Hard Tango with JP Jofre featuring Ensemble ATX

Award-winning Korean pianist Dr. Sohee Kwon is celebrated for her artistry, exquisite pianism, and
profound sensitivity. She has garnered top honors in major international competitions, including the First
Prize at the 2020 MTNA Chamber Competition and the Second Prize at the 2020 Fischoff National
Chamber Competition.

An avid soloist and chamber musician, Dr. Kwon has performed in prestigious venues and series
worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Beethoven-Haus Kammermusiksal (Bonn), Chamber Music
International, Mid America Performing Alliance, Sarasota Music Festival, Austin Chamber Music Center,
Beerthoven Concert Series, Salon Concert Series, and Classical Sound. In high demand as a collaborator,
she has worked with renowned artists such as Felix Olschofka, Jon Kimura Parker, Chloé Kiffer, Horacio
Contreras, Sandy Yamamoto, Daniel Ching, Joshua Gindele, as well as the Invoke String Quartet and
OSMOSIS String Quartet (Leipzig).

Dr. Kwon’s versatility extends to music arrangement, with her adaptation of Piazzolla’s Three Preludes
for Piano Trio, originally written for piano solo. Served as her doctoral thesis at UT Austin, it was
premiered by her group, Trío En.

Dr. Kwon earned her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance at the University of Texas at
Austin under the guidance of Dr. Andrew Brownell. She completed her undergraduate studies at the
Manhattan School of Music and Rutgers University, studying with Daniel Epstein and Dr. Min Kwon,
supported by a presidential scholarship. She graduated with the Elizabeth Wyckoff Durham Award for
Excellence in Keyboard Performance. She then earned her Master’s degree at Rice University under Jon
Kimura Parker as a full scholarship recipient.

An active educator and passionate advocate for chamber music, Dr. Kwon serves on the faculty of the
Austin Chamber Music Center and the International Summer Music Institute at the University of North
Texas. She is frequently invited to present guest lectures, masterclasses, and performances at institutions
such as Rutgers University, University of North Texas, University of Kansas, and University of
Nebraska–Lincoln.

In 2024, Dr. Kwon founded Chamber on the Move, a curated house concert series in Austin designed to
bring high-quality chamber music to intimate settings while fostering collaborations with local musicians.

Hailed by the press for his “bold, rich sound” (Strad Magazine) and “nuanced musicianship,” (New York Times) Grammy-nominated Cellist Michael Katz has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and Israel, in venues such as Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Kimmel Center, the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center, the Kravis Center, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Oji Hall (Tokyo, Japan), Philips Hall (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Teatro Cervantes (Malaga, Spain), Lucerne KKL (Lucerne, Switzerland), and Henry Crown Auditorium (Jerusalem, Israel). Mr. Katz has appeared as a soloist with Princeton Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, DuPage Symphony, New York Classical Players, The Juilliard Orchestra, Orchestra de Conservatoire Superieur de Paris, Greenwich Village Orchestra, Ensemble 212, the Doctors’ Orchestral Society of New York, and others. His musicianship has been recognized with many awards, among them all three awards at the 2011 Aviv Competition, first prizes at the 2010 Juilliard School’s Concerto Competition, and the 2005 Turjeman Competition, as well as awards from the America Israel Cultural Foundation and the Ronen Foundation.

High in demand as a chamber musician, Mr. Katz has collaborated and performed with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Cho-Liang Lin, Donald Weilerstein, Daniel Philips, Peter Wiley, Anthony Marwood, Peter Frankl, Charles Neidich, Lucie Robert, Alexander Schimpf, Lucy Shelton, Roger Tapping, and Lucy Chapman. He has performed at international music festivals including Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Mostly Mozart, Festival Mozaic, Yellow Barn, Lucerne, Holland Music Sessions, Sarasota, Methow Valley, Classical Bridge, Cooperstown, Green Box, Bard, Copenhagen, Malaga Clasica, Skaneateles, Perlman Music Program, Orford, and Kol Hamusica.

As the cellist of the Lysander Piano Trio, Mr. Katz was a winner of the 2012 Concert Artists Guild Competition, and was awarded first prizes at the 2011 Coleman Competition and 2011 J.C. Arriaga Competition. Their first album “After a Dream” was released in 2014 on CAG Records and was praised by the New York Times for its “polished and spirited interpretations.” A second album “Mirrors”, featuring six world premiere recordings of commissioned works, was released on First Hand Records to critical acclaim in 2021.

Deeply committed to community outreach and education, from 2014-2016 Mr. Katz was a Fellow in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. He is a core member of Decoda, an affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall since 2019. He was previously selected to be part of a special string quartet led by Midori to present formal and outreach concerts in Myanmar and Japan as part of the 2013-2014 International Community Engagement Program, and was invited to return to the program in 2016-2017 for concerts in Nepal and Japan. Mr. Katz is a faculty member at the Csehy Summer School of Music and the Chamber Music Institute in Stamford CT, and has served as an adjunct cello professor at Nyack College from 2015-2017.

Mr. Katz has a great passion for expanding the cello and chamber music repertoire - he has premiered Works by over 50 composers including Samuel Adler, Timo Andres, Ofer Ben-Amots, Christopher Cerone, Jakub Ciupinski, Ann Cleare, Gilad Cohen, Bryce Dessner, Mohammed Fairouz, Daniel Felsenfeld, Vivian Fung, Him Sophy, Vijay Iyer, Juan Pablo Jofre, David T. Little, Zhou Long, Eric Moe, Reinaldo Moya, Sergiu Natra, Olga Neuwirth, Jonathan Newman, Malcolm Payton, Paola Prestini, Chris Rogerson, Huang Ruo, Caroline Shaw, Sang Song, Zhou Tian, Julian Wachner, and Yehudi Wyner.

Born in Tel-Aviv Israel, Mr. Katz began his cello studies at age 7. Among his teachers in Israel were Zvi Plesser, Hillel Zori and the late Mikhail Khomitzer. Mr. Katz received his Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory where he studied with Laurence Lesser, his Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School where he studied with Joel Krosnick, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from SUNY Stony Brook as a student of Colin Carr.

Joel Braun is Associate Professor of Double Bass at the University of Texas at Austin.  As an orchestral musician he has performed with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic.  He is a former member of the Ft. Wayne Philharmonic and currently serves as Assistant Principal Bass of the Eastern Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of Gerard Schwarz.  As a soloist and chamber musician, he has concertized at major universities, conservatories, and music festivals throughout the United States.  Much of his recent work involves collaborating with contemporary composers.  He has premiered works by Olga Magidenko, Rain Worthington, Manuel Sosa, and Behzad Ranjbaran.  “Unaccompanied”, his premiere solo recording, was released in 2022 on the Centaur Records Label and features his own composition “Awake”, which won honorable mention in the unaccompanied category of the 2022 ISB/David Walter Composition Competition.  As an in-demand pedagogue, he has presented master classes at institutions such as the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Mannheim, Germany, the Universidad Nacional de Música in Lima, Perú, and Indiana University, among many others. He has held faculty positions at Ball State University and The Juilliard School Pre-College Division.  His principal study was with Eugene Levinson at The Juilliard School where he earned a Pre-College Diploma, B.M., and M.M. degrees. 

Born in San Juan, Argentina, Juan Pablo Jofre Romarion, aka JP Jofre, is a Grammy and Latin Grammy-nominated composer and bandoneon player. Having written several concertos with chamber and symphony orchestras, and chamber music works, Mr. Jofre has been repeatedly highlighted by the New York Times and praised as one of today’s leading artists by Great Performers at Lincoln Center. His music has been recorded by the legendary London Symphony Orchestra, multi-Grammy award winner Paquito D’ Rivera, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra among others. He has performed and given lectures at Google Talks, TED Talks, The Juilliard School of Music, The New School among others. A recipient of the National Prize of the Arts grant in Argentina, Mr. Jofre has been part of many prestigious festivals, including the Celebrity Series of Boston, Umbria Jazz Festival, Great Performers at Lincoln Center, Seattle Town Hall, Hatfield and Sheffield Chamber Music Festival (U.K) Australian Music Festival for Chamber Music and Kasposfest (Hungary) to name a few. 

For the world premiere of his Bandoneon Concerto, the  California Mercury News wrote: “…he is an electrifying composer-bandoneon player.” In 2012, Jofre was invited by the Free University of Bolzano and SudTirol Festival (Italy) to perform for the homage to Argentinean Nobel Peace Prize winner, Adolfo Perez Esquivel. 

For the release of his Double Concerto for Violin and Bandoneon with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Michael Guttman, the BBC Magazine wrote: "His concerto is arresting and -through the gorgeous Adagio-rather beguiling". He currently leads the JP Jofre Quintet, the ensemble has been touring internationally since the release of their last album "Manifiesto" among others. Mr. Jofre's music has been performed at the most prestigious concert halls around the world such as Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Music Center, Morlacchi Theater (Italy) Mariinsky Theater, Mikhailovsky Theater, Stanislavsky Theater (Russia), Beijing National Concert Hall, Seoul Art Center, and Taiwan National Theater to name a few.  

Mr. Jofre started making music at the early age of 5, and academically studying at age 15, double bass with Nestor Castillo, harmony with Horacio Lavaise, composition, and orchestration with Ezequiel Viñao and Adrian Rusovich. He took masterclasses given by Ingrid Zur and George Heyer (Germany) and studied bandoneon with Julio Pane, former bandoneonist of the legendary Astor Piazzolla Sextet. Mr. Jofre has received numerous commissions for composing music from producer Ted Viviani, violin virtuosos Francisco Fullana, Kyung Sun Lee, Rachel Lee, Eric Silberger, Lucia Lin, Michael Guttman, Yih Shuin Huang, MUPA Budapest, pianists David Fung, Min Kwon, clarinetist Seunghee Lee and cellist István Várdai, Metropolis Ensemble, Belares Symphony Orchestra, and San Antonio Music Institute.

Violinist Geoffrey Herd dedicates his diverse musical career to enriching cultural landscapes and fostering musical talent within communities. His roles as a soloist, chamber musician, artistic director, and educator have allowed him to engage audiences in concert halls across the globe and support the development of aspiring musicians.

Herd’s collaborative performances with esteemed artists and orchestras have led him to perform in reputable venues such as the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum of Art in Boston, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and universities and conservatories worldwide.

In addition to his performance career, Herd is the founder and director of the Geneva Music Festival. This platform unites accomplished classical and jazz performers and has gained national recognition in its 14th season, with performances regularly broadcast on major media outlets across the country. Furthering his leadership activities, Herd also serves as the CEO and co-artistic director of ATX Chamber Music and Jazz (ATX Music), an organization committed to creating the most innovative, engaging, and immersive chamber music and jazz performances available anywhere. Herd also has a deep passion for training the next generation of classical musicians and serves as the Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Louisville.