Icelandic violinist Sibbi Bernhardsson joined the Oberlin Conservatory faculty in 2017 after performing for the previous 17 years with the Pacifica Quartet, with which he won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance, Musical America Ensemble of the Year honors, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant. As a member of the Pacifica Quartet, Bernhardsson appeared in more than 90 concerts worldwide each year, including engagements in Wigmore Hall (London), the Vienna Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall (New York), and other major venues. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, and the Reykjavík Arts Festival, and has collaborated with Menahem Pressler, Yo-Yo Ma, Jörg Widmann, Lynn Harrell, Leon Fleisher, the Emerson String Quartet, Johannes Moser, and members of the Guarneri and Cleveland quartets. His television appearances include The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the MTV Europe Music Awards with Icelandic artist Björk. He appears on 16 recordings with the Pacifica Quartet and has recorded the violin music of Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson and the sonatas for violin and piano by Franz Schubert. Bernhardsson serves as director of the Cooper International Violin Competition at Oberlin and as artistic director of Iceland’s Harpa International Music Academy. He gives regular concerts and master classes in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has appeared as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, CityMusic Cleveland, and other ensembles. Bernhardsson is a 1995 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory. His teachers include Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, Almita and Roland Vamos, Mathias Tacke, and Shmuel Ashkenasi. He previously served on the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Acclaimed by The Strad for his "eloquent” and "vibrant" playing, violist Paul Laraia is an active soloist, chamber musician, and new music proponent. In competition, he was awarded First Prize in the 13th Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, First Prize in the 14th National Sphinx Competition, and Gold Medal with High Distinction at the fifth Manhattan International Music Competition. As an internationally acclaimed soloist, Laraia has performed concerti with major orchestras from Pittsburgh to Bogota and solo performances at Wigmore Hall, the Shalin Liu Performance Center, the 40th International Viola Congress, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Since 2013, Laraia has been a member of the Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet, which has held residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, and SF Performances in San Francisco. Laraia has worked directly with many of the leading voices in composition such as Jessie Montgomery, David Ludwig Serkin, Gabriella Lena Frank, Richard Danielpour, Jimmy Lopez, and Todd Machover. He also maintains a close artistic partnership with Taiwanese composer Shiuan Chang, with whom he is crafting new work calling for peace in our troubled times. Laraia studied under Kim Kashkashian and Steven Dann, and has been Associate Professor of Viola at the Boston Conservatory of Music since 2023.

Cellist Astrid Schween has gained a rich following and enjoys a multifaceted career as a soloist, chamber artist and teacher. Since joining the Juilliard String Quartet and Juilliard Cello Faculty in 2016, she has appeared at many of the world’s great concert halls, recorded for SONY Records, and collaborated with performers Itzhak Perlman, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Emmanuel Ax, and composers Mario Davidovsky and Jörg Widmann, among others. She has been featured on National Public Radio, in The Strad Magazine, and Strings Magazines, and was a special guest speaker on the topic of Women in Music at the Library of Congress. In 2024, Astrid Schween contributed a series of instructional videos for the popular platform ToneBase. As a member of the Lark Quartet, Astrid Schween received the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and Gold Medal at the Shostakovich International Competition. She and her colleagues were mentored by the Juilliard, Guarneri, Budapest, Amadeus, Borodin, Paganini, Galimir and La Salle quartets, recorded more than a dozen CDs and commissioned numerous composers including Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis and Peter Schickele. Astrid Schween made her concerto debut with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic at age 16. She received her degrees from the Juilliard School and was a pupil of Leonard Rose, Harvey Shapiro, Channing Robbins and Ardyth Alton. Additionally, she enjoyed a rich 7-year mentorship with the great cellist Jacqueline DuPré in London. She was fortunate to have begun her studies with Dr. H.T. Ma and benefited from additional instruction by Bernard Greenhouse, Philippe Muller, Eugene Moye and Scott Ballantyne. During her summers at the Marlboro Festival, she was selected for a performance with Rudolf Serkin and Joshua Bell. Astrid Schween’s recent cello recitals and master classes have taken her to Houston, Denver, Cleveland, Memphis, Cincinnati and San Francisco. Her recent festival appearances have included Tanglewood, where she performed in recital with Shai Wosner, and the Seattle Chamber Music Festival, where she collaborated with James Ehnes and Orion Weiss. A dedicated and passionate teacher/ mentor, Astrid Schween was for many years on faculty at the Perlman Music Program and Interlochen Center for the Arts. She is an advocate for children’s education in the arts and avid supporter of The Sphinx Organization, Project Step, Project Music Heals Us, CelloBello, The Musical Mentors Collaborative and Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program. Her numerous recordings appear on the Sony, Arabesque, Decca/Argo, CRI, New World, JRI, Centaur, NAR, and Point labels.