Kingston Chamber Music Festival

Cuban-American cellist Dr. Tommy Mesa is recognized as one of the most charismatic and innovative performers of his generation. The recipient of Lincoln Center’s 2025 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Sphinx Organization’s 2023 Medal of Excellence, its highest honor, Mesa has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and symphony orchestras across the United States. He has also performed at the Supreme Court of the United States on four occasions.

A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Mesa gave the world premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Divided, a concerto written for him, in 2022. He has since served as the work’s exclusive soloist, performing it in major venues throughout the United States and Brazil, including Miami’s New World Center, Nashville’s Schermerhorn Center, and Carnegie Hall. His orchestral recording debut of Divided was released on Deutsche Grammophon in 2023.

In the 2024–25 season, Mesa serves as Artist in Residence with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Recent and upcoming orchestral engagements include performances with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and debuts with the Delaware, Glacier, and Rogue Valley Symphony Orchestras, as well as a performance of Jocelyn Morlock’s Lucid Dreams with the Windsor Symphony. Previous highlights include appearances with the Calgary and Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestras and numerous symphony orchestras across North America.

An active recitalist, Mesa performs regularly on major chamber music series and at leading institutions. This season marks the launch of a national recital tour with pianist Michelle Cann, with appearances presented by organizations including Chamber Music Pittsburgh, Linton Chamber Music, The Schubert Club, and the University of Vermont’s Lane Series. Additional performances include appearances at the Phillips Collection, Bargemusic, and Key West Impromptu Classical Concerts.

Mesa’s recordings include Division of Memory (PARMA Recordings), which received critical acclaim, as well as recent releases featuring tango works with bandoneonist JP Jofre and world-premiere recordings by Black and Latinx composers with Michelle Cann, featured on WQXR. He has also collaborated extensively with the multiple GRAMMY Award–winning vocal ensemble The Crossing Choir and appears on the GRAMMY-nominated album Bonhoeffer.

A committed educator and ensemble musician, Mesa has toured with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and serves as principal cellist of Sphinx Virtuosi. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School, Northwestern University, and the Manhattan School of Music, and performs on a 1767 Nicolò Gagliano cello, generously loaned by CANIMEX Inc.

Cellist Audrey Chen is the cellist of the Terra String Quartet and is praised for her “lyricism of dramatic intensity” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “longevity of phrasing” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). As a soloist, she has performed with the Seattle Symphony and Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and she appears regularly with ensembles including the Jupiter Chamber Players and the Boston Chamber Music Society.

Chen has participated in festivals such as YellowBarn, Olympic Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, Four Seasons Chamber Music, the Perlman Music Program, and Tanglewood Music Center. She studied at Harvard University, New England Conservatory, and the CUNY Graduate Center with Laurence Lesser, Lluis Claret, and Marcy Rosen, and was a 2022 recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

Violist Chih-Ta Chen hails from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and is the winner of the 2022 Chimei Arts Award and the 2018 Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award. A passionate chamber musician, Chen has performed at festivals including Music@Menlo, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, Taos School of Music, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival.

He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music as a Jean J. Sterne and Edwin B. Garrigues Fellow, working with Roberto Diaz, Hsin-Yun Huang, Ed Gazouleas, and Misha Amory. Prior to Curtis, he studied at the New England Conservatory and Tainan National University of the Arts with Mai Motobuchi, Yong-Zhan Chen, and I-Chen Wang.

Outside of music, Chen enjoys playing badminton and spending time with his two-year-old cat, Cheetah.

Violinist Amelia Dietrich earned her Bachelor of Music from The Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, studying with Robert Lipsett, and her Master’s degree from The Juilliard School under Ida Kavafian. She grew up in North Carolina, studying with her longtime mentor Ara Gregorian.

Dietrich has performed in chamber music series across the United States, Europe, and Australia, including Alice Tully Hall’s Wednesdays at One, National Sawdust, The Guggenheim, the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, ClasClas Chamber Festival in Spain, and the Moritzburg Festival in Germany.

A dedicated educator, she mentors and coaches chamber music for the New York Youth Symphony, maintains a private teaching studio in New York City, and teaches at Suzuki on the Island in Manhasset, NY. Outside of music, Dietrich enjoys running, cooking, and exploring fashion and interior design.

Violinist Harriet Langley is a Korean-Australian musician celebrated for her expressive playing and versatility as a soloist and chamber artist. She received her training at the New England Conservatory, Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth, and The Juilliard School.

Langley has performed with ensembles including the London Chamber Orchestra, Verbier Festival Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Reno Philharmonic, Gyeonggi Philharmonic, and Orchestre National de Belgique. She has appeared at leading festivals and academies such as the Seiji Ozawa Academy, Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, YellowBarn, and the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove.

Outside of music, Langley enjoys reading, visiting museums, and exploring her passions for perfumes and teas.

Cellist Clancy Newman, first prize winner of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg International Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, has had the unusual career of a performer/composer. From Albany, New York, he began playing cello at the age of six, and at twelve he received his first significant public recognition when he won a Gold Medal at the Dandenong Youth Festival in Australia, competing against contestants twice his age. In the years that followed, he won numerous other competitions, including the Juilliard School Cello Competition, the National Federation of Music Clubs competition, and the Astral Artists National Auditions.

He has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. He can often be heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” and has been featured on A&E’s “Breakfast With the Arts.” A sought after chamber musician, he is a member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, and a former member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center. He has also toured as a member of “Musicians from Marlboro.”

He developed an interest in composition at an early age, writing his first piece at seven, a piece for solo cello. Since then, he has greatly expanded the cello repertoire: he premiered his Four Pieces for Solo Cello at the Violoncello Society in New York, his Sonata for Sonata for Cello and Piano in New York’s Weill Hall, and his Four Seasons for cello and string orchestra with Symphony in C in Philadelphia. He has also written numerous chamber music works, including two string quartets, a clarinet trio, and a piano quintet. He has been a featured composer on the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “Double Exposure” series and the Chicago Chamber Musicians’ “Freshly Scored” series, and has received commissions from Astral Artists, the Barnett Foundation, the Carpe Diem String Quartet, and the Silo Collective, among others. His piano trio, JuxtOpposition, is available on Bridge Records.

Mr. Newman is a graduate of the five-year exchange program between Juilliard and Columbia University, receiving a M.M. from Juilliard and a B.A. in English from Columbia. His teachers have included David Gibson, Joel Krosnick and Harvey Shapiro.

Known for captivating interpretations of a wide repertoire Natalie Zhu is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, and Astral Artists Award. The Philadelphia Inquirer heralded Ms. Zhu in recital as a display of “emotional and pianistic pyrotechnics”. Selections from her live performances are frequently broadcasted on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”

Ms. Zhu has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. In the U.S. she has appeared as soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Haddonfield Symphony, The Curtis Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Princeton Chamber Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic, China Philharmonic, Riverside Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Philharmonic National Repertory Orchestra. Ms. Zhu made her European debut in 1994 at the Festival de Sully et d’Orleans in France, she has also given solo recitals at the Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Hall in New York City, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Seattle Chamber Music Society, New York’s Steinway Hall and Merkin Hall, Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Series in Fresno, Portland Piano Festival in Oregon, Munich’s Herkulessaal in Germany, and Beijing Concert Hall in China. She has performed with the Daedalus, Dover, Miami, Vermeer Quartets, and collaborated with members of the Guarneri, Orion, Mendelssohn, and Ying Quartets, as well as the Beaux Arts Trio and Time for Three. Ms. Zhu had been a touring recital partner with renowned violinist Hilary Hahn, and have maintained an ongoing partnership, most noticeably a Mozart Violin Sonatas recording with the Deutsche Grammophon label in 2005, as well as Suzuki Violin Books 1-3 in 2020.

As an active chamber musician, she has appeared in Marlboro Music Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Curtis-On-Tour, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Maestro Foundation Concert Series, Skaneateles Festival, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, Bay Chamber Concerts, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Chicago Chamber Musicians, Crested Butte Chamber Music Festival, The Friends of Chamber Music Reading Concert Series, and Brooklyn Library Chamber Music Series. Since 2009, Ms. Zhu has been the artistic director of the Kingston Chamber Music Festival in Rhode Island.

Natalie Zhu began her piano studies with Xiao-Cheng Liu at the age of six in her native China and made her first public appearance at age nine in Beijing. At eleven she emigrated with her family to Los Angeles, and studied with Robert Turner and Li Ming-Qiang. By age fifteen was enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music where she received the prestigious Rachmaninoff Award and studied with Gary Graffman. She received both Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music where she studied with the late Claude Frank. Ms. Zhu lives in Philadelphia suburbs with her husband and daughter.

Violist Che-Hung Chen joined The Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 20, when he was hired by then-Music Director Wolfgang Sawallisch, becoming the first Taiwanese citizen ever to join the Orchestra. He has also served as acting associate principal viola under former Music Director Christoph Eschenbach.

Mr. Chen was the first-prize winner at the Seventh Banff International String Quartet Competition as the founding member of the Daedalus Quartet; the Quartet was also awarded the Pièce de Concert prize for the best performance of a commissioned work and the Székely Prize for the best performance of a Beethoven quartet. A three-time, top-prize winner at the Taiwan National Instrumental Competition, Mr. Chen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with the legendary Joseph dePasquale. Mr. Chen has served as principal viola of the Curtis Symphony and recently appeared as guest principal viola with Japan’s Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Chen’s recording of Chiayu’s Twelve Signs for solo viola on the Naxos Label was praised in Gramophone magazine’s Awards 2015 issue for its ‘“mesmerizing intensity.’”

As a chamber musician, Mr. Chen was a participant at Marlboro Music, performing in its 50th anniversary concerts in Boston and New York’s Carnegie Hall, and in several “Musicians from Marlboro” national tours. He performs annually at the Kingston Chamber Music Festival in Rhode Island with his wife, pianist and Artistic Director Natalie Zhu, and has also participated in such festivals as Ravinia, Caramoor, Saratoga, Bridgehampton, and Music from Angel Fire. With Ms. Zhu, Philadelphia Orchestra colleague and First Associate Concertmaster Juliette Kang, and cellist Clancy Newman, he is a member of the Clarosa Piano Quartet, dedicated to exploring and enriching the piano quartet repertoire. Their debut performance earned praise from the Philadelphia Inquirer as “a combination of easy cohesion and unfettered, expressive freedom.” In the Fall of 2019, Mr. Chen founded Quartet Iris with Philadelphia Orchestra colleagues violinists Christine Lim, Julia Li, and cellist Yumi Kendall, eager to delve into the challenging realm of string quartet playing.

Mr. Chen serves on the faculty of Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music. He performs on a viola made by Carlo Antonio Testore in Milan, Italy, c.1756. He and Natalie reside in Narberth, PA, with their daughter, Clara.