Dohnányi Sextet

Na Hyun Della Kyun, from Seoul, entered the Curtis Institute of Music in 2022 and studies violin with Shmuel Ashkenasi and Benjamin Beilman. Ms. Kyun is the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Fellow.

Ms. Kyun has received numerous awards, including second place in the Sungjung Competition, winner of Group B at the 2020 Singapore Violin Festival Online Competition, first place in the Seoul Youth Chamber Music Competition, and second place in the Ewha and Kyunghyang Music Competition. She participated in the 2014 Peabody Preparatory String Ensemble winner’s concert and performed in the 2013 Asian-American Music Society International String Competition winner’s concert at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Kyun has performed as a soloist with the Mostly Philharmonic Orchestra and was featured in the 2021 House Concert July Festival and the 2019 Kumho Prodigy Concert. She has been a member of the Korea National Institute for the Gifted in Arts Ensemble, the Seoul Arts High School Ensemble, the Korea National institute for the Gifted in Arts Symphony Orchestra, and the Yewon School Orchestra and its chamber ensemble.

Ms. Kyun has attended Music Academy of the West in 2023, the Gifu International Summer Camp, the MusicAlp Festival in France, the Belgium International Academy of Arts Summer Festival, and recently participated in a master class with Glenn Dicterow. She studied with Matthew Horwitz-Lee at Peabody Preparatory and Sung-Ju Lee at the Korean National Institute for the Gifted Arts.

Yunji Jang is a South Korean violist currently studying with Hsin-Yun Huang and Misha Amory at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Yunji was a prizewinner at the 28th Johannes Brahms International Competition. She has also garnered First Prizes at many of Korea’s most prestigious national competitions, including the Music Association of Korea Competition, Segye Times Competition, The Strad Competition, the Korean Chamber Orchestra Competition, as well as prizes at the Dong-A Music Competition and the Ewha & Kyunghyang Music Competition.

Yunji graduated as the valedictorian of the Seoul National University Class of 2024 and was selected to perform at the 87th Chosunilbo Debut Concert, presented by The Chosun Ilbo, one of the leading newspapers in Korea. She made her concerto debut at the age of eleven with the Cheongju Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chungbuk Philharmonic Orchestra.

Selected by the Kumho Cultural Foundation, Yunji presented the 2022 Kumho Young Artist Concert, one of the premier recital series for emerging musicians in Korea.

A dedicated chamber musician, Yunji has been actively engaged in chamber music through a wide range of ensemble collaborations. She attended the Heifetz International Music Institute on a full scholarship, where she worked closely with the Borromeo Quartet. Highlights include performances at Spirit of SNU Strings X at the Seoul Arts Center, an invitation to perform as a string sextet for Samsung, and First Prize at the Seoul Arts High School String Quartet Competition.

Yunji has participated in masterclasses with distinguished artists including Yura Lee, Diyang Mei, Toby Appel, Mai Motobuchi, and Paul Neubauer.

Recent concert highlights include concerto appearances with the Virginia, Albany, Delaware, Stamford, Richardson, Lansing, and Bangor symphonies, the Erie Philharmonic, The Orchestra Now, the New Haven Symphony as artist-in-residence, and the American Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall. He performs recitals throughout the United States with his longtime duo collaborator, pianist-composer Michael Stephen Brown, and recent appearances have included Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Four Arts in Palm Beach, New Orleans Friends of Chamber Music, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and Wolf Trap near Washington D.C.

Mr. Canellakis is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, with which he performs regularly in Alice Tully Hall and on tour internationally, including London’s Wigmore Hall, the Louvre in Paris, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, and the Shanghai and Taipei National Concert Halls. He is also a regular guest artist at many of the world’s leading music festivals, including Santa Fe, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Bard, Bridgehampton, La Jolla, Moab, Chamberfest Cleveland, and Music in the Vineyards. He was recently renewed as the artistic director of Chamber Music Sedona in Arizona, where he has made a major impact through his dynamic programming and educational and community outreach.

Mr. Canellakis’ latest album (b)romance, featuring some of his original compositions and arrangements, was released by First Hand Records in 2023 and has received over one million streams on Apple Music.

Filmmaking and acting are special interests of Mr. Canellakis. He has produced, directed, and starred in several short films and music videos, including his popular comedy web series Conversations with Nick Canellakis. His latest films Thin Walls and My New Cello were nominated for awards at many prominent film festivals and are currently available to stream online.

A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music (’06) and New England Conservatory, his teachers included Orlando Cole, Peter Wiley, and Paul Katz, and he was a student of Madeleine Golz at Manhattan School of Music Pre-College.

Mr. Canellakis plays an outstanding cello by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, from 1840. He joined the Curtis Institute of Music faculty in 2024.

Chin-I (James)Lee, from Taipei City, Taiwan, a third year undergraduate clarinetist studying with Anthony McGill and YaoGuang Zhai at the Curtis Institute of Music since 2024, is the Ruth and Eugene Helmer Fellow.

James has appeared as a substitute musician with the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra and the Taipei Century Symphony Orchestra. In 2026, he was selected as the bass clarinet fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. He has also participated in several music festivals, including the Aspen Music Festival (2025) and the Asian Youth Orchestra (2023). James currently serves as the bass clarinetist of Symphony in C.

Elizabeth Crafton is a horn player from Savannah, Georgia, currently in her fourth year as an undergraduate at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studies with Jennifer Montone and Jeffery Lang. In addition to her studies, she serves as principal horn of the Savannah Philharmonic and has appeared as a soloist with the orchestra. Elizabeth has participated in several summer festivals, including the Tanglewood Music Center, Spoleto Festival USA, and the National Repertory Orchestra. Her former teachers include Sylvia Alimena, Carolyn Wahl, and Erin Lano.

Award-winning pianist Yang (Jack) Gao is developing a rising career as a recitalist, composer, chamber musician, and orchestra soloist. In November 2023, he won the Naumburg International Piano Competition during his sophomore year at Juilliard, garnering worldwide attention. Jack is a prizewinner of many competitions in the last seasons, including the Koussevitzky Piano Competition (first prize, 2026), the Bösendorfer Competition (second prize, 2025), the Munz Competition (first prize, 2024), the Juilliard Gina Bachauer (winner 2023), the Juilliard Concerto Competition (winner, 2023), and others. He has performed intensively in North America, Europe, and Asia. In June 2025, he was invited by Martha Argerich to perform in her festival in Hamburg, and where Argerich herself personally awarded him the Steinway Prize, with her comments, “I am deeply impressed by his profound sensitivity, his great stylistic flexibility, and his dazzling virtuosity, all of which he combines with a special openness both artistically and personally.” In February 2024, he gave a recital in Carnegie Hall and included a world-premiere of his newest work. Born in December 2003, he made his orchestral debut at age 17 performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Symphonic Orchestra of China Conservatory under conductor En Shao. Jack is also an avid chamber musician, and he has worked closely with world-renowned composers. He premiered the newest piano work “Van Vechten Variations” by Micheal Daugherty in Carnegie Hall in 2025, and performed the piano concerto by John Corigliano in 2023 in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, with the Juilliard Orchestra under conductor Simone Young. His mentors at the Juilliard School include Emanuel Ax and Jerome Lowenthal. He is now studying at the Curtis Institute as their first-ever master’s student in piano, mentored by Robert McDonald.