Intersections: Music, Longing, and Displacement

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.

Ning Yu

​​Praised for her “taut and impassioned performance” by the New York Times, pianist Ning Yu performs with vigor and dedication for traditional and repertoire of the 20th and 21st century on stages across the United States, Europe and Asia.  Working at the forefront of the current creative music scene in the US, she has given dozens of world premieres by composers from around the world. She has performed with ensembles such as Bang on A Can All-Stars, ICE, Talea Ensemble  and she is a member of piano/percussion quartet Yarn/Wire, counter)induction and Signal Ensemble.

Ning has performed in concert halls, international festivals, universities, and other non-traditional performance spaces around the world. These venues include Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Museum of Modern Art , Miller Theater, Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, Library of Congress, Issue Project Room, Pioneer Works, Contempo Concert Series at University of Chicago, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, Köln Philharmonie in Germany, Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, Kwe- Tsing Theater in Hong Kong, Spoleto Festival, Rainy Day Festival in Luxembourg, Ultima Festival in Norway, Transit Festival in Belgium, Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, Singapore International Arts Festival. 

In theater, Ning performed with Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse — a critically acclaimed production directed by Lee Breuer. She can be seen in the production’s feature-film version, produced by ARTE France. Ning has also collaborated with director Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project on the development of the Tony Award–nominated play 33 Variations.

Ning is a YAMAHA Artist, and she is an assistant professor of piano and chamber music at the George Washington University. 

Paul Cigan

Appointed to the National Symphony Orchestra clarinet section by Maestro Leonard Slatkin in 1999, Paul Cigan enjoys a career as an orchestral clarinetist, chamber musician, teacher, and soloist. In addition to the NSO, Cigan can frequently be heard performing with the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, 21st Century Consort, and the Smithsonian Chamber Players, as well as on recordings with those ensembles on the Dorian, Bridge, and Naxos labels. In 2012, Cigan premiered Donald Crockett's Dance Concerto with the 21st Century Consort and performed a special wind ensemble version of the piece with the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra in 2015. Prior to the NSO, Cigan held principal posts with the San Antonio Symphony, Colorado Symphony, and Virginia Symphony.

An active teacher in the Washington, D.C., area, Cigan is currently on the faculty of The University of Maryland at College Park. He is also active in the NSO education department, instructing members of the Youth Fellowship Program and Summer Music Institute.

Other activities include performing at the Halcyon Music Festival and Grand Teton Music Festival and teaching at the University of Maryland National Orchestral Institute and the Philadelphia International Music Festival. Cigan studied with Anthony Gigliotti, former principal clarinetist of The Philadelphia Orchestra, and David Breeden, former principal clarinetist of the San Francisco Symphony. Cigan is a graduate of Temple University.

Regino Madrid

Regino Madrid, from Los Angeles, CA, is currently the concertmaster of The American Pops Orchestra frequently featured on PBS and “54 Below” in NYC, the associate concertmaster of NatPhil at Strathmore, a member of Sound Impact, 21st Century Consort, and the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra. Regino was the associate concertmaster of “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra and played at the White House for 20 years. He currently plays with The National Symphony Orchestra and has played with the Pittsburgh and Baltimore Symphonies. He is a member of the tango band “Quintango” that holds a residency at Blues Alley in Georgetown. In 2021, he recorded Kyle Werner’s violin sonata for its premiere with The Washington Ballet on Marquee TV with a live performance at Wolf Trap. In 2024, he was a soloist with the NATO Symphony Orchestra at the Library of Congress. Regino received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music after pursuing a Physiological Science degree from UCLA. He currently plays a violin from 1845 by J.B. Vuillaume.