Dr. Zachary Ebin is the Director of the Suzuki Program at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music.  Zachary holds a BA and an MA from Brandeis University, an MM from the Boston Conservatory, and a PhD from York University.  Before relocating to Nashville, Dr. Ebin was on the faculty of Etobicoke Suzuki Music in Toronto, where he founded and directed Arco Violini, an advanced precollege string orchestra dedicated to giving back to the community through performances at hospitals, senior residences, and charity events.  Dr. Ebin led Arco Violini in over 40 performances including two television appearances.

In high demand as a guest clinician Zachary has taught and lectured all over North America at conferences, institutes, and workshops. His research has been published in the American Suzuki Journal and the American String Teacher. In 2015, Dr. Ebin founded the Silent Voices Project. In the project young composers write chamber music based on poems written by children during the Holocaust. The Silent Voices Project has given multiple concerts across North America and recently released a recording.

Winner of the 2011 Prix de la Ville de Lausanne, Yuuki Wong has been quoted by The Strad as an artist ‘'with imagination and insight….a crowd-pleaser'’.  Musical studies began at the age of four with the piano and two years later, he started playing the violin. After just three years of violin lessons, he was admitted to the world renowned Yehudi Menuhin School in England, where he studied with Rosemary Furniss and Natasha Boyarsky alongside lessons with Yehudi Menuhin. He was the youngest student at the age of 15 to be admitted to the class of Amita and Roland Vamos at the Oberlin Conservatory, USA to begin his Bachelor of Music degree. This was followed by studies with Boris Kuschnir at the Vienna Conservatory, Pierre Amoyal at the Haute-Ecole de Musique Lausanne and Ilya Gringolts at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. Yuuki has participated in masterclasses with personalities such as Itzhak Perlman, Donald Weilerstein, Joel Smirnoff, Tibor Varga, Aaron Rosand, Zakhar Bron, Frans Helmerson, Viktor Tretyakov, Pamela Frank, Gabor Takacs-Nagy, Miriam Fried, Sylvia Rosenberg, Leon Fleischer to mention a few.

Honours bestowed upon Wong include 1st Prize at the 2007 Summit Music Festival Competition in New York, 2nd Prize and Special Prize at the 2007 Michael Hill International Violin Competition in New Zealand, Special Prize and 4th Place at the 2005 Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition in Helsinki, 3rd Prize at the 2004 Abbado International Violin Competition in Milan, the Grand Prix at the 2000 Kingsville International Competition, where he also swept the 1st Prize in the Senior Strings and Best Violinist Prize. While at Oberlin Conservatory, he was a recipient of the Dean’s Talent Award, which recognizes exceptional talent at the institution. At the Konservatorium Wien, he was prizewinner of the Fidelio Competition in 2005.

Yuuki has performed at the Menuhin Festival Gstaad as part of the 'Jeunes Étoiles' Series, Bellerive Festival in Geneva and has participated in the Verbier Festival Academy, Perlman Music Program, Ravinia Festival. He was invited numerous times to perform at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as part of he Professional Training Workshop. Recital, concerto and chamber music performances have taken place across 5 continents. Not only is the geographical scope diverse, other highlights include performances for the President of Singapore, for HM Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, and with orchestras such as the Helsinki Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne, Camerata de Lausanne, Auckland Philharmonia, Singapore Symphony, Corpus Christi Symphony, Bruno Walter Festival Orchestra, Morphing Chamber Orchestra.

As concertmaster of the Morphing Chamber Orchestra, recent highlights include the 2020 CD release by Sony Classical of Aleksandra Kurzak’s album ‘Desire’, the New York Metropolitan Opera Live-Stream ‘Met Stars in Concert’ with Aleksandra Kurzak and Roberto Alagna followed by a re-invitation by the Met for the New Year’s Eve Gala Livestream with Angel Blue, Pretty Yende, Javier Camarena and Matthew Polenzani. Upcoming album releases include Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with Tomasz Wabnic, founder and artistic director of the Morphing Chamber Orchestra on the Aparté label.

Violist Andrew Braddock’s teaching and performing career has recently taken him to the Sejong Center in Seoul, South Korea, the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, and the International Viola Congress in Rotterdam.

A passionate educator, he has given masterclasses at Vanderbilt University, the Chinese Culture University in Taipei, Taiwan, Bowling Green State University, and many others. He is currently on the faculty of Western Kentucky University (WKU) and is the co-director of the WKU String Academy. In the summers, he teaches at the Indiana University Summer String Academy and directs the WKU Summer String Institute, an intensive summer camp for students ages 4 to 18 based around chamber music and orchestral performance. His creative teaching led him to co-found Bridging Cultures with Music, a 501(c)(3) organization that supports various pedagogical and outreach programs in his community and abroad.

Research, writing, and intellectual discovery are central to his artistic mission. His writing has appeared in The Strad, the Journal of the British Music Society, the American Suzuki Journal, and the Journal of the American Viola Society. He is currently the editor of the American Suzuki Journal, a quarterly publication of the Suzuki Association of the Americas. From 2017 to 2021, Dr. Braddock was the editor of the Journal of the American Viola Society, the most prominent peer-reviewed publication for viola scholarship. The journal presents musicological and music theory research relating to the viola, in addition to pedagogical insights and current reviews. Most recently, Dr. Braddock spearheaded an issue devoted to the 40th anniversary of George Rochberg’s viola sonata, examining it from various musicological, historical, and theoretical perspectives. He previously served as the journal’s New Music Editor and on the board of the American Viola Society.

He is the principal violist of the Paducah Symphony Orchestra, and he regularly plays with the Nashville Symphony and the Nashville Opera. He also serves as an adjudicator for Carnegie Hall’s NYO2 program. He holds degrees from Indiana University, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Kentucky. His principal teachers are Atar Arad, Kathryn Plummer, and John Graham. He plays on a viola made by Giovanni Pistucci, ca. 1920.

andybraddock.com

Sarah McGuire is from Franklin, Tennessee and from a young age, developed a love and passion for the violin. She completed her high school and undergraduate studies with Dr. Carolyn Huebl at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, and she currently studies at New England Conservatory of Music with Ayano Ninomiya. In Boston, Sarah enjoys teaching young students, performing with the Philharmonia Orchestra at NEC, as well as participating in local ensembles like Apollo Ensemble of Boston and the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra. Sarah has also spent summers as a fellow in the Aspen Festival Orchestra, the National Repertory Orchestra, and Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra. As an avid chamber musician, Sarah is a founding member of the Eunoia String Quartet from her undergraduate school. The Quartet received first-prize at the MTNA Chamber Music Competition.