Delirium Musicians on Tour
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Etienne Gara - Artistic Direction / Violin
Artist in Residence at The Soraya and at USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, Etienne is a French-Hungarian graduate of the New England Conservatory, and ended his student career of more than 11 years at USC with Midori Goto. Since then, he enjoys concertizing internationally and gathering artists from different backgrounds around creative projects, and goes skydiving when he runs out of ideas. His dearest memories, beside the time spent with Delirium Musicum musicians, are from playing under the baton of John Adams with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and recording his debut album on a 1714 Stradivarius. His strongest trait of character: French.
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Evan Hjort - Violin
Evan Hjort is a Seattle-based violinist who recently returned to his native Washington after several years in Boston. As a passionate composer and interpreter of new music, Evan has premiered pieces by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Caroline Shaw, Tan Dun, and Wayne Shorter, among others. When not flying down to LA to perform with his delirious friends, Evan enjoys curating for a film studies group, drinking beers while hiking in the great PNW, and constructing elaborate Halloween costumes. Evan is slated to release his first full-length album of original music in 2024.
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Sheng-Ching Hsu - Violin
As a quiet introvert girl, Sheng-Ching wanted to be a musician when she realized it is a way to communicate without actually speaking. Born and raised in Taiwan, S-C earned all her degrees in New York (Mannes, Juilliard and Stony Brook) and moved to Los Angeles after performing Lincoln Center Stage on cruise ships all over the world for a few years. During the pandemic, “S-C Sidewalk Performance” brought weekly live music to the street corners of West LA. The performances brought comfort and hope to many people during the time of isolation, and were featured on KTTV Fox 11 Los Angeles. S-C enjoys baking, organizing, and drinking coffee. She shows her delirious love to her DM colleagues by baking one thing for them every cycle.
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Sophia Szokolay - Violin
Canadian violinist Dr. Sophia Szokolay graduated from Juilliard and serves on faculty at Brandeis University. Based in Boston, she performs widely with ensembles such as A Far Cry, the Portland String Quartet, and the MahlerFest Orchestra, and is deeply invested in new music through commissioning projects. Once known for cycling to engagements through New England winters, she now (sensibly) owns a car. She is happiest playing with Delirium in Los Angeles, where the weather is kinder and training for the Boston Marathon is far more pleasant.
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Misha Vayman - Violin
Misha Vayman is a professional violinist, educator, and dog lover. He has performed in a wide variety of contexts, from opening for Dorian Electra to soloing with various orchestras in the United States, Mexico, Russia, and China. With his genre hopping band Astral Mixtape, Misha has been featured at a variety of venues across Los Angeles and at multiple international music festivals. After 10 years of school at the USC Thornton School of Music, Colburn Conservatory, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, Misha is good, and doesn’t need to practice at all. Animals have been known to enjoy his playing, as do some people.
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Yezu Woo - Violin
Violinist Yezu Woo debuted at Carnegie Hall at age 16, becoming the youngest performer to play all 24 of Paganini’s Caprices for solo violin. Winner of the Korean national award, "Outstanding International Musician of the Year" by the Arts Critics Association, Yezu was appointed as Honorary Ambassador of the City of Chuncheon, where she is currently serving as the Artistic Director of the New York in Chuncheon Music Festival. Yezu is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship in Germany, where she was a member of the Ensemble Modern Academy and a researcher at the Isang-Yun-Haus in Berlin. She received a degree from virtually all of the best music schools in New York, while finding time to enjoy watching movies and reading during her free time. Yezu has recently been obsessed with salsa dancing!
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Juchao Zhao - Violin
Juchao Zhao was admitted to the Middle School attached to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at age nine. He has performed at Carnegie Hall with the Chinese Youth Symphony Orchestra and was a finalist in the inaugural Mintz International Violin Competition (2017). He earned fourth prize at the 8th Washington Johnson International Youth String Competition (2018) and received the Shanghai Conservatory’s prestigious “Yincai Program” Scholarship. Invited by Maestro Tan Dun, Juchao toured major Chinese cities in 2020–2021 as concertmaster. In 2023, he was admitted to The Juilliard School for the M.M. program with the highest scholarship and also received a full scholarship offer from Yale University.
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Nao Kubota - Viola
Violist Nao Kubota is an active chamber and orchestral musician in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Nao frequently performs in several chamber music series, including the Chamber Music Society of SF and Benicia Chamber Players. As an orchestral musician, Nao plays with several Bay Area orchestras, including the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Santa Rosa Symphony, and Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera. Nao is a graduate of NEC and USC, and is a supposedly rare “purebred” violist who has never played the violin. Aside from music, Nao enjoys eating, traveling, and exploring cute cafes and bakeries.
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Chris Broyles - Viola
A native of Franklin Massachusetts and senior at Oberlin Conservatory, Christopher Broyles is a passionate violist, educator and lifelong student of music who is dedicated to sharing his music with anyone curious enough to listen. Chris has engaged audiences in storied concert halls around the world through performances in the Vienna Musikverein, the Verbier Festival's Salle des Combins and the Regina Mundi Church in South Africa among others. Locally, Chris is even more inspired by his private students and his work within his community at prisons, pre-schools and everywhere in between. When not on stage, you will likely find Chris playing sudoku, trying hole-in-the-wall restaurants with friends or attempting to get in bed by 8:30pm.
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Stella Cho
Originally from South Korea and raised in the UK, Stella made her solo debut at the Royal Albert Hall, London at the age of fifteen. She was selected as one of the Holland Music Sessions’ “New Masters on Tour”, which took her to the Royal Concertgebouw for a solo recital, and concertizes on 3 continents. As a kid, Stella started piano and cello with the same teacher. She is now known for her super-power as a living GPS – she can point you to any restaurant at anytime, anywhere – which probably made her pick cello over piano, so she could fulfill her destiny to be the anchor of any ensemble she plays with.
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Christopher Ellis - Cello
Born in Ireland, Chris has been described as “a rapidly rising cello star” (The Irish Times). He currently lives in Houston, Texas and holds degrees from the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP) and Rice University. He enjoys playing with ensembles such as Loop38, ROCO, Kinetic Ensemble, DaCamera and Musiqa. A recent highlight was playing at the UN Summit in Geneva in a project which fused the worlds of music, dance and neuroscience. Away from music, Chris’ favorite things are Guinness and Rugby, which happen to go together rather nicely. He’s on a mission to find the best pint of Guinness in North America, wish him luck.
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Nathan Ben-Yehuda - Keyboard
Born in Los Angeles, Nathan Ben-Yehuda completed his masters degree at Juilliard. Passionate about new music and embracing a variety of keyboard traditions, Nathan especially enjoys the open mindedness and risk taking that playing in Delirium Musicum encourages in himself, and all its entities. He’s been lucky to work closely with some of the leading composers of our time, like Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, George Lewis and Oliver Knussen. A connoisseur of funky synth bass grooves, he often experiments with electronic soundscapes, and is a member of classical-crossover band Astral Mixtape. Catch Nathan after a Delirium show and he might make you extra delirious with a whisky based cocktail.
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Sarah Wager - Bass
Hailing from Rochester, NY, Sarah was introduced to the double bass in public school at age 10. She graduated from Boston University and the USC. She has attended summer festivals including Domaine Forget, Music Academy of the West, Sarasota Music Festival, Artosphere Festival Orchestra, and the Lucerne Contemporary Music Festival. She has appeared with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, and won Associate Principal Bass of the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra. Currently, she is on contract with the Phoenix Symphony. Sarah has recently gotten into rock climbing and is fascinated by the real similarities between climbing a wall and playing a piece of music (trust on this one).
Resting Musicians
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Tiffany Chang - Violin
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Leonard Fu - Violin
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JiEun Hwang - Violin
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Yiliang Jiang - Violin
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Yezu Woo - Violin
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Dian Zhang - Violin
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YuTing Hsu - Viola
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Tanner Mennes - Viola
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Chieh-Fan (Jay) Yiu - Viola
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Luther Warren - Viola
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Stella Cho - Cello
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Annie Jacobs-Perkins - Cello
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Ryan Baird - Bass
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Kathryn Schulmeister - Bass
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Thomas Mellan - Keyboard

