Artistic Team
Livia Sohn
Founder and Artistic Director
Hailed by Opus Magazine as “a stunning musician”, Livia Sohn has performed widely on the international stage as concerto soloist, recitalist, and festival guest artist in North America, Europe, and Asia. The Strad Magazine says, “Livia Sohn possesses a remarkably lithe and transparent tone of exceptional purity. [Her] virtually blemishless accounts are nothing short of remarkable. Even when under the most fearsome technical pressure at high velocity, every note rings true with pinpoint accuracy.”
Livia has been a guest soloist in North America with numerous symphony orchestras, including Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Seattle, Milwaukee, Austin, Phoenix, and Boston Pops, among others. Internationally, she has performed as soloist with the Budapest Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony, Cologne Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony, Mexico City Philharmonic, Hungarian Radio Philharmonic, Auckland Philharmonia, Czech National Symphony Orchestra, The City of London Sinfonia, Asia Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Wuhan Philharmonic in China. She performed a multi-city tour with South Africa’s National Symphony and KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestras and has performed solo recitals in Spain, Mexico, Cyprus, Israel, and Japan.
National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” hosted Livia as an Artist-in-Residence for five days, during which she gave live interviews and performances of a different program each day. Other career highlights include performing at the inaugural concerts of Harris Hall at Aspen, and her performance with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra at the “Annual New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace”, held at New York City’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine before an audience of 10,000.
Livia gave her first public performance at age eight. In 1989, at the age of 13, she won First Prize in the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition, where she was also awarded the Audience Prize. She attended the Juilliard Pre-College Division from the age of seven, at which time she began her studies with Dorothy DeLay and Hyo Kang. She continued under their tutelage at the Juilliard School, where she also studied chamber music with the legendary Felix Galamir. Livia plays on a J. B. Guadagnini violin crafted in 1770, and a Samuel Zygmuntowicz made in 2006.
James Austin Smith
Artistic Advisor
A chamber musician, curator and on-stage host praised for his “virtuosic,” “dazzling,” and “brilliant” performances (New York Times) and his “bold, keen sound” (New Yorker), James Austin Smith is driven by the communicative nature of live performance. He appears regularly at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, leading national and international chamber music festivals, at Carnegie Hall and on tour as Co-Principal Oboe of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and as an artist of the International Contemporary Ensemble.
As Artistic and Executive Director of Tertulia Chamber Music Mr. Smith creates intimate evenings of food, drink, and music designed to engage audiences hungry for singular cultural experiences in New York, San Francisco and Serenbe, Georgia, as well as an annual weekend festival of food and music in a variety of global destinations. He mentors graduate-level musicians as a professor of oboe and chamber music at Stony Brook University and the Manhattan School of Music, and as a regular guest at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
James Austin Smith holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Music and bachelor’s degrees in political science and music from Northwestern University. He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany, and is an alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. Born in New York and raised in Connecticut, Smith’s principal teachers are Stephen Taylor, Christian Wetzel, Humbert Lucarelli, and Ray Still.
Janey Choi
Community Engagement Advisor
Canadian violinist/teaching artist/concert host, Janey Choi has performed, taught, and collaborated with artists across the globe, engaging audiences of all ages and genres. She is the recipient of numerous awards including National First Prize in the Canadian Music Competition, an Artists International debut recital at Carnegie Hall, and has participated in such festivals as Mostly Mozart, Norfolk, Taos, Bar Harbor Music Festival, the Spoleto Festivals in the U.S. and Italy, Festival Musical de Santo Domingo, the Santa Fe Opera and the Sarasota Opera. Highlights of recent years include performances with such groups as the Atrikk Ensemble, Ardelia Trio, Leonia Chamber Musicians, as substitute Concertmaster of Broadway’s “Jagged Little Pill” and “Aladdin”, on tour with Adele, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Wonder, curating an interactive chamber series at the cell theatre in NYC, and her debut as a host of the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts. She has held education posts for the New York Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Binghamton University, and has presented educational workshops for the College Music Society National Conference, Concert Artists Guild, Lincoln Center Institute, and Tokyo College of Music. Dr. Choi holds advanced degrees from the Juilliard School and Rutgers University where her major teachers were Joseph Fuchs, Joel Smirnoff, Harvey Shapiro and Arnold Steinhardt. She enjoys organizing chamber music readings, hiking, playing hockey and doing jigsaw puzzles with her husband and two daughters. For more information, please visit www.JaneyChoi.com
Livia and James
Livia and James have been making music together around the world for over a decade. Friends since they first met at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, they share a love of great food, wine, coffee and being inspired by their extraordinary chamber musician colleagues. They can’t wait to share their greatest passions with the Coast Live community.