Tessa Lark was nominated for a 2020 Grammy Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category, and is also a highly acclaimed fiddler in the tradition of her native Kentucky. This season she returns to the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Rochester Philharmonic, and debuts with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, she recently toured with bassist Edgar Meyer and cellist Joshua Roman to Cal Performances and the Boston Celebrity Series.

Lark has appeared with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, Knoxville Symphony, and Indianapolis Symphony, and has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, San Francisco Performances, and numerous summer festivals. Her most recent album, The Stradgrass Sessions, features an all-star roster of collaborators and composers including Edgar Meyer, pianist Jon Batiste, mandolinist Sierra Hull, and fiddler Michael Cleveland. Her debut recording was the Grammy-nominated SKY, a bluegrass-inspired violin concerto written for her by Michael Torke and performed with the Albany Symphony.

Lark is a recipient of the Hunt Family Award, one of Lincoln Center’s prestigious Emerging Artist Awards, as well as a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She was Silver Medalist in the 9th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and winner of the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition. She champions young aspiring artists and supports the next generation of musicians through her work as co-host of NPR’s From the Top and as a mentor and board member of the Irving M. Klein International Strings Competition.

Lark is a graduate of New England Conservatory and completed her artist diploma at the Juilliard School. She currently plays a ca. 1600 G.P. Maggini violin on loan from an anonymous donor through the Stradivari Society of Chicago. She makes her debut at the San Francisco Symphony with this recital.

Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists. Also a New York Times bestselling author, he is the recipient of both the MacArthur Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In the 2024–25 season, Denk continues his collaboration with longtime musical partners Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis, with performances at the Tsindali Festival and Wigmore Hall, following on from his multi-concert artist residency at Wigmore in 2023–24. He also returns to the Lammermuir Festival in multiple performances, including the complete Ives violin sonatas with Maria Wloszczowska, and a solo recital featuring female composers from the past to the present day. He performs this same solo program on tour across the US, as well as continuing his exploration of Bach in ongoing performances of the complete partitas. Denk is known for his interpretations of the music of American visionary Charles Ives, and in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, Nonesuch Records will release a collection of his Ives recordings later this year.

Denk is also known for his original and insightful writing on music. His New York Times bestselling memoir, Every Good Boy Does Fine was published to universal acclaim by Random House in 2022. He also wrote the libretto for a comic opera presented by Carnegie Hall, Cal Performances, and the Aspen Festival, and his writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New Republic, the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

Denk’s latest album of Mozart piano concertos was released in 2021 on Nonesuch Records. His recording of the Goldberg Variations for Nonesuch Records reached No. 1 on the Billboard Classical Charts, and his recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Opus 111 paired with Ligeti’s Études was named one of the best discs of the year by the New Yorker, NPR, and the Washington Post. His account of the Beethoven sonata was selected by BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library as the best available version recorded on modern piano. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2006.