Viola. Praised by The Philadelphia Inquirer for his “glowing refinement,” violist Luke Fleming’s performances have been described by The Strad as “confident and expressive…playing with uncanny precision,” and lauded by Gramophone for their “superlative technical and artistic execution.” Festival appearances include the Marlboro Music School and Festival, the Steans Institute at Ravinia, Perlman Music Program, the Norfolk and Great Lakes Chamber Music Festivals, the Melbourne Festival, Bravo!Vail, and Festival Mozaic. Formerly the violist of the internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet, he has served as Artist-in-Residence for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and received the National Federation of Music Clubs Centennial Chamber Music Award. He was awarded First Prize at the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and top prizes at the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. In 2015, Mr. Fleming became the Founding Artistic Director of both the Manhattan Chamber Players, a New York-based chamber music collective, and the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival. He has performed as a guest artist with the Pacifica, Solera, Serafin, and Canterbury Quartets, the Eroica and Gryphon Trios, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Sejong Soloists, Ensemble Connect, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and the New York Classical Players, and has given masterclasses at UCLA, Louisiana State University, Ithaca College, Columbus State University, Syracuse University, Melbourne University, and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, among others. He has served on the faculties of the Innsbrook Institute, Renova Music Festival, Festival del Lago, and Houston ChamberFest, and Fei Tian College and is Lecturer-in-Residence for the concert series Project: Music Heals Us. Mr. Fleming holds the degrees of Doctor of Musical Arts, Artist Diploma, and Master of Music from the Juilliard School, a Postgraduate Diploma with Distinction from the Royal Academy of Music in London, and a Bachelor of Music summa cum laude from Louisiana State University. He is represented by Arts Global, Inc.
lukefleming.com

DAVID FUNG, Piano. Praised for his “ravishing and simply gorgeous” performances in the The Washington Post, pianist David Fung is widely recognized for interpretations that are elegant and refined, yet intensely poetic and uncommonly expressive. With a repertoire of over sixty concertos, Mr. Fung regularly performs as a soloist with the world’s premier ensembles including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony working with conductors such as Marin Alsop, Gustavo Dudamel, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Lan Shui, and Christian Zacharias. An incisive interpreter of Mozart and Bach, Mr. Fung has collaborated with the Israel, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Orpheus, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

Mr. Fung’s highly acclaimed debut with the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Music Festival was “everything you could wish for” (Cleveland Classical), and he was further praised as an “agile and alert interpreter of Mozart’s crystalline note-spinning” (The Plain Dealer). In the following week, he performed Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini at the Beijing National Stadium for their Olympic Summer Festival. In 2021, Mr. Fung made his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut partnering with Yuja Wang and Gustavo Dudamel following his performances with the Detroit Symphony celebrating the Orchestra Hall Centennial. In addition to the West Coast Premiere of Chen Qigang’s Piano Concerto, “Er Huang”, with the San Francisco Symphony, other recent solo engagements include performances with the Albany Symphony, Arkansas Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Israel Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Marin Symphony, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the National Taiwan Symphony, Niagara Symphony, New Haven Symphony, New Japan Philharmonic, Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, San Diego Symphony, Southwest Florida Symphony, Sun Valley Symphony, Symphony Tacoma, Tampere Philharmonic, and Xiamen Philharmonic, as well as the major orchestras in Australia, including the Melbourne, Queensland, and Sydney Symphony Orchestras.

As a recitalist and chamber musician, Mr. Fung is a frequent guest artist at prestigious festivals and venues worldwide. Notable festival appearances include Aspen, Blossom, Caramoor, Edinburgh, Hong Kong Arts, Ottawa, Ravinia, and Tippet Rise. At his Edinburgh International Festival debut, the Edinburgh Guide described Mr. Fung as being “impossibly virtuosic, prodigiously talented… and who probably does ten more impossible things daily before breakfast.” He has captivated audiences at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Louvre, Gewandhaus, Palais des Beaux-Arts, and Zürich Tonhalle, as well as the major halls in Asia, including the Beijing Concert Hall, Guangzhou Opera House, Hong Kong Town Hall, Seoul Arts Center, Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Taiwan National Concert Hall, and Tianjin Grand Theater. Notable collaborations include performances with the Brentano, Dover, Jupiter, and Verona Quartets.

In August 2020, the Steinway and Sons Label released Mr. Fung’s Transcendent Beethoven, which was featured on Apple Music’s Best of Beethoven, a list of outstanding releases of the composer during the 250th anniversary of his birth. The album follows the label’s acclaimed 2019 release of Mr. Fung’s first installment of the complete Mozart sonatas. Fung’s Mozart album was called “undeniably bold” (AllMusic Guide) and praised by Boston’s WCRB as “heartbreaking”, adding that “Fung relishes the art of exploring Mozart’s characters – giving them freedom to breathe, and casting them in darkness and light to help reveal their humanity.” Mr. Fung can also be heard on more than a dozen accoladed releases by Pentatone, Orchid, Genuin, Yarlung, and Naxos.

Mr. Fung garnered international attention as a laureate of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels and the Arthur Rubinstein Piano International Masters Competition in Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv, he was further distinguished by the Chamber Music and Mozart Prizes, awarded in areas in which Mr. Fung has a passionate interest. He was the first piano graduate of the prestigious Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles where he studied with John Perry, going on to work with Peter Frankl and Claude Frank at Yale University, and Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover. In 2002, he won the ABC Young Performer of the Year Award while studying with Margaret Hair in Sydney and has received further artistic guidance from piano luminaries including András Schiff, Alfred Brendel, and Leon Fleisher. Mr. Fung serves on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and the University of British Columbia and is a curator at the Chan Center for the Performing Arts in Vancouver. Mr. Fung is a Steinway Artist.

CONNIE KUPKA, Violin and Viola. Connie Kupka, a native Angelino, grew up in a music-loving family along with two other siblings, both of whom are also performers. After graduating from UCLA, she won a scholarship to study chamber music with the Guarneri Quartet at the Yale Summer Festival in Norfolk, Connecticut. The experience created a lifelong passion for chamber music (and orchestras), and inspired her and her future husband, cellist David Speltz, to form their own ensemble, the Arriaga Quartet. The group went on to win the grand prize in the prestigious Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition and was able to tour with a broad range of offerings from the magnificent quartet repertoire. Summers always find Connie participating in many of the wonderful festivals throughout the country. She has performed at the Oregon Bach and Mostly Mozart festivals; the Santa Fe and Grand Canyon chamber music festivals; and the Ojai, Colorado and Sedona Jam music festivals. In Los Angeles, she regularly performs on the South Bay Chamber Music Society and Pacific Serenades series. She and David are the proud parents of three sons who grew up attending Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra concerts, two of them now pursue musical careers of their own. Connie loves performing with them at local chamber music venues.

BRENDAN SPELTZ, Violin. NYC-based violinist Brendan Speltz second violinist of the world renowned Escher String Quartet, has toured the globe with groundbreaking ensembles such as Shuffle Concert, the Manhattan Chamber Players, A Far Cry, and the Harlem Quartet. As founder of FeltInFour Productions, Mr. Speltz has produced innovative concert events across the New York City area that have been described by ,The New Yorker as “Thrilling, poignant, unexpected, and utterly DIY.” Most recently, Mr. Speltz co-created a cross-disciplinary presentation of Steve Reich’s Different Trains with aerial dance troupe ABCirque which was sponsored by Meyer Sound Labs. In NYC he has performed as guest with the New York New Music Ensemble, Mark Morris Dance Group, American Ballet Theatre, the American Symphony, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and as a founding member of the conductorless string orchestra Shattered Glass. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California and his Master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music. Mr. Speltz plays a 1925 Carl Becker violin.

BROOK SPLETZ, Cello. Praised for his “fluid virtuosity” and “soulful melodies,” Los Angeles native Brook Speltz has been inspired since childhood by the long tradition of deep musical mastery of artists such as Jascha Heifetz, Pierre Fournier, and the Guarneri String Quartet. As of 2015, he is the new cellist of the internationally renowned Escher String Quartet and a season artist of the Chamber Music Society. He has performed as a soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist throughout the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. First Prize winner of the prestigious Ima Hogg Competition, he has performed with the Houston Symphony, Colorado Music Festival Orchestra, and International Contemporary Ensemble, and is a regular performer at England’s IMS Prussia Cove and on tour with Musicians from Marlboro. Chamber music tours with Itzhak Perlman and Richard Goode caused him to be nominated for the inaugural Warner Music Prize, a newly established prize presented by Warner Music and Carnegie Hall. He has also toured with the cello rock band Break of Reality, whose cover of music from Game of Thrones has received over 19 million views online. The band’s recent US tour raised funds and awareness for music programs in public schools all around the country. After studying with Eleanor Schoenfeld, Mr. Speltz attended the Curtis Institute of Music with Peter Wiley and The Juilliard School with Joel Krosnick. He performs on an 1857 J.B. Vuillaume on loan from his father, a cellist and his first inspiration in a family of professional musicians.

DAVID SPELTZ, Cello. David Speltz began his formal studies with Eleanore Schoenfeld after being introduced to the cello by his father. Later, he was invited to join the Piatigorsky masterclass at USC. He earned a master’s degree in mathematics from UCLA, but soon realized that the cello was the path to follow. In 1973 he co-founded the Arriaga Quartet, which went on to win first prize in the Coleman Competition. As a member of the ensemble Musical Offering, he performed at the Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, and recorded for the Nonesuch label. He has been active for years on many Los Angeles chamber music series in Los Angeles, and participated in summer festivals throughout the United States. David was a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Sir Neville Marriner, and served as the principal cellist of the California Chamber Orchestra under Henri Temianka. In 1989 he served as principal cellist for the German conductor Helmuth Rilling at the Bach Collegium Stuttgart. He has been active in the motion picture industry in Los Angeles, playing in the studio orchestras for over 500 movies, from the Godfather series to Star Wars! David has three sons, two of whom are professional string players in New York City. He is married to violinist Connie Kupka.