John Gilhooly became Director of London’s Wigmore Hall in 2005, making him, at 32, the youngest leader of any of the world’s great concert halls. As Wigmore Hall’s Director, he programmes the largest chamber music and vocal series in the world. He was born in Limerick, which has a strong musical tradition. While reading History and Politics at University College Dublin, John, a tenor, also studied singing with Veronica Dunne, winning numerous prizes in Irish competitions. From 2010 until 2024, he was Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society, one of the oldest musical societies in the world. He is Chairman of the Cardiff Singer of the World Song Prize. John was an outspoken advocate for the importance of live performance during the coronavirus pandemic and initiated the gradual return to live performance through livestreaming from an empty Wigmore Hall. In 2022 John was awarded a CBE, and in 2015 he was made a Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland. He has also received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, the Order of the Star of Italy, and the German Order of Merit. He is an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. John is also patron of Leeds Lieder, Irish Heritage, Wimbledon Music Festival and Corpus Christi Maiden Lane Refurbishment Project. John was awarded the Heidelberger Frühling Music Award in 2019, and was also presented with the Musicians’ Company Cobbett Medal for chamber music.

Since 2004, Peter Jarůšek has been cellist of the Pavel Haas Quartet, one of today’s most acclaimed chamber ensembles worldwide. Revered across the globe for its richness of timbre, infectious passion and intuitive rapport, the quartet performs at the world’s most prestigious concert halls. Recording exclusively for Supraphon, the quartet has won five Gramophone Awards as well as numerous others including the Diapason d’Or de l’année and the BBC Music Magazine Awards. Highlights of the 24/25 season so far were concerts at Carnegie Hall in celebration of the Year of Czech Music, where the quartet played in events alongside the Czech Philharmonic and Prague Philharmonic Choir. During this season the quartet also returns to Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Stuttgart’s Liederhalle and Musikverein für Steiermark, Graz; festival appearances include the Rheingau Music Festival, Schubertiade and Bath Mozartfest. The quartet toured North America in December 2024 and will be back there in March 2025. Since September 2022, the Pavel Haas Quartet has been Curator at the Dvořák Prague Festival where they curate chamber music concerts including programming all the Dvořák String Quartets over three seasons. Besides playing in the quartet, Peter appears regularly at the most renowned concert halls and festivals and is a sought-after teacher at chamber music masterclasses around the world.

Nina Lee began learning cello at the age of ten. At sixteen, she went to study with David Soyer at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She went on to complete her Bachelors and Masters of Music at the Juilliard School in New York City with Joel Krosnick, attended the Tanglewood Music Festival, and toured with the Marlboro Music Festival where she collaborated with Mitsuko Uchida, Andras Schiff, Felix Galimir and Samuel Rhodes. In 1999, Nina joined the Brentano Quartet with whom she has been privileged to perform worldwide. The Quartet has recorded works by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and also championed new music by commissioning works by composers including Stephen Hartke, Steve Mackey, Vijay Iyer, James MacMillan, Bruce Adolphe, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Shulamit Ran. Among the various projects the Brentano Quartet has undertaken, it was asked to record the soundtrack to the 2012 film, “A Late Quartet” which focussed on Beethoven’s Op. 131. The film, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener also features Nina playing herself in a cameo. Nina has been on the faculty at Princeton and Columbia Universities and is currently coaching chamber music at the Yale School of Music where the Brentano Quartet has been in residence since 2014. Regular summer appearances in performing and teaching include the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Taos School of Music, the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar, the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, Kneisel Hall, the Spoleto Festival USA and the La Jolla SummerFest. Nina also served on the jury of the Salzburg International Quartet Competition in 2023.

Heime Müller, born in 1970 in Hamburg, Germany, studied violin with Marianne Petersen, Uwe-Martin Haiberg, Ulf Hoelscher and Nora Chastain, and took masterclasses with Hermann Krebbers and Ida Haendel. From 1991 to 2007, Heime was 1st and 2nd violinist in the Artemis Quartet. Teachers and mentors of the quartet were Walter Levin and the Alban Berg Quartet; György Kurtág, the Juilliard and Emerson quartets were also strong influences. The Artemis Quartet won the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb, the ARD Competition in Munich and the Premio Paolo Borciani. For almost two decades Heime Müller performed at all the major chamber music concert venues in the world. The Quartet partnered with Sabine Meyer, David Geringas, Juliane Banse, Elisabeth Leonskaya, Leif Ove Andsnes and Truls Mørk among others, and can be heard on many award-winning Virgin Classics recordings. Since leaving the quartet for health reasons, Heime has concentrated on teaching. He was Professor for Violin and Chamber Music at the Universität der Künste Berlin and since 2009, has held the same position at the Musikhochschule Lübeck. He also teaches string quartets and violin at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid. He is Artistic Director of the International Chamber Music Campus of the Jeunesses Musicales in Weikersheim, one of the most important and traditional chamber music courses in the world. Heime has transcribed several works by Alban Berg - a version of the Piano Sonata for string sextet, and transcriptions of “Seven Early Songs” and the Op. 2 song cycle for voice and string quartet.

Praised by Strad magazine as having “lyricism that stood out...a silky tone and beautiful, supple lines”, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt has established herself as one of the most sought-after violists of her generation. In addition to appearances as soloist with the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra, she has performed in recitals and chamber music concerts worldwide, including an acclaimed 2011 debut recital at London’s Wigmore Hall, which was described in Strad as being "fleet and energetic...powerful and focused". Milena was the founding violist of the Dover Quartet and played in the group from 2008-2022. During her time in the group, the Dover Quartet was a recipient of the Avery Fischer Career Grant, the Cleveland Quartet Award, the First Prize-winner and recipient of every special award at the Banff International String Quartet Competition 2013, and winner of the Gold Medal and Grand Prize in the 2010 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Her numerous awards also include First Prize at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and top prizes at the Sphinx and the Tokyo International Viola competitions. While in the Dover Quartet, Milena was on the faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music and Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and part of the Quartet in Residence of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. She is now a member of the newly formed piano quartet ‘Espressivo!’ with acclaimed artists Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, and Anna Polonsky.

Founding member of the celebrated St. Lawrence String Quartet (SLSQ) (1989-2024), Lesley Robertson serves as Artist in Residence at Stanford University (1998-) where she teaches viola, coaches chamber music, and spearheads both the Emerging String Quartet Programme and the annual St Lawrence Chamber Music Seminar. With the SLSQ, Ms. Robertson performed more than 100 concerts worldwide annually, earning prizes of distinction including a Grammy, Juno and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, and more). Renowned for its high-energy, deeply expressive, and “take no prisoners” approach to all music, the SLSQ was especially regarded for its commitment to the music of Haydn - recent concert programmes included all six quartets from his Opus 20 in a single afternoon - and to new music. The ensemble disbanded in 2024 following the death of founding violinist Geoff Nuttall. Lesley has served on the jury of several international competitions including the Banff, Melbourne, Wigmore Hall and Geneva International String Quartet Competitions. She has participated in the Marlboro Festival and toured with Musicians from Marlboro. Recent summer engagements include Spoleto Festival USA, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Banff Festival, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Summer Music Vancouver, Bravo Vail, and more.