CCM presents a daylong event to celebrate violist Nobuko Imai

Nobuko Imai (Tokyo, 1943) began her training at Tokyo's Toho Gakuen School of Music and soon after went to the United States, where she studied at the Juilliard School and Yale University. She won the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1967, and won the highest prize at both the Geneva International Music Competition and the ARD International Music Competition in Munich.

As a chamber musician, Imai has worked with artists such as Martha Argerich, Kyung-Wha Chung, Heinz Holliger, Mischa Maisky, Midori, Murray Perahia, Gidon Kremer, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, András Schiff, Isaac Stern, and Pinchas Zukerman. She appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She is a former member of the Vermeer Quartet and is the founder and a member of the Michelangelo Quartet, where she performs together with Mihaela Martin, Daniel Austrich, and Frans Helmerson.

Her discography includes more than thirty releases on labels such as BIS, Chandos, DG, EMI, Hyperion, and Philips. She has been a recipient of numerous awards including the Avon Arts Award (1993), Japan's Suntory Music Award (1995), and Mainichi Award of Arts (1996). Toru Takemitsu composed the viola concerto A String around Autumn for her in 1989.

Between 1983 and 2003, Imai taught at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. She is  currently teaching at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, the Conservatoire Supérieur et Académie de Musique Tibor Varga in Sion in Switzerland, and at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique de Genève in Geneva. For young musicians from Japan and the Netherlands, she founded the East West Baroque Academy.

She has played a 1690 Andrea Guarneri instrument since 1988.

Sally Chisholm, violist of the Pro Arte Quartet, and Professor of Viola at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has had an extensive career in chamber music. She was a founding member of the Thouvenel String Quartet who won first prize at the Weiner International Chamber Music Competition, was a finalist of New York's Naumburg Competition, performed on NBC's TODAY Show, and toured China and Tibet.

Since joining the ProArte Quartet, Chisholm has performed numerous concerts in Eastern Europe, served twice as an international juror in Warsaw, Poland, presented four concerts in North Korea, and for two decades performed in Ernen, Switzerland, at the Festival Der Zukunft founded by pianist Gyorgy Sebok.

Chisholm is a permanent member of the Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute, the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota and performs annually in Midsummers Music Festival in Door County. She frequently serves as Principal Violist of the Chicago Philharmonic and the Joffrey Ballet including their week long residency at Lincoln Center. In 2018 and 2019 she performed at the Otaru Festival in Japan, in 2019 gave the world premiere of the John Harbison Viola Sonata, and in 2020 taught viola master classes at the Manhattan School in New York. World premieres of viola quintets by Paul Wiancko and John Harbison are scheduled for 2024.

She returned to Marlboro Music Festival this past summer for her 15th season, joining musicians including violists Nobuko Imai, Hsin Yun Huang and Mischa Amory, violinist Arnold Steinhardt, cellist Peter Wiley, and artistic directors Mitsuko Uchida and Jonathan Biss. Composers in residence were Thomas Adés, Sally Beamish and Paul Wiancko.

Her former students include violists in major orchestras, renowned chamber musicians and internationally recognized teachers. She performs on the viola formerly owned by violist Georges Janzer.

Beth Guterman Chu is one of the most sought-after violists of her generation. Before joining the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 2013 as Principal Viola, she was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and enjoyed a varied career as a chamber musician and recitalist. Chu is still an avid chamber musician, and collaborates with many artists including Gil Shaham, Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, Menahem Pressler, Jaime Laredo, James Ehnes, and members of the Guarneri, Emerson, and Orion quartets. As a recording artist, she has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Tzadik, Naxos, and the CMS Studio Recordings.

During the summer Chu performs and works with young musicians at the Aspen Music Festival and School, National Youth Orchestra-USA, and at the Marlboro Music Festival. In recent years, she has also performed at festivals in Seattle; Lake Champlain, Vermont; Portland, Maine; as well as Luzerne, Bridgehampton, and Skaneateles, New York. Chu has also performed as soloist with many distinguished conductors including Hannu Lintu, Bramwell Tovey, David Robertson, Leonard Slatkin, and James DePreist.

Chu received her Artist Diploma at the New England Conservatory studying with Kim Kashkashian, and her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School studying with Masao Kawasaki and Misha Amory. She lives in St. Louis with her husband Jonathan, another violist, and their three children.

Hank Dutt worked under the inspirational tutelage of David Dawson at Indiana University where he earned a Bachelor and Master of Music degree. Directly after his work at Indiana in 1977, he joined the Kronos Quartet and held the viola position until his retirement in July of 2024.

The San Francisco based Kronos Quartet has combined a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the world’s most celebrated and influential ensembles, performing thousands of concerts, releasing more than 60 recordings, collaborating with many of the world’s most accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning over 1,000 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos has received over 40 awards, including the prestigious Polar Music Prize, Avery Fisher Prize, and the WOMEX (World Music Expo) Artist Award.

Maiya Papach is the principal violist of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. A member of the orchestra since 2008, she has made solo appearances with the SPCO in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with concertmaster Steven Copes, solo directed Benjamin Britten’s Lachrymae and as soloist in Woolrich’s Ulysses Awakes.

Papach has made frequent national and international appearances as a chamber musician, with a versatile profile in her performances of both traditional and contemporary repertoire. She is a founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), with whom she has performed frequently at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and dozens of experimental venues. She has toured extensively in the former Soviet Union with the Da Capo Chamber Players, across North America with Musicians from Marlboro, and has made appearances at Prussia Cove (UK), the Boston Chamber Music Society, the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, the Chattanooga Chamber Music Festival and Chamber Music Quad Cities. She is also currently a member of Accordo, a Twin Cities-based chamber music group.

Papach is a 2013 recipient of the McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians administered by the MacPhail Center for Music. Through this fellowship and in collaboration with ICE, she co-commissioned a viola concerto by Anthony Cheung, performed at the Mostly Mozart Festival to critical acclaim by the New York Times. She is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Juilliard School, and her principal teachers include Roland Vamos, Karen Tuttle, Benny Kim and Hsin-Yun Huang. She performs on a 19th century Turinese viola by Annibale Fagnola.