboration with the new media and video artist Xuan. Shifting Ground intersperses seminal works for solo violin by J.S. Bach with pieces by Matthew Burtner, Mario Davidovsky, Nicola Matteis, Kaija Saariaho, Paul Wiancko, and Du Yun, as well as new commissions by composers Salina Fisher and Angélica Negrón. The album version of Shifting Ground was released in June 2024.

In recent seasons, Alexi has soloed with the Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Detroit Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, and l’Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, as well as in a play-conduct role as guest leader of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, on Carnegie Hall’s ‘Distinctive Debuts’ series, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, 92nd Street Y, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern Festival, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild Competition and laureate of the 2012 Menuhin Competition, Alexi has been profiled by Musical America, Strings Magazine, and The New York Times, and has written for The Strad.

Chamber music continues to be a major part of Alexi’s life, regularly performing at festivals including Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Chamber Music Northwest, Kronberg, La Jolla, Ojai, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Seattle, and Spoleto. He is a founding member of Owls—an inverted quartet hailed as a “dream group” by The New York Times—alongside violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko. Alexi is also an alum of the Bowers Program (formerly CMS 2) at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried. Previous mentors in the Bay Area include Wei He, Jenny Rudin, and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow by Charles Espey made in Port Townsend, Washington in 2024.

Outside of music, Alexi enjoys hojicha, modernist design and architecture, baking for friends, and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.

Hailed for her "magnetic, wide-ranging tone" and her "rock solid technique" (Philadelphia Inquirer), violist Ayane Kozasa is a member of the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet. Their current season tours include performance venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to the Vicenza Jazz Festival, and they will be making stops in Brazil, Japan, Sweden, and Latvia. Many of their concerts include dynamic collaborators such as Indonesian singer Peni Candra Rini, visual storytellerAriel Aberg-Riger, and composer Terry Riley. Ayane is also a member of the quartet collective Owls, whose debut album Rare Birds was just released on New Amsterdam Records this spring. As a founding member of the Aizuri Quartet, she toured with the group for 11 years, garnering a Grammy nomination and capturing grand prizes at the M Prize Chamber Arts Competition and the Osaka International String Quartet Competition. Much of Ayane’s current work involves mentoring young musicians through programs like the Meadowmount School of Music, and she is currently on the viola faculty at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Aside from music, she enjoys hiking, doodling, and creating animation.

Cellist Gabriel Cabezas is a prolific and sought-after soloist and collaborator. Praised for his artistry and charisma, he is as comfortable interpreting new works as he is with the pillar scores of the cello repertoire and was named one of the “Composers and Performers to Watch” by the Washington Post. Gabriel has appeared with America’s finest symphony orchestras and has inspired and premiered dozens of new works by vanguard composers of the 21st century.

Gabriel is known for his extensive creative partnership with composer Gabriella Smith. Together, they released Lost Coast, a dynamic album of original music composed by Smith in response to climate change, which she has seen devastate her home state of California. It was named one of NPR Music’s “Favorite Albums Of 2021” and was featured by the New York Times as a “Classical Album to Hear Right Now.” The album was released on the Icelandic record label Bedroom Community. The duo Gabriella Smith & Gabriel Cabezas continues to write and record. Their live performance highlights in the 2025-26 season include appearances at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, Seattle Symphony’s Octave 9, LA Phil’s Green Umbrella series, and San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox series.

Gabriel premiered Smith’s concerto Lost Coast, a reimagining of the album as a daring work for solo cello and orchestra, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel in May 2023. In the 2025-26 season, Cabezas will perform Smith’s Lost Coast concerto in a pair of transatlantic performances with conductor Gemma New, first with the BBC Philharmonic for the piece’s UK premiere and then with the Seattle Symphony, where Gabriel will serve as the orchestra's Artist in Focus. He will also perform this signature work with the Chicago Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen. Past performances include appearances with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru, the Prague Symphony Orchestra under Tomáš Brauner, and the New York Philharmonic under John Adams.

Gabriel is a member of the genre-leading chamber sextet yMusic. Their virtuosic execution and unique configuration have attracted high profile collaborators—from Paul Simon to Bill T. Jones to Ben Folds— and inspired an expanding repertoire of original works by prominent composers including Caroline Shaw, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly and Andrew Norman. The ensemble recently released their first album of self-composed work, titled YMUSIC. Written collaboratively by all six musicians, YMUSIC represents a creative breakthrough for the ensemble. “They’ve transcended all the conventions that they were trained in” (NPR Music), presenting "one of the most exciting and confident chamber music releases of the year” (Strings Magazine). yMusic’s most recent composition project, an evening-length work in collaboration with choreographer Kyle Abraham, Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful, premiered across ten performances in New York at the Park Avenue Armory in December 2024.

Gabriel also co-founded the string group Owls, described as “a dream group...” by the New York Times. The quartet weaves together new compositions with fresh arrangements of music ranging from the 1600s to the present, made distinctive by the group’s unique instrumentation of violin, viola, and two cellos. Their debut album, Rare Birds, was released in 2025 on New Amsterdam Records to wide acclaim.

Gabriel has recorded extensively as a studio musician, appearing on releases by Phoebe Bridgers, John Legend, Rufus Wainright and Taylor Swift, among many others. In 2016, Gabriel received the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, a career grant awarded to extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians, who, early in their professional career, demonstrate artistic excellence, outstanding work ethic, a spirit of determination, and ongoing commitment to leadership. Gabriel studied at the Curtis Institute of Music under Carter Brey. 

Lauded for her “extraordinarily varied palette” (WholeNote Magazine) and “purely magical” playing (New York Concert Review), Tokyo-born Chinese-Canadian pianist Silvie Cheng illuminates musical works with her exquisite touch at the keyboard. Since her Carnegie Hall solo debut in 2011, she has performed internationally as both a recitalist and collaborative pianist on five continents, from the California Center for the Arts to Brussels’ Flagey Hall, Montreal's Salle Bourgie to Santiago's Centro GAM, and the University of South Africa to Shanghai’s Poly Theatre. In the 2022-23 season, she was both the musician-in-residence of Cecilia Concerts in Halifax and a National Arts Club Artist Fellow in New York City.

Recent highlights as guest soloist with orchestra include appearances with the Filarmonic Banatul (Romania), Symphony Nova Scotia (Canada), and the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra (USA). Her distinctions over the years include top prizes at the Thousand Islands and Heida Hermanns International Piano Competitions, the Canadian Music Competition National Finals, the Ontario Music Federation Association Competition, and the Lillian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition. Her performances, recordings, and interviews have been broadcast on CBC Radio Two, WQXR, Vermont Public Radio, ICI Musique, Radio-Canada International, WCRB Classical Music Boston, WCNY Classic FM, Winnipeg Classic FM, BBC Radio Scotland, ORF Radio Austria, Classical Radio Orpheus Russia, Kulturradio RBB Berlin, Südwestrundfunk (SWR2), NDR Kultur and hr2-kultur Frankfurt.

​An avid chamber musician, Silvie tours extensively as the pianist of Cheng² Duo alongside her cellist brother, Bryan Cheng, and explores contemporary music of South America through her artistic partnership with Chilean-American violist Georgina Rossi. She has recorded for audite, Centrediscs, Navona, and New Focus Recordings, garnering a 2024 JUNO nomination for Cheng² Duo's most recent album, Portrait, for "Classical Album of the Year, Small Ensemble". She has also collaborated with pianist Angela Hewitt, clarinetist James Campbell, violinist Jonathan Crow, members of the Aizuri, Attacca, Kronos, and Penderecki Quartets, and musicians of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra, and others.​

Silvie's affinity for working closely with living composers has led to over fifty world premieres since 2010, in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Cornell University, and the National Gallery of Canada. Having an extraordinary ability to connect with the next generation and with audiences both on and off the stage, she is a teaching-artist of the Manhattan School of Music's Orto Center and of the Living Arts Collaborative in New York. With the belief that music as a universal language can help bring communities in need together, she has curated and performed at numerous benefit concerts over the years, raising tens of thousands of dollars for various charities and causes, including bringing awareness to breast cancer research and the 20/20 Campaign through the Ottawa Hospital Foundation, and participating in relief efforts for natural-disaster victims in Haiti, Indonesia, China, and Japan through the Canadian Red Cross.

​Silvie discovered her love for music at age four on a tiny, blue, toy keyboard. She obtained her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Manhattan School of Music as a Presidential Award Scholar, Dean’s List student, and the recipient of the Roy M. Rubinstein Award for "exceptional promise in piano performance" upon graduation. Her formative musical mentors include Jeffrey Cohen, Menahem Pressler, and Angela Hewitt. Silvie also holds an Associate Piano Performance Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, and has been invited as an adjudicator and panelist for The Hnatyshyn Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, and Steinway Piano Gallery Ottawa.