I Sciolisti
About Us
Charles Letourneau
Originally from Ottawa, Canada, Charles is a violinist and performing arts executive. He started his violin studies in Ottawa with Dr. Joseph Berljawsky and went on to study with Vladimir Landsman at the Université de Montréal where he received a Bachelor of Music degree. After a year as an exchange student at the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with Evgenia Chugaeva, he went on to obtain a Master’s Degree at Yale under the tutelage of Sidney Harth and Erick Friedman.
While working in New York at Young Concert Artists, Columbia Artists and IMG Artists, Charles continued to play with ensembles including the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra and the Dalton String Quartet. He performed the New York premiere of Mark O’Connor’s String Quartet No. 1 and Caprice No. 5.
Since 2015, he has had his own company producing performing arts events, and loves staying intensively involved with playing great music while bringing it to as many people as possible.
Emily Siegel
Emily is a cellist and architectural designer. Born on Long Island, New York, she began playing cello at the age of five. As a young student, she completed her training in the New School’s Mannes Preparatory Division, where she studied under Dorothy Lawson. During that time, she was a member of the New York Youth Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Music Program, and was named a 2010 Tilles Scholar and placed first in the Long Island Choral Society Young Artist Competition. She pursued a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied solo cello and chamber music under Michal Schmidt, David Yang, Amy Yang, and Guillaume Combet. She then received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University, where she was a member of the Columbia University Orchestra. Throughout her career, she has performed on the distinguished stages of Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Symphony Space, The Tilles Center and Steinway Hall.
Through these experiences, Emily has discovered a love for chamber music as a collaborative form of music-making. She has nurtured this passion by participating in programs such as the CW Post Chamber Music Festival and Snow Pond Music Festival. Currently, she is working as an architectural designer in Brooklyn, where she often applies the discipline, creativity, and dynamism of chamber music to her designs.
Kevin Zhang
Kevin is a pianist and dentist. Hailing from Greater Philadelphia, he has studied piano with Ching-Yun Hu, Christine Delbeau, and Benjamin Whitten.
While studying Biology and French at the University of Delaware, he found time to win the first prizes of the University of Delaware Concerto Competition, Newark Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, and Delaware MTNA/Steinway Competition. Meanwhile, he studied collaborative piano with Julie Nishimura and used those skills to make a modest living as a freelance chamber musician.
Following his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, Kevin moved to New York City and is currently completing a residency in Pediatric Dentistry at Jacobi Medical Center, while spending much of his spare time paddling outrigger canoes on the Hudson.
A polyglot and traveler, he lives life in English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Arabic.