About Us
Studio Wie trains music students of all ages and ability levels. We are a husband and wife team who work together to help our students acquire strong technical and musical skills so that they may participate in recitals, chamber music, youth orchestras, and summer festivals. Regardless of their eventual career choices, our students develop a love for music and the opportunity to participate in the art form as performers, teachers, and audience members for the rest of their lives. We commit a substantial amount of volunteer time to help train aspiring teachers as well as empower young people to improve their world around them by fostering access and opportunities in impacted communities.
Chika was born in Nagoya, Japan, where she started with the Suzuki Method from the age of four. She moved to the United States at age ten and enrolled at the Colburn School of Performing Arts, where she participated in private lessons, Suzuki classes, chamber music, and orchestras, and served as a concertmaster for the Orchestra de Camera. Her primary teachers have included Chan Ho Yun, Virginia Frazier, Sherry Cadow, Nawomi Ishida, and Jun Maekawa, and she studied chamber music with Shun-Lin Chou, Andrew Duckles, Richard Naill, Deborah Aitken, Anne Diener Zentner, and Clayton Haslop. She has performed in masterclasses for Cho-Liang Lin, Mark Kaplan, Martin Chalifour, Corey Cerovsek, and Evan Wilson.
She has been teaching since 2005 and her students and graduates have been finalists in the Classics Alive National Young Artist Auditions, earned positions as section principals of local school and youth orchestras, appeared with local community orchestras after winning their concerto competitions, and attended the Aspen Music Festival. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance from Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University at Long Beach, where she also completed a California teaching credential in Mathematics. She has served as String Specialist for the South Bay Youth Orchestra and was Assistant Director for the South Bay Youth Chamber Ensemble. She is a member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas (SAA), and has completed SAA Registered Training including Every Child Can! and Violin Units 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, and 10. A frequent concerto competition winner throughout her high school and college years, she has performed with the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony, CSU Long Beach Symphony, Colburn Orchestra da Camera, and many others. She has performed solos with orchestras in Southern California as well as Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Italy. She has also served as Director of the Solo Performance Program at the St. Margaret's Summer Music Festival, and is the past Executive Director of the 501(c) non-profit Community Youth Orchestra of Southern California. |
Gene began his musical training at the age of six with the Suzuki Violin program at the Irvine Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Lori Franke. His subsequent violin/viola studies have been with Hong Cheng, William Kennedy, Haroutune Bedelian, and William Fitzpatrick. He studied clarinet with Dorea Tate and Amanda Walker, and chamber music with W. Fitzpatrick, Yoko Matsuda, Robert Becker, Peter Marsh, Margaret Parkins, Nina Scolnik, and members of the Blaeu and Miro String Quartets. He earned B.S. Information and Computer Science and M.F.A. Music degrees from the University of California, Irvine.
Gene is the new Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut as of Fall 2020. He recently concluded fifteen years of service as the volunteer Music Director of Community Youth Orchestra of Southern California, and fourteen years as Director of the Orchestra Program at St. Margaret's Episcopal School. Recognized as a program creator, he previously taught at the Orange County School of the Arts where he developed an innovative course in music technology, conducted the string and concert orchestras, coached chamber music, and led the string masterclass. Over the past decade he also served as a faculty member at the Capistrano International Chamber Music Festival, St. Margaret's Summer Music Festival, the Chamber Music Workshop at Big Bear Lake, ChamberArtsFest (USA/France), Arrowbear Music Camp, and the Viola Workout (Colorado), Prior to teaching full time, Gene played professionally as a founding member and first violinist of the Elegie String Quartet and Monarch String Quartet, and has concertized throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and the South Pacific in major venues like the Sydney Opera House, Salzburg Mozarteum, and Prague Leichtenstein Palace. He has also appeared as principal clarinet with the South Orange County Chamber Orchestra, concertmaster with the Blackbird Music Project, and substitute viola with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. More recently, he served as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the California Solisti Chamber Orchestra. |
