Violin 2025: Jury
Sibbi Bernhardsson, Cooper Competition director and jury chair
Catherine Cho, Violin and Chamber Music Faculty, The Julliard School
Francesca dePasquale, Oberlin Conservatory Assistant Professor of Violin
Peter Herresthal, Professor at the Oslo Academy, visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music, London and NYU Steinhardt School, New York
Xie Nan, Professor of violin and Chairman of the violin department at the Central Conservatory of Music
William van der Sloot, Oberlin Conservatory Professor of Violin
Jury Biographies
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.
Catherine Cho draws upon her experiences as a soloist, chamber musician, pedagogue, and artistic director to support and mentor artists in their quests to engage and enrich their high values as creative thinkers and communicators. She is devoted to fostering the next generation of performers, teachers, and leaders through the development of artistic excellence, curiosity, and clarity of vision through a holistic view of the artist.
She has appeared as a soloist with the Detroit, National, Edmonton, Montreal, National Arts Center, Barcelona, Haifa, New Zealand, Buenos Aires, KBS, Seoul, and Daejon orchestras, and has appeared in recitals and chamber music performances at the Kennedy Center, Ravinia, 92nd St. Y, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Casals Hall, among others. She has appeared in 12 national tours with Musicians From Marlboro and participated in the festivals of Aspen, Chamber Music Northwest, Santa Fe, Four Seasons, Bridgehampton, and Vivace. She was a member of the Johannes String Quartet and La Fenice and was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant as well as top prizes in the Montreal (1987), Queen Elisabeth (1989), and Joachim (1991) Competitions.
Her work as a teacher in the Juilliard Chamber Music Community Engagement Seminar highlights her passion for community connection through art and communication. She is a Music For Food artist, the artistic director of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, a member of the Perlman Music Program faculty (since 2007), and .the artistic advisor for the Starling-Delay Symposium at Juilliard.
Cho received her BM and MM degrees at Juilliard, where she studied with Dorothy Delay, Hyo Kang, and Felix Galimir. Her mentors include Ruggiero Ricci, Franco Gulli, and Michael Avsharian, Jr.
Described by critics as “scintillating” and celebrated for her “rich, expressive playing” (Musical America), violinist Francesca dePasquale was the first-prize winner of the 2010 Irving M. Klein International String Competition and recipient of the prestigious 2014-16 career grant from the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Earning her the 2015 Classical Recording Foundation Young Artist Award, her self-titled debut album and accompanying recital tour was praised for its “sincerity, intensity” and “individual voice” (Philadelphia Inquirer) and “immaculate and discreet phrasing” (The Strad). DePasquale has been featured by Strings Magazine and on SiriusXM, WNYC, WQXR, WRTI (Philadelphia), and WFMT (Chicago) radio.
An active chamber musician, dePasquale is the violinist of the Aletheia Piano Trio alongside pianist Fei-Fei and cellist Juliette Herlin. She is a member of the artist roster for Manhattan Chamber Players and Noree Chamber soloists, and performs with Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Marinus Ensemble, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. DePasquale has collaborated with a long list of standout musicians including Adrian Brendel, Paul Coletti, Kim Kashkashian, Itzhak Perlman, and Donald Weilerstein, and she has appeared as soloist with the Gustav Mahler Orchestra, the Bach Festival of Philadelphia, Colburn Orchestra, Galesburg Symphony, Peninsula Symphony, and Santa Cruz Symphony, among others.
Before arriving at Oberlin in fall 2020, dePasquale taught for four years at Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is a member of the violin and chamber music faculty for the Juilliard School Pre-College Program and the violin faculty at the Heifetz International Music Institute. She served as the Starling Fellow teaching assistant to Itzhak Perlman from 2013-16 and teaching assistant to Catherine Cho from 2013-18 at the Juilliard School. She was a visiting faculty member at Oberlin in fall 2018.
DePasquale’s teachers have included Itzhak Perlman, Catherine Cho, and Robert Lipsett. Previous teachers include Hirono Oka and William dePasquale, with additional mentorship from Norman Carol and Arnold Steinhardt.
Grammy nominated violinist Peter Herresthal has appeared with orchestras and ensembles world wide from Melbourne Symphony with Thomas Adès conducting at the Melbourne festival, Vienna Radio Symphony in Konzerthaus Wien, BBC Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, London Sinfonietta to the major Scandinavian orchestras including Oslo and Stockholm Philharmonic.
He has recorded 22 violinconcertos for BIS and Simax earning 10 nominations and five Norwegian «Spellemannspris». His Nørgård recording was nominated for a Gramophone Award and was Editors Choice in The Strad and International Record Review.
The last three seasons Peter has been touring Europe and US with Kaija Saariahos aria “Vers toi es si loin” written for him and 30 performances of her violin concerto “Graal Theatre” most recently recording the work for BIS with the Oslo Philharmonic and a TV production for BBC.
The Saariaho recording was nominated for a Grammy Award and in 2023 Herresthals recording of Missy Mazzolis violin concerto was nominated for two Grammys.
Peter Herresthal is a Professor at the Oslo Academy and the Royal Danish Academy of Music,visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music, London, Ingesund College Sweden and NYU New York.
He performed on his GB Guadagnini from Milano 1753, but retired from performing in 2023 to focus on teaching.
Xie Nan is currently a professor of violin and chairman of the violin department at the Central Conservatory of Music. She is also the vice president of the China Musicians’ Association’s Violin Academy, council member of the China Female Musicians’ Association, and adjudicator for the CCTV Piano and Violin Competition.
Xie Nan’s musical talent was unveiled at age nine when she was awarded second prize at the Guangdong Music Competition. By age 14, she had won awards at the Beijing International Youth Violin Competition. Two years later, she performed at the Wieniawski Competition in Poland and claimed another prize as well as the award for Best Performance of Wieniawski’s Works.
Xia Nan studied with professors Zhu Xiongzhen, Huang Xiaozhi, and Lin Yaoji. After obtaining her master’s degree with distinction, she continued her studies in the United States under Alice Schoenfeld at the University of Southern California. Xie Nan also received instruction and high praise from violinists Isaac Stern, Salvatore Accardo, and Pinchas Zukerman.
In 1999, she became the first violinist to record the complete 42 Capriccios of Kreutzer. She has recorded numerous solo albums including Xian Qin Wang Shi and Ma Sicong’s violin works. She is the recipient of the PRC’s Ministry of Education’s “New Century Talent” program, for which she recorded the album Brahms: Violin Sonatas 1-3 and was the first person in China to publish educational materials for these works. Her latest album, Encounters, won the Best Art Award of the 2019 Fever Disc. She has recorded several albums with the China Central Television network for international distribution.
Xie Nan’s musical career has brought her to many of the world’s stages and major musical events in such places as Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Finland, North Korea, Russia, the Netherlands, Japan, the United States, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, as well as Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. She has appeared in concert at the Beijing International Music Festival, the Macau Arts Festival, the Shanghai Spring Music Festival, Japan’s Asia Symphonic Music Festival, the Asia Cultural Ministers’ Forum, and the CCTV Music Channel’s Third Anniversary Celebration Music Festival. She has also collaborated as a soloist with the China Philharmonic Orchestra, the China National Symphony Orchestra, the Central Opera Orchestra, the China Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra, the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, the Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Finland Kuopio Symphony Orchestra, the Netherlands’ Brabants Orchestra, the Macau Orchestra, the Seoul Chamber Orchestra, the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the Taipei Experimental Chinese Orchestra, and many others.
Since becoming a faculty member at the Central Conservatory of Music, she has invested her passion into teaching the next generation of students, who have since claimed numerous awards in national and international competitions. She has given master classes at Yale University Music School, Boston University Music School, Singapore Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, Xinghai Conservatory of Music, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, among others.
Dedicated to promoting Chinese music compositions, she has performed the Chinese violin concerto “Butterfly Lovers” in Vienna’s Musikverein, Netherland’s Philips Concert Hall, Japan’s Osaka Concert Hall, and the Johannesburg Concert Hall. A live recording of her concert in Vienna Musikverein was released by the China Record Corporation. She also gave performances of “Butterfly Lovers” arranged for traditional Chinese orchestra with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra at the Hong Kong Cultural Center and the Taipei Experimental Chinese Orchestra at the Taibei National Concert Hall.
William van der Sloot is a heralded violinist and teacher whose students have earned acclaim throughout the world. A native of Alberta, Canada, he is a graduate of the University of Calgary and continued his studies at the Eastman School of Music. A onetime member of the Villa Marteau Quintet, he has toured extensively across Europe and North America. He is a frequent judge of international competitions including the Wieniawski International Violin Competition, the Brahms International Chamber Music Competition, the Stradivarius International Violin Competition, and the Chengdu International Violin Competition. His students have earned top prizes in the National Music Festival, the Canadian Music Competition, the Menuhin International Violin Competition, the Stradivarius International Violin Competition, the Queen Elisabeth Competition, and the Tchaikovsky Competition, among numerous others. Many of his former students hold positions in major orchestras around the world.
In 2015, van der Sloot was named an honorary fellow of the Royal Conservatory of Music for his contributions to music education in Canada and abroad. A member of the Oberlin faculty since fall 2018, he also holds teaching appointments at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Mount Royal University in Calgary.