Artists

• Kuan Cheng Lu

  Violin

  Violinist Kuan Cheng Lu joined the New York Philharmonic at the start of the 2004–05 season — the first Taiwanese classical musician to earn a seat in the Philharmonic in its 170-year history. Lu has received numerous awards and scholarships that include the top prize in the Taiwan National Violin Competition, first prize in the ASTA string competition, the Raphael Bronstein Award, and the Taiwan Chi-Mei Corporation’s Outstanding Young Artist award. He received his bachelor’s in music degree from Oberlin College, his master’s in music from the Manhattan School of Music, and his doctor of musical arts from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). He is an alumnus of the Music Academy of the West, now a partner in the New York Philharmonic Global Academy, and has studied with former New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, Lisa Kim, Associate Principal, Second Violin Group, and Yoko Takebe. Other teachers have included Roland and Almita Vamos, Daniel Phillips, Julia Bushkova, as well as his father, Chung Chih Lu.

  
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• Su Hyun Park

  Violin

  Violinist Su Hyun Park joined the New York Philharmonic in September 2017. She previously served as assistant concertmaster of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, as well as concertmaster of the Music Alps Festival Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, New York Classical Players, and Music Academy of the West Orchestra.

  
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• Rebecca Young

  Viola

  Rebecca Young joined the New York Philharmonic in 1986 as its youngest member. In 1991 she won the position of Associate Principal Viola. Two months later she was named principal viola of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. After spending the 1992–93 season in Boston and two summers at Tanglewood, she ultimately decided to return to her family in New York, resuming her Associate Principal position with the Philharmonic in September 1994. She can currently be seen leading the viola section of the All-Star Orchestra, a popular televised educational series about classical music.

  
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• Ru-Pei Yeh

  Cello

  Ru-Pei Yeh, cello, who joined the New York Philharmonic in September 2006, has performed regularly as a recitalist in her native Taiwan and in the U.S. A founding member of the Formosa Quartet, formed in 2003, she has served as acting principal cello of the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Opera, in addition to performing with a string quartet of principal players from the San Diego Symphony. She has made solo appearances with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, National Taiwan Symphony, Taiwan’s Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, North Carolina School of the Arts’s International Music Program Orchestra, and Kuan-Jen School Orchestra, and is the winner of numerous competitions.

  
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• Mindy Kaufman

  Flute

  Mindy Kaufman, The Edward and Priscilla Pilcher Chair, joined the New York Philharmonic as flute and solo piccolo in 1979 at the age of 22, after performing for three seasons with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. She received a bachelor of music degree from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Walfrid Kujala, Bonita Boyd, and James Galway.

  
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• Robert Langevin

  Flute

  With the start of the 2000–01 season, Robert Langevin joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Flute, in The Lila Acheson Wallace Chair. In May 2001, he made his solo debut with the Orchestra in the North American premiere of Siegfried Matthus’s Concerto for Flute and Harp with Philharmonic Principal Harp Nancy Allen and Music Director Kurt Masur. His October 2012 solo performance in Nielsen’s Flute Concerto, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, was recorded for inclusion in The Nielsen Project, the Orchestra’s multi-season traversal of all of the Danish composer’s symphonies and concertos, to be released by Dacapo Records.

  
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• Pascual Martínez Forteza

  Clarinet

  A native of Mallorca, Spain, clarinetist and E-flat clarinetist Pascual Martínez Forteza joined the New York Philharmonic in 2001; he currently serves as Acting Associate Principal Clarinet, The Honey M. Kurtz Family Chair. Prior to his appointment with the Philharmonic, he held tenure with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and at age 18 he was assistant principal and later acting principal of the Baleares Symphony Orchestra in Spain. He has recently performed as guest principal clarinet with the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle.

  
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• Judith LeClair

  Bassoon

  Judith LeClair joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Bassoon in 1981, at the age of 23. Since then, she has made more than 50 solo appearances with the Orchestra, performing with conductors such as Colin Davis, Sir Andrew Davis, Alan Gilbert, Christopher Hogwood, Rafael Kubelik, Erich Leinsdorf, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, André Previn, John Williams, and Andrey Boreyko.

  
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• Leelanee Sterrett

  Horn

  Leelanee Sterrett joined the New York Philharmonic in 2013. She was previously a fellow of Ensemble Connect, Carnegie Hall’s collective of young professionals and music advocates. In recent seasons, Sterrett has made solo appearances at Carnegie Hall and several International Horn Symposia, and has presented recitals and masterclasses around the country. She has performed as guest principal horn with the London Symphony Orchestra, appears frequently at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and was a member of the 2022 National Brass Ensemble. An advocate for works by women composers, she can be heard on the world-premiere recording of Fernande Breihl-Decruck’s Poëme Héroïque for trumpet, horn, and orchestra.

  
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• Christopher Martin

  Trumpet

  Christopher Martin is one of the leading classical trumpet voices on the world stage. He joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Trumpet, The Paula Levin Chair, in September 2016. He served as principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) for 11 seasons, and enjoyed a distinctive career of more than 20 years in some of America’s finest orchestras, including as principal trumpet of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and associate principal trumpet of The Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his New York Philharmonic solo debut in October 2016, performing Ligeti’s The Mysteries of the Macabre, led by then Music Director Alan Gilbert.
  
  Praised as “brilliant, impeccable” by The New York Times and as a musician of “effortless understated virtuosity” by The Chicago Tribune, Christopher Martin has appeared as soloist multiple times nationally and internationally with the CSO and music director Riccardo Muti. Highlights of Martin’s solo appearances include the 2012 World Premiere of Christopher Rouse’s concerto Heimdall’s Trumpet; Panufnik’s Concerto in modo antico, with Muti; a program of 20th-century French concertos by André Jolivet and Henri Tomasi; and more than a dozen performances of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. Other solo engagements have included Martin with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa’s Saito Kinen Festival, Atlanta and Alabama Symphony Orchestras, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. Christopher Martin’s discography includes a solo performance in John Williams’s score to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012) and two recordings of a concerto Martin co-commissioned: John Mackey’s Antique Violences.
  
  Dedicated to music education, Martin is a professor of trumpet at The Juilliard School and has given master classes and seminars around the world. He has served on the faculty of Northwestern University and coached the Civic Orchestra of Chicago for 11 years. In 2010 he co-founded the National Brass Symposium with his brother Michael Martin, a trumpeter in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 2016 he received the Edwin Franko Goldman Memorial Citation from the American Bandmasters Association for outstanding contributions to the wind band genre.
  
  Christopher Martin is a Yamaha Performing Artist. He and his wife, Margaret — an organist and pianist — have two young children who both prefer the piano over the trumpet.

  
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• Thomas Smith

  Trumpet

  A native of Detroit, Michigan, Thomas Smith came to the Philharmonic as fourth and utility trumpet in July 1998. He is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and the New England Conservatory of Music, where he received a bachelor’s degree with distinction in 1981. He continued orchestral studies at Tanglewood with the fellowship program in the summers of 1981 and 1982, and began a freelance career in Boston playing with Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston and Gunther Schuller’s New England Ragtime Ensemble. He also performed regularly with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra as well as the Boston Pops, and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

  
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• Colin Williams

  Trombone

  Colin Williams joined the New York Philharmonic as Associate Principal Trombone in September 2014. He previously served as principal trombone of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, for 12 seasons, and principal trombone of the San Antonio Symphony, for three seasons. He has also performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra (of Washington, D.C.), and Houston Symphony.

  
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• George Curran

  Bass Trombone

  George Curran became the Bass Trombone of the New York Philharmonic in June 2013 after serving in that role on an acting basis with the Orchestra during the 2012–13 season. Previously, he was a member of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for six years and a fellow with the New World Symphony. He has also performed with The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Detroit symphony orchestras.

  
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• William Wolfram

  Piano

  William Wolfram was a silver medalist at the William Kapell and Naumburg International Piano Competitions and a bronze medalist at the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition. He is equally adept as a concerto soloist, recitalist, accompanist, and chamber musician. His solo engagements have included the Baltimore, City of Birmingham, National, Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, San Francisco, and Tokyo Metropolitan symphony orchestras, among others, and he regularly appears and in the New York Philharmonic Ensembles series. His releases on the Naxos label include transcriptions of Liszt, chamber music with violinist Philippe Quint, and music by Earl Kim; he can be heard on the Albany label, performing concertos by Edward Collins. A Juilliard graduate, Mr. Wolfram serves on the faculty of North Carolina’s Eastern Music Festival, is a regular guest at the Colorado College Music Festival; and teaches performance at Manhattan School of Music. He was the focus of a chapter in Joseph Horowitz’s The Ivory Trade: Music and the Business of Music at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and was featured in a documentary about the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition.

  
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