New York-based cellist Ari Evan maintains an active performing career throughout North America and Europe. From 2020–23 he lived in Brussels, Belgium, where he completed his Artist Diploma at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapelle in Belgium, under the tutelage of Gary Hoffman. Solo highlights from his time in Europe include a performance of Schumann’s Cello Concerto with the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra, Haydn’s D Major Concerto with Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Vienna Concert Orchestra, and a recital at Flagey, Brussels. Ari was featured on the Chapelle’s landmark Cesar Franck CD, recording his first three piano trios with Frank Braley. Especially fond of string quartets, Ari served as guest cellist of the Quatuor MONA, performing in the Paris Philharmonie, and toured with the internationally acclaimed Rolston String Quartet through Europe, Canada, and the US. He also served as guest principal cellist with Belgium’s Ataneres Ensemble.
A versatile chamber musician, Ari has performed with many of the world’s pre-eminent artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Shumel Ashkenasi, Corina Belcea, Colin Carr, Miriam Fried, Gary Hoffman, Hsin-Yun Huang, Ani Kavafian, Robert McDonald, as well as former members of the Cleveland and Artemis Quartets. He often performs music of living composers—having world-premiered works by Augusta Reed Thomas, Aaron J Kernis, Philip Lasser, and Pieter Schuermans—and has worked with Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Zorn, Eric Montalbetti, Kinan Azmeh, Eric Tanguy, and George Lewis on their own compositions. Many of the relationships Ari cultivated through chamber music have led to CD recordings—he is featured on the Alpha Classics, DUX, MSR Classics, and Sono Luminus labels. Exciting upcoming new music projects include the world-premiere of a cello/piano work by Michael Grebla at the Australian Embassy, and the first CD recording of Aaron J Kernis’ piano trio, Bright Abyss.
Ari has also played with many of New York’s premiere ensembles, working with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, ECCO, Music from Copland House, NOVUS, Metropolis Ensemble, New York Classical Players, Frisson Ensemble, and Exponential Ensemble. Additionally, he serves as the co-founder and artistic director of the Forest Hills Chamber Music Series, which he founded in 2019 to bring works by under-represented Jewish composers to his hometown of Forest Hills.
A passionate educator, Ari has coached chamber music at Juilliard Pre-College since 2016, and held a cello faculty position at the Caedmon School for the 2023–24 academic year. During his recent performances in Hawaii, he gave a solo cello masterclass to University of Hawaii students, as well as a high school solo masterclass to students of the Iolani music school. He has also served as guest artist faculty at the Heartland Chamber Music Festival in Kansas (2021), and the Merit School of Music in Chicago (2017), where he led chamber music masterclasses. His philosophy as a private teacher is to adapt his style to suit the individual needs of each student, and to always strive to help every student connect with their innate love of music.
Ari was a member of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect from 2018–2020, and studied with Timothy Eddy at the Juilliard School, where he received his Master’s Degree in 2017. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, where he graduated with honors.
David Kaplan — piano
Photo by Dario Acosta
Pianist David Kaplan has been called “excellent and adventurous” by The New York Times, and praised by the Boston Globe for “grace and fire” at the keyboard. As orchestra soloist, he has appeared with the Britten Sinfonia at London’s Barbican and Das Sinfonie Orchester Berlin at the Philharmonie, as well the Symphony Orchestras of Hawaii and San Antonio. As recitalist, he has performed at the Ravinia Festival, Sarasota Opera House, Music on Main in Vancouver, Strathmore, Washington’s National Gallery, and New York’s Carnegie and Merkin Halls.
Kaplan has consistently drawn critical acclaim for creative programs that interweave classical and contemporary repertoire, often featuring newly commissioned works. As a guest artist of Piano Spheres at Los Angeles’ Zipper Hall, he recently premiered Quasi una Fantasia, a program exploring the grey area between composition and improvisation through works by Anthony Cheung, Christopher Cerrone, and Andrea Casarrubios, together with Couperin, Beethoven, Schumann, Saariaho, Ligeti, and his own improvisations. Kaplan’s New Dances of the League of David, a recital infusing Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze with sixteen new works by composers including Augusta Read Thomas, Marcos Balter, Caroline Shaw, and Andrew Norman, was cited among the “Best Classical Music Performances of 2015” by The New York Times.
Balancing solo performances with meaningful collaborations, Kaplan has played with the Attacca, Ariel, Enso, Hausman, and Tesla String Quartets. As a core member of Decoda, the Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, he performs frequently in New York’s most exciting venues, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to National Sawdust, as well as creating innovative residencies as far away as Abu Dhabi, Mexico, and Scotland. He is a veteran of numerous distinguished chamber music festivals and series, such as the Seattle Chamber Music, Bard, and Mostly Mozart Festivals, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, and Barge Music. He is an alumnus of Tanglewood and the Ravinia-Steans Institute, and performs regularly as an alumnus of the Perlman Music Program, including with Itzhak Perlman at Miami’s Arsht Center. He serves as Co-Artistic Director of Lyrica Chamber Music, a community series in Morris County, NJ currently in its 36th season.
Kaplan has recorded for Naxos and Marquis Records, as well as for Nonesuch as part of his longstanding duo with pianist/composer Timo Andres. In September 2023, Bright Shiny Things will release Vent, Kaplan’s debut album with his wife, flutist Catherine Gregory, to include music by Gabriela Lena Frank, David Lang, Mr. Andres, Schubert, and Prokofiev.
Kaplan was a student of the late Claude Frank, and previously studied with Walter Ponce and Miyoko Lotto. His mentors over the years have included Anton Kuerti, Richard Goode, and Emanuel Ax. He studied conducting at the Universität der Künste Berlin with Lutz Köhler, under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship from 2008–10. The recipient of a DMA from Yale University in 2014, Kaplan earned his Bachelor from UCLA, where he has also served on the faculty since 2016, and now is the Assistant Professor and Inaugural Shapiro Family Chair in Piano Performance.
David is proud to be a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist, and when at home in Los Angeles, he enjoys practicing on his childhood piano, a 1908 Hamburg Steinway model A. Away from the keyboard, he loves cartooning and cooking, and is mildly obsessed with classic cars.
Eva Conti — dancer
Photo by Irena Shoyet
Eva Conti Alegria, flamenco dancer, has been a featured dancer, soloist, choreographer and musical arranger for the New Jersey based Alborada Spanish Dance Theater since 2006. With the ensemble SEGUE she has performed extensively and given numerous workshops about flamenco and the music of Spain throughout the northeast. She studied flamenco dance and castanets in both New York and in Spain (at the legendary Amor de Dios Studio in Madrid) with José Molina, Omayra Amaya, Inmaculada Ortega, Pastora Galvan, Olga Pericet, Farruquito and Adrian Santana. She has participated yearly in the National Institute of Flamenco workshops in Albuquerque and in the Maria Benitez Institute for Spanish Dance workshop in Santa Fe since 2008. She has danced as a soloist to the music of Bizet, De Falla, Albeniz, Piazolla, Granados, D’Rivera, Surinach, and Boccherini, with the Queens Symphony, Stamford Symphony, Atlantic Classical, and New Haven Symphony Orchestras and with the chamber groups, Ulysses Quartet, Windscape, Sylvan Winds, Gabriel Ensemble, Engle Winds, and the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival.
Eva brings a lifetime of musical study and performance to her flamenco dance. Since graduating from the Manhattan School of Music she has been performing extensively as a professional classical musician on both French horn and classical guitar. She is currently principal horn of the New Haven Symphony and the Berkshire Opera, and has played in numerous Broadway shows. She has performed and recorded with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera, New Jersey Symphony, Israel Philharmonic and the Radio City Orchestra. She toured the US and Canada as a member of the Barbra Streisand Orchestra for several years and is on the CD/DVD of the 2006 tour and the 2012 Back to Brooklyn tour. Eva recently released a CD of the Music for Eva Suite for horn and jazz piano composed by Tomoko Ohno. It is now available on Amazon and iTunes.
Ms. Conti holds a Master’s Degree in French horn from the Manhattan School of Music and Bachelor’s Degrees in Classical Guitar and one in Biology from the University of Rhode Island.
Eva designs and creates her own costumes
Jasmin Ward — soprano
Jasmin Ward is a soprano from Virginia, currently in her first year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. During the Met’s 2025–26 season, she will cover the roles of the Strawberry Woman and Lily in Porgy and Bess, then make her company debut as Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly. She recently made her company and role debut as Gerhilde in Die Walküre at the Santa Fe Opera as a member of the Apprentice Artist Program. Recent operatic engagements include several roles with Juilliard Opera such as Madame Lidoine in Dialogues des Carmélites, Rose Segal in John Musto’s Later the Same Evening, and Amelia in Simon Boccanegra.
On the concert stage, she made her Alice Tully Hall debut in 2025 performing selections from Strauss’s Four Last Songs, performed selections from Brahms’ Liebeslieder and Neue Liebeslieder with the Wintergreen Music Festival, appeared as the soprano soloist in the Richmond Ballet’s production of Vivaldi’s Gloria, and performed at the 2022 Virginia Gubernatorial inauguration. In 2024, she was awarded the Murray Rosenthal/Philip Hagemann Award from the Opera Index Vocal Competition and the following year, was named a semi-finalist in Houston Grand Opera’s Eleanor McCollum Competition and received the Florence and Paul DeRosa Prize from the Juilliard School.
She is an alumna of the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist Program, The Denyce Graves Foundation’s Shared Voices program, and Wintergreen Music Festival’s LEAD Cooperative. She holds degrees in voice from Virginia Commonwealth University and the Juilliard School.
Kayla Viviana — mezzo-soprano
Born and raised in The Bronx, NY, Kayla is a multi-disciplinary vocalist of Puerto Rican descent, hailed for her “arrestingly beautiful mezzo” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer).
Performance highlights include Ruth in Pirates of Penzance, Mrs. Hildebrand in Street Scene (Central City Opera, Regional Debut), Vessels of Light with the New York City Opera Chorus (Carnegie Hall), Hansel in Hansel & Gretel, Mercédès in Carmen (The New Voice Festival), Abuela/Ms. Sirleaf in To the People Like Us (White Snake Projects), and Ensemble in Pericles (The Public Theater).
A proud member of the BronX BandA, an eleven-piece Latin Jazz ensemble led by Arturo O’Farrill in partnership with Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education, Kayla made her Lincoln Center debut with the ensemble in a collaboration with the New York Philharmonic for Summer for the City. She is set to return to Lincoln Center, joining the New Latin Wave and the Philip Glass Ensemble for the 40th Anniversary performance of Glass’s album Songs from Liquid Days.
Kayla holds her Bachelor’s from the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College and her Master’s from the Royal Academy of Music, University of London.
