New York-born violinist Akiko Kobayashi performs in much of the northeastern United States, and collaborates frequently in chamber music concerts and projects. Past projects have included a three-day Mozart Festival of chamber music, opera arias, and educational outreach at the Allegheny Riverstone Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh; a six-week exploration of Bach's six Sonatas for Violin and Klavier, examining the spiritual background of the music; and a presentation of twentieth-century music, its techniques, and its influences, sponsored by the Islip Arts Council in New York.

Kobayashi has appeared as a soloist with the West Islip Symphony Orchestra, Yonkers Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Suginami Kokaido Chamber Orchestra, and InterHarmony Festival Orchestra, and performed in international festivals such as the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine, the InterHarmony International Music Festival in the Berkshires, and the Sulzbach-Rosenberg International Festival in Bavaria. She has performed in master classes for the Stradivarius Society, Zvi Zeitlin, and Sergiu Schwartz.

Other concert appearances include the Dame Myra Hess Concert Series in Chicago, broadcast live on WFMT; Saugerties Pro Musica Foundation Concert Series in the Hudson River Valley; Steinway Hall, NYC; and Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, Germany.

Please visit akikokobayashi.net

Eric Siepkes studied piano performance at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, where he was awarded the Howard Hanson Scholarship and the George Eastman Grant.   He later continued his piano performance studies at the Mannes College of Music in NYC.

He has performed in master classes for Richard Goode and Angela Hewitt, and has played in chamber music master classes for London Baroque, the Avalon String Quartet, and the Eroica Trio.  During his pre-college studies at City Music Center, Duquesne University, his chamber group was selected for a live performance on WQED Radio Pittsburgh.  Later collaborations have included a duo performance on WFMT Chicago, in a live broadcast of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series.

Programs that he has helped to present include a Mozart Festival at the Allegheny River Stone Center for the Arts near Pittsburgh, PA which included an emphasis on educational outreach to local public schools, as well as informal lectures and performances for the general public.  He co-organized a series entitled Meditating Bach, in which he collaborated with Ms. Kobayashi in performing Bach's Six Sonatas for Violin and Clavier, with informal lectures focused around the influence that Bach's Christian faith had on his compositions.