Syoko Aki
Professor in the Practice of Violin. Syoko Aki studied in Japan at the Toho Academy of Music and in the United States at Hartt College and the Yale School of Music. She has taught at the Eastman School and the State University of New York at Purchase. She has appeared as soloist with leading conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, Gerard Schwartz, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Kenneth Schermerhorn. Miss Aki has been concertmaster and soloist with the New York Chamber Symphony, the New Japan Philharmonic, Waterloo Festival Orchestra and the New Haven and Syracuse Symphonies and has appeared in concerto and chamber music performances with Syzmon Goldberg, Henryck Szeryng, Broadus Erle, Leon Fleisher, Jaime Laredo, Joan Panetti and many others. A member of the Yale faculty since 1968, Miss Aki appears regularly in New Haven and at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.
Hyo Kang
Adjunct Professor of Violin. Hyo Kang has led a flourishing and versatile career as performer, teacher, and artistic director for the past three decades. He has made numerous concert tours in the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada, and Central America. As a member of the highly acclaimed Theatre Chamber Players of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. for more than twenty years, he has given many works their American premieres.
Hyo Kang joined the Yale faculty in 2006. He has been on the faculty of the Juilliard School since 1978, and was on the faculty of the Aspen Music School in Colorado from 1978–2005. His students have distinguished themselves with top prizes at the world’s most prestigious competitions and are performing with major orchestras worldwide. Mr. Kang’s former students include Gil Shaham, Sarah Chang, and Chee-Yun, among many others. Hyo Kang was born in Seoul, Korea and graduated from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Dorothy DeLay. In 1995, Mr. Kang founded Sejong, which has performed more than 300 concerts on major stages around the world and is in its thirteenth season.
In March 2003 Mr. Kang was appointed Honorary Ambassador by the Governor of Gangwon Province, Korea and was asked to bring the first international music festival to PyeongChang. Mr. Kang launched the Great Mountains Music Festival & School in August 2004 and serves as its artistic director. In the past few years, he was the subject of four television documentaries including KBS-TV’s Teaching Genius: Juilliard Professor, Hyo Kang. In 2004 the Korean government awarded him the National Arts Medal.
Ani Kavafian
Professor in the Practice of Violin since 2006, Ani Kavafian has enjoyed a career as soloist with major orchestras, chamber musician, and recitalist. She is also in great demand as a teacher, having taught at Mannes and Manhattan schools of music, Queens College, McGill, and Stony Brook universities.
Ms. Kavafian has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia, and Cleveland Orchestras as well as the Los Angeles and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras. Along with her sister, Ida, she has appeared around the country in recital as well as soloists with orchestras.
As an artist of the Chamber Music Society since 1979, Ani Kavafian continues to tour the United States, Canada, and the Far East. Ms. Kavafian is also a member of Trio da Salo with violist Barbara Westphal and cellist Gustav Rivinius and is a founding member of The Triton Horn Trio with William Purvis and Mihae Lee. Ms. Kavafian performs frequently with clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Andre-Michel Schub. Along with cellist Carter Brey, she is the artistic director of the New Jersey chamber music series “Mostly Music.”
A 1979 recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, she has appeared at the White House on three separate occasions and has been featured on many network and PBS television music specials. Recently, Ms. Kavafian and Kenneth Cooper released a live recording of Bach’s Six Sonatas on the Kleos Classics label. In 2007, a recording of Mozart Piano and Violin Sonatas with pianist Jorge Federico Osorio was released by Artek.
In the summer of 2008 she traveled to nine music festivals from Oregon to Italy. Ms. Kavafian serves as a guest concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra will perform as soloist with that orchestra in 2009. The Kavafian sisters will celebrate the 25th Anniversary of their first recital in Carnegie Hall in November 2008 with a performance at the Ethical Culture Society presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Wendy Sharp
Lecturer in Violin and Director of Chamber Music. Ms. Sharp performs frequently as a recitalist and a chamber musician. In demand as a teacher and chamber music coach, she is on the faculties of the Yale School of Music and California Summer Music. For nearly a decade, Ms. Sharp was the first violinist of the Franciscan String Quartet. As a member of the quartet, she toured the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan, and was honored with many awards including first prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Press and City of Evian Prizes at the Evian International String Quartet Competition.
A native of the San Francisco Bay area, she attended Yale University, graduating summa cum laude with Distinction in Music and received the Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Ms. Sharp has served on the faculties of Mannes College, Dartmouth College, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Choate Rosemary Hall, and has participated in the Aspen, Tanglewood, Chamber Music West, Norfolk, and Music Academy of the West festivals. She is currently a member of the Blue Elm Trio, a string trio based in the New Haven area. She has been a faculty member at the Yale School of Music since 1985.
Kyung Hak Yu
Lecturer in Violin. Ms. Yu holds both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School and a Master of Music from the Yale School of Music. She has studied with Dorothy DeLay, Paul Kantor, and the late Professor Emanuel Zetlin.
Ms. Yu was concertmaster of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra from 1988 until 1999 and has appeared as a soloist with the Seattle Symphony, the New Haven Symphony, and Yale Philharmonia, and has performed numerous recitals in New York City, Seattle, Aspen, and throughout Korea. She gave her New York debut concert in Weill Recital Hall in Carnegie Hall as a winner of the Artists International Competition.
Ms. Yu has taught at the Aspen Music Festival and was an assistant to Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard pre-college division. She served on the Fulbright Scholarship Screening Committee for Strings from 1999 to 2002. Ms. Yu has taught violin at Lehigh University and Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and has served on the faculty at Yale since 1988. Ms. Yu performs extensively with pianist Elizabeth Sawyer Parisot, with whom she recorded the Strauss and Prokofiev sonatas and performed on the CD The Music of Ezra Laderman for Albany Records.
She performed the Beethoven Triple Concerto with Elizabeth Parisot and Ole Akahoshi, cello, with the Yale Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Shinik Hahm. With Elizabeth Parisot, Ms. Yu has played numerous recitals throughout Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and has performed to acclaim in concert tours of Korea and Italy.
