FREE Courtroom Concert: Isles Ensemble

Violinist Stephanie Arado’s career encompasses a wide range of performance and teaching experience. Ms. Arado began her violin studies at the age of five and played her first solo recital when she was eight. Since her debut with the Chicago Symphony as a 12 year old, Ms. Arado has performed as soloist with symphony orchestras throughout the United States, including the Detroit, St. Louis, and Minnesota Orchestras.

Ms. Arado spent 22 years as Assistant Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra and also served as Concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony. In 2012, Ms. Arado resigned from her position with the Minnesota Orchestra to devote more time to teaching and chamber music. Ms. Arado has participated in chamber music festivals both nationally and internationally and has had the privilege to perform with such masters as Paul Tortelier, Joseph Silverstein, and Yuri Bashmet. A recipient of a McKnight Foundation Grant for Performing Artists, Ms. Arado maintains a private teaching studio in Minneapolis and is an Artistic Director of the Bakken Trio, a chamber music consortium she has performed with since 1991.

Violinist Emily Switzer is a 2019 graduate of the Yale School of Music and 2017 graduate of Yale University. Former co-concertmaster of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, she is a winner of the 2015 Friends of Music Recital Competition, the 2016 William Waite Competition and a recipient of the 2016 Sharp Prize for Music. She has performed with numerous orchestras including the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Lakewood Symphony, Denver Philharmonic, Littleton Symphony and Yale Symphony Orchestra. In January 2022, she performed with the Yale Philharmonia as a winner of the 2019 Woolsey Concerto Competition.

Recipient of the 2017 Yale Louis Sudler Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, the Yale Wrexham Prize and the Fry Cup for Contributions to the Arts, she has studied with Hyo Kang, Wendy Sharp, James Maurer, Kathleen Winkler, Jorja Fleezanis, Alexander Treger and Glenn Dicterow. An avid chamber musician and advocate of new music, she was a winner of the 2018 Yale Oneppo Chamber Music Competition, and in May of 2018 premiered a violin concerto by emerging composer Max Vinetz. She attended Music Academy of the West in 2015 and 2016, and in 2017 participated in their Global Academy Program, a 10-day immersive performance residency with the New York Philharmonic. She is a two-time fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center and in 2017 was awarded the program’s Jules C. Reiner Violin Prize. In June 2019 she traveled to Incheon, Korea, with the Sejong Soloists as part of the Hic et Nunc music festival. Ms. Switzer joined the second violin section of the Minnesota Orchestra in September 2019.

Violist Sarah Switzer joined the Minnesota Orchestra in the fall of 2022 after earning her masters’ degree from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University as a student of Ivo-Jan van der Werff. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in the History of Art from Yale University, where she studied with Wendy Sharp. Her undergraduate thesis, on French medieval manuscript illumination, earned her the A. Conger Goodyear Fine Arts Award in 2019.

Switzer has attended the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Grand Teton Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she served as a New Fromm fellow, focusing on the performance and recording of contemporary classical music.

A native of Denver, Colorado, Switzer began her musical studies on violin under the tutelage of James and Jacqueline Maurer.

Cellist, Laura Sewell, enjoys an active and varied musical career and has distinguished herself as a highly respected chamber musician. From 2007-2016 she was a member of the Artaria String Quartet which was appointed as one of Minnesota Public Radio’s ensembles-in-residence, was featured on Twin Cities Public Television’s “Minnesota Originals” series, and performed the complete Shostakovich quartet cycle to critical acclaim. Earlier in her career she was the founding cellist of the award-winning Lark Quartet.

Ms. Sewell received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Juilliard School where she was a student of Leonard Rose, and her Master’s Degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music where she studied with Alan Harris. She also had the unique opportunity, at the age of 17, to study with the legendary cellist, Jacqueline DuPre. Her chamber music teachers have included members of the Juilliard, Tokyo, American, Guarneri, and Budapest quartets, as well as Felix Galimir, Josef Gingold and William Pleeth.

Ms. Sewell plays as a substitute cellist with both the Minnesota and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras and has been a guest artist with the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota, the Bakken Trio, and the Musical Offering. She has appeared on “Saint Paul Sunday” and on “A Prairie Home Companion” on several occasions. She has premiered solo works by Paul Schoenfield, Stephen Paulus, and Steve Heitzeg, and chamber works by Libby Larsen, Peter Schickele, Jon Deak, and Stanislaw Skrowacewski. From 2000-2008 she served on the board of Chamber Music America, the national service organization for chamber musicians, and was its Chair for four years.

Thomas Rosenberg is nationally known as a dynamic performer, teacher and chamber coach. Recipient of the 2025 National Arts Advocate of the Year from Chamber Music America, he has been Artistic Director of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition since 1981, teaches cello and chamber music at Carleton and Macalester Colleges, is Director of the Saint Paul Chamber Music Academy and maintains a pre-college home studio.

As well as regional and national awards for teaching, he has been presented in masterclasses at music schools throughout the United States. His students have won many awards, regularly gain acceptance into top music schools, and over thirty students from his studio have performed on NPR’s “From the Top”. They are in major symphonies, chamber music ensembles, Managing Director of the NY Philharmonic, Director of Education for Jazz at Lincoln Center and successful in countless other professions. Tom is recipient of the 2003-04 “Master Studio Teacher Award” from the Minnesota chapter of the American String Teachers Association and has also been named “Arts Educator of the Year” by the Michigan-Indiana Arts and Sciences Council. Tom is a featured “blogger” and host of Live Internet “CelloChats” on www.cellobello.com

A prize-winner at the Munich and Portsmouth International Quartet Competitions and three-time Naumburg Award finalist, Tom performs with the Isles Ensemble and has been a frequent substitute player in both the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra. He has performed with jazz greats Charlie Hayden and Al Foster in Carnegie Hall, performed in all of the major concert venues in NYC as solo cello of the New York Chamber Ensemble and was the founding member of the highly acclaimed Chester String Quartet with whom for twenty years he toured internationally and made numerous recordings.

Tom is a graduate of Oberlin as a student of Richard Kapuscinski and The Eastman School of Music where he was teaching assistant to both Paul Katz and Laurence Lesser. His chamber music studies have been with the Budapest, Cleveland, Juilliard, Guarneri and Tokyo quartets.  www.tomrosenbergmusic.com

Born in Henan, China, Yi Zhao was offered a first violin position in the Minnesota Orchestra in June 2023, and in fall 2024 was appointed principal second violin. Prior to joining the Orchestra, Zhao was the assistant concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony for nine seasons. During her time in Colorado, Zhao appeared as a solo artist with major community orchestras and was frequently featured at the Englewood Arts, Walden Chamber Music Society (Salida) and Epic (Colorado Springs) Series. She is now looking forward to sharing her passion for music in the Twin Cities community.

For the past six summers, Zhao has been regularly performing at the Grand Teton Music Festival, taking on various leadership roles as well as chamber music concerts. The Festival Orchestra is comprised of musicians from top orchestras around the world, and Zhao is now proud to represent the Minnesota Orchestra among its ranks. In 2022, she was invited by Manfred Honeck to join the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s summer European tour and performed at major festivals across Europe, including the Salzburg Festival. Prior to her invitation to the Tetons, Zhao and her colleagues, Coleman Itzkoff and Andrew Staupe, were invited to the 2014 La Jolla Music Festival as the Pegasus Trio. There she has shared the stage with many world-renown artists such as Cho-Liang Lin, Yefim Bronfman, Inon Barnatan, Alex Kerr, Desmond Hoebig, Richard O’Neill, Leonard Slatkin and the Miro Quartet. In addition, she has performed with Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carerras at the Sun Festival in Singapore and in concert series with Michael Kannen at the Weil Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and the Peabody Institute of Music. In the summer of 2023, in addition to a solo feature with the Colorado Symphony, Zhao performed as the concertmaster at the Sunriver Music Festival in Bend, Oregon.

Zhao received her bachelor of music under the tutelage of Qian Zhou at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in 2007 and earned her master’s under the guidance of Cho-Liang Lin at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in 2013. During these times she was also a fellow at both the Tanglewood Music Center and Music Academy of the West, and worked with other renowned pedagogues such as Pamela Frank, Emanuel Ax, Glenn Dicterow, Jorja Fleezanis and Kathleen Winkler. Zhao performs on a 2019 Collin Gallahue violin.

Casey Rafn is a Minneapolis-based pianist, recording artist, and music director whose work spans the worlds of collaborative piano, musical theater, as well as contemporary music and beyond. In recent seasons, he has performed as a member of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and also appeared in concert with Cantus. For his performances with Cantus, the Star Tribune praised his playing as “having done extraordinary things with the music all evening.”

As a collaborative pianist, he has toured the United States, Latin America, and Europe. As a member of the saxophone-piano trio “Trés,” their album Romance al Campesino Porteño received a Latin GRAMMY nomination. The trio has collaborated with internationally acclaimed saxophonist Miguel Zenón, and also recently premiered Angélica Negrón’s Pedacito De Tierra, a work that interweaves music with spoken testimony from members of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the Twin Cities. The trio’s commissioned composition by Zenón, El País Invisible, earned a GRAMMY nomination, reflecting the trio’s commitment to innovative and culturally meaningful artistic collaborations.

As a recording artist he has published recordings with faculty members of the University of Minnesota School of Music, which can be found on Spotify and Apple Music. As a soloist he has appeared with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, and also won top prizes at the Liszt-Garrison competition in Baltimore, including Best Liszt Interpretation. As a music director, he has led musical theater productions at Lundstrum Performing Arts in North Minneapolis, as well as Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists. He is a graduate of The University of Iowa, and currently serves as pianist for both VocalEssence and the Basilica of Saint Mary.