Sibelius & Schumann:
Paying it Forward

Stefan Jackiw is one of America’s foremost violinists, captivating audiences with playing that combines poetry and purity with impeccable technique. Hailed for playing of “uncommon musical substance” that is “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity” (Boston Globe), Jackiw has appeared as a soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, among others.

In the 2025–26 season, Stefan Jackiw returns to the Pittsburgh Symphony for Korngold’s Concerto, the Baltimore Symphony for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto alongside Inon Barnatan and Hayoung Choi, conducted by Jonathan Heyward, and the Indianapolis Symphony for Berg’s Violin Concerto. He launches the Austin Symphony’s season with Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, which he also performs later with the Vancouver Symphony. Jackiw joins the Seoul Philharmonic and Mei-Ann Chen for Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy. In winter 2026, he opens the Laguna Beach Music Festival with three consecutive concerts featuring a varied repertoire, including Janáček’s Kreutzer Sonata. He also performs Dvořák’s Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony.

Jackiw is set to make his debut at London’s iconic Southbank Centre in a highly anticipated special trio project with cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan. He continues touring with Junction Trio with engagements at Chamber Music Sedona, Sanford-Hill Piano Series, Noe Music, Caramoor, Jacksonville Symphony, and additional dates to be announced. As a recitalist, he returns to Montclair State University, Denver Friends of Chamber Music, Harvard University, Friends of Music Sleepy Hollow, and The Rockefeller University, with additional performances to be announced.

Jackiw’s 2024-25 season highlights include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra under Santtu-Matias Rouvali, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Suwon Philharmonic, Pasadena Symphony, The Florida Orchestra, Erie Philharmonic and the Jacksonville Symphony. He continued touring with Junction Trio, returning to the 92NY stage with a program including the world premiere of a new work by John Zorn and performing at Rockefeller University.

Jackiw opened his 2023-24 season returning to the New York Philharmonic to perform the Barber Concerto with Jaap van Zweden. His season also included a quadruple World Premiere of new works at Roulette, performances with the Taiwan Philharmonic, China National Symphony, and the Junction Trio’s highly praised debut at Carnegie Hall.

Jackiw tours frequently with his musical partners, pianist Conrad Tao and cellist Jay Campbell, as part of the Junction Trio. In 2021, Jackiw performed a new Violin concerto, written for him by Conrad Tao and premiered by the Atlanta Symphony and Baltimore Symphony. He also enjoys collaborating with pianist Jeremy Denk with whom he recorded the complete Ives Violin Sonatas on Nonesuch Records. The album was universally lauded by critics, with The New Yorker’s Alex Ross naming Jackiw’s performance “a new standard.” In 2019, he recorded Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Inon Barnatan, Alisa Weilerstein, Alan Gilbert and Academy St. Martin in the Fields.  He has also premiered David Fulmer’s concerto Jauchzende Bögen with Matthias Pintscher and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen at the Heidelberger Frühling.

Jackiw has performed in numerous major festivals and concert halls around the world, including the Aspen Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Caramoor International Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City Festival, the Philharmonie de Paris, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Celebrity Series of Boston, and the Washington Performing Arts Society.

Born to physicist parents of Korean and Ukrainian descent, Stefan Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of four. His teachers have included Zinaida Gilels, Michèle Auclair, and Donald Weilerstein. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, as well as an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory, and is the recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Jackiw plays a violin made by Domenico Montagnana “ex. Rossi” c. 1730, generously loaned by a private foundation. He lives in New York City.

Photo credit: Diego Redel

Ashley Yoon is a 22-year-old violinist and passionate chamber musician from Charleston, South Carolina. She is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, where she studied with Joseph Lin for her bachelor’s degree as a recipient of the C.V. Starr and Malino Scholarships. She is currently studying with Soovin Kim at the Yale School of Music for her master’s degree. She serves as Artist-in-Residence at INTEMPO, a music education nonprofit based in Stamford, CT.

Ashley was recently a fellow for the Bowdoin International Music Festival’s Fellowship Program in 2025. She was a fellow at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival during the summers of 2024 and 2023. She is currently an active member of Charles Neidich’s WA Sinfonietta chamber orchestra as part of the Artena Foundation. She has recently served as the concertmaster of the Shepherd School Symphony, conducted by Jerry Hou, and for Yale’s Chorale Week. Her sextet had the honor of performing Brahms’ Sextet multiple times at the MET Museum through Juilliard. She won the American Protégé International Competition of Romantic Music and was invited to play at Carnegie Hall in December 2019. Ashley is also a winner of the DSO Concerto Competition and has had the opportunity to perform the Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto with the Dekalb Symphony Orchestra.

Outside of performing, Ashley has a deep interest in human rights, law, and writing, and hopes to curate a melding of these worlds. During her time at Juilliard, she served as the group leader for both the Gluck Community Engagement Fellowship and Hire Juilliard Performers, engaging with underserved communities in New York City and with clients such as Rémy Martin Cognac and a Grammy-winning artist.

Conductor Michael Stern has long been devoted to building and leading highly acclaimed orchestras known not only for their impeccable musicianship and creative programming, but also for collaborative, sustainable cultures that often include a vision of music as service to the community. He is passionate about working with young musicians not only in music making, but also to incorporate the idea of “service” into their experiences as they become the artists and advocates of the future who will take classical music into the 21st century and beyond.

Stern is Music Director of Orchestra Lumos (formerly Stamford Symphony) and the National Repertory Orchestra, a unique fellowship program for aspiring young musicians, and whose alumni populate every major orchestra across the United States. He is Music Director Emeritus of the Kansas City Symphony where he just concluded his 19-year tenure and is Artistic Advisor of Iris Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee.

During Stern’s acclaimed tenure with the Kansas City Symphony, he and the orchestra were recognized for their remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational development, stability, and extraordinary audience growth. The orchestra explored a wide range of repertoire and commissioned a number of new works and partnered with GRAMMY® Award-winning Reference Recordings for a collection of acclaimed recordings that includes commissions by American composers Adam Schoenberg and Jonathan Leshnoff as well as Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Hindemith, Prokofiev, Bartok and more.

Stern co-founded Iris Orchestra in 2000 and was Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor until 2021-22, when he had planned to step down from his post. With his departure, staff, community and musicians joined together to reinvent the orchestra as the Iris Collective, devising a new way for a 21st-century organization to offer a spectrum of events, from chamber music and smaller ensemble programs to full orchestral performances, teaming up with a number of creative partners, including Stern who continues his involvement as Artistic Advisor.

North American conducting engagements for Stern have included the orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and the National Symphony. He debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1986 in a program titled, “Leonard Bernstein and Three Young America Conductors” and has conducted them several times since. Internationally he has led major orchestras in London, Stockholm, Paris, Helsinki, Budapest, Seoul, Israel, Moscow, Taiwan, and Tokyo. Stern has been Chief Conductor of Germany’s Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lille, France.

Stern received his music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and is a 1981 graduate of Harvard University.