American Chamber Music Celebration at Payton Violins

James Thompson, Violin

Violinist James Thompson enjoys a multifaceted career as a chamber musician, soloist, educator, and lecturer. He performs regularly as a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program.

Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Thompson considers himself fortunate to have been surrounded by superlative musical artists and educators from a young age. Through the preparatory program at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he was introduced to chamber music and was inspired to pursue a career performing and collaborating with artists from around the world.

Thompson has since performed for a variety of chamber music organizations across the country including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, ChamberFest Cleveland, Music@Menlo, the Four Arts Society, Parlance Chamber Concerts, the Perlman Music Program, and the Taos School of Music. Solo engagements include appearances with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra, the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, and the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra. He was invited to perform in Budapest as part of the First Bartok World Competition and in Sendai for the Seventh Sendai International Violin Competition.

Recently, Thompson’s abilities as a presenter have earned him invitations to speak at a variety of established concert series. His multimedia live-interview with the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, hosted by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, was a highlight of his 2021/2022 season. As artistic director of Music@Menlo’s Winter Residency, he curates diverse student and community programs in the Bay Area.

Alongside his performance career, Thompson enjoys his work with students as a private instructor and chamber music coach. From 2019 to 2023, he joined the faculty of Music@Menlo as both a coach for the Young Performer’s Program and a mainstage artist. He has recently served as a teaching fellow at both the Encore Chamber Music Festival and the Western Reserve Chamber Music Festival. He views his work with young people as a crucial aspect of his calling as a musician, and is grateful to have the opportunity to share with everyone the joy he has found making music.

Thompson holds Bachelor of Music, Masters, and Artist Diploma degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music; his primary teachers include Jaime Laredo, William Preucil, and Paul Kantor. He currently resides in Rochester, New York with his wife, violinist Jeanelle Thompson.

Claire An, Violin

South Korean violinist Jeongwon (Claire) An is a versatile violinist experienced in solo, chamber, and orchestra settings who joined the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2023 as a member of the first violin section.

As a chamber music enthusiast, Jeongwon is a founding member of Trio Menil, the Grand Prize and Odyssey Chamber Music Series Award winner of the 2023 Plowman Chamber Music Competition, and is a recipient of the Peter Salaff Prize in Chamber Music from the Eastman School of Music. She feels grateful to have performed the U.S. premiere of Yevhen Stankovych’s “Almost Serenade” for Two Violins in recital with Oleh Krysa, and shared the stage with Jon Kimura Parker, James Dunham, and Norman Fischer.

She was invited to participate in numerous international festivals including Mozarteum Sommerakademie, IMS Prussia Cove, Aspen Music Festival, and New York String Orchestra Seminar (NYSOS), and in concert venues like the Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and various halls in Asia. 

A recipient of the Korean Embassy’s Korean Honor Scholarship, Jeongwon has served principal positions in the Shepherd School Symphony, Eastman Philharmonia, and Aspen Festival Ensemble. She also performed as an acting concertmaster of Symphony S.O.N.G. (Seoul, South Korea), and as a substitute violinist in the Minnesota Orchestra.

An advocate for community outreach, Jeongwon was a member of DACAMERA’s Young Artist Program in 2022-2023, a fellowship program for emerging professional instrumentalists, vocalists, and composers that serves the Houston community. She also served as a mentor of YOLA (Youth Orchestra Los Angeles), LA Philharmonic’s El Sistema music education program, and is currently a chamber music faculty at the Hochstein School.

Jeongwon has studied and worked with inspiring master musicians such as Pierre Amoyal, Steven Doane, James Dunham, Anthony Marwood, Donald Weilerstein, and Kathleen Winkler, and will always be a student of her loving mentors, Fung Ho, Paul Kantor, and Oleh Krysa. She holds her degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Shepherd School of Music, and is currently playing on a 1703 G.B. Rogeri violin, generously on loan from the Maestro Foundation.

Josh Newburger, Viola

Josh Newburger is the newly appointed principal violist of the Rochester Philharmonic. Formerly the assistant principal violist of the Pacific Symphony, Josh has performed as a guest principal with the Fresno Philharmonic and the Santa Barbara Symphony, and subbed in the sections of the LA Phil, San Diego Symphony, Colorado Symphony, and Buffalo Philharmonic.

During his time in the Los Angeles area Josh recorded for numerous feature films and television productions, working with renowned film composers including John Williams, James Newton Howard, and Ludwig Göransson. Among other credits, he can be heard on the soundtracks for movies from the Star Wars, Lego Movie, Creed, Charlie’s Angels, and IT franchises, and TV series including The Mandalorian, The Orville, and American Dad.

Josh has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as a member of the Verbier Festival Chamber orchestra, and a guest musician with Ivan Fischer’s Budapest Festival Orchestra. He was twice selected as the assistant principal violist of the New York String Orchestra and studied as a fellow at the Music Academy of the West and the Verbier Festival.

Josh received his Bachelor’s degree in violin from the New England Conservatory as a student of Nicholas Kitchen. Under the guidance of Rochester native and Eastman alum Michael Klotz, Josh found his voice with the viola and ultimately obtained his Master’s degree in viola from Yale, where he studied with Ettore Causa.

William Shi, Piano

Australian pianist William Shi has garnered first prizes at numerous competitions

including the Petrof, Vivace, Yamaha, and Queensland Piano Competitions. He is a recipient

of the Theme & Variations Foundation Award, an American Australian Association Arts

Fund Grant and since 2021, has been supported by the Australian Music Foundation. In

2023, he was the inaugural winner of the AMF Richard Bonynge Award. Shi’s international

performing profile includes appearances at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, the

Australian Piano Duo Festival, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Brahmshaus

(Baden-Baden), and Szabelski’s Hall (Katowice). His U.S performances have been broadcast

on Performance Today, WCRB, and WXXI Classical.

As a collaborative pianist, Shi has accompanied masterclasses with distinguished artists

including Glenn Dicterow, Walter Auer, Martin Katz, Dawn Upshaw, and Renée Fleming,

and has worked with the Australian Strings Association Competition, Australasian Double

Reed Society National Competition, and the Underground Opera Company. In 2023, Shi was

the only Tanglewood Fellow to be accepted into both instrumental and vocal piano

disciplines. He was re-invited to lead the inaugural combined Tanglewood piano cohort in

2024.

Shi holds degrees from the Mannes School of Music and the University of Queensland,

where he studied with Dr. Arkady Aronov and Max Olding. He has been the teaching

assistant for Prof. Natalya Antonova and Dr. Ran Dank, with whom he is undertaking a DMA

in Piano Performance & Literature, as well as currently serving as teaching assistant to Dr.

Andrew Harley, with whom he is earning a concurrent MM in Piano Accompanying &

Chamber Music at the Eastman School of Music. Shi is a three-time recipient of Eastman’s

Excellence in Accompanying Award in addition to the Barr Award in Accompanying. He

currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at Nazareth University.

Ahrim Kim, cello

The Clara and Edwin Strasenburgh Chair

Ahrim Kim is an accomplished soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral leader who joined the RPO as principal cellist in the fall of 2015. She was awarded the Cassado Prize at the Gaspar Cassado international Cello Competition in Japan and top prizes in numerous other competitions, including the Houston Symphony's Ima Hogg Young Artists Competition, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic String Competition, the Five Towns Music Competition, and the Corpus Christi International Competition. She has performed solo and chamber repertoire at Boston's Symphony Hall, The Juilliard School, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Sarasota Music Festival, Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory, the Kennedy Center, and the Salzburg Mozarteum. As a soloist, she has appeared with the Boston Pops, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Hudson Valley Philharmonic Orchestra, and others. She was a member of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for the 2014-15 season as acting principal cellist, and she has also played in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.  

Since 2016, she has been teaching orchestral repertoire for cello at the Eastman School of Music and coaching chamber music at the Bowdoin International Music Festival.  

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kim began her cello studies at the age of six. She moved to the U.S. in 2002 and studied cello through Juilliard’s Pre-College Division for young musicians. She holds a master’s degree in cello performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, where she also earned her bachelor’s degree under the tutelage of Laurence Lesser and Natasha Brofsky.  

Kim was awarded the Arthur Foote Award from the Harvard Musical Association as the cellist of the Klimt Trio. As a chamber musician, she has participated in festivals such as Bowdoin, Yellow Barn, Chesapeake Chamber Music, and Marlboro.