Music for Peace Ensemble
Join us for a lovely string concert, featuring the harmonies of the Mendelssohn and Enescu Octets, written by teenage composers, and the sonorities of their 8 talented musicians.
Sam Ou‘s finesse on the cello has garnered praise from many listeners, as well as the Boston Globe, for his “empassioned performance.” Born in Taiwan and raised in the United States, he studied with distinguished teachers including Gretchen Geber, Eleonore Schoenfeld, and Aldo Parisot. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees through Columbia University and Juilliard’s double degree program, then completed a Doctor of Musical Arts at New England Conservatory (NEC) under Laurence Lesser. His accolades include the Rosemary Scales Prize, the Rome Festival Concerto Soloist Award, the Chi-Mei Music Scholarship, the ARTS Level II Award, and the Joseph Schuster Memorial Cello Scholarship. As a soloist, he gave the 2012 world premiere of Larry Bell’s Cello Concerto, The Triumph of Lightness, with the Boston Civic Symphony, and in March 2025 performed Yehudi Wyner’s Cello Concerto with the New England Philharmonic to mark the composer’s 95th birthday. He also founded the award-winning NEC String Trio. A dedicated teacher, Ou has given masterclasses and recitals internationally, served as assistant professor of cello and music theory at Kutztown University, and for two decades has been on the faculty of NEC’s Preparatory School and School of Adult Education, where he is also assistant chair of the string and chamber music departments. An avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with the Borromeo String Quartet, James Buswell, Marcus Thompson, and many other notable artists, and performs regularly with pianist Chi-Chen Wu as the Formosa Duo and with his sister Carol Ou as the Ou Cello Duo.
Carol Ou, the other half of this accomplished duo, is a fiery, marvelous cellist with accolades from the Boston Globe and The Strad. An accomplished soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and educator, Carol was also a member of the Carpe Diem String Quartet, which has performed around the world, including Carnegie Weill Hall, Jordan Hall, the National Gallery of Art, the Gardner Museum, and the national concert halls of Kiev and Taipei, pairing European masterworks with contemporary and eclectic repertoire. She has recorded the Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and Elgar cello concertos and premiered Taiwanese composer Hsiao Tyzen’s Cello Concerto in Taipei. Her decade-long collaboration with Iranian composer Reza Vali produced performances, premieres, and recordings of a dozen of his works, including his Cello Concerto The Dervish and The Magus. Hsiao, Richard Toensing, and Daniel Pinkham have also dedicated works to her, and she has recently worked with crossover artists on mandolin, accordion, pipa, and Persian santoor. Her prize-winning discography spans labels including Chi-Mei, Naxos, CRI, MSR, and Albany. Her Naxos recording of Walter Piston’s chamber music won the 2001 Chamber Music America award for Best Chamber Music CD, and her recording of Jeff Midkiff’s Music for Mandolin & String Quartet earned the 2018 Global Music Awards Gold Medal. A Yale graduate and passionate teacher, she won the 2025 Jean Stackhouse Award for Excellence in Teaching at New England Conservatory (NEC), where she has mentored cello students of all ages. She has also taught at MIT and NYU, previously served as Chair of Strings for NEC’s Adult Education program, and now serves as Chamber Music Chair at NEC’s Preparatory School.
Daniel Urbanowicz holds a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music and a bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. Urbanowicz is currently a violist in the Sarasota Orchestra, a position which he won in 2019. Additionally, Urbanowicz is a former tenured member of the Florida Orchestra. In the summers, Dan is on faculty at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, where he teaches viola. He is also the artistic director and founder of an historical performance series in its 6th season called St Pete Baroque. St Pete Baroque is dedicated to giving new life to old masterpieces and giving a voice to newly discovered works. Urbanowicz has appeared with the Colorado Music Festival, Jacksonville Symphony, and Southwest Florida Symphony. Urbanowicz has played with the New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall, the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, the Canton Symphony Orchestra, the Firelands Orchestra, and the Plymouth Philharmonic. Urbanowicz has served as principal violist of the Augusta Symphony, Charlottesville Opera, Gulfshore Opera, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany, the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, and the Chautauqua Music School Festival Orchestra. As a historical performance musician has been a featured guest artist with the Colorado Chamber Players, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, College of Charleston’s Second Monday Series, and Augusta University as a guest lecturer and recitalist. His principal teachers include Martha Katz and Jeffrey Irvine. Mr. Urbanowicz plays on a 2017 Robert Clemens Viola. Urbanowicz’s viola d’amore is from the 19th century and is of unknown origin.
Paola Caballero is an internationally acclaimed violinist, recording artist, educator, and artistic leader whose distinguished career spans major orchestras, opera companies, festivals, and concert stages internationally. After more than a decade based in Barcelona, Ms. Caballero has returned to Boston, where she continues to perform, record, teach, and shape the next generation of musicians through her leadership of chamber music programs. She was a member of the Orquestra de Cadaqués and the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC), performing extensively throughout Europe and in many of its most prestigious concert halls. A Grammy Award–winning artist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP/Sound), Ms. Caballero’s recordings appear on the Naxos, Trito, and BMOP/Sound labels. She performs regularly with Odyssey Opera, the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Back Bay Chorale, and the Bach, Beethoven & Brahms Society. Her artistry has been presented by the Celebrity Series of Boston, Medici.tv, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she has appeared as a featured artist in its Balcony Recital Series. Her artistic reach extends across classical, opera, contemporary, jazz, and popular music. She has collaborated with such internationally celebrated artists as Michael Bublé, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Janine Jansen, Isabelle Faust, Ray Chen, Augustin Hadelich, Lang Lang, Plácido Domingo, Jonas Kaufmann, Audra McDonald, Björk, Andrea Bocelli, and Joni Mitchell. Her festival appearances include Sónar, Primavera Sound, and the Jazz Festival at the Palau de la Música Catalana. Ms. Caballero is Executive Director of the Lexington Chamber Music Center and Artistic Director of the Point CounterPoint Chamber Music Festival. She serves on the faculty of New England Conservatory Expanded Education and Project STEP and maintains a private studio. She holds degrees from New England Conservatory and a Postgraduate Diploma from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
Zenas Hsu is a member of Grammy-nominated ensemble A Far Cry, and second violin principal at the Boston Ballet. With a sound palette ranging from a ‘commanding tone’ to ‘delicate sentiment’ (Calgary Herald), he enjoys a vibrant career filled with chamber music, orchestral leadership, and education. He has served as guest concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Brockton Symphony, Chorus pro Musica, and Monadnock Music Symphony Orchestra. Zenas also performs regularly with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops and Esplanade, and Boston Lyric Opera. His duo, the Hsu-Cho Duo, successfully Kickstarted and released their debut album, “Rediscovering Three American Composers,” in 2025; it is also available on Spotify. Zenas is a founding member of Chamber Music by the Bay, a California-based interactive music series designed for schools, libraries, and public spaces. He coaches sectionals at the New England Conservatory of Music and has served as a guest coach at Portland Summer Ensembles, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and Rivers Conservatory. 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.
Come support MAPA through your love for music! Thank you for joining us, and may we continue to make this world a better place, one note at a time.