CMB is thrilled to welcome new artist Hannah Tarley and returning artists Zenas Hsu, Jessica Chang, and Laura Gaynon for its thirteenth season in 2026! CMB also welcomes returning artists Katie Youn and Rebecca Jackson-Picht for its Pop-Up Concerts throughout 2026.
Hannah Tarley, violin
American violinist Hannah Tarley began playing the violin at age two. Winner of Astral’s 2018 National Auditions, Hannah has soloed with orchestras including the Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, and Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra.
Hannah has worked with numerous conductors including Michael Tilson Thomas and Edwin Outwater, and has participated in various festivals, including the Heifetz International Music Institute, Perlman Music Program, Kronberg Academy Masterclasses, and Aspen Music Festival and School.
Hannah founded Notes By The Bay Music Festival and School, a year-round music school and summer festival for children and adults in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through music lessons and theatrical performances, NBTB presents a unique platform for solo and ensemble playing, as well as exploring different forms of the arts. Hannah also performs with Violins of Hope, an organization that brings to life the history of the Holocaust and the stories of its victims and their violins.
A former student of Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School, Hannah received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Royal College of Music in London. She received her Master’s Degree from the Juilliard School, under the guidance of Itzhak Perlman, Donald Weilerstein and Catherine Cho, and was awarded the Irene Land Scholarship and the Norman Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant. Hannah recently graduated with a Master of Musical Arts degree from Yale University, studying with Ani Kavafian, and was awarded the Horatio Parker Memorial Prize and the Philip F. Nelson Prize.
Zenas Hsu, violin
With a sound palette ranging from a ‘commanding tone’ to ‘delicate sentiment’ (Calgary Herald), Taiwanese-American violinist Zenas Hsu leads a vibrant career filled with chamber music, orchestral leadership, and education. He is a founding member of Chamber Music by the Bay, a California-based interactive music series that reaches over 2,000 people annually. He is also a founding member and concertmaster of Phoenix, an orchestra based in Boston focused on providing social and accessible concert experiences in creative venues. Zenas is a member of A Far Cry, a frequent guest artist of the Wellesley Chamber Players, and has performed as a featured musician at Bard Music West, Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival, Hayden Chamber Music Series, Halcyon Music Festival, and Monadnock Music Festival.
A native of California, Zenas received his early training in the preparatory division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He was accepted at age sixteen to the Curtis Institute of Music for his Bachelor of Music degree, and received his Master of Music and Graduate Diploma degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music. His teachers include Wei He, Ida Kavafian, Nicholas Kitchen, and Donald Weilerstein.
Jessica Chang, viola
Violist Jessica Chang leads a versatile career as a chamber musician and educator. As the Founder and Executive Director of Chamber Music by the Bay, Jessica directs and performs interactive concerts for diverse communities of young audiences throughout the San Francisco Bay Area annually. Her work as a teaching artist has led to concert residencies with Project 440, the Savannah Music Festival, Music from Angel Fire, and Music Beyond the Chamber. She has also served as violist of the Afiara Quartet, with whom she toured North America, including a visiting faculty residency at The Banff Centre in Alberta and residency as the Glenn Gould School Fellowship Quartet-in-Residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada.
Jessica has performed as a chamber musician in concert tours throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Her performances have been broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today, WYNC, WHYY, and WQXR Public Radio. Highlights include collaborations with Roberto Díaz, Pamela Frank, Scott Yoo, Christoph Richter, William Bennett, Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Silverstein, Toby Appel, James Campbell, members of the Orion and Guarneri Quartets, and members of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Berlin Philharmonic. Her festival appearances include Festival Mozaic, Juneau Jazz and Classics, Bard Music West, Music from Angel Fire, International Musicians Seminar Prussia Cove, Open Chamber Music Prussia Cove, Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, Tanglewood Music Center, Taos School of Music, Verbier Festival, the National Arts Centre of Canada, and Aspen Music Festival.
Jessica is a graduate of Yale University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree with honors and distinction. She also holds an Artist Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music as the recipient of the William A. Loeb Fellowship, and a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School. Her primary teachers include Heidi Castleman, Steven Tenenbom, Roberto Díaz, Michael Tree, Misha Amory, Daniel Panner, Jodi Levitz, Jesse Levine, and Jenny Rudin.
A sought-after chamber musician and teacher, Jessica maintains a private studio in the San Francisco Bay Area. She performs frequently with ensembles including Ensemble Illume, Ensemble San Francisco, the Ives Collective, and Chamber Music Silicon Valley, and has also performed as principal viola with the Santa Cruz Symphony and San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. She has also served as appointed committee and board member roles with the American Viola Society and the Curtis Institute of Music, and leads a dual career as a technologist in information security and trust & safety.
Laura Gaynon, cello
In demand as a performer, educator, and presenter of cello and chamber music, Laura Gaynon performs both modern and baroque cello in concert halls across the United States, Europe, Canada, and China. Based in San Francisco, Laura has performed with the American Bach Soloists, the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Opera Parallele, Magik*Magik Orchestra, One Found Sound, and as a founding member of the baroque chamber ensemble MUSA.
A passionate chamber musician, she is cellist of the Pacific Crest String Quartet, which forms the faculty of the Pacific Crest Music Festival, as well as of the viola-cello-piano trio Ensemble Illume with violist Jessica Chang and pianist Allegra Chapman. She has collaborated with Kim Kashkashian, Tanya Gabrielian, Krista Bennion-Feeney, Geoff Nuttall, Bonnie Hampton, Tanya Tomkins, Paul Hersh, and Ian Swensen. Recent festival appearances include the American Bach Soloists Academy, Valley of the Moon Music Festival, Berwick Academy, Toronto Summer Music Festival, Taos School of Music, the St. Lawrence String Quartet Seminar, and the International Piatigorsky Cello Masterclasses at USC.
Laura was co-founder and Co-artistic Director of Bard Music West, a San Francisco music festival that explored the life and works of one composer from the last 100 years each season through music, dance, theater, film, and lectures. The festival has been described as “brilliant” and picked as one of the best classical performances in San Francisco by the San Francisco Chronicle, and received widespread critical acclaim.
In addition to performing and programming, Laura is passionate about music education. Laura runs an active private cello studio in San Francisco and teaches cello at San Francisco State University. She is the Artistic Director of Pacific Crest Music Festival and a core teaching artist of Chamber Music by the Bay. Previously, Laura taught cello and chamber music at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, directed the String Quartet Program at Thomas Hart Middle School in Pleasanton, CA and taught at California Music Preparatory Academy in Saratoga, CA as a chamber music coach.
Laura earned degrees from Yale University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she graduated with a M.M. in cello performance, an Artist Certificate in chamber music, and an emphasis in Historical Performance Practice as a student of Jennifer Culp and Elisabeth Reed. She is currently finishing (all-but-dissertation) her Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Illinois, where she studied with Daniel McDonough and Denise Djokic. Her dissertation research is on the topic of self-concept clarity development and vulnerability in adolescent music education.
Outside of music, Laura’s most prized accomplishment is completing a cross-continent bicycle trip, from New Haven, CT to Portland, OR, because, in her words, “I don’t know how I’m still alive.” She would love to bike the perpendicular path from Canada to Mexico if someone would be willing to carry her luggage.
Rebecca jackson-Picht, violin
Violinist Rebecca Jackson-Picht’s performances have been described as “riveting” and characterized by a “fierce spirit.” Rebecca has been a part of commissioning and premiering 12 chamber works. In 2019, she performed the San Jose and San Francisco premieres of Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s, Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope [made possible by Music at Kohl Mansion and Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions]. During her five seasons as acting member of Santa Fe Opera Orchestra the company won 2019 Grammy for Best Opera Recording for (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.
Her foundational belief is that music possesses power to heal and unite. This has propelled her career and professional outreach around the globe, having performed in marginalized communities across the U.S., Ukraine, Romania, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nepal, Costa Rica and Lebanon. While maintaining a regular performance schedule with groups like the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, she contemporaneously produces projects that build community through music outside the concert hall.
Her largest project to date, she serves as Artistic Director of Music in May, a chamber music festival with one division dedicated to engaging incarcerated youth. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that this outreach “revives the evocative and visceral power of music that can be too often deadened in more formal concert environments.” In 2013, she co-founded Sound Impact and Ensemble San Francisco, organizations with missions tied to many of her personal core values. In 2018, Rebecca received a KSBW Jefferson Award in recognition of her volunteerism and public service. The following year, she and her father coauthored the biography of her mentor David Arben, Holocaust survivor and former associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The book, ARBEN: David Arben’s Life of Miracles & Successes, by Dr. John Jackson and Rebecca Jackson is available on Amazon and at www.davidarben.com and their story featured on NBC News.
Jackson-Picht received her Bachelor of Music from The Juilliard School and a Master of Music from University of California, Santa Cruz.
katie youn, cello
Cellist Katie Youn has been praised for her passionate, imaginative, and colorful sense of artistry. Katie has appeared in concerts throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, in venues such as Boston’s Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, Japan’s Suntory and Minatomirai Hall, Vancouver’s Orpheum Hall, and Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Basilica. She has performed in festivals including Aspen, Banff, Beethoven Institute, Bowdoin, Orford and the Kronberg Academy’s Cello Festival. Katie has collaborated with members of the Cleveland, Borromeo, Muir, Arneis Quartets and Daniel Phillips, Barry Shiffman, Todd Palmer, Steve Drury and Bayla Keyes in concert. She had the opportunity to study with distinguished musicians such as Aldo Parisot, Anner Bylsma, Bernard Greenhouse, Natalia Gutman and Franz Helmerson.
She is the founding member of San Francisco-based Shoreline Piano Trio. Formed in 2019, Shoreline Piano Trio has performed throughout the Bay Area and performs in concert series, including Stanford Hospital Concert Series and Fortnightly Music Club. Katie also regularly appears with the Chamber Music Silicon Valley, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and Sonnet Ensemble.
Her commitment to outreach programs has lead to being a founding faculty at Boston String Project, an educational string program for inner city students at the Salvation Army Kroc Center. In 2015, Katie created the Boston String Project Chamber Concerts, which gave the opportunity for Boston String Project students to share the stage with Boston University faculty and graduate students. Currently, she is a member of Sound Impact, an organization that brings music outside the concert halls and into schools, juvenile detention centers and to local communities. Passionate about teaching, Katie is on cello faculty at Santa Clara University and has an active private cello studio in the Bay Area. Her students have been principal cellists and soloists in youth orchestras and have been prizewinners in competitions, including US Open Music Competition and Junior Bach Festival. She has held teaching positions at Boston University teaching non-major students, Belvoir Terrace, Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) String Quartet Seminar, and Jou Music Institute.
Born in Korea and raised in Canada, Katie began cello lessons at the Vancouver Academy of Music at the age of 7 with Judith Fraiser. She moved to Boston to earn her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the New England Conservatory under the guidance of Yeesun Kim. In 2013, Katie graduated Boston University with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree under the guidance of Michael Reynolds. Her doctoral thesis was on “Exploring the Balinese Influence in Benjamin Britten’s Suite for Cello, Op. 72.”
Katie plays Oreste Martini’s cello made in 1935 and a custom-made bow by Benoit Rolland in 2019.
Chamber Music by the Bay 