THE TEAM
executive & artistic director
RAJA RAHMAN
Pianist Raja Rahman has enjoyed an international career as a concert pianist, teacher, and arts leader. His passion for education and classical music feeds his drive to lead ChamberFest VEGAS with world-class programming. Mr. Rahman has studied with Seymour Lipkin, Jerome Lowenthal, Lev Vlassenko, and Byron Janis. Notable performances venues have been Weill Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Moscow Conservatory, Edinburgh Festival, among others. Raja spent summers at Kneisel Hall studying chamber music with Artur Bolsam, Ronald Copes, Jerry Grossman, and Seymour Lipkin. A graduate of The Juilliard School, Raja was coached in chamber music with Joel Smirnoff, Felix Galimir, Dorothy Delay, and Joel Sachs.
CO-artistic director
RALPH FARRIS
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, producer and conductor, Ralph Farris has spent the last three decades on modern music’s front lines, collaborating with a wide range of luminaries, from Leonard Bernstein, Ensemble Modern and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, to Gorillaz, Kaki King, Robert Mirabal and Merce Cunningham. 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. Ralph is a founding member and Artistic Director of the genre-bending string quartet ETHEL (Resident Ensemble at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Petrie Court Café; Ensemble-in-Residence at Denison University; 2019 Levi Family Distinguished Visiting Artist at The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University; 2018/’19 Quartet-in-Residence at Kaufman Music Center’s Face the Music; 2018 EG Presenter; Multi-year TED Presenter; 2009 GRAMMY® Award with Kurt Elling).
ADVISORY BOARD
ROHAN DE SILVA
Pianist Rohan De Silva was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Cho-Liang Lin, Joshua Bell, Anne Akiko Meyers, Kurt Nikkanen, Gil Shaham, Kyoko Takazawa, Vadim Repin, and Midori. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, the 92nd St. Y, Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Philadelphia Academy of Music, Ambassador Theater, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, London’s Wigmore Hall, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, and Milan’s La Scala. He has also appeared at the festivals of Aspen, Interlochen, Manchester, Ravinia, Schleswig-Holstein, Pacific, and Wellington.
Among De Silva’s awards are the best accompanist special prize at the ninth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He performed at the White House in 2007 for President George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth, and in 2012 with Perlman for President Barak Obama and Shimon Peres. He has also appeared on television on The Tonight Show with Midori; and on radio stations WQXR, WNYC, and WNCN, as well as the Berlin Radio, Japan’s NHK, and CNN’s Showbiz Today, Millenium Grammy’s 2000. De Silva has recorded on the DGG, CBS/Sony Classical, Collins Classics, and BMG labels.
De Silva holds BM and MM degrees from Juilliard where he studied piano with Martin Canin and chamber music with Felix Galimir. He earned an associate degree from the Royal Academy of London in 1992 and was the recipient of the first President’s Fund scholarship from his home country to study at Juilliard. He also studied piano with Hamish Milne while attending the Royal Academy of Music from 1975 to 81. De Silva has been on the faculty at Juilliard since 1991.