Prisma Health Presents Andy & Friends #4

Maurice Ravel
String Quartet in F Major, M. 35

Felix Mendelssohn
String Octet in E-flat Major, Opus 20

Praised by critics for his passionate expression and dazzling technique, pianist Andrew Armstrong has delighted audiences across Asia, Europe, Latin America, Australia Canada, and the United States, including performances at Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and Warsaw’s National Philharmonic.

Andrew’s orchestral engagements across the globe have encompassed a vast repertoire of more than 60 concertos with orchestra as well as solo recitals and in chamber music concerts at festivals around the globe.

This 2025-26 season, Andrew will perform Grazyna Bacewicz’s Piano Concerto and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto both with the South Carolina Philharmonic.  This October 2025, Andrew launches the first presentation of his Tuscan Music Festival, October 11-19.  Throughout calendar year 2026, Andrew joins longtime friend and duo partner, Two-Time Grammy Winning violinist James Ehnes in a cross-country tour across Canada, playing in each capital, province, and territory. Back in the States, year-round, Andrew directs and hosts six thriving chamber music series. Three of them are in South Carolina – in Beaufort (USCB Chamber Music), in Columbia (SC Philharmonic’s Andy & Friends), and in Greenville (Sigal Music Museum presents Andy & Friends, a combination of evening chamber music concerts and daytime workshops with students at the remarkable public arts high school, the Fine Arts Center).  He also directs New Canaan Chamber Music in Connecticut, Fabbri Chamber Concerts in NYC at Fabbri Mansion’s 1609 Italian Renaissance Library, a rare, intimate jewel with only 80 seats, and A Little Night Music at Tuckerman Hall in Worcester, MA, the vibrant city where Andrew lives happily with his wife Esty, their three children Jack (19), Elise (14), and Gabriel (8), and their dog Dooker.

A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since that time, he has appeared in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras, and as a chamber musician, throughout North America, Europe and Asia. The 2025-26 season marks Mr. Arron’s 13th season as the co-artistic director with his wife, Jeewon Park, of the Performing Artists in Residence series at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Mr. Arron tours and records as a member of the renowned Ehnes String Quartet and he is a regular performer at the Boston and Seattle Chamber Music Societies, the Brooklyn Chamber Music Society, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic, Caramoor, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, Seoul Spring Festival in Korea, Music in the Vineyards Festival, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Manchester Music Festival, and the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland. Other festival appearances include Salzburg, Ravinia, Tanglewood, Mostly Mozart, PyeongChang, Bridgehampton, Spoleto USA, Santa Fe, Evian, La Jolla Summerfest, Chamber Music Northwest, Chesapeake Chamber Music, and the Bard Music Festival. Mr. Arron’s performances are frequently broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today. In 2021, Mr. Arron’s recording of Beethoven’s Complete Works for Cello and Piano with pianist Jeewon Park was released on the Aeolian Classics Record Label. The recording received the Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artists Award from the Classical Recording Foundation. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Mr. Arron currently serves on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Luna Hayoung Choi is an award-winning violinist from Daejeon, South Korea. Most recently, Choi received 1st Prize at the Bales Violin Competition and won the NEC Honors Chamber Music Competition. Other recent accolades include performing as the feature soloist in a concert with the Aspen Festival Orchestra and David Robertson after winning the coveted 2023 Dorothy DeLay Competition, and winning top prizes at numerous competitions including the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, Hong Kong Generation Next Arts International Music Competition, MTNA Young Artist National Competition. Solo appearances include performances with Neo-Strings, Sangrok Orchestra, Seoul Symphony Orchestra, Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra, Macon-Mercer Symphony Orchestra.

Choi is currently pursuing a Master of Musical Arts at the Yale School of Music under the tutelage of Augustin Hadelich. Previous education includes a Master of Music at the New England Conservatory with Donald Weilerstein through the full-tuition Dean’s Scholarship and a stipend through the Presidential Scholarship, and a Bachelor of Music at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings of Mercer University. Her teachers include Amy Moretti, Robert McDuffie, and David Kim.

Born in Russia, violinist Maria Ioudenitch immigrated with her musical family to the U.S. at the age of two and grew up in Kansas City. In 2021, she received first prizes in the Ysaÿe International Music Competition, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition and the Joseph Joachim International Competition. She also received numerous special prizes at these competitions, including Joachim’s Chamber Music Award, the prize for Best Interpretation of the Commissioned Work, the Henle Urtext Prize, and a recording deal with Warner Classics.

Recognized for her innovative programmes, her first album on Warner – Songbird with pianist Kenny Broberg, released on 24 March 2023 – spans from Franz Schubert, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann to Nikolai Medtner, Richard Strauss and Nadia Boulanger. In upcoming concerts, she performs the Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Barber concertos as well as Haydn’s G-Major and Mozart’s D-Major concertos, while this season’s recital programmes include works by George Gershwin, William Grant Still, Dolores White and Fazil Say, alongside standard violin repertoire.

In the recent months, Maria Ioudenitch has made her debuts with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (at Berlin’s Philharmonie), MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker and Münchner Symphoniker and returned to her home-town Kansas City Symphony. Other recent engagements have taken her to the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, Lithuania Chamber Orchestra and Utah Symphony, while her growing list of conductors includes names like Andrey Boreyko, Alpesh Chauhan, Kevin John Edusei, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Andrew Manze, Ruth Reinhardt and Hugh Wolff. She is also an active chamber musician and has taken part in multiple chamber music tours with Ravinia Steans Music Institute and Marlboro Music Festival. An upcoming Marlboro tour will take place in November 2023.

Maria began playing violin with Gregory Sandomirsky at the age of three and continued her studies with Ben Sayevich at the International Center for Music in Kansas City and Pamela Frank and Shmuel Ashkenasi at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she completed her bachelor’s degree. She fulfilled both her master’s degree and Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried.

In the past year, Maria has been mentored by Sonia Simmenauer as part of Simmenauer’s new initiative, zukunfts.music. Maria is currently in the Professional Studies programme at the Kronberg Academy, working with Christian Tetzlaff. 

American violist Matthew Lipman has been praised by the New York Times for his “rich tone and elegant phrasing,” and by the Chicago Tribune for a “splendid technique and musical sensitivity.” Lipman has come to be relied on as one of the leading players of his generation, frequently appearing as both a soloist and chamber music performer.

Lipman debuted with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival and with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe at the Rheingau Music Festival in the summer of 2021. Highlights of recent seasons include appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and the Juilliard Orchestra. Lipman has worked with conductors including Edward Gardner, the late Sir Neville Marriner, Osmo Vänskä, and Nicholas McGegan. Lipman was a featured performer with fellow violist Tabea Zimmermann at Michael Tilson Thomas’s 2019 Viola Visions Festival of the New World Symphony in Miami. His recent debuts include at the Aspen Music Festival, Seoul’s Kumho Art Hall, Wigmore Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and in recital at Carnegie Hall.

Ascent, his 2019 release by Cedille Records, was celebrated by The Strad as a “most impressive” debut album while Lipman is praised for his “authoritative phrasing and attractive sound.” The album marks the first ever recording of the recently discovered work by Shostakovich, Impromptu for viola and piano and of Clarice Assad’s Metamorfose for viola and piano, which Lipman commissioned for the recording. He has also been featured on the recording of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with violinist Rachel Barton Pine and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by the late Sir Neville Marriner. The album topped Billboard’s Classical Chart and has received praise by both the press and public.

Named the 2019 Artist-in-Residence for the American Viola Society, Lipman has additionally been featured on WFMT Chicago’s list “30 Under 30” of the world’s top classical musicians, and is a published contributor to The Strad, Strings and BBC Music magazines. He was featured on the second season of PBS’s ‘Now Hear This’ performing Schubert’s ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata with pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen. He performs regularly on tour and at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and at music festivals including the Morizburg Festival, St. Petersburg’s White Nights, Music@Menlo, Marlboro, Ravinia, Bridgehampton, Seattle, Saratoga, and Kissinger Sommer festivals. His regular chamber music partners include Tabea Zimmermann, Mitsuko Uchida, Itzhak Perlman, Sir András Schiff, Jeremy Denk, Stella Chen, and Pinchas Zukerman.

Dedicated to expanding the repertoire for the viola, Lipman has also performed the premieres of works for viola by composers Helen Grime, Clarice Assad, David Ludwig and the American premiere of Monochromer GartenVI by Malika Kishino.

Lipman is the recipient of a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Kovner Fellowship, and the Jack Kent Cooke Award, and is also a major prize winner in the Primrose, Tertis, Washington, Johansen, and Stulberg International Viola Competitions. He studied at The Juilliard School with Heidi Castleman and was further mentored by Tabea Zimmermann at the Kronberg Academy. As an alum of the Bowers Program, Lipman occupies the Wallach Chair at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He performs on a 1700 Matteo Goffriller viola loaned through the generous efforts of the Pine Foundation.

"Splendid technique and musical sensitivity" - The Chicago Tribune

Virgil Moore began violin studies at the age of 9, and studied with Joseph Nigro and Dr. Yevgeniy Dovgalyuk. He served as Concertmaster of the Lynchburg Symphony Youth Orchestra, and was a member of the Lynchburg Symphony Orchestra and the James Chamber Players. He is currently a substitute violinist with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, and has sat Principal of The Juilliard Orchestra, having worked with conductors including Stéphane Denève, Peter Oundjian, Scott Yoo, and Giancarlo Guerrero.

Virgil was a semi-finalist in the 2024 Sphinx Competition in Detroit, and was winner of the 2017 LSYO Concerto Competition and the 2023 Townsend School of Music Concerto Competition. He has been awarded scholarships from the Congressional Black Caucus and the Gods Morning Foundation. Virgil has attended numerous summer music festivals, including the Rome Chamber Music Festival in Italy, the Curtis Summerfest, and the Meadowmount School of Music.

He has been awarded fellowship positions at the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, Colorado College Summer Music Festival, Aspen Summer Music Festival, and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. He has performed in masterclasses for Rachel Barton Pine, James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Cho-Liang Lin, and Donald Weilerstein.

Virgil graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University studying with Amy Schwartz Moretti, Robert McDuffie, and David Kim. He is currently pursuing a Masters degree at the Juilliard School on a full-tuition scholarship, in the studios of Laurie Smukler and Joseph Lin.

Winner of the Grand Prize at the 2016 Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Manulife Competition, Blake Pouliot’s 2024-2025 symphonic highlights include debuts with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare, as well as the Houston Symphony, Grand Rapids Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic and the San Antonio Symphony. Blake expands his presence in Europe this season with performances with the London Philharmonic and Alevtina Ioffe, Chamber Orchestra of Europe with conductor Mattias Pintscher and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, KYMI Sinfonietta and Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire.

During his time as Soloist-in-Residence of Orchestre Métropolitain in 2020/21, Pouliot and Yannick Nézet-Séguin performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 and Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons (was there anything else?) which led to Pouliot’s 2022 debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Centre, performing John Corigliano’s The Red Violin (Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra) with Nézet-Séguin. Highlights elsewhere include Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal in 2022/23, with Angela Hewitt and Bryan Cheng, as well as performances of the Paganini, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saëns concerti and Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy in subscription concertos across North America.

As a chamber musician, recital performances this season include debuts at Carnegie Hall and La Jolla Music Society with pianist Henry Kremer. As a chamber musician, Blake will return to Seattle Chamber Music Society, Austin Chamber Music Festival, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, and with violinist Simone Porter and pianist Hsin-I Huang he will perform at the Van Cliburn Concerts in Fort Worth, TX and BroadStage in Santa Monica, CA.

Pouliot released his debut album of 20th century French music on Analekta Records in 2019. Featuring Ravel’s Tzigane and Violin Sonata in G, Debussy’s Violin Sonata in G minor and Beau Soir, the recording received critical acclaim including a five-star rating from BBC Music Magazine and a 2019 Juno Award nomination for Best Classical Album.

Since his orchestral debut at age 11, Pouliot has performed with the orchestras of Aspen, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, Madison, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, and Seattle, among many. Internationally, he has performed as soloist with the Sofia Philharmonic in Bulgaria, Orchestras of the Americas on its South American tour, and was the featured soloist for the first ever joint tour of the European Union Youth Orchestra and National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He has collaborated with many musical luminaries including conductors Sir Neville Marriner, David Afkham, Pablo Heras-Casado, David Danzmayr, JoAnn Falletta, Marcelo Lehninger, Nicholas McGegan, Alexander Prior, Vasily Petrenko and Thomas Søndergård.

Pouliot has been featured twice on Rob Kapilow’s What Makes it Great? series and has been NPR’s Performance Today Artist-in-Residence in Minnesota (2017/18), Hawaii (2018/19), and across Europe (2021/22). Prior to that, he was named First Laureate of both the 2018 and 2015 Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.

Raised in Toronto, Canada, Pouliot studied with Marie Berard and Erika Raum as a graduate of the RCM Taylor Academy, and was then admitted into the studio of the renowned pedagogue Robert Lipsett, with whom he studied at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles

Pouliot performs on the 1729 Guarneri del Gesù on generous loan from an anonymous donor.

Known for captivating audiences with her passionate performances and musical artistry, cellist Sara Scanlon is quickly becoming a sought-after talent in the world of classical music. Sara made her solo debut, performing the Elgar Concerto with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. She has been featured as a soloist on NPR’s nationally broadcast program From the Top, served as principal cellist for the Emmy Award–winning Night of Georgia Music on PBS, and performed alongside Joshua Bell at a TED Talk with the Chamber Orchestra of America.

A Native of Milford, Connecticut, Sara won the Chappaqua Orchestra, Adelphi Orchestra, Greater New Haven Orchestra, Hamden Symphony Orchestra, and the Townsend Orchestra’s Concerto Competitions. She has been a featured performer in the Finckel-Wu Han Chamber Music Program at the Aspen Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Orford Musique’s Gala du Prix, the Toronto Summer Music Festival, Kneisel Hall, the Fabian Concert Series, the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach Concert Series, and the Rome Chamber Music Festival. Sara regularly performs in the New York City-based Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players Music Series and as a member of the Blue Hill Trio, showcasing her unique musical voice and resonant sound, gaining attention and acclaim from audiences and industry professionals alike.

Sara attended the Juilliard Pre-College Program, where she studied with Clara Kim and Richard Aaron. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree, graduating summa cum laude from the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings on a full merit scholarship, where she studied with Julie Albers, Richard Aaron, and Leo Singer. She continued her graduate studies at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Richard Aaron and Joel Krosnick and received a Master of Music degree in May of 2024. Sara has also had the opportunity to perform in masterclasses with esteemed artists such as Lynn Harrell, Frans Helmerson, Paul Katz, Colin Carr, David Finkel, Philip Glass, Edward Arron, Peter Stumpf, Michel Strauss, Laurence Lesser, Yegor Dyachkov, Amir Elden, Brian Manker, and The Brentano and Miro Quartets.

Sara performs on a beautiful 18th-century cello previously owned by Eleanor Aller-Slatkin, the first woman to hold a principal cellist position in an American orchestra and cellist for the Grammy Award-winning Hollywood String Quartet. The cello and Eleanor’s performance soundtrack, which includes the premiere of the Korngold Cello Concerto, are featured in the 1947 movie, “Deception” starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains.

Carlos Walker, a violist from St. Petersburg, Florida, is currently pursuing a masters degree in viola performance from The Juilliard School. With chamber music being one of their most treasured passions, they found a love for the viola while playing Samuel Barber’s String Quartet. Since finding their voice, Carlos has completed a Bachelor of Music in Viola Performance at the McDuffie Center for Strings, and had the pleasure of participating in NYO-USA, Aspen Music Festival and School, Heifetz International Music Institute and more.

In 2022, Carlos made their international debut at the Rome Chamber Music Festival performing in the Teatro Argentina in Rome, Italy. In this same year, Carlos won 1st Prize in the American Viola Society Collegiate Solo Competition. Carlos’ current teachers are Heidi Castleman and Samuel Rhodes at the McDuffie Center, they studied with Rebecca Albers and Victoria Chiang, and performed in masterclasses for violists such as Dimitri Murrath, Ettore Causa and Hsin-Yun Huang.

As part of the Fabian Concert Series at the McDuffie Center, Carlos has collaborated with artists such as Edward Aaron, Fabiola Kim, Sihoa He, Jeewon Park, Amy Shwartz-Moretti and the Cavani Quartet. Beyond this, since being at Juilliard, Carlos has collaborated with Juilliard faculty, Natasha Brofsky during chamberfest which culminated in a performance in Alice Tully Hall. As a chamber musician, in 2023 Carlos won 2nd prize in St. Paul String Quartet Competition and participated in the 2023 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Outside of performing, Carlos has a strong interest in teaching and increasing accessibility to music and firmly believes that everyone’s unique experience brings value to music making worldwide.