2025-26 Season Artists

American cellist Ashley Bathgate has been described as an “eloquent new music interpreter” (New York Times) and “a glorious cellist”(The Washington Post) who combines “bittersweet lyricism along with ferocious chops”(New York Magazine). Her “impish ferocity”, “rich tone” and “imaginative phrasing” (New York Times) have made her one of the most sought after performers of her time. The desire to create a dynamic energy exchange with her audience and build upon the ensuing chemistry is a pillar of Bathgate's philosophy as a performer. Dynamism drives her to venture into previously uncharted areas of ground-breaking sounds and techniques, breaking the mold of a cello's traditionally perceived voice.

For ten years Bathgate was a member of the acclaimed sextet Bang on a Can All-Stars. She also served as the cellist of the GRAMMY winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird for several years, and is currently a member of the chamber ensemble HOWL; TwoSense with pianist Lisa Moore; Bonjour, a low-strung, percussive quintet; and the Anzu Quartet. She serves as the Artistic and Executive Director of Avaloch Farm Music Institute.

For more information about Ashley, please visit www.ashleybathgate.com.

Jill Levy has served as Artistic Director and violinist of the Saratoga Chamber Players for 30 years, bringing together musicians from Europe, Canada, and the U.S. since 1994. She recently retired as concertmaster of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, having joined them in 1993. Her numerous solo performances with them include the December 2008 performance with Jaime Laredo of Bach’s “Double Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra,” and the premiere and recording of Evan Chambers’ “Concerto for Irish Fiddle and Violin” which was released on the CD Brutal Reality by Albany Records. She is scheduled to solo with them again in Spring 2020. As a winner of competitions, she twice performed as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. The New York Times review of the ASO Carnegie Hall appearance in May 2011 praised the “graceful solo from the concertmaster, Jill Levy.” Ms. Levy is also featured on the Saratoga Chamber Players CDs of Live Performances. She has performed at the Blossom, Sebago-Long Lake Festivals, with the Pittsburgh Chamber Soloists, the Williams Chamber Players (Williams College), and North Country Chamber Players. She has been a member of the Sherman Chamber Ensemble in Sherman, CT. since 1993. She is a former member of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy. Ms. Levy is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Jascha Brodsky and Arnold Steinhardt. She has also worked with Franco Gulli at the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy.

Emilie Anne Gendron and Alex Shiozaki, violins;

Stephanie Griffin, viola; Michael Haas, cello

Momenta: the plural of momentum – four individuals in motion towards a common goal. This is the idea behind the Momenta Quartet, whose eclectic vision encompasses contemporary music of all aesthetic backgrounds alongside great music from the recent and distant past. The New York City-based quartet has premiered over 200 works, collaborated with over 250 living composers and was praised by The New York Times for its “diligence, curiosity and excellence.” In the words of The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, “few American players assume Haydn’s idiom with such ease.”

The Momenta Quartet's 2024-25 season is made possible, in part, through the support of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Amphion Foundation, the Alice M. Ditson Fund and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Canadian violinist Jessica Tong has garnered international acclaim as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, having been described as an "outstanding talent" (Performing Arts in Canada) with "keen sensitivity and receptivity" (Bloomington Herald Times), who "allow[s] us to savour her sense of ardour and intensity, but never at the detriment of her tonal beauty." (ClassiqueInfo France).

She has been a top prizewinner at the Eckhardt-Gramatté Competition, the Toronto Symphony, Canadian Music and Yellow Springs International Chamber Music Competitions and has served as first violinist of both the Vinca and Larchmere String Quartets, during which time she was Artist-in-Residence for the Perlman Music Program in Florida, the ProQuartet Odyssée Program in France and at the University of Evansville in Indiana.

A pupil of Pamela Frank, Jessica has also studied with Kathleen Winkler, Donald Weilerstein, and Zhang yun Zhang, and has been mentored as a chamber musician by members of the Alban Berg, Vogler, Artemis, Cleveland and Brentano Quartets.

She is currently the Violin Professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Chamber Music Director of the Composers Conference, and Co-Artistic Director of Avaloch Farm Music Institute. For more information, visit www.jessicatong.com

Polish-American pianist Adam Golka has been regularly on the concert stage since the age of sixteen, when he won first prize at the 2nd China Shanghai International Piano Competition. He has also received the Gilmore Young Artist Award and the Max I. Allen Classical Fellowship Award from the American Pianists Association.

As a concerto soloist, he has appeared with dozens of orchestras, including the BBC Scottish Symphony, NACO (Ottawa), Warsaw Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, as well as the San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, New Jersey, and San Diego symphonies. Adam has enjoyed collaborations with conductors such as Donald Runnicles, Pinchas Zukerman, Mark Wigglesworth, Joseph Swensen, and he has made countless concerto appearances with his brother, conductor Tomasz Golka.

In recent years, Adam Golka performed the eleven-hour cycle of Beethoven’s Sonatas five times in its entirety, accompanied by 32 short films he created with Zac Nicholson, known as 32@32 (available on YouTube). First Hand Records in London recently released his “Beethoven Piano Sonatas Vol. 1”, recorded at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana.

Adam Golka is deeply indebted to his two main teachers, José Feghali, with whom he studied at Texas Christian University, and Leon Fleisher, with whom he worked with at Peabody Conservatory. He has continued to develop his artistry under the mentorship from his favorite artists, including Alfred Brendel, Richard Goode, Murray Perahia, Ferenc Rados, and András Schiff.

For more three decades, omnivorous violist Nicholas Cords has been on the front line of a unique constellation of projects as performer, educator, and cultural advocate, with a signature passion for the cross-section between the long tradition of classical music and the wide range of music being created today.

Nicholas served for twenty years as violist of the Silkroad Ensemble, a musical collective founded by Yo-Yo Ma in 2000 with the belief that cross-cultural collaboration leads to a more hopeful world. This mission was poignantly explored by the recent Oscar-nominated documentary by Morgan Neville, The Music Of Strangers, which makes a case for why culture matters. In addition, Nicholas served from 2017-2020 as a Co-Artistic Director for Silkroad, and previously as Silkroad’s Programming Chair. He appears on all of the Silkroad Ensemble’s albums including Sing Me Home (Sony Music), which received a 2017 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.

Another key aspect of Nicholas’ musical life is as founding member of Brooklyn Rider, an intrepid group which NPR credits with "recreating the 300-year-old form of the string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” Highly committed to collaborative ventures, the group has worked with Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, ballerina Wendy Whelan, Persian kemancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor, Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, Mexican singer Magos Herrera, and banjoist Béla Fleck, to name a few. Their most recent recording Healing Modes was lauded by the New York Times and received a 2021 Grammy Nomination.

His acclaimed 2020 solo recording Touch Harmonious (In a Circle Records) is a reflection on the arc of tradition spanning from the baroque to today, featuring multiple premieres. A dedicated teacher, Nicholas currently serves on the viola and chamber music faculty of New England Conservatory.

Violist David Rose has served as a titled player of numerous orchestras, including Associate Principal of the Vancouver Symphony, Principal Viola of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and Acting Assistant Principal of the San Francisco Symphony. Currently, he performs regularly with the Pro-Musica Chamber Orchestra. Also active as a baroque performer, he has toured and recorded with Toronto's Tafelmusik.

He currently serves as Associate Professor of Viola at Fredonia State University (New York), and teaches in the summer at the Rocky Ridge Young Artists Seminar in the Colorado Rockies, as well as the Fredonia Summer String Festival. In the Spring term of 2024, he held the post of Visiting Professor of Viola at the University of Maryland. 

David studied viola at the University of British Columbia, and also Indiana University. His main teachers included Gerald Stanick, Atar Arad and Stanley Ritchie.

Praised for his “sumptuous tone and deeply expressive phrasing” (The New York Times), cellist Keehyun Kim brings a rare combination of technical finesse and heartfelt musicality to every performance.

A founding member of the award-winning Parker Quartet, Kim has been recognized for his “unfailingly elegant” playing (The Boston Globe) and his ability to “speak through the cello with an eloquence that’s both intimate and commanding” (The Washington Post).

As a member of the Parker Quartet, Kim is a recipient of the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, and the Grand Prix and Mozart Prize winner of the 2006 Bordeaux International String Quartet competition. They have performed on many of the world’s foremost stages, including Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, and London’s Wigmore Hall. The quartet’s critically acclaimed recordings and boundary-pushing interpretations have cemented their place as one of today’s leading chamber ensembles.

Kim is currently on the faculty at Harvard University, where the Parker Quartet serves as Blodgett Artists-in-Residence. The quartet also holds visiting residencies at the University of South Carolina and the Walnut Hill School. Kee teaches cello at MIT and at the New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School.

He earned his degrees from the New England Conservatory, and counts among his mentors Laurence Lesser, Paul Katz and Bernard Greenhouse. Kee performs on a Giaccomo Rivolta cello made in 1844.