Nonpareil

Carrie Bean Stute

Cellist Carrie Bean Stute is co-founder and co-artistic director of the Washington, DC-based Chiarina Chamber Players, a chamber music series and flexible ensemble that has won critical acclaim for its artistry and innovative programming. Carrie’s chamber music performances have been broadcast on Classical WETA’s Front Row Washington. In DC, she performs with the National Symphony Orchestra, has served as an adjunct professor of music at George Washington University, and is currently assistant principal cellist of “The President’s Own” Marine Chamber Orchestra, where she performs in such diverse settings as the White House, area public schools, and for events hosted by the United Nations and State Department.

A performer who seeks out the voices of today, she collaborates with a growing set of composers, including Reinaldo Moya, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Juhi Bansal, and Kennedy Center composer-in-residence Carlos Simon. Carrie authored a doctoral dissertation on the cello works of Pēteris Vasks and in 2021 performed as soloist in the North American premiere of his Cello Concerto No. 2. She took part in the Carnegie Hall workshop “New Voices, New Music” and has performed chamber music at such venues as the Phillips Collection, Zankel Hall, Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, and an in-house educational residency at the 92nd Street Y.

Carrie holds degrees from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York (Doctor of Musical Arts), Indiana University, and the Eastman School of Music. She was a fellow at the New World Symphony and Tanglewood Music Center. Forthcoming in 2024-25 are recordings of chamber music by Carlos Simon (with Domenic Salerni, Efi Hackmey, and Carl DuPont) and clarinet trios by Brahms and Beethoven (with Robert DiLutis and Rita Sloan).

Daniel Foster

National Symphony Orchestra Principal Violist Daniel Foster’s varied career encompasses orchestral, chamber and solo playing, as well as teaching. Since capturing the First Prize in both the William Primrose and Washington International Competitions, he has appeared in recital and as soloist with orchestra in Washington, DC and throughout the United States. After Studying with Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey at Oberlin Conservatory and with Karen Tuttle at The Curtis Institute, Mr. Foster joined the National Symphony’s viola section in 1993, and was appointed Principal by Music Director Leonard Slatkin in 1995. Mr. Foster has appeared frequently as soloist with the National Symphony since his appointment.

Mr. Foster was a member of the critically acclaimed Dryden Quartet, which he founded along with his cousins Nicolas and Yumi Kendall and National Symphony Concertmaster Nurit Bar-Josef. He is currently a member of the 21st Century Consort, and is a founding member of the Kennedy Center Chamber Players. Mr. Foster has performed chamber music at the Marlboro, Bowdoin, Killington and Alpenglow Festivals, and at Strings in the Mountains. Mr. Foster appears regularly on a number of chamber music series in the Washington, DC area.

Mr. Foster is on the faculty at the University of Maryland, where his former students have gone on to major orchestral and university positions, and he has been a faculty member at the Bowdoin and Killington festivals. Mr. Foster has given master classes at Oberlin and Peabody Conservatories, the University of Michigan and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and is a member of the “International Principals” faculty at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.

Mr. Foster comes from a musical family. In addition to his violinist and cellist cousins, his father William was also a violist with the National Symphony from 1968-2018, and his grandfather John Kendall was a renowned violin pedagogue. His wife Adria Sternstein Foster is the Principal Flutist of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra.

Domenic Salerni

Acclaimed a “marvelous violinist” by the Washington Post, violinist, composer, and arranger Domenic Salerni is a member of the two-time Grammy Award-winning Attacca Quartet. Attacca was featured on Billie Eilish’s most recent album “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” and can be heard on the soundtrack to Alfonso Cuarón’s seven-part film series on Apple TV+ “Disclaimer,” playing the music of Finneas. They are also featured, alongside Sō Percussion and Roomful of Teeth, in Caroline Shaw’s film score to Ken Burns’ newest PBS documentary, “Leonardo da Vinci.” Attacca released Maurice Ravel’s “String Quartet” in March on Platoon in honor of his 150th birthday.

Domenic arranged 60s Civil Rights era protest songs for the Palaver Strings’ album “a change is gonna come,” featuring tenor Nicholas Phan and jazz vocalist Farayi Malek, released on Azica Records, which was nominated for a Grammy Award this year. The Belvedere Series, Richmond, Virginia’s new salon series, commissioned Salerni’s “Seven Meditations” for piano trio last season thanks to a grant from the Allan and Margot Blank Foundation.

In 2022, Attacca created and recorded original music for the podcast “The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome,” which was featured in the New York Times’ Best Podcasts of 2023. Domenic’s first string quartet commission, “Trilobites: a Musical Excavation,” was made possible by the Appalachian Chamber Music Festival, founded in 2021 by cellist Katie Terrell, and is featured on West Virginia Public Television.

A graduate of the Yale School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Domenic regularly performs with the Chiarina Chamber Players in Capitol Hill, DC. Recipient of the 2020 CMA Commissioning Grant, Chiarina looks forward to its debut album in its 10th season of the music of Carlos Simon, including the commissioned work, “The Best Cuisine,” featuring co-artistic directors Efi Hackmey and Carrie Bean Stute and bass-baritone Carl DuPont.

Efi Hackmey

Praised for his highly personal interpretations and “feather-light pianism” (Washington Classical Review), Efi Hackmey is recognized for his lyricism and beauty of tone. As Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Chiarina Chamber Players he performs regularly on Chiarina’s concert series, which has won critical acclaim for its artistry and innovative programming, called “some of the most compelling chamber programs in town” by the Washington Post. Efi has performed at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Rose Studio, the Kennedy Center and Bargemusic, and in the Friends of Mozart series in NYC. In his native Israel he performed as soloist with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra, as well as at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Jerusalem Music Center. Efi is often featured on WETA Classical’s Front Row Washington.

A passionate chamber musician, Efi has collaborated with the Attacca Quartet, Imani Winds, clarinetists Ricardo Morales and Charles Neidich, baritone Randall Scarlata, cellist Marcy Rosen and violinists Catherine Cho, Todd Phillips and Nurit Bar-Josef, among others.

Efi’s recordings include the 2025 release of The Best Cuisine: Music of Carlos Simon on the Azica label, and the 2013 album Polish Violin Music on the Naxos label, among others.

Efi has served on the piano faculty at DePauw University, and he also taught at the Indiana University system. He holds a Doctor of Music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and degrees in piano and conducting from Tel Aviv University. He studied with Menahem Pressler, Pnina Salzman and Dina Turgeman, and has had additional coaching with Lazar Berman, Emanuel Ax, Richard Goode, Janos Starker and Jaime Laredo.