Rasa Vitkauskaite has won top prizes at numerous prestigious international piano competitions including First Prizes at the Rubinstein Piano Competition (Paris), Les Rencontres Internationales des Jeunes Pianistes (Belgium), the competition in Taurisano (Italy), and the Mendelssohn Cup (Italy). In 2007, Rasa won a Kathryn Wasserman Davis grant that supported her tour promoting peace in Israel.

Rasa has performed as soloist with the Kaunas, Latvian, Kaliningrad Philharmonic Orchestras, I Solisti di Perugia and the Boston Conservatory Orchestra. Her most recent concert engagements include performances at festivals in China, South Korea, Venezuela, Mexico, Portugal, Japan and the United States.

Rasa performs regularly with world-renowned clarinetist Jonathan Cohler. The duo recorded two CDs - Rhapsodie Française and Romanza. She is also the pianist of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Xonor Trio. Rasa is on a faculty at the Concord Conservatory.

Rasa studied at the National M.K. Čiurlionis School of Arts in Lithuania. She then won a scholarship to study at the United World College of the Adriatic in Italy. Subsequently, she studied at The Boston Conservatory, where she twice won the H. Wilfred Churchill piano scholarship competition, and completed her Bachelors and Masters degrees. Her teachers include Jūratė Karosaitė, Mūza Rubackytė, Alberto Miodini, Michael Lewin and Randall Hodgkinson.

A native of Japan, violinist Yumi Okada serves as a concertmaster to the Ars Nova Chamber Orchestra. Her first rise to fame came when she won the highly acclaimed Soloist Competition of Japan in Tokyo and the All-Japan Performance Association Competition in Nagoya in 1998. Since then she won numerous other competitions around the world, including the second prize in the International Chamber Ensemble Competition of New England in 2005 and the first prize in the Aichi Arts Foundation Competition in 2006. Most recently she appeared as a soloist with the Washington Sinfonietta and performed Paganini Concerto in B minor. 

  She earned the Performance Diploma at the Indiana University, where she studied with Ilya Kaler, and received her Artist Diploma and Masters Degree at the Longy School of Music with Malcolm Lowe. She also studied chamber music with Jonathan Cohler and Victor Rosenbaum. 

  Ms. Okada is also a member of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Despite her active concert career, she also finds time to share her musical knowledge with aspiring musicians as a faculty member at the Concord Conservatory of Music.  

  Internationally, Yumi Okada is well-known in her native country where for the tenth consecutive year she is the exclusive solo violinist for the Osaka Arte Philharmonic Orchestra.

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