Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 1 in D Major, Op. 12
Gabriel Fauré: Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major, Op. 13
Earl Wild: Embraceable You
Florin Parvulescu was born in 1971 in Bucharest, Romania. He started playing the violin at six at the Georges Enescu music school. In 1978, he attended the Juilliard School Pre-College division, studying with Shirley Givens.
By 1989, Florin Parvulescu went on to study at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where his principal teachers were Sylvia Rosenberg and Herbert Greenberg. He also worked closely with pianist Leon Fleisher and violinist Berl Senofsky.
In addition to earning Bachelor’s and Artist Diploma degrees at Peabody, Mr. Parvulescu was awarded numerous prizes including the Marbury Award and Yale Gordon Award.
From 1996 to 1998 Florin Parvulescu was a member of the St. Louis Symphony. In 1998, he joined the San Francisco Symphony. He is currently serving as Artistic Director of the Tateuchi Institute of Music, an annual festival and workshop in Mountain View, California, in its fifth year.
As soloist and chamber musician Mr. Parvulescu has appeared in recital series at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Dame Myra Hess recital series in Chicago, Aspen Music Festival, Berkeley Chamber Music Series, Johanessen International School of the Arts in Victoria British Columbia, San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series, Chamber Music Series St. Louis, Heidelberg, Germany, and Fontainebleau, France, and as a soloist with the Xiamen Philharmonic in 2009 and 2010. He has performed in chamber music concerts with pianists Kiril Gerstein and Anton Nel and performed Thomas Ades’s Piano Quintet with the composer at the piano.
Mr. Parvulescu gave masterclasses at the Beijing Conservatory and taught at the Singapore International Violin Festival in 2018. He was featured on the McGraw Hill Young Artist Showcase on WQXR radio NY, National Public Radio, WFMT Chicago, and King FM in Seattle. The San Francisco Chronicle has praised him for his “gleaming tone and pyrotechnics.”
Born in Los Angeles, pianist Samantha Cho is active professionally in the San Francisco Bay Area as a soloist, chamber recitalist, and educator.
She has performed in the San Francisco Symphony’s Chinese New Year Concert, Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert in Chicago, Noontime Concert Series, Old First Concert Series, Concerts at Presidio Chapel, and Seattle’s Classical KING. Highlights include being featured on NPR Live Sessions and ArteTV in Seoul, Korea.
2024-2025 appearances include solo and chamber music recitals at Live from WFMT (Chicago), Noontime Concert series, and MayBeck Concert (San Francisco.)
An avid chamber recitalist, Samantha has performed with members of the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and Houston Symphony, and she has also performed with the Kenwood Symphony as the winner of the 19th Annual Master’s Concerto & Aria Competition. Her performances have been broadcast on WFMT, Classical King FM, National Public Radio, KTSF 26, San Francisco Symphony +, and NBC Bay Area.
Samantha is currently a Professor of Piano Pedagogy at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Prior positions include Associate Professor at Cabrillo College and faculty positions at Southwest College and Pierce College.
Samantha received her Bachelor of Music at Northwestern University, Master of Music at Cleveland Institute of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Minnesota. Her childhood teacher, Robert Turner, was renowned as a protegée of the Lhevinnes at the Juilliard School. She continued her studies with the following teachers: Paul Schenly, Kathryn Brown, Sylvia Wang, and Alexander Braginsky.
