Session 1 & 2
Symphony San Jose

A graduate of the Juilliard School and Indiana University, violist Craig Bate has appeared as soloist throughout the United States, including a concerto performance in Bloomington, IN, as the winner of Indiana University’s concerto competition. He was also the Grand Prize Winner at the Gee Viola Competition in Aspen, Colorado. While a student at Juilliard, he was invited to tour Europe and the United States with the Juilliard Orchestra. He was also selected to perform on a nation-wide PBS broadcast for Juilliard’s centennial anniversary. Before moving to California, Mr. Bate was a member of the Eykamp String Quartet in residence at the University of Evansville. He has served as Principal Violist of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Kentucky and Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra. At age 17, he became the youngest member of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, where he was offered tenure two years later.

Session 1 & 2
San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Mariya Borozina is a member of First Violin sections of the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet orchestras and a substitute player with the San Francisco Symphony. She is a Conductor of Galbraith Honor Strings of Golden State Youth Orchestra.

Born in Moscow, Mariya Borozina began playing the violin at the age of 5, following in the footsteps of her violinist father. Starting at the Gnessins School of Music, she continued her studies at the Moscow Conservatory, class of Marina Yashvili. After moving to the US, she earned a postgraduate degree at Manhattan School of Music studying with Glenn Dicterow, Lisa Kim, Yoko Takebe, and Albert Markov. She performed around the globe as a Concertmaster of Verbier Festival and Verbier Festival Chamber orchestras.

An avid chamber music player, she has appeared as part of several local groups, including Eos Ensemble and Farallon Quintet. She appears regularly as a concertmaster and soloist for the Russian Chamber Orchestra and performs at various venues in the Bay Area and beyond. As an educator, Ms. Borozina coaches chamber groups and orchestras, performs at outreach programs, and teaches privately. She is frequently invited to judge local music competitions.

Session 1 & 2
San Francisco Symphony

David Chernyavsky joined the San Francisco Symphony in 2009. Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, he began violin studies at the age of six and at eleven gave his first solo recital. After winning prizes in competitions in Russia and France, he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In 1997, Mr. Chernyavsky came to the US to study at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music with the famous Profesor Nelli Shkolnikova and, later, at the Juilliard School. Before joining SF Symphony Mr. Chernyavsky had been a member of the Kennedy Center Opera orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. He performed and recorded several CDs with the Saint Petersburg String Quartet and with the Joel Rubin Klezmer Music Ensemble, and he has released a solo CD, Klezmer Violin. He also performs and teaches with the San Francisco Academy Orchestra.

Session 1 & 2

Colyn Fischer, a native of Pittsburgh, PA has been studying classical violin since age 3 and Scottish Fiddle since age 5. As a teenager he studied with a number of the great fiddlers of Scotland, such as Ian Powrie, Angus Grant and Alasdair Hardy, and of the United States, including John Turner and Bonnie Rideout. He holds a Bachelor of Music Performance in Violin from Wheaton College, Illinois, and has recorded and performed with various ensembles in genres including jazz, classical, rock and Scottish. In 1993, Fischer won the US National Scottish Fiddling championship (Jr. Div.), and won in the Open category in 2005 (in Houston, Texas) and again in 2006 (in Ohio). Colyn currently lives in San Francisco, California, teaching middle school orchestra in the San Carlos School District. He is a private violin-fiddle instructor, taught at the Jink and Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling for 14 years and founded the Silver Apple Scottish Fiddle School in the Bay Area of California along with Rebecca Lomnicky and David Brewer. From 2007 to 2018, he performed and recorded three albums with pianist Shauna Pickett-Gordon as the duo "Peat-Fire Flame". Colyn is also the co-founder and current concertmaster of the New Millennium Chamber Orchestra and co-directed the Peninsula Scottish Fiddlers with Shauna Pickett-Gordon from 2007 to 2018.

Session 1 & 2

Kevin Hsu is a violist hailing from Saratoga, California. Throughout his storied career, Mr. Hsu has performed throughout the continents with esteemed artists and groups such as Midori Goto, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony and the Classical Music Institute. He has also collaborated with musicians such as Alfred Brendel, Augustin Dumay, members of the Artemis Quartet, Glenn Dicterow, Donald Weilerstein and many more. In addition to his viola performances and activities, Mr. Hsu is also a professional photographer and videographer.

Session 1

Tina Minn, violin, has studied at the Eastman School of Music as a George Eastman Merit Scholar and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music receiving her Bachelor's Degree in Performance. Primary teachers include Andor Toth, Zvi Zeitlin, and Zaven Melikian. Ms. Minn has performed in masterclasses for Yehudi Menuhin, Jorja Fleezanis, and Jerome Lowenthal and coached with Joseph Gingold and members of the Cleveland, St. Lawrence, and Stanford String Quartets. She has taught and performed at the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival in Italy and participated at the Bear Valley and Mendocino Music Festivals. She was a founding member of Sonnet Ensemble. Currently, Ms. Minn performs with the Symphony San Jose and Monterey Symphony including collaborations with Monterey’s Chamber Players performing at San Francisco’s Old First and Noontime Concert series. Ms. Minn maintains a private teaching studio and is a sought after coach at San Jose Youth Symphony, Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, KAMSA, and Lynbrook High

Session 2
San Francisco Symphony

Florin Parvulescu was born in 1971 in Bucharest, Romania. He started playing the violin at the age of six at the Georges Enescu music school. In 1978, he attended the Juilliard School Pre-College division, studying with Shirley Givens.

By 1989, Florin Parvulescu went on to study at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where his principal teachers were Sylvia Rosenberg and Herbert Greenberg. He also worked closely with pianist Leon Fleisher and violinist Berl Senofsky.

In addition to earning Bachelors and Artist Diploma degrees at Peabody, Mr. Parvulescu was awarded numerous prizes, among them the Marbury Award and Yale Gordon award.

Mr. Parvulescu has given masterclasses at the Beijing Conservatory and taught at the Singapore International Violin Festival in 2018 . He was featured on the McGraw Hill Young Artist Showcase on WQXR radio NY, National Public Radio, WFMT Chicago, and King FM in Seattle. The San Francisco Chronicle has praised him for his “gleaming tone and pyrotechnics.”