Cellist Caroline Stinson is a native of Canada and has made her career across North America and Europe as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician in traditional, 20th century and contemporary repertoire. Cellist of the internationally acclaimed Ciompi String Quartet and Associate Professor at Duke University in North Carolina, Ms. Stinson’s concert invitations include Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Halls, Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Museum of Modern Art’s Summergarden Series, Bargemusic and Le Poisson Rouge in New York, Boston’s Gardner Museum, Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian; the Koelner Philharmonie, Lucerne Festival and Cité de la Musique in Europe, and the Centennial and Winspear Centres in Canada.

An active recitalist and chamber musician, Caroline is invited regularly as guest and has appeared at the Rencontres d’été Strasbourg, France, Rudersdal Sommerkoncerter, Denmark, Manchester Music, Newburyport and Caramoor Music Festivals in the USA. Since joining the Ciompi Quartet in 2018, she has performed with the group across the US, in Taiwan and Italy and has given solo recitals in New York City presented by the League of Composers and in Denmark. In 2022 she will tour Lithuania with pianist Gabrielius Alekna performing Dialogues with Beethoven including a premiere by Žibuoklė Martinaityte.

Together with her husband, Andrew Waggoner, Caroline is co-artistic Director of the Weekend of Chamber Music, a summer music festival of concerts and events in the Southern Catskill Mountain Region of New York State. Now in their 9th year as directors and the festival’s 30th, WCM hosts multiple events over 3 weeks, featuring a composer-in-residence, and the select group of artists perform vivid, intimate concerts in rural spaces and unusual village sites across multiple counties. WCM also brings in graduate fellows in composition and performance to collaborate on new works and present as part of the festival itself.

Caroline’s close work with composers has been essential in building her understanding and communication of new music, and she is privileged to have worked closely with Bill Bolcom, Pierre Boulez, John Corigliano, George Crumb, John Harbison, Aaron Jay Kernis, Harold Meltzer, Shulamit Ran, Steven Stucky, Joan Tower, Andrew Waggoner and Anna Weesner; Peter Eötvös in Germany, and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen in Denmark, among many others. At the composer’s recommendation, she performed Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “YTA III”,
for solo cello at Scandinavia House in New York, and performed Elliot Carter’s Triple Duo on two continents and for Swiss Radio with Pierre Boulez conducting, working with the composer on multiple occasions. Caroline has commissioned cello concerti, solo cello works and pieces with electronics, and chamber music, premiering dozens of works over a decade with the Lark Quartet and Open End Ensemble (a new music and improvisation group), and performing and touring with the Bang On a Can All-Stars, ISCM League of Composers, the Cassatt Quartet, CELLO, Continuum of New York City and Accroche Note of France.

Ms. Stinson has an extensive chamber music discography of almost two dozen CDs, including three recordings on Bridge Records with the Lark Quartet, featured and praised on the BBC, in Gramophone Magazine, WQXR and in the NY Times. She released her solo recording on Albany Records linking European masters to multiple generations of American composers in 2011. In radio, her performances have been broadcast on Swiss Radio, Performance Today in the USA, and on CBC Radio Canada.

Caroline was a student of Tanya Prochazka in Edmonton and earned degrees with honours from the Interlochen Arts Academy, the Cleveland Institute of Music under Alan Harris, the Hochschule für Musik Köln (First Prize) as a student of Maria Kliegel, and completed her Master’s Degree and Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School with Joel Krosnick. While living in Germany, she took courses with Natalia Gutman, Frans Helmerson, Boris Pergamenschikow, Siegfried Palm and Janos Starker. She is the recipient of the J.B.C. Watkins Prize in Music from the Canada Council, first prize in the Hohnen Foundation Cello Competition of Germany, and the American Music Award from the Seventeen/GM National Concerto Competition in the United States. She has been awarded prizes, grants and scholarships from the Alberta Heritage Fund, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Winspear Fund, the Anne Burrows Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, and fellowships from the Aspen, Lucerne, Verbier and Sarasota Festivals.

Lithuanian pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute’s powerfully and intricately crafted performances have earned her critical acclaim throughout North America and Europe. Her ability to communicate the essential substance of a work has led critics to describe her as possessing ‘razor-sharp intelligence and wit’ and ‘subtle, complex, almost impossibly detailed and riveting in every way’ (The Washington Post) and as ‘an artist of commanding technique, refined temperament and persuasive insight.’(The New York Times). In 2006, she was honored as a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.

Labor Records released Ieva’s debut recording in 2010 to critical international acclaim, which resulted in recitals in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Vilnius, and Toulouse.   She made her orchestral debuts with the Chicago Symphony; in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; with the American Youth Philharmonic in 2016, and in February 2017, Ieva was the soloist with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Montevideo in Uruguay.  Her piano trio—Trio Cavatina—won the 2009 Naumburg International Chamber Music Competition.  Ieva’s latest recording:  Returning Paths:  solo piano works by Janacek and Suk was also released to critical acclaim in 2014.

In the fall of 2016, Ieva began a collaboration with the violinist Midori, with recitals in Canada, at the Cartagena International Music Festival in Colombia, and in Germany and Austria.  Since, they have given recitals in Japan, Germany, Austria, Poland, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, India, and Sri Lanka.

Jokubaviciute’s latest piano solo recording Northscapes will be released in 2021.  This recording project weaves works, written within the last decade by composers from the Nordic and Baltic countries of Europe, into a tapestry of soundscapes that echo the reverberations between landscape, sound, and the imagination.  This recording will include works by:  Kaja Saariaho, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Raminta Šerkšnyte, Lasse Thoresen, Bent Sorensen, and Pēteris Vasks.

A much sought after chamber musician and collaborator, Ieva regularly tours and appears at international music festivals including: Marlboro; Ravinia; Bard; Caramoor; Chesapeake Chamber Music; Prussia Cove in Cornwall, England; and Festival de la musique de chambre at La Lointaine in France. She has participated in the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Lubeck, Germany; the Katrina Chamber Music Festival, Aland Islands, Finland; the Oulunsalo Chamber Music Festival in Oulunsalo, Finland; the Joaquin Turina Chamber Music Festival in Seville, Spain; and Music in the Vineyards in Napa Valley, CA; the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, VT; Salt Bay Chamber Music Festival in Maine, and the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival at East Carolina University.

Earning degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and from Mannes College of Music in New York City, her principal teachers have been Seymour Lipkin and Richard Goode.  Currently, Ieva is Associate Professor of the Practice of Piano at Duke University in Durham, NC having previously been on the faculty at Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, VA. Ieva is also on the faculty at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival in Blue Hill, ME and has established herself as a mentoring artist at the Marlboro Music Festival in Marlboro, VT.