Music in the Afternoon: String Quintet

Come and listen to a world premiere of a cello quintet by Moses Sedler and Franz Schubert’s celebrated Quintet in C Major. Performance for this concert is by Ensemble SF with guest cellist Tanya Tomkins. This is an event not to be missed!

Musicians from Ensemble SF
Jennifer Choi, violin
Rebecca Jackson-Picht, violin
Jessica Chang, viola
Angela Lee, cello
with Tanya Tomkins, cello

Jennifer Choi has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo violin, chamber music and the art of improvisation. Hailed by The New York Times as an "excellent violinist," "soulful, compelling" and "spectacular, virtuosic play" by the San Francisco Chronicle, she has performed worldwide in venues such as the Library of Congress in Washington D. C., the RAI National Radio in Rome, Hong Kong National Radio and the Mozartsalle in Vienna since giving her debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall in 2000.

A prominent chamber musician, Jennifer was a former violinist of the Miró String Quartet. With her involvement, the group won Grand Prize at Fischoff national competition and first prize at Coleman chamber music competition. She has performed for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums, MOMA Summer Garden Series, Ravinia Festival, Barge Music, Caramoor Music, Strathmore Mansion series, Ridotto and numerous other chamber music series across the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. She joined ETHEL during their 2011–2012 season, and previous to that, was member of the Sirius String Quartet and Classical Jam. Jennifer has premiered dozens of new works by composer/performers like MacArthur genius grant winner John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Susie Ibarra, Sergio Assad and Richard Carrick and can be heard on numerous recordings on New World Records, TZADIK, New Focus and Starkland record labels. Jennifer will be performing on the 1718 Firebird Stradivarius. Visit her website at www.jenniferchoi.com

Violinist Rebecca Jackson-Picht’s performances have been described as "riveting" and characterized by a "fierce spirit." She is founder and artistic director of Music in May, an annual chamber music festival in Santa Cruz that has featured such notable musicians as Jennifer Koh, Michael Tree, Ron Leonard, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Cho-Liang Lin and Martin Beaver. The festival celebrates its 18th season in 2025.

Rebecca has been a part of commissioning and premiering 12 chamber works. Most recently, she performed the San Jose and San Francisco premieres of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s, Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope [made possible by Music at Kohl Mansion and Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions]. She regularly performs with the San Francisco Ballet, and during her five seasons as acting member of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, the company won the 2019 Grammy for Best Opera Recording for "(R)evolution of Steve Jobs."

Believing strongly in the power of music to heal and unite, she has performed in marginalized communities across the US, Ukraine, Romania, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nepal, Costa Rica and Lebanon. Ms. Jackson-Picht regularly brings colleagues together for performances at juvenile halls. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that this outreach "revives the evocative and visceral power of music that can be too often deadened in more formal concert environments." In 2013, combining her passion for music and community engagement, she cofounded Sound Impact and Ensemble SF.

In 2018, Rebecca received a KSBW Jefferson Award in recognition of her volunteerism and public service. The following year, she and her father coauthored the biography of her mentor David Arben, Holocaust survivor and former associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The book, ARBEN: David Arben's Life of Miracles and Successes, by Dr. John Jackson and Rebecca Jackson-Picht is available on Amazon and at www.davidarben.com. The story was recently featured on NBC News. Ms. Jackson-Picht received her Bachelor of Music from The Juilliard School and a Master of Music from University of California, Santa Cruz.

Taiwanese American violist Jessica Chang leads a versatile career as a chamber musician and educator. As the Founder and Executive Director of Chamber Music by the Bay, Jessica directs and performs interactive concerts for diverse communities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area which reach over 2,000 young audience members annually. Her work as a teaching artist has led to concert residencies with Project 440, the Savannah Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire and Music Beyond the Chamber. She has also served as violist of the Afiara Quartet, with whom she toured North America, including a visiting faculty residency at The Banff Centre in Alberta and residency as the Glenn Gould School Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada.

Jessica has performed as a chamber musician in concert tours throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Her performances have been broadcast on American Public Media's Performance Today, WYNC, WHYY and WQXR Public Radio. Highlights include collaborations with Roberto Díaz, Pamela Frank, Scott Yoo, Christoph Richter, William Bennett, Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Silverstein, Toby Appel, James Campbell, members of the Orion and Guarneri Quartets, and members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic. Her festival appearances include Festival Mozaic, Juneau Jazz and Classics, Bard Music West, Music from Angel Fire, International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, Open Chamber Music Prussia Cove, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Tanglewood Music Center, Taos School of Music, Verbier Festival, the National Arts Centre of Canada and Aspen Music Festival.

Jessica is a graduate of Yale University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree with honors and distinction. She also holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music as the recipient of the William A. Loeb Fellowship, and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School. Jessica maintains a private studio in the San Francisco Bay Area, performs frequently with ensembles including Ensemble Illume, the Ives Collective, Ensemble SF and Chamber Music Silicon Valley, and has also performed as principal viola with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Santa Cruz Symphony. She also leads a dual career in information security and is an industry-recognized speaker and presenter globally on building and scaling security culture.

Since giving her Carnegie Hall debut in 1994, cellist Angela Lee's "amazing finesse, control and coloration" [San Francisco Chronicle] and "astonishingly rich tone" [San Francisco Examiner] has been celebrated with recitals in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Victor Borge Hall at Scandinavia House in New York, Chicago’s Cultural Center, The Phillip’s Collection and Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Copenhagen's Nationalmuseet and the Purcell Room at South Bank Centre in London. She has soloed with orchestras including the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, the San Francisco Concert Orchestra, the New Haven Symphony, the CAMS Orchestra, the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, the Paraiba Symphony, São Paulo State Orchestra, the Chautauqua Symphony and the Hertfordshire Chamber Orchestra (UK), performing works of Boccherini to Barber to Kernis. Her solo and chamber performances have taken her throughout North and South America, Australasia, Europe and Asia. She is frequently invited to festivals including St. Petersburg's Revelations, IMS at Prussia Cove, Cagayan Valley International Music Festival, Taipei Summer Festival, Pontino Festival, La Musica, Banff, Marlboro Music Festival, Anneberg Festival, Chelsea Music Festival, Music Mountain and Mahler-Jihlava Festival, collaborating with the likes of Nobuko Imai, Bruno Giuranna, Frans Helmerson, Isabelle Faust, Lydia Artymiw, Andras Schiff, Alexander Lonquich, Anthony Newman, Franco Petracchi, the Hausmann Quartet and members of the Beaux Arts Trio and Guarneri Quartet.

She is the recipient of the Ruth T. Brooks Achievement Award for Continued Excellence in the Arts, a grant from the Foundation for American Musicians in Europe, a Fulbright scholarship to study in London with William Pleeth, the Jury Prize in the Naumburg International Cello Competition and a cello performance fellowship from The American-Scandinavian Foundation. Her cello is a 1762 Nicolo Gagliano from Naples.

Cellist Tanya Tomkins is co-founder and director of the Valley of the Moon Music Festival. She has been featured in recitals and at chamber music festivals across the United States, Canada and Europe, and is a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Ms. Tomkins is particularly renowned for her interpretation of the complete Bach Cello Suites, which she recorded for the Avie label and has performed many times at venues including New York's Le Poisson Rouge, Seattle's Early Music Guild, Vancouver's Early Music Society, Santa Fe's Pro Musica and the Library of Congress. For many years, Ms. Tomkins was principal cellist and a frequent soloist for both San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Portland Baroque Orchestra. She has recorded the complete piano trios by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn with the Benvenue Fortepiano Trio. She is now devoting more time to mentoring the next generation of musicians.

Ms. Tomkins learned the importance of mentorship from the great cellist Anner Bijlsma, with whom she studied in the Netherlands. These experiences inspired her, together with VMMF co-director Eric Zivian, to create the Apprenticeship, Laureate and Emerging Artists Programs at the Valley of the Moon Music Festival, where young musicians are absorbed into an intergenerational musical community and are exposed to the non-hierarchical, collaborative values of chamber music. She has mentored young musicians in master classes at Yale, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and through her frequent appearances as a guest teacher at Juilliard's Historical Performance Department.

Senior Programs are made possible in part by generous contributions from the Jewish Community Federation & Endowment Fund, the John R. Schwabacher Family, as well as many other individual donors. We are grateful for their generous support.

Doors open at 12:30 PM The Nourish Cafe on campus is open for lunch before the concert.

Linger after the concert for a snack and beverage in the lobby.

$15 tickets purchased online before May 5 | $25 after May 5 online and at the door.

Contact: Michelle Rosengaus | mrosengaus@paloaltojcc.org