Mark Nuccio officially begins his position as Principal Clarinet with the Houston Symphony Orchestra in the 2016-17 season after seventeen years with the New York Philharmonic. He will also serve as clarinet faculty at the University of Houston’s Moore School of Music. Mr. Nuccio joined the New York Philharmonic in 1999 as Associate Principal and Solo E-flat Clarinetist and recently served as Acting Principal Clarinet with the New York Philharmonic for four years from 2009-2013.Prior to his service with the Philharmonic, he has held positions with orchestras in Pittsburgh, Denver, Savannah, and Florida working with distinguished conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Erich Leinsdorf, Bernard Haitink, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Andre Previn, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and Gustavo Dudamel. Additionally, Mr. Nuccio has toured extensively with the New York Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in numerous countries, recorded with both orchestras, and performed regularly with the Philharmonic on the award-winning series, Live from Lincoln Center, broadcast on PBS. Recent highlights include the Philharmonic’s historic and newsworthy visits to North Korea and Vietnam.
Nuccio is an active solo and chamber musician and has been featured with various orchestras in the United States and made multiple appearances as a featured performer at the International Clarinet Association conventions. He made his subscription solo debut with the New York Philharmonic on Feb. 10, 2010 and returned to perform the Copland Concerto with the NY Philharmonic under the baton of Alan Gilbert on May 31 and June 1 of 2013. Other highlights include a New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 2001 and his Japanese recital debut in 2002. He is an avid chamber musician and continues to regularly perform recitals in Asia and Europe as well as across the United States. In New York, he can often be heard at Merkin Concert Hall, 92nd Street Y, Carnegie Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Nuccio also participates in the chamber music series at the Strings in the Mountain Music Festival in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and teaches at the Hidden Valley Music Festival in Carmel, CA.
As a studio musician, Mr. Nuccio is featured on numerous movie soundtracks, including Failure To Launch, The Last Holiday, The Rookie, The Score, Intolerable Cruelty, Alamo, Pooh’s Heffalump, Hitch, The Manchurian Candidate, and various television commercials. Additionally he has performed on the Late Show with David Letterman and on the 2003 Grammy Awards. His own debut album featuring the clarinet quintets of Mozart and Brahms, Opening Night, was released in November 2006.
A Colorado native, Mr. Nuccio was recently awarded the “Distinguished Alumni Award” from his alma mater the University of Northern Colorado, a very selective honor bestowed on an elite group of 200 alumnus representing various fields throughout the long history of the university. He also holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University where he studied with renowned pedagogue Robert Marcellus. Beyond his active performing schedule, Mr. Nuccio is a dedicated teacher committed to training the next generation of musicians and teaches master classes in the U.S. and abroad. Nuccio is a D’Addario Advising Artist & Clinician and a Performing Artist/Clinician for Buffet Music Group.

Liang Wang joined the New York Philharmonic in September 2006 as Principal Oboe, The Alice Tully Chair. Previously, he was principal oboe of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (2005–06), Santa Fe Opera (2004–05), and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra; associate principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony; and guest principal oboe of the Chicago and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. He has performed as concerto soloist with the New York Philharmonic 23 times, including his debut performing Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto, led by Xian Zhang, in Hong Kong during the Orchestra’s 2008 tour of Asia. In addition, he has been heard as a featured player in works ranging from J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Varèse’s Octandre.
Recipient of the 2014 Beijing International Music Festival Artist of the Year award, Mr. Wang serves as artist-in-residence of the Qing Dao Symphony Orchestra, his hometown orchestra, in the 2014–15 season, at the invitation of the mayor. He was invited by the Presidents of China and France to perform Chen Qigang’s Extase with the Orchestre Colonne de France at Versailles’s Royal Opera House in March 2014 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of France-China diplomacy.
Born in Qing Dao, China, in 1980, Liang Wang began oboe studies at the age of seven. In 1993 he enrolled at the Beijing Central Conservatory, and in 2003 he completed his bachelor’s degree at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Philadelphia Orchestra principal oboist Richard Woodhams. He is an alumnus of the Music Academy of the West, now a partner in the New York Philharmonic Global Academy.
Mr. Wang made his Carnegie Hall solo debut in April 2011 performing Chen Qigang’s Extase. Other recent appearances include Mozart’s Oboe Concerto with Les Violons du Roy (led by Bernard Labadie in Quebec City), China Philharmonic, and Shanghai and Guanzhou Symphony Orchestras; Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto with the Makau Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Ballet Orchestra; Mozart and Strauss’s Oboe Concertos on tour with all of China’s major symphony orchestras; and J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 at The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In December 2014 he performs Mozart’s Oboe Concerto with the New York String Orchestra, led by Jaimie Laredo, at Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium.
An active chamber musician, he has appeared with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for ten seasons, Angel Fire Music Festival, and La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest, with which he premiered Sean Shepherd’s Oboe Quartet. He has given master classes at the Cincinnati Conservatory, The Juilliard School, Mannes College of Music, Manhattan School of Music, The Curtis Institute of Music, Seoul University, New York University, and the Beijing, Shanghai, Hanoi, and Singapore conservatories. He is currently on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and New York University, and is an honorary professor at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

For over 25 years Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. In addition to performing, she also serves as  Artistic Director of the Bravo! Vail Music and Ocean Reef Music Festivals, as well as Curator for Chamber Music for the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego.
The breadth of Ms. McDermott’s repertoire reaches from Bach, Haydn and Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Scriabin, to works by today’s most influential composers. In 2015-16 season, Ms. McDermott appeared with the Dallas, Nashville, and Pacific Symphonies, and premiered a new concerto by Poul Ruders with the Vancouver Symphony—a piece she will record alongside Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of  Paganini.  Charles Wuorinen’s last solo piano sonata, which she has recorded, was written for her and premiered at New York’s Town Hall.
Ms. McDermott has recorded the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine), solo works by Chopin, and Gershwin’s Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony (also Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine). In 2013, she released a disc of Mozart Concerti with the Calder Quartet (“exceptional on every count.”—Gramophone). Most recently she recorded five Haydn piano sonatas and two Haydn Concertos with the Odense Philharmonic in Denmark including two cadenzas written by Charles Wuorinen.
In the upcoming season Ms. McDermott will be participating in the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s Silver Jubilee All Gershwin Program, in addition to embarking on a cycle of Beethoven Concertos at Santa Fe Pro Musica. In recent years Ms. McDermott performed Mozart Concerto, K. 595 with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Donald Runnicles, the Bach D minor concerto with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the New York City-based Le Train Bleu. In 2012 Ms. McDermott performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Bramwell Tovey.  She also did a west coast tour with award-winning violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra; the complete Beethoven piano trios with Ida Kavafian and Peter Wiley; and the complete Beethoven cello sonatas with Lynn Harrell.  Other recent international highlights include a performance of Schumann’s piano concerto with the Sao Paulo Symphony at the Cartagena Festival and an all-Haydn recital tour of China.  Ms. McDermott gave special performances of works by Charles Wuorinen in New York and at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., in celebration of the composer’s seventy-fifth birthday.
Ms. McDermott has performed with many leading orchestra including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Seattle Symphony, National Symphony, Houston Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, League of American Composers, Moscow Virtuosi,  Hong Kong Philharmonic, San Diego Symphony, New Jersey Symphony and Baltimore Symphony among others. Ms, McDermott has toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Virtuosi.
She is a longtime member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center with whom she performs and tours extensively each season. With CMS she has performed the complete Prokofiev piano sonatas and chamber music, as well as a three-concert series of chamber music by Shostakovich.  Ms. McDermott enjoys touring as a member of OPUS ONE, a chamber group with Ida Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom and Peter Wiley. Together they have commissioned over 15 new works.  She also tours annually violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and performs as part of a trio with sisters, Kerry and Maureen McDermott. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music and was winner of the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women, the Young Concert Artists auditions and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. Anne-Marie McDermott lives in New York City with her husband, Michael, and her Maltese, Sammy.

Philip Myers, The Ruth F. and Alan J. Broder Chair, joined the New York Philharmonic as Principal Horn in January 1980. He made his solo debut during his first month with the Orchestra in the premiere of William Schuman’s Three Colloquies for French Horn and Orchestra, and he has appeared as a Philharmonic soloist on numerous occasions. In October 2012 he performed Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3, conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, and in November 2013 he performed Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, led by Alan Gilbert. Other highlights include Schumann’s Konzertstück for Four Horns, with Lorin Maazel in February 2007 and Kurt Masur in May 2001; Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings led by André Previn in October 2001; and Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante in E-flat major for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, and Bassoon in March 2010, led by Music Director Alan Gilbert.

Mr. Myers began his orchestral career in 1971 with a three-year term as principal horn of the Atlantic Symphony in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was third horn with the Pittsburgh Symphony from 1974 until 1977. As principal horn of the Minnesota Orchestra for a season and a half, he made his solo debut with that ensemble in 1979, performing Richard Strauss’s Horn Concerto No. 1 with Sir Neville Marriner conducting. A native of Elkhart, Indiana, Philip Myers holds two degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He plays Engelbert Schmid French horns.

Joseph Alessi was appointed Principal Trombone of the New York Philharmonic, The Gurnee F. and Marjorie L. Hart Chair, in the spring of 1985. He began musical studies in his native California with his father, Joseph Alessi, Sr., as a high school student in San Rafael, California, and was a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony before continuing his musical training at the Curtis Institute of Music. Before joining the Philharmonic, Mr. Alessi was second trombone of The Philadelphia Orchestra for four seasons, and principal trombone of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for one season. He has performed as guest principal trombonist with the London Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, led by Pierre Boulez.

Mr. Alessi is an active soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. In April 1990 he made his New York Philharmonic solo debut, performing Creston’s Fantasy for Trombone, and in 1992 premiered Christopher Rouse’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Trombone Concerto with the Philharmonic, which commissioned the work for its 150th anniversary celebration. He performed the World Premiere of Melinda Wagner’s Trombone Concerto, conducted by Lorin Maazel in February 2007. In July 2013 he appeared with the Philharmonic as soloist in Bramwell Tovey’s The Lincoln Tunnel Cabaret for Trombone and Orchestra, written for Mr. Alessi, at Summertime Classics and at Bravo! Vail, both performances conducted by the composer. In June 2016 he gave the World Premiere of William Bolcom’s Trombone Concerto, a Philharmonic co-commission, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert as part of the NY PHIL BIENNIAL; Mr. Alessi and the Philharmonic, led by Alan Gilbert, reprise the concerto in the 2016–17 season.

Mr. Alessi has been a guest soloist with the Lincoln, Colorado, Syracuse, Virginia, Alabama, Santa Barbara, Puerto Rico, Hartford, and South Dakota symphony orchestras; New Japan, Seoul, Hague, and Helsinki philharmonic orchestras; National Repertory Orchestra; Orchestra of Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, Sicily; Mannheim National Theater Orchestra; and National Symphony of Taiwan. Mr. Alessi has also participated in numerous festivals, including the Festivale Musica di Camera in Protogruaro, Italy; Cabrillo Music Festival; Swiss Brass Week; and Lieksa Brass Week in Finland. He was featured in the 1997 International Trombone Festival in Feldkirch, Austria, and the International Meeting of Brass Instruments in Lille, France. He is a founding member of the Summit Brass ensemble at the Rafael Mendez Brass Institute in Tempe, Arizona. In 2002 Mr. Alessi was awarded an International Trombone Association Award for his contributions to the world of trombone music and trombone playing.

Joseph Alessi is currently on the faculty of The Juilliard School; his students now occupy posts with many major symphony orchestras in the U.S. and internationally. As a clinician for the Edwards Instrument Co., he has also given master classes throughout the world and has toured Europe extensively as a master teacher and recitalist. He has performed as soloist with several leading concert bands, including the U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point, U.S. Army Band (“Pershing’s Own”), and the U.S. Marine Band (“The President’s Own”).

Mr. Alessi’s discography includes many releases on the Summit record label, including Trombonastics and Fandango, with retired Philharmonic Principal Trumpet Philip Smith. He also recorded New York Legends on the Cala label, Return to Sorrento on the Naxos record label, and conductor/composer Bramwell Tovey’s Urban Cabaret. His live recording with the Philharmonic of Christopher Rouse’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Trombone Concerto, commissioned for the Orchestra’s 150th anniversary project, can be heard on Volume II of An American Celebration, on New York Philharmonic Special Editions, the Orchestra’s own recording label.

Mr. Alessi was invited by the International Trombone Association to record a solo disc of newly composed works, which was distributed to the Association’s membership of 5,000 trombonists in early 1999 and is now available as Beyond the End of the Century through Summit Records. His recording of George Crumb’s Starchild on the Bridge record label, featuring Mr. Alessi as soloist, won a Grammy Award for 1999–2000. Other recordings featuring Mr. Alessi are with the Canadian Brass (Sony Classical and Philips Records). Further information about Mr. Alessi can be found on his website, www.slidearea.com.

Christopher Martin joins the New York Philharmonic as Principal Trumpet in the 2016–17 season. Currently in his 11th season as principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), he has enjoyed a distinctive career of almost 20 years in many of America’s finest orchestras. Prior to his CSO appointment by Daniel Barenboim, Mr. Martin served as principal trumpet of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and associate principal trumpet of The Philadelphia Orchestra. Praised as a musician of “effortless understated virtuosity” by The Chicago Tribune, Christopher Martin has appeared as soloist multiple times domestically and internationally with the CSO and music director Riccardo Muti. Highlights of Mr. Martin’s solo appearances include the 2012 World Premiere of Christopher Rouse’s concerto Heimdall’s Trumpet; Panufnik’s Concerto in modo antico, with Mr. Muti; a program of 20th-century French concertos by André Jolivet and Henri Tomasi; and more than a dozen performances of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. Other solo appearances have featured Mr. Martin with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa’s Saito Kinen Festival, the Atlanta Symphony, the Alabama Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico. Christopher Martin’s discography includes a solo trumpet performance in John Williams’s score to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (2012), the National Brass Ensemble’s Gabrieli album, and CSO Resound label recordings, including the widely acclaimed 2011 release of CSO Brass Live. Dedicated to music education, Mr. Martin serves on the faculty of Northwestern University and coaches the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. In 2010 he co-founded the National Brass Symposium with his brother Michael Martin, a trumpeter in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in 2016 he received the Edwin Franko Goldman Memorial Citation from the American Bandmasters Association for outstanding contributions to the wind band genre. Christopher Martin and his wife, Margaret — an organist and pianist — enjoy performing together in recital and, most especially, for their one-year-old daughter, Claire.

Lee Musiker is a Grammy and Emmy award-winning pianist, conductor, music director and arranger/orchestrator/composer. He has collaborated with the premier artists in the Classical, Operatic, Broadway, Jazz and Pop music genres including; Joshua Bell, Tony Bennett, Andrea Bocelli, Chris Botti, Michael Bublé, Kristin Chenoweth, Judy Collins, Barbara Cook, Michael Feinstein, Renée Fleming, Lady Gaga, Josh Groban, Marvin Hamlisch, Marilyn Horne, Diana Krall, Jerry Lewis, Seth MacFarlane, Wynton Marsalis, Audra McDonald, Maureen McGovern, Bernadette Peters, Buddy Rich, Sting, Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, Mel Tormé and Dawn Upshaw.

A Steinway Artist, Lee Musiker has performed with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Orpheus, Atlanta, Cleveland, Hollywood Bowl, Philadelphia, San Francisco, London Symphony Orchestras; and the New York, Boston, Cincinnati and Philly Pops. Mr. Musiker has guest conducted the New York Philharmonic, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and National Symphony Orchestras. Lee was a guest on NPR’s Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz”, Judy Carmichael’s “Jazz Inspired”, and was featured in Steinway and Keyboard magazines. He has served on the faculties of the Mannes School of Music, The New School, New York University, and has given master classes at The Metropolitan Opera and Indiana University.