Five Minahan Songs

Ya-Jhu Yang studied piano and composition at National Taiwan Normal University in her native Taipei, and composition at Curtis and MSM. Her piano trio Letters to Formosa was a prize winner at the 2009 Washington International Competition, and she’s recently composed new commissions for Trio Barclay and Loadbang.

Praised for his “strikingly individual timbre” (Philadelphia Magazine), German-American baritone Dennis Chmelensky was a member of the Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artist program at the Kennedy Center. He is an alum of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Marlena Malas and Mikael Eliasen. This season, he will debut as Marquis de Corcy in Le Postillon de Lonjumeau at the Tiroler Festspiele in Erl under the baton of Beomseok Yi and directed by Hans Walter Richter.

Recent highlights include his debut at the Verbier Festival as Peter in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel conducted by Stanislav Kochanovsky, as well as Tom in Un ballo in maschera under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda. He also performed Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte at the Philips Collection and workshopped Sensor in Jeanine Tesori’s new opera Grounded, which was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Further highlights include appearances with Opera for Peace in Sochi, Russia, and his debut as Don Giovanni in a Curtis / Opera Philadelphia co-production under the baton of Karina Canellakis.

An avid recitalist, Dennis has toured extensively throughout the United States and Europe to perform works such as Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch. He made his Konzerthaus Berlin debut with Curtis on Tour, performing Ned Rorem’s Aftermath and works by Franz Schubert in 2019 on a tour through Greece, France, Spain, and Germany.

Dennis was a National Semifinalist of the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition. He is a 2018 Opera Awards career grant recipient and an alum of the Internationale Meistersinger Akademie in Neumarkt, the Chautauqua Music Festival, and the Franz Schubert Institute in Baden bei Wien. His debut album DENNIS was released by Sony Music.

Jean Kim has performed extensively throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia as a soloist, chamber musician, and principal orchestral cellist. She has been invited to perform in prestigious venues such as Berliner Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Wiener Konzerthaus, and Royal Festival Hall. She has won prizes at the 2013 Johansen International Competition and the 2018 Irving M. Klein International Competition and was named a 2013 YoungArts Finalist.

As a chamber musician, she has collaborated with renowned artists, including Pamela Frank, Jason Vieaux, Michael Rusinek, Leon McCawley, and Roberto Dìaz, among others. As a part of the Curtis on Tour initiative, Jean performed throughout Athens, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Shanghai in 2016. She has participated in festivals such as Banff Centre, MusicAlp, Centre d’Arts Orford, Great Mountains Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Fondazione Accademia Chigiana, and Weimar Meisturkurse, where she performed in masterclasses with Lawrence Lesser, Gary Hoffman, David Geringas, Jens Peter Maintz, Jian Wang, David Finckel, Philippe Muller, Sung-Won Yang, Antonio Meneses, and Aldo Parisot

As an orchestral player, she has served as guest principal cellist for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and went on tour with them throughout Germany and Spain during the 2019/20 season. She has performed with the New York Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and served as principal cellist of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra during the 2017/18 season.

A native of Sleepy Hollow, NY, she began playing the cello at age 5 with Vladimir Morgovsky. She entered the Juilliard Pre-College Division three years later to study with Minhye Clara Kim. As the Mark E. Rubenstein Annual Fellow, she graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music with a bachelor’s degree, where she studied with Carter Brey and Peter Wiley.