Piano Quartet in Eb Major, Op.47                                   Robert Schumann

Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 60, Andante                   Johannes Brahms

Craig Reiss is a member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Associate Principal 2nd Violin of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.  He has been a featured soloist with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Oakland Civic Orchestra, the Nova Vista Symphony, and the Vallejo Symphony.  He has taught chamber music at the Blackburn Music Academy in Napa and the Marin Academy and participated in festivals at Tanglewood, Spoleto, and the Colorado Music Festival.

He is also the director of the Eos Ensemble, an exciting chamber music group comprised mainly of members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra.  The goal of the group is to present concerts of wide-ranging musical styles and instrumental combinations.  Audiences throughout the Bay Area have been thrilled to experience the artistry normally reserved for the grand canvas of opera transformed into the intimacy of chamber music.  The Eos Ensemble has received grants from the Music Performance Trust Fund and KIDDO! to present educational concerts in the Mill Valley schools.  They also recently performed on the national radio broadcast “West Coast Live.”   San Francisco Classical Voice said, “Every little detail was perfectly in place and meticulously balanced… They played with genuine depth and power.”

Caroline Lee has performed throughout the United States and Canada as an orchestral player as well as a chamber musician and recitalist. She is currently a member of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and performs regularly as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra.

Before relocating to the Bay area, Caroline was a member of the Kansas City Symphony for eight years. She also performed with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra as a principal violist and for the newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, an ensemble dedicated to performing music written by living composers. An active chamber musician, she has performed for the Banff International String Quartet Festival, Domaine Forget International Music Festival, and San Francisco International Musical Arts Festival, collaborating with members of the Tokyo, Cleveland, and Colorado Quartets, as well as artists such as Eric Friedmann, Steve Dann, Ian Swensen, and Richard Stolzman. Along with her sister Aeri, Caroline formed The Lee Duo and performed recitals throughout North America, championing less familiar viola repertoire. She is also a member of Eos Ensemble, performing a wide range of works for chamber ensembles around the San Francisco Bay area.

Lee holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Michigan and a Master of Music and Artist’s Diploma from Yale School of Music. She currently lives in Oakland with her husband and two children.

Keisuke Nakagoshi began his piano studies at the age of ten, arriving in the United States from Japan at the age of 18. Mr. Nakagoshi earned his Bachelor’s degree in composition and Master’s degree in Chamber Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Graduating as the recipient of multiple top awards, Keisuke was selected to represent the SFCM for the Kennedy Center’s Conservatory Project, a program featuring the most promising young musicians from major conservatories across the United States.

Mr. Nakagoshi has performed to acclaim on prestigious concert stages across the United States, including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. He has received training from some of the most celebrated musicians of our time – Emanuel Ax, Gilbert Kalish, Menahem Pressler, Robert Mann, Paul Hersh, David Zinman – and enjoys collaborating with other accomplished musicians such as Lucy Shelton, Ian Swensen, Jodi Levitz, Robin Sutherland, Lev Polyakin, Axel Strauss, Mark Kosower, Gary Schocker and also conductors such as Alasdair Neale, George Daugherty, Nicole Paiement, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Herbert Blomstedt.

Mr. Nakagoshi is a Pianist-in-Residence at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the award-winning Opera Parallele. He resides in San Francisco.

Cellist Eric Gaenslen is a part-time artist-in-residence at the School of Music.  He has been a member of the Rossetti Quartet since 1999. Also a recitalist, he has performed worldwide at such venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Lincoln Center, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. As an orchestral soloist, he has performed Bloch’s Schelomo at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Beethoven Triple Concerto in Mexico, and given the premiere performance of Laura Carnibucci’s ‘Siddartha’ for cello and string orchestra. Chamber music performances at major music festivals include the Olympic, Aspen, Evian, Tanglewood, Bowdoin, Banff, and Vermont Mozart Festival. Among the artists with whom Mr. Gaenslen has collaborated are Eugene Istomin, Anton Kuerti, and Gautier Capucon. He has been a guest artist with the Ying Quartet.

Born in San Francisco, Mr. Gaenslen began his musical studies at the age of seven with master pedagogue Irene Sharp. He went on to receive his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University while studying with Aldo Parisot, and his Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School with Joel Krosnick, cellist of the Juilliard Quartet. Other major influences on Mr. Gaenslen include Robert Mann, William Pleeth, and Gyorgy Kurtag.

Gaenslen is a committed teacher himself and has taught at the Mannes College pre-college in New York and at the University of California at Santa Cruz.