Quartet-in-Residence

Cassatt String Quartet

Muneko Otani, violin

Muneki Otani is currently on the faculty of Columbia University, The Mannes College of Music and the Mozarteum Summer Festival in Salzburg.
She has performed as a soloist with the Tokyo Chamber Orchestra as well as the Norfolk Festival Orchestra. Ms. Otani has held fellowships at both the Banff and Tanglewood Summer Festivals. She received the Bachelor of Music degree in both performance and education from the Toho Academy of Music in Japan, where she studied with Toshiya Eto. She then continued her training at the New England Conservatory, where her principal teachers were Masuko Ushioda and Louis Krasner.
Ms. Otani plays a 1770 J.B. Guadagnini of Parma violin.

Jennifer Leshnower, violin

Jennifer Leshnower works with young students nationwide coaching chamber music.  She has concertized with members of the Cleveland, Orion and Amadeus Quartets and as a former member of the Thouvenel String Quartet, Ms. Leshnower has performed at the Festival Institute at Round Top and the String Seminar while touring throughout the country.  She has participated in the Meadowmount and Aspen Music Festivals as well as the National Repertory Orchestra and has coached with members of the Guarneri, Tokyo and Juilliard Quartets.
Ms. Leshnower trained at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the Peabody Conservatory with Sergiu Luca and Sylvia Rosenberg.
Ms. Leshnower's violin is a 1655 Jacobus Stainer.

Michiko Oshima, viola

For nearly a decade, Ms. Oshima was the violist of the Cassatt String Quartet, which was honored with many awards including the First Prize of the 1997 Slee Beethoven String Quartet Cycle Competition, the Wardwell Chamber Music Fellowship at Yale (where she was a teaching assistant to the Tokyo Quartet members), the 1995 CMA/ASCAP First Prize Award of Adventurous Programming. She has collaborated with David Schiffrin, Abby Simon, Lewis Kaplan and members of the Cleveland, Amadeus, and Concord Quartets among many others. As a member of the quartet, she was frequently invited to give performances and masterclasses at Bowdoin, Round Top and Swannanoa Summer Festivals as well as State University at Buffalo, Syracuse University, Rice University and Interlochen Arts Academy.
Since she left the quartet in summer of 2000, Ms. Oshima has moved her base to Tokyo and appears frequently as a solo and chamber music concerts. She is currently is on faculty of viola and chamber music at Toho School of Music Orchestra Academy. As a dedicated chamber music coach, she has coached several weekend chamber music workshops in Japan. In fall 2002, she joined the Tanner Chamber Ensemble, and she started teaching violin and chamber music at Yokohama International School.
Ms. Oshima holds BA from Toho School of Music, and Performers Certificate from Eastman School of Music. Her teachers include Kenji Kobayashi, Martha Strongin Katz and the Cleveland Quartet.

Nicole Johnson, cello

Nicole Johnson has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and Germany. She has appeared in performances with the Vermeer Quartet on their series in Chicago, on the Composers' Guild concerts in New York City and at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Most recently, she was the cellist of the Avanti Ensemble in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she also chaired the cello and chamber music departments at the Renaissance Music Academy.
Ms. Johnson holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. Her teachers have included Andrés Díaz, Alan Harris and Joel Krosnick.
Ms. Johnson plays an 1806 Nicholas cello.

...hailed as one of America's outstanding ensembles, the Manhattan based Cassatt String Quartet has performed throughout North America, Europe, and the Far East, with prestigious appearances at New York's Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Tanglewood Music Theater, the Kennedy Center and The Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and Maeda Hall in Tokyo. The group has frequently been heard on WGBH, WQXR and WNYC, and has also presented programs on CBC Radio and Radio France.

Formed in 1985 with the encouragement of the Juilliard Quartet, the Cassatt initiated and were the inaugural participants in Juilliard's Young Artists Quartet Program. Their numerous awards include a Tanglewood Chamber Music Fellowship, the Wardwell Chamber Music Fellowship at Yale (where they served as teaching assistants to the Tokyo Quartet), First Prizes at the Fischoff and Coleman Chamber Music Competitions, two top prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, two CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, a recording grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, and two grants received in 2005 from Meet the Composer and the E. Nakamichi Foundation.

The Cassatt celebrates their twentieth Anniversary during the 2005-2006 Season with premieres of works by Libby Larsen for Quartet and Children's Choir at Syracuse University through a commissioning grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Jay Reise's Piano Quintet with pianist Marc-André Hamelin at the University of Pennsylvania through a commissioning grant from the Barlow Foundation as well as Schafer Mahony's Piano Quintet with pianist Peter Basquin at New York's Hunter College. Other highlights include educational residencies at Canada's Music at Port Milford and in the Norwalk, Connecticut Public Schools as well as performances at the Syracuse International Film Festival, the Bessie Bartlett Frankel Chamber Music Festival at California's Scripps College and at New York's Kosciuszko Foundation with pianist Roman Markowicz.

Their ongoing residencies include the University of Pennsylvania and Syracuse University as well as summer residencies at Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Seal Bay Chamber Music Festival.

Recent CD releases include works by Pulitizer Prize-winner Steven Stucky on Albany Records, Quartets by Berlin Prize-winner Sebastian Currier on the New World label, Ezra Laderman's Flute Quintet with Ransom Wilson on Albany Records, and String Quartets by Daniel S. Godfrey on Koch International Classics which The New Yorker magazine recommended as one of the top eleven CD's in 2004.

The Cassatt has recorded for the Koch, New World, Point, CRI, Tadzik and Albany labels and is named for the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.