CCM Presents
A Celebration of Nobuko Imai

With her exceptional talent, musical integrity, and charisma, Nobuko Imai is considered to be one of the most outstanding violist of our time.

After finishing her studies at the Toho School of Music, Yale University and the Juilliard School, she won the highest prizes at both the prestigious international competition in Munich and Geneva. Formerly a member of the esteemed Vermeer Quartet, Ms. Imai now combines a distinguished international solo career. She has appeared with many of the wolrd’s prestigious orchestras such as Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London, Boston, and Chicago Symphonies, among many others.

A keen chamber musician, Ms. Imai has often performed with world’s renowned artists at numerous world’s most distinguished music festivals, including Marlboro, Pablo Casals in Prado, Ravinia, and Verbier. From 2003 to 2020,  Nobuko Imai was founding member of Michelangelo String Quartet. The quartet achieved numerous acclaimed projects such like the Beethoven quartet cyle in Scotland and Japan and the world premiere of Lera Auerbach’s “Goetia. 72 – In umbra Lucis”, among others.

Nobuko Imai has dedicated a large part of her artistic activities to explore the diverse potential of the viola. In 1995/1996 she was artistic director of three Hindemith Festivals in London, New York, and Tokyo. She is the funder of the annual “Viola Space” project which is dedicated to “celebrating the viola, introducing outstanding works and new works for viola”. And also, since 2009, the Tokyo International Viola Competition, the first international competition in Asia exclusively for viola, is held every three years as part of the Viola Space. She is also keen to expand the viola repertoire and has given a number of first performances of the composers such as Toru Takemitsu, Toshio Hosokawa, Ichiro Nodaira, Dai Fujikura, among many others.

An impressive discography of over 40 CDs shows Nobuko Imai’s recordings for prestigious labels such as Philips, BIS, Deutsche Grammophon.

Her many prizes include the Avon Arts Award, the Education Minister’s Art Prize for Music awarded by the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs, the Mobil Prize, the Suntory Music Prize, and the Mainichi Art Prize. Ms. Imai received the Purple Ribbon Medal and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette from the Japanese government. In April 2024, Ms. Imai was appointed as a member of the Japan Art Academy.

Ms. Imai now teaches at Amsterdam Conservatory, Kronberg International Academy, and Queen Sofia College of Music in Madrid.

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.