Pianist Peter Dugan’s debut performances with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony were described by the Los Angeles Times as “stunning” and by the SF Chronicle as “fearlessly athletic.” He is heard across America as the host of NPR’s beloved program From the Top.  He has appeared as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across North America and abroad, and can be heard as the piano soloist on a new release of Ives’ Fourth Symphony from Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.  In 2020, he joined violinist Joshua Bell for At Home With Music, a national PBS broadcast and live album release on Sony Classical. Prizing stylistic versatility as the hallmark of a 21^st century musician, Peter is equally at home in classical, jazz, and pop idioms.

A sought-after multi-genre artist, Peter has performed in duos and trios with artists ranging from Itzhak Perlman and Renee Fleming to Jesse Colin Young and Glenn Close. The Wall Street Journal described Peter’s collaboration with violinist Charles Yang as a “classical-meets-rockstar duo.” This season Charles and Peter are Artists in Residence at New York’s Kaufman Music Center and the Cali School of Music at Montclair State University.

Gabrielle Chou, piano & violin

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Gabrielle Chou is a New York-based pianist and violinist seeking to defy genres and break barriers in music education and performance tradition. On both instruments she performs solo, chamber music, and in large ensembles, teaches and lectures, coaches chamber music and gives masterclasses, improvises, collaborates with composers and dancers, and is active in community engagement and activism. She studied at the Colburn Music Academy and received her B.M. and M.M. from The Juilliard School, as well as her D.M.A from the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, writing her dissertation on play and game elements in music. She has studied piano with Jerome Lowenthal and Richard Goode, violin with Lewis Kaplan, and chamber music with Emmanuel Ax, Timothy Eddy, Joseph Kalichstein, Matti Raekallio, and Sylvia Rosenberg.

Gabrielle performs throughout the country and internationally, including appearances as both a piano and violin soloist with orchestras in the US, Europe, and Asia. She is the winner of the Center for Musical Excellence’s 2018 International Performing Arts Grant and regularly serves as artist-in-residence and faculty at festivals, most recently at the Sphinx Performance Academy and the Altenburger Musik Akademie in Austria. While she plays the breadth of repertoire for either instrument, Gabrielle is particularly passionate about chamber and contemporary music and enjoys all forms of collaboration with musicians of any genre and artists of any medium. She has premiered piano, violin, and chamber works at Juilliard, the Yale School of Music, National Sawdust, the Avaloch Music Institute, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Currently in New York Gabrielle serves as professor of music history at Baruch College, chamber music coach at the New York Youth Symphony, and staff pianist at The Juilliard School. She is a founding member of the contemporary chamber collective Away From Keyboard and is on the rosters of Metropolis Ensemble, Nu Deco Ensemble, Protestra, Sound Off: Music for Bail, After Arts Featured Artists, the Center for Musical Excellence, and Concerts for Compassion. In her free time she enjoys frequenting art museums and aquariums, playing board and video games, birding, and reading science fiction. Her website is gabriellechou.com.

Michael Dahlberg, cello

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Photo credit: Zoe Lin

Cellist Michael Dahlberg, noted for his “sensitivity and coloristic playing” (The New York Times), has built a portfolio career of community-building, education, and performance projects that carried him from local gallery spaces, to schools, to international concert halls.

During his years in Boston, Michael helped establish and lead the Discovery Ensemble, Juventas New Music Ensemble and Phoenix Orchestras, ensembles aimed at revitalizing classical music for the modern era. He stewarded contemporary chamber works as a New Fromm Player at the Tanglewood Music Center, performing alongside artists including Pierre-Laurent Aimard, John Zorn and the Mark Morris Dance Group.

His string quartet, the Boston Public Quartet (BPQ), presented concerts and workshops as the Celebrity Series’ first “Artist in Community.” As teaching artists, the BPQ founded the non-profit musiConnects, providing Boston Public Schools access to music instruction, forums for creative collaboration, and free performances. Michael brought his learning to the education team of NPR’s “From the Top,” where he designed and hosted over 80 interactive music events across 40 cities for more than 11,000 audience members of all ages.

Since relocating to the Bay Area in 2017, Michael has served as an Artist in Residence at the pianoSonoma summer festival, performed with regional ensembles including the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and Symphony Silicon Valley and Modesto Symphony, and teaches privately and as cello faculty at San Jose State University.

A native of Philadelphia, Michael began musical studies in a public school Suzuki program. He was fortunate to receive formative training from many of the city’s accomplished performers and educators thanks to institutions like the Settlement Music School and the scholarship programs they provided. He studied with Gloria dePasquale of the Philadelphia Orchestra before pursuing a Bachelor of Music degree at the New England Conservatory (NEC) under the tutelage of Yeesun Kim.

Michael now resides in the Sacramento area with his wife, daughter and 13-pound cat, Gus, enjoying a triple life as Product Manager for a tech startup, musician, and father.

Learn more on his website: www.mikedahlberg.com.

Kara Dugan, mezzo-soprano

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Mezzo soprano Kara Dugan has been praised by The New York Times for her “vocal warmth and rich character.” Her diverse career ranges from baroque oratorio to world premieres. Her work with living composers has included the world premiere of Michael Tilson Thomas’ Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind, a production of John Musto’s Bastianello at Festival Napa Valley with the composer at the piano, and an appearance with the Albany Symphony performing Michael Daugherty’s This Land Sings, a multi-genre tribute to Woody Guthrie. Recently, she won first place in the Rochester International Vocal Competition and was selected to be a member of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab.

Her work as a baroque concert soloist began during her studies at The Juilliard School and has taken her on three international tours with Juilliard415 and conductors Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, and Nicholas McGegan, culminating in a performance as the Soprano II soloist in Bach’s Mass in B minor at the Boston Early Music Festival. Operatic highlights include Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Zaida in Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia, and Nireno in Handel’s Giulio Cesare. She has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Marlboro Music Festival, Ravinia Steans Institute, Aspen Music Festival, Wolf Trap Opera, and at venues ranging from National Sawdust to Alice Tully Hall.

As a passionate recitalist she performs often with her husband Peter Dugan, pianist and host of NPR’s From the Top. The husband and wife duo were recently featured on PBS Great Performances’ “Now Hear This” and have performed across the United States, including at the Joye in Aiken Festival, Charles Ives Concert Series, Moab Music Festival, Portland Chamber Music Festival, and most recently at WQXR’s Greene Space. The duo’s eclectic repertoire has brought them to a wide range of venues including Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, where they joined genre-defying string group Time for Three. Kara received her Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees from The Juilliard School. She is a proud recipient of the Novick Career Advancement Grant.

Riley Mulherkar, trumpet

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Photo credit: Zenith Richards

Riley Mulherkar has been recognized as a “smart young trumpet player” by The New York Times, praised by The Wall Street Journal as a “youngster to keep an eye on,” and is a 2020 recipient of Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award for his work as “an original bandleader, composer, arranger, educator, community activist and advocate for jazz and the arts.”

Riley works with a number of leading artists of our time, including Wynton Marsalis, Anna Deavere Smith, and Alan Cumming, and is a founding member of The Westerlies, a new music brass quartet that creates the rarest of hybrids: music that is both “folk-like and composerly, lovely and intellectually rigorous” (NPR Music). Riley also serves as Artistic Director at Joye in Aiken, bringing leading young talent to the historic city of Aiken, South Carolina.

Born and raised in Seattle, Riley moved to New York in 2010 to study at The Juilliard School, where he completed his Bachelor’s Degree in 2014 and his Master’s in 2015. Riley is actively engaged in educational initiatives, founding the Joye in Aiken Jazz Camp in 2021, directing the Summer Advanced Institute at Seattle JazzEd from 2017-2019, and serving as an ambassador for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Jazz for Young People” program in New York and St. Louis from 2016 – 2018. Riley is also a faculty member of The College of Performing Arts at The New School in New York, NY. Riley is an Edwards Artist and performs on Edwards trumpets.

Doori Na, violin

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