Ilya Gringolts
Despite his youth, Ilya Gringolts can already look back on fifteen extraordinarily successful years of his violinist career. His inquisitiveness regarding new musical challenges has shown him to be an outstanding musical personality.

After studying violin and composition in Saint Petersburg with Tatiana Liberova and Jeanna Metallidi, he attended the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied with Itzhak Perlman. In 1998 he won the International Violin Competition Premio Paganini, as youngest first prize winner in the history of the competition. As soloist he devotes himself particularly to contemporary and to seldom played works. He has premiered compositions by Peter Maxwell Davies, Augusta Read Thomas, Christophe Bertrand, and Michael Jarrell. Apart from this, he is also interested in historical performance practice. At the Verbier Festival in summer 2010, he played the complete cycle of the Bach Sonatas on a baroque violin, accompanied by Masaaki Suzuki. He is also first violinist of the Gringolts Quartet, which he founded in 2008.

In the 2013/14 season Ilya Gringolts can be heard as soloist with the Bamberg Symphony (conducted by Eivind Aadland), the Copenhagen Philharmonic (Santtu-Matias Rouvali), the Iceland Symphony (Ilan Volkov), the BBC Scottish Symphony (Ilan Volkov), the Taipei Symphony (Oleg Caetani), the Columbus Symphony (Thomas Wilkins), and the Galician Symphony Orchestra (Osmo Vänskä). He will be performing chamber music at the festivals of Verbier and Gstaad, and, together with Maxim Vengerov, at the Barbican Centre in London.

Previous to this, Ilya Gringolts had already performed with leading orchestras over the whole world, such as the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Birmingham Symphony, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the BBC Symphony, the Sao Paulo Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Melbourne Symphony, the NHK Symphony, the Hallé Orchestra and both orchestras of SWR.

Ilya Gringolts can be just as frequently heard in recital programs. He is a regular guest at the festivals of Lucerne, Kuhmo, Colmar and Bucharest (Enescu Festival), as well as at the Serate Musicali of Milan and in the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. Playing chamber music, he collaborates with artists such as Yuri Bashmet, Lynn Harrell, Diemut Poppen, Nicolas Angelich, Itamar Golan, Peter Laul, Nicholas Hodges, and Jörg Widmann.

After numerous critically praised recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Hyperion, Ilya Gringolts has with three recent releases on the Onyx label devoted himself to the music of Robert Schumann: the violin sonatas 1-3 with Peter Laul (2010), the piano trios, played with Dmitry Kouzov and Peter Laul (2011), and the string quartets and piano quintet, with the Gringolts Quartet and Peter Laul (2011). In 2006, the CD Taneyev – Chamber Music together with Mikhail Pletnev, Vadim Repin, Nobuko Imai and Lynn Harrell received a Gramophone Award. In the coming months, Orchid Classics will release a solo CD containing all Capricci of Niccolo Paganini as well as a new recording of the three string quartets by Johannes Brahms. Apart from his position as violin professor at the Zurich Academy of the Arts, he is also a Violin International Fellow at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Ilya Gringolts plays a 1718-1720 Stradivarius, which was made available to him by a private collection.

Dmitry Kouzov
A versatile performer, cellist Dmitry Kouzov has performed on five continents with orchestras, in solo and duo recitals, and in chamber music performances. He has appeared with such orchestras as the St. Petersburg Symphony (Russia), as well as National Symphony of Ukraine, and the South Bohemian Chamber Philharmonic (Czech Republic), and the Symphony Orchestra “Classica” (Russia), to name a few. He has awarded First Prize at the International Beethoven Competition in the Czech Republic and he is a two-time laureate of the International Festival-Competition “Virtuosi of the Year 2000” in Russia and is winner of the New York Cello Society Rising Star Award. His credits include numerous performances at many prominent concert venues throughout his native Russia, including both St. Petersburg Philharmonic Halls, the conservatoire halls of Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively, and the Mariinsky Theater. Mr. Kouzov made his New York orchestral debut at Alice Tully Hall in 2005, under the baton of Maestro Raymond Leppard. Since that time, he has also made recital appearances in New York at 92nd Street Y and Bargemusic.

Highlights of Mr. Kouzov recent seasons include his debuts with the the Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, Johannesburg Philharmonic, solo appearances with the chamber orchestra “Soloists of St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society”, duo recitals in Moscow and St. Petersburg with all Brahms and Beethoven Sonatas with the prominent Russian pianist Peter Laul, and chamber music appearances at the Ravinia and Caramoor Festivals Rising Stars Series. Most recently, Mr. Kouzov made his recording debut on Naxos with three C.P.E. Bach Gamba Sonatas and a recital CD “Two Hundred Years of Cello Masterpieces” on Marquis Classics.

Mr. Kouzov has appeared in command performances before Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Andrew, Duke of York. In 2005 and 2006, he was a guest artist at the Verbier Festival, International Bach Festival (Switzerland) and Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival (Germany). Additionally, he has performed at the “May of Janacek” International Festival (Czech Republic), and at the “Art-November” International Festival (Russia), and the “Kiev Summer Music Nights” International Festival, amongst others.

A consummate chamber musician, Mr. Kouzov has collaborated with Joshua Bell, Yuri Bashmet, Krzysztof Penderecki, Donald Weilerstein, Ilya Gringolts, and Pacifica Quartet among others. Mr. Kouzov is a founding and active member of the Manhattan Piano Trio, with whom he has toured extensively throughout United States and captured First Prizes at the Plowman and Yellow Springs National Chamber Music Competitions.

In addition to his concert activities, Mr. Kouzov is a devoted teacher. Currently Mr. Kouzov is an Assistant Professor of Cello at the University of Illinois. Prior to this appointment he was on faculty at the Juilliard School and Oberlin Conservatory. Mr. Kouzov holds Bachelors & Masters of Music degrees from the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, and Artist Diploma from the Juilliard School in New York. His principal teachers have included Professors Mark Reizenshtock, Victoria Yagling, Joel Krosnick, and Darrett Adkins.