Jean- Baptiste Barrière: Sonata for 2 Cellos in G Major

Giacobo Cervetto: Divertimento No. 1

Madoka Mori: Sakura for Solo Cello

David Popper: Suite for 2 Cellos, Op. 16

Nicolo Paganini: Caprice No. 24

Friedrich August Kummer: Bolero, Op. 103

A native of Atlanta, GA, Robert Howard began studying cello at age 12. A graduate of Rice University and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has studied and performed at festivals such as Tanglewood, Spoleto, Verbier, the Accademia Chigiana, and the Sandor Vegh Academy in Prague. Robert won first prize in the Rome Festival Competition and has received grants from the Maggini and Virtu Foundations. Robert has performed in the Festival Internacional de Musica in Costa Rica, the Festival de Guadarrama in Spain, and the Mostly Mozart series in Lincoln Center. He has performed with American Bach Soloists, New Century Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque, and the San Francisco Symphony. A regular guest on many Bay Area chamber music series, Robert has also made concerto appearances with BARS Orchestra and Stanford Symphony. He has worked directly with composers such as Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Frank, George Perle, George Benjamin, and Jonathan Berger. Robert runs his own house concert series, concertsbythesquare.org, which combines thematically linked chamber music programs with food and short lecture presentations. A passionate teacher, he has made two trips to Kenya, where he taught and performed. He has coached at San Francisco Conservatory, Stanford University, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University, and the Conservatorio Superior Coruña in Spain.

Since giving her Carnegie Hall debut in 1994, Angela Lee’s “amazing finesse, control and coloration” [San Francisco Chronicle] and “astonishingly rich tone” [San Francisco Examiner] have been celebrated with recitals in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Victor Borge Hall at Scandinavia House in New York, Chicago’s Cultural Center, The Phillip’s Collection and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen’s Nationalmuseet and the Purcell Room at South Bank Centre in London. She has soloed with orchestras including the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, the San Francisco Concert Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, the CAMS Orchestra, the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, the Paraiba Symphony, the São Paulo State Orchestra, the Chautauqua Symphony, the Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra (UK), performing works of Boccherini to Barber to Kernis. Her solo and chamber performances have taken her throughout North and South America, Australasia, Europe, and Asia. She is frequently invited to festivals including St. Petersburg’s Revelations, IMS at Prussia Cove, Cagayan Valley International Music Festival, Taipei Summer Festival, Pontino Festival, La Musica, Banff, Marlboro Music Festival, Anneberg Festival, Chelsea Music Festival, Music Mountain, and Mahler-Jihlava Festival, collaborating with the likes of Nobuko Imai, Bruno Giuranna, Frans Helmerson, Isabelle Faust, Lydia Artymiw, Andras Schiff, Alexander Lonquich, Anthony Newman, Franco Petracchi, the Hausmann Quartet, and members of the Beaux Arts Trio and Guarneri Quartet.

Ms. Lee is dedicated to working with and performing the music of leading composers, among them Lukas Foss, Aaron Jay Kernis, Philip Lasser, Tania León, Jane Cornish, and Yehudi Wyner. As an opera, theater, and ballet enthusiast, Angela Lee was the solo cellist in Harris Yulin’s production of Don Juan in Hell starring Ed Asner, Cherry Jones, and René Auberjonois. She has worked as 2nd Solo-Cellist with Det Kongelige Kapel in Denmark, as Principal Cellist with Opera North Leeds in England, and with Eliot Feld at Ballet Tech, premiering Feld’s The Last Sonata, set to Claude Debussy’s Cello Sonata.

Using music to foster peace and goodwill, Angela Lee has made numerous humanitarian trips to the Republic of the Philippines and the former Yugoslavia. While on a U.N.-sanctioned tour of six war-torn cities throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, she performed for American and NATO troops and displaced civilians. As part of The Lee Trio with her sisters–Lisa, violinist, and Melinda, pianist–Angela Lee traveled to Ukraine in 2010 to work and perform for underprivileged children. Known for their “primal force on the stage” [Piedmont Post], the Trio won top awards at the 2004 Gaetano Zinetti and Kuhmo International Chamber Music Competitions in Italy and Finland and continues to teach and perform throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Angela Lee began her cello studies at age four at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Irene Sharp. At age twelve she was accepted to study privately with William Pleeth, commuting between San Francisco and London for several years. She graduated from The Juilliard School and Yale School of Music as a scholarship student of Aldo Parisot. In addition to her formal studies, she has been mentored by Cordelia Wikarski-Miedel and Morten Zeuthen. She is the recipient of the Ruth T. Brooks Achievement Award for Continued Excellence in the Arts, a grant from the Foundation for American Musicians in Europe, a Fulbright scholarship to study in London with William Pleeth, the Jury Prize in the Naumburg International Cello Competition, and a cello performance fellowship from The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Her cello is a 1762 Nicolo Gagliano from Naples.