Our Artists in the 2025-26 Concert Season

Tyler Michael James

Lauded as performing “like a gladiator” and with a “phenomenal color palette” (Radda), cellist Tyler Michael James stands out as an ebullient artist of his generation. He is a top prize winner at the Radda International String Competition and regularly performs as an international soloist and chamber musician. A champion of new music, Tyler just released the official recording of Jessie Montgomery’s “Loisaida, My Love” on the Monday Music Label. He is currently assistant Faculty of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Cello Workshop. For more details: https://www.tylermichaeljames.net/

Ralph Harris

(Photo to left: Peter Gannushkin

Multi-instrumentalist composer, conductor, producer and educator Ralph Farris is Director of Chamber Music and Viola Faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College. He is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of the genre-bending string quartet ETHEL (GRAMMY® Award with Kurt Elling; Resident Ensemble at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Balcony Bar; TED Presenter and EG Presenter; Ensemble-in-Residence at Denison University; 2018-19 Quartet-in-Residence at Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music; and 2019 Levi Family Distinguished Visiting Artist at The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University).

Ralph has spent the last three decades on contemporary music’s front lines, collaborating with a wide range of luminaries, from Ron Carter, Leonard Bernstein, Ensemble Modern, and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, to Raven Chacon, Gorillaz, Kaki King, Robert Mirabal, and Merce Cunningham. He has appeared as a concerto soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Orchestra, the Raleigh Civic Chamber Orchestra, Tasmanian Youth Orchestra, and Red (an orchestra). The onetime Music Director and Solo Fiddle of the Roger Daltrey Band, Ralph was an original Broadway company member of Disney’s The Lion King.

An award-winning graduate of The Juilliard School (BM/MM), award-winning, three-time Tanglewood Fellow, Hermitage Artist, and YoungArts Interdisciplinary Master Teacher and National Reviewer, Ralph holds an honorary degree from Denison University. He has given classes at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Kinhaven Music School, Next Festival of Emerging Artists, Nevada School of the Arts, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Interlochen Arts Academy, Eastman School of Music, and The Juilliard School.

Ralph has produced recordings for and with ETHEL; for artists such as A Moving Sound, Hevreh, and Stanley Grill; for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Balcony Bar from Home series; and for the Broadway and 9/11 communities. He provided string arrangements for the GRAMMY®-nominated Five For Fighting hit “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” and he worked as music supervisor / coordinator / conducting coach on Martin Scorsese’s The Key to Reserva.

Guest Curator of Randy Cohen’s Person Place Thing, Ralph has served as Host of Carnegie Hall Family Concerts, and in partnership with Rogers Art Loft (NV), as Curator & Host of Co-Lab: The Art of Collaboration. Ralph was lead coordinator of the volunteer corps of musicians at St. Paul’s Chapel and St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, supervising 500+ performances offered in support of the 9/11 Rescue and Recovery Effort.

Featured Composer of New England Conservatory Preparatory School’s Contemporary Music Festival (2018), Ralph has received commissions from Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Ringling Museum, dance evangelists Monkeyhouse, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Las Vegas darlings Jarrett & Raja, the Jerome Foundation, and the NEA. His scoring credits include Jehane Noujaim’s Pangea Day industrial, Tracy MacDonald and Matt Zodrow’s RIGGED, the Aquila Theatre’s productions of A Female Philoctetes and The Tempest, and ETHEL’s Documerica, The River, and Circus: Wandering City. Ralph endorses the AVID family of software solutions and he plays instruments by Douglas Cox.

Christopher Nelson

Christopher Nelson is a violinist that has interpreted the masters from Monteverdi to Kurtág. Based in Boston, Christopher can be found playing with local orchestras including the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Festival Orchestra, Du Bois Orchestra, and Cape Ann Symphony. He has performed at several prominent music festivals including the Aspen Music Festival, National Repertory Orchestra, Round Top Festival Institute, Taconic Chamber Intensive, and the Fellowship String Quartet Program at Madeline Island Chamber Music. Christopher has had the privilege to study with acclaimed violin pedagogues such as William Fitzpatrick, Dr. Moni Simeonov, Daniel Phillips, Carmit Zori, Paul Kantor, and Gail Mellert. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance from Chapman University’s Hall-Musco Conservatory and a Master’s from Bard College’s Bitó Conservatory of Music.

Sachin Shukla

Sachin Shukla is a violist and teacher based in Boston. Performances have brought him across the US and Italy, and to the stages of Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, and NEC’s Jordan Hall. He is a member of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, and has performed with A Far Cry, the Albany Symphony, Cape Symphony, Portland Symphony, and as guest principal with the Plymouth Philharmonic, among others.

Sachin is on the violin and viola faculty of the Powers Music School in Belmont, MA, where he is also Director of Chamber Music. He has also taught with the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, the Boston Music Project, and the Community Music Center of Boston. Sachin is proud to have sent his students to success in auditions for BYSO, NEC Prep’s orchestras, and MMEA District and All State festivals.

Of the eclectic array of performance projects Sachin has had the privilege to participate in, some of his favorites include the Arpeggione Ensemble’s debut studio recording, Songs of a Seafarer, a private string quartet performance on the 50th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s death, and a film-in-concert performance on the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws, as well as several world premieres with the Albany Symphony. Sachin is also active in the world of historically-informed performance, having performed in ensembles led by Ingrid Matthews, Phoebe Carrai, and Aislinn Nosky. His festival appearances include Taconic Music, Heifetz, and Bowdoin.

Sachin is a graduate of Northwestern University and the New England Conservatory, where his principal teachers were Helen Callus and Mai Motobuchi. While at Northwestern, Sachin served as research assistant to noted labor economist Diane Schanzenbach and tax law scholar Ajay K. Mehrotra, and was a member of the executive board of Northwestern University’s Political Union for three years, culminating in a term as co-president. He has been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Viola Society and has presented at the AVS and the Galant Schemata conferences.

If not playing a concert, driving to a concert, or teaching, Sachin is probably enjoying a Taiwanese oolong and listening to music with his cats, Onyx and Obsidian.

Thomas Lee Cooper

“… Thomas Lee Cooper took up the tune and suspended time with his absolute conviction and glimmering silver thread of tone.” - Lee Eiseman, The Boston Musical Intelligencer

American violinist Thomas Lee Cooper’s passion for music and the violin began at an early age, studying piano with his mother alongside his sister, before subsequently taking up the violin. Since then, Cooper has performed in several countries across continents, including Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. He is an active soloist and chamber musician, performing with the Colorado College Festival Orchestra, the Coeur D’Alene Symphony Orchestra, the Credo Baroque Orchestra, the Bar Harbor Music Festival Orchestra, and the Middlesex Chamber Orchestra among others. Cooper is concertmaster of the Du Bois Orchestra, and has appeared as concertmaster with the Boston Chamber Symphony and the Apollo Ensemble of Boston.

Cooper is a laureate of several prizes and competitions, such as the Naftzger, Washington, and Coeur D’Alene Competitions and most recently the Cremona International String Competition in July 2019, at which he received the First Prize.

As a chamber musician, Cooper has had the fortune of sharing the stage with such groups and individuals as the Oberlin Trio, the Jupiter String Quartet, David Bowlin, Amir Eldan, and Evgeny Sinaiski. He is a founding member of the Tristan Trio, alongside pianist Aljoša Jurinić, and cellist Tyler James.

With a love of conductor-less ensemble playing, Cooper has appeared as a guest musician with many of the finest chamber orchestras in the country, including the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and A Far Cry. He has spent his summers performing at Keshet Eilon in Israel, the Mozarteum Summer Academy in Salzburg, Nagold Sommermusik in Bavaria and Festival Orford Musique in Quebec. In the 2024 - 2025 season, Cooper appears regularly in concert as a soloist and chamber musician, with engagements to include appearances at the Bar Harbor Music Festival, Red Door Chamber Music, Museo Stradivari in Cremona, and Scena Amadeo in Zagreb.

A native of the Boston area, Cooper received his early training from the late Hungarian violinist and musicologist, Stephen Erdely. He received his formal training through scholarships at the New England Conservatory and Oberlin Conservatory. Cooper performs on a 1751 Gennaro Gagliano violin on generous loan from a private collection.