Our Musicians
Founder
Artistic & Executive Director
Jacqueline Audas
Jacqueline Audas is a passionate violinist, focused on engaging and empowering communities through classical music. Her belief in the power of music to create bonds between people inspired her to found the non-profit organization, Classical C.A.R.M.A. (Concerts Aiming to Raise Money & Awareness). As artistic and executive director, Jacqueline helps to produce and perform innovative concert series.
In the past few years, Jacqueline has made appearances abroad in Israel, Germany, Italy, Spain, and New Zealand and performed as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician around the United States. Most recently, she has performed at the North Shore Chamber Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Keshet Eilon Mastercourse and the Sommermusik im Oberen Nagoldtal. Jacqueline is a member of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and will be joining the Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra for the Summer of 2022. She also performs as an artist with the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players in New York City.
Jacqueline has been awarded the top prize in multiple competitions. Most recently, she was the first prize winner of the Yale-Gordon Competition for Strings. She was a finalist in the Barlassina International Young Talents Competition and a quarter-finalist in both the 2019 Michael Hill International Violin Competition and the 2020 Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition.
Jacqueline Audas graduated with her Master’s Degree in Violin Performance from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where she held the Anne and Charles Duncan Concertmaster Chair. While completing both her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees at the Shepherd School of Music, she studied with Paul Kantor. Prior to attending university, she studied with the late Arkady Fomin. Currently, she works with Vadim Gluzman at Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute.
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Performing Artist
Katherine Audas
Katherine Audas is currently pursuing an artist diploma degree in cello performance with Brin-
ton Smith at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, where she holds the Appassionata En-
dowed Scholarship in Music and the Annette and Hugh Gragg Principal Chair in Cello. She
graduated cum laude from Rice University with her undergraduate degree in cello performance
where she studied with Norman richer and her masters degree in cello pertormance where she
studied with Brinton Smith.
Katherine made her solo debut at the age of 11 as the winner of the Young Artist's Competition
of the Meridian Symphony. In January 2020, she was awarded first prize at the Ann and Charles
Eisemann International Young Artists Competition. In 2019, she was awarded the silver medal at the IX Concurso Internacional Violonchelo Carlos Prieto, as well as Fourth Prize and the Audience Favorite award at the 2019 Ima Hogg Competition. In the past, she has won the Shepherd School of Music Concerto Competition, the Gold Medal and the Audience Favorite Award at the Young Texas Artists Music Competition, the Grand Prize at the Enkor International Music Competition, and the Grand Prize in the junior division of the Tulsa International Crescendo Music
Awards.
Katherine has appeared as a soloist with numerous symphonies, including the Houston Symphony at the Ima Hogg Competition, the Northbrook Symphony, the Michoacán Symphony, the Shepherd School of Music Symphony Orchestra, the Boise Philharmonic, the Walla Walla Symphony, and the Music in the Mountains Festival Orchestra. In June 2021, she recently performed at the North Shore Chamber Music Festival where she was praised for the "inviting, vocal quality" of her tone in the Chicago Classical Review.
Katherine performs on a 1696 Grancino composite cello.
Performing Artist
Kyung-A Yoo
Hailed for “her expressive and sensitive sound,” Dr. Kyung-A Yoo, Associate Professor of Collaborative Piano joined the faculty of the Townsend School of Music (TSM) in 2021. As a distinguished artist at Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, Dr. Yoo coaches and performs with string players and guest artists.
Before joining TSM, she served as an Artist Collaborator at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music for nine years. Working closely with such renowned musicians and pedagogues as Leone Buyse, Paul Kantor, Richie Hawley, and Stephen King, she played for numerous master classes and recitals every year. Her performances and interviews were featured on The Front Row, hosted by KUHF Houston Public Radio, collaborating with flutists Leone Buyse, Jean Ferrandis, and Sergio Pallottelli. Throughout her career, Dr. Yoo collaborated with many distinguished artists and the list includes Ralph Kirshbaum, Steve Doane, Tim Eddy, Mark Kaplan, Barbara Butler, Jean Ferrandis, and Richie Hawley.
Her professional career started at Manhattan School of Music where she received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Collaborative Piano under the tutelage of Dr. Heasook Rhee and worked as a staff pianist and vocal coach. As a collaborative pianist, she frequently performed with new music ensemble the New York Composers Circle, the Joy in Singing Art Song Competition, New Triad for Collaborative Arts, and the Korea Music Foundation, presenting debut recitals and annual concerts at Carnegie and Merkin Halls.
After serving as a visiting Assistant Professor of Collaborative Piano at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University, Dr. Yoo continued her work as a collaborative pianist at Oberlin Conservatory. She also worked as faculty member of the Heifetz International Music Institute and joined Aspen Music Festival and School in 2014 as a collaborative pianist.
Composer
Christopher Theofanidis
Christopher Theofanidis (b. 12/18/67 in Dallas, Texas) has had performances by many leading orchestras from around the world, including the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Moscow Soloists, the National, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Detroit Symphonies, among many others. He has also served as Composer of the Year for the Pittsburgh Symphony during their 2006-7 season, for which he wrote a violin concerto for Sarah Chang.
Mr. Theofanidis holds degrees from Yale, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Houston, and has been the recipient of the International Masterprize, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship to France to study with Tristan Murail at IRCAM, a Tanglewood fellowship, and two fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2007 he was nominated for a Grammy award for best composition for his chorus and orchestra work, The Here and Now, based on the poetry of Rumi, and in 2017 for his bassoon concerto. In 2021, his viola concerto won a grammy for violist, Richard O’Neill. His orchestral work, Rainbow Body, has been one of the most performed new orchestral works of the new millennium, having been performed by over 150 orchestras internationally.
Mr. Theofanidis’ has written a ballet for the American Ballet Theatre, a work for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as part of their ‘New Brandenburg’ series, and two operas for the San Francisco and Houston Grand Opera companies. Thomas Hampson sang the lead role in the San Francisco opera. His work for Houston, The Refuge, features six sets of international non-Western musicians alongside the opera musicians. He has a long-standing relationship with the Atlanta Symphony and Maestro Robert Spano, and has just four recordings with them, including his concert length oratorio, Creation/Creator, which was featured at the SHIFT festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. this year with the ASO, chorus, and soloists. His work, Dreamtime Ancestors, for the orchestral consortium, New Music for America, has been played by over fifty orchestras over the past two seasons. He has served as a delegate to the US-Japan Foundation’s Leadership Program, and he is a former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University as well as the Juilliard School. Mr. Theofanidis is currently a professor at Yale University, and composer-in-residence of the composition program at the Aspen Music Festival.
Composer
Mark Wingate
Mark Wingate, is a composer of digital music, and has taught composition and been the director of the new center for electroacoustic music at Florida State University for many years. He came to FSU after having co-founded and directed the Electronic Arts Studio at Istanbul Technical University in Turkey. He earned his D.M.A. in composition from the University of Texas at Austin and worked as a Fulbright Scholar to Sweden in 1994. He received a Travel Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to Caracas, Venezuela, where he wrote theater music and was awarded an NEA Composer Fellowship in 1997.
In 1999, Wingate was a recipient of the Rome Prize in Music Composition from the American Academy in Rome. His electroacoustic works have received international acclaim at new music festivals such as ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music) World Music Days, Copenhagen and London, the "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music, and others.
Dr. Wingate's compositions have garnered prizes and honors from international juried competitions such as the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award, the "Prix de la Musique Electroacoustique Caractère," Bourges, France, and Prix Ars Electronica in Austria. His music has been recorded on Centaur Records, empreintes DIGITALES Records, and Mnémosyne Musique Média Records UNESCO/CIME.