"Left speechless after having the chance
 to watch and listen to Jean Huang close up." –The WBUR-FM (2020).

Taiwanese violinist Jean Huang's active performing career has brought her to concert halls internationally and throughout the United States. Huang holds Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral of Musical Arts degrees in Violin Performance with honors from the New England Conservatory with the Doctoral thesis topic "A Performative Analysis and the Critical Edition: Francis Poulenc Violin Sonata," under the guidance of Sean Gallagher and Pascal Rogé. Passionate for teaching, Huang currently maintains a private studio in Boston, with students ranging from six years old to adults. She also serves as the violin faculty at the New England Conservatory School of Continuing Education and preparatory school. 

"Superior leading."
–The Boston Musical Intelligencer (2019).

Maintaining an active professional career, Jean serves as the concertmaster of the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra and has received recognition for her leading and artistry by Cape Cod Times and other prominent music critics. Jean also serves as a member of the Phoenix Orchestra (Boston), where she participated as the principal violinist and performed 16 episodes of the "Chronophone" online chamber music series on Twitch during the pandemic, covering the western music history from pre-baroque to modern era. Praised for her poised and expressive playing, Jean enjoys performing standard repertoire and contemporary music. She also works as the first violinist in CØDA contemporary ensemble and gives regular concerts at the Old South Church in Boston. 

"A consummate artist -- so poised, in control,
expressive, and exciting and moving to listen to" –Victor Rosenbaum (2018).

Jean loves performing, believing music can provoke the wildest imagination. As a result, she often looks for a three-way connection between composer, performer, and audience. Jean is recognized for her lecture-recitals discussing topics such as "Musician's role," "Baroque Dances," and "Evolutionary Violinist." During those recitals, she combines virtuosic violin playing, her musicology background, and multi-media commentary that audience members of all experience levels can understand.

Wishing to become a musician rather than merely a violinist, Huang delves into all aspects of the field. In the summer of 2013, she took violin-making lessons and created her first violin, based on a Guarnerius model. She enjoys everyday coffee and often wanders around the Greater Boston area for new inspirations from nature in her sound.

Victor Rosenbaum, piano
Renowned teacher and former NEC faculty for over five decades
vrosenbaum@aol.com

"The appeal of Rosenbaum’s playing is in his musical temperament, in which fervor and gentleness are happily combined and in the velvet of his tone.....he makes up for all the drudgery the habitual concert-goer has to endure in the hope of finding the real, right thing". 

Internationally known pianist and teacher, Victor Rosenbaum, has been a prominent figure in Boston’s musical community for more than five decades, since Gunther Schuller, newly appointed President of New England Conservatory, hired him to teach piano, theory, and chamber music in 1967.  Of his very first recital as an NEC faculty member, the Boston Globe wrote: Rosenbaum “makes up for all the drudgery the habitual concert-goer has to endure in the hope of finding the real, right thing”.  His critical praise continues to this day.  Describing his most recent CD, “Brahms: The Last Piano Pieces” (Bridge), which was released in fall 2020, Glyn Pursglove of MusicWeb International said: “Rosenbaum’s account of of these pieces seems to me impeccable.  The whole disc is magisterial; a mature pianist bringing deep thought and empathy to a series of mature pieces which stand revealed, as clearly as I have heard, as masterpieces.  This will be the disc I turn to when I next want to hear any of these remarkable pieces”.  Rosenbaum has just retired from NEC and will devote his time to guest teaching, master classes, recording, concerts, and an upcoming Artist-in-Residence position in Taiwan in the spring of 2023.

Rosenbaum has concertized widely as soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Europe, Israel, Brazil, Russia, and Asia (including 25 annual trips to Japan) in such prestigious halls as Tully Hall in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. A committed chamber music performer, he has collaborated with such artists as Leonard Rose, Leslie Parnas, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Arnold Steinhardt, Robert Mann, Joseph Silverstein, Roman Totenberg, Eric Rosenblith, James Buswell, Malcolm Lowe, Walter Trampler, and the Brentano, Borromeo, Shanghai, and Cleveland String Quartets, and was a member of two trios: The Wheaton Trio and The Figaro Trio. Festival appearances have included Tanglewood, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Kfar Blum and Tel Hai (in Israel), Yellow Barn, Kneisel Hall (Blue Hill), Musicorda, Masters de Pontlevoy (France), the Heifetz Institute, the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, the International Music Seminar in Vienna, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Festival at Walnut Hill School, the Puerto Rico International Piano Festival,The Art of the Piano Festival in Cincinnati, the Atlantic Music Festival, PianoTexas, and the Eastern Music Festival, where he headed the piano department for five years. Rosenbaum is also a contributor to the online site “Musicale” (WeAreMusicale.com).

Concert appearances have brought him to Chicago, Minneapolis, Tokyo, Beijing, St. Petersburg (Russia), Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and New York, among others.  In addition to his absorption in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (in particular Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms), Rosenbaum has performed and given premieres of works by many 20th and 21st Century composers, including John Harbison, John Heiss, Peter Westergaard, Norman Dinerstein, Arlene Zallman, Donald Harris, Daniel Pinkham, Miriam Gideon, Stephen Albert, and many others.  A musician of diverse talents, Rosenbaum is also a composer and has frequently conducted in the Boston area and beyond.

Rosenbaum, who studied with Elizabeth Brock and Martin Marks while growing up in  Indianapolis, and went on to study with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Festival and Leonard Shure in New York (while earning degrees at Brandeis University and Princeton), has become a renowned teacher himself.  During his long tenure on the faculty of New England Conservatory, he chaired its piano department for more than a decade, and was also Chair of Chamber Music. On the faculty of Mannes School of Music in New York from 2004-2017, he has also been Visiting Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, a guest teacher at Juilliard, and presents lectures, workshops, and master classes for teachers’ groups and schools both in the U. S. and abroad, including London’s Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, and Guildhall School, the conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Beijing Central Conservatory, Shanghai Conservatory, the Toho School in Tokyo, Tokyo Ondai, most major schools in Taiwan, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and other institutions such as the Menuhin School near London, and the Jerusalem Music Center.  Rosenbaum’s students have established teaching and performing careers in the US and abroad, and have won top prizes in such competitions as the Young Concerts Artists, Charles Wadsworth International Competition, New Orleans International Competition, Casagrande International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer Competition, and the New York International Competition, among others.  Rosenbaum’s sixteen years as Director and President of the Longy School of Music (1985-2001) transformed the school into a full-fledged degree granting conservatory as well as a thriving community music school.

In addition to his Brahms disc, Rosenbaum’s recordings on the Bridge and Fleur de Son labels include a Mozart CD, three Schubert discs, one of which was described as “a poignant record of human experience”, and two recordings of Beethoven which the American Record Guide named as among the top classical recordings of 2005 and 2020. 

The Jerusalem Post wrote of Rosenbaum: “His obvious consciousness of everything he was doing....resulted in rich and subtle nuances of dynamics and shadings and in organically shaped, well-rounded phrases; [while] there was refreshing spontaneity and genuine temperament....the reign of intellect never faltered”.

The New York Times put it succinctly after his performance at Tully Hall: Rosenbaum “could not have been better”.  And a review in the Boston Globe summed up the appeal of Rosenbaum’s playing: “Fervor and Gentleness Combined”.