Joshua has been championed for his captivating performances and continues to be recognized as one the promising young dramatic voices of today. In the 2022-2023 season, he makes his Opera Omaha debut as Reginald in X, a role he has also performed at Detroit Opera and Odyssey Opera/Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He also makes his English National Opera debut in Blue, which he has also performed with Seattle Opera, makes his Indianapolis Symphony debut as soloist in Handel’s Messiah, and returns to Brooklyn Art Song Society for a series of concerts. Other career highlights include Germont in La traviata with Washington National Opera, Jason in the world premiere of Matt Boehler’s 75 Miles, and his Carnegie Hall Debut in 2018 as the baritone soloist in Mozart’s Regina Cœli, K. 276, Vaughn Williams’ Serenade to Music.
Robert combines a deep commitment to the existing cello repertoire with what the New Yorker magazine calls an “adventurous” spirit in new music. With performance credits at Alice Tully Hall, Bargemusic, Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Hall, and The Rose Studio at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he has also appeared as a soloist throughout Japan as a member of the New York Symphonic Ensemble, and been featured in recital on WQXR’s “Young Artist Showcase.”
At the center of new music in New York, Robert has performed with the American Modern Ensemble, Argento New Music Project, Fireworks Ensemble, Newspeak, and SONYC. Recent collaborations include Uri Caine, Georg Friedrich Haas, Aaron Jay Kernis, Steve Mackey, Joan Tower, Charles Wourinen, and Chen Yi. He has performed the New York premiere of John Harbison’s Abu Ghraib for cello and piano, and was the soloist in Augusta Read Thomas’s Passion Prayers for cello and chamber ensemble at the New York Times Center.
Robert’s major teachers include Paul Tobias at The Mannes College of Music and Uri Vardi at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he has worked with Timothy Eddy, Aldo Parisot, and Janos Starker at festivals and masterclasses. Robert has taught at Juilliard Pre-college, Mannes Prep, Syracuse University, and Music Conservatory of Westchester, and been artist-in-residence at Yale University and the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. His recent CD “20/21: Music for Cello and Piano from the 20th and 21st Centuries,” features pianist Blair McMillen and the premiere of a work for cello and piano by composer Andrew Waggoner. Robert’s recording of solo Bach on the American Express commercial “Don’t Take Chances. Take Charge.” has garnered national attention.
Nick Kendall, violin; Charles Yang, violin; Ranaan Meyer, double bass
Bonded by an uncommon blend of instruments and vocals, Charles Yang (violin), Nick Kendall (violin), and Ranaan Meyer (double bass), have found a unique voice of expression. To experience Time For Three live is to hear the various eras, styles, and traditions of Western music fold in on themselves and emerge anew.
Earning praise from NPR, NBC, and The Wall Street Journal, Time For Three is renowned for their charismatic and energetic performances in venues including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, and The Royal Albert Hall. In 2020, the band partnered with cellist and composer Ben Sollee to put together the soundtrack to the new Focus Features’ film Land, starring and directed by Robin Wright. The film first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 31, 2021. They have collaborated with artists as diverse as Ben Folds, Branford Marsalis, and Joshua Bell, and have premiered original works by composers Chris Brubeck and Pulitzer Prize-winners Jennifer Higdon and William Bolcom. Their most recent commission by Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts, Contact, will be premiered with the San Francisco Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra in summer 2022. This concerto will be featured on their new album, Letters for the Future, alongside Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto 4-3, to be released June 2022 on Deutsche Grammophon.
Charles “plays classical violin with the charisma of a rock star” (Boston Globe). He received the Leonard Bernstein Award in 2018. The Juilliard graduate has performed as a soloist with orchestras and in concert in the United States, Europe, Brazil, Russia, China, and Taiwan. In 2016 Charles joined the crossover string band, Time for Three. His improvisational abilities on violin, electric violin, and as a vocalist have led him to featured performances in the Aspen, Moab, Schleswig-Holstein, Ravinia, and Crested Butte Music Festivals, the Cayman Arts Festival, the YouTube Music Awards, TED, Caramoor, the EG Conference, Google Zeitgeist, Interlochen, and onstage at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House, David H. Koch Theater, Dizzy’s, David Rubinstein Atrium, The Long Center, Rudolfinum, The Royal Danish Theatre, Le Poisson Rouge, Highline Ballroom, Ars Nova, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Forbidden City in Beijing among many others. He has shared the stage with artists including Peter Dugan, CDZA, Steve Miller, Jesse Colin Young, Jake Shimabukuro, Ray Benson, Michael Gordon, Marcelo Gomes, Savion Glover, Twyla Tharp, Misty Copeland, and Jon Batiste. The Texas Observer has noted, “Mr. Yang is a true crossover artist, a pioneer who can hop between classical and popular music and bring fresh ideas to fans of both genres. Rather than maintaining an insular focus and simply assuming that an audience for classical music will always exist, he wants to actively create that audience, to persuade and seduce others into enjoying a type of music as passionately as he does.”
Jason is a Grammy-winner described by NPR as “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation”. His multiple appearances for San Francisco Performances, Caramoor Festival, Ravinia Festival, PCMS, 92Y, etc., have cemented his reputation as one of the world’s leading guitarists. Overseas performance venues include Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Concert Hall, Sala Sao Paolo, and Teatro Colon. Jason has performed as soloist with over 100 orchestras, including Cleveland, Toronto, Houston, Nashville, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s, working with conductors such as Giancarlo Guererro, Jahja Ling, Gerard Schwarz, and Michael Stern.
Recent recordings include his long-awaited “Bach Volume 2: Works for Violin” on Azica Records, “Shining Night”, featuring his duo with violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, and Michael Fine’s “Concierto del Luna” for flute and guitar (with flutist Alexa Still) on Sony Classical. Jason also recorded Pat Metheny’s “Four Paths of Light”, a solo work dedicated to him by Pat, for Metheny’s 2021 album “Road To The Sun”.
Jason has performed world premieres from composers Jeff Beal, Avner Dorman, Vivian Fung, Pierre Jalbert, Jonathan Leshnoff, David Ludwig, Mark Mancina, and Dan Visconti, among others. Of his Grammy-winning 2014 solo album “Play”, HuffPost declared that “Play” is “part of the revitalized interest in the classical guitar.”
Jason’s regular collaborators include Escher String Quartet, Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, Grammy-nominated harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro, and violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. He holds faculty positions at Curtis Institute of Music and Cleveland Institute of Music.
I am 26 years old and Navajo/Dine. I have been hoop dancing for 8 years and performed at the National Museum of the American Indian Smithsonian in Washington D.C and New York City. I have also performed for the tire company Big O Tires Corporation in Moab, UT. I have been on a TV commercial with a TV brand called Phillips TV. I have also been on a music video with Hip Hop artist “Taboo”, a member of the Black Eyed Peas. I did a week performance in Dubai at the 2020 Dubai World Expo showcasing our World Class Hoop Dancing. The hoop dance has gotten so competitive that now there’s a Worlds Championship Hoop Dance Contest, held every year in downtown Phoenix. Tribes from all of North America come to this competition to compete for the world title of hoop dancing. I am the 2022 top 6 hoop dancer in the world.
Hoop Dancing to me means that I am able to dance for those who can’t. The hoop dance is a healing and storytelling dance. I like to tell the story about the history of the Native American Race of what our ancestors went through. On the Navajo Nation in the late 1800s Navajos were forced to go to boarding schools “until we learned to live like the white men”. So they took away our long hair, our cultural dancing, and told us not to speak Navajo. So when I do hoop dance or speak Navajo, I dance for those who were told they couldn’t.