Biography

Valerie Li, first violinist of the Afiara Quartet since its founding, has enjoyed performing at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, and touring across North America, Europe, Brazil, Mexico, and China. In 2008, the quartet won the Concert Artists Guild International Competition as well as a top prize at the Munich ARD International Music Competition, and in 2010 won the Young Canadian Musicians Award and top prizes at the Banff International String Quartet Competition.

Ms. Li received her Bachelor of Music from the Peabody Conservatory, where she won the Marbury Prize and the Hulsteyn Award, and her Master of Music from the New England Conservatory. Her primary teachers include Miriam Fried, Herbert Greenberg, and Gwen Thompson, with whom she studied in her hometown of Vancouver. During her studies, Ms. Li was a fellow at Tanglewood Music Center and Aspen Music Festival, performed at Taos School of Music, served as Concertmaster of the New England Conservatory Philharmonia and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, and performed with the Baltimore Symphony.

During the Afiara Quartet’s residencies at San Francisco State University with the Alexander Quartet and at The Juilliard School with the Juilliard Quartet, Ms. Li has had the opportunity to pursue her passion for teaching and coaching. Further opportunities have arisen though Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, Indiana University Summer String Academy, University of Alberta, and the Orkester Efterskolen in Holstebro, Denmark, as well as numerous outreach and educational activities. Ms. Li is dedicated to making the world of string quartets accessible and relevant to all, including her nephew, whom she shares with Afiara cellist Adrian Fung. His sister is married to Ms. Li’s brother.

Violinist Timothy Kantor is the second violinist of the Afiara Quartet. Before joining the Afiara Quartet, Mr. Kantor was concertmaster of the Evansville (Indiana) Philharmonic and a founding member of the Larchmere String Quartet, in residence at the University of Evansville. He has performed as a member of the Kuttner String Quartet in residence at Indiana University, the chamber music and Quartet in the Community residencies at the Banff Centre, the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar and the St. Lawrence String Quartet Chamber Music Seminar. He has also performed chamber works with many of today’s leading musicians, including Joshua Bell, Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Atar Arad, William Preucil, Alexander Kerr, and the Pacifica Quartet. Mr. Kantor has been featured as an artist on American Public Media’s “Performance Today”, CBC Radio, and local classical radio stations in both Cleveland and Toronto. He is devoted to the performance of new music and has participated as soloist, concertmaster and chamber musician with the new music ensembles at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Indiana University.

A dedicated teacher and coach, Mr. Kantor is the Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Arizona’s Fred Fox School of Music. Mr. Kantor also teaches at the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont and the Programa Gabriel del Orbe in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). Mr. Kantor graduated with honors from Bowdoin College, earned a Master of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and pursued doctoral studies at Indiana University. His former teachers include Jaime Laredo, Paul Kantor, Stephen Kecskemethy, Andrew Jennings, and Mark Kaplan. Off the clock, Mr. Kantor enjoys auto racing and basketball.

American violist Eric Wong received both graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music studying violin with Paul Kantor, viola with Lynne Ramsey and Kirsten Docter, and chamber music with Peter Salaff and the Cavani Quartet. He subsequently earned an artist diploma from the Yale School of Music where he worked with Kazuhide Isomura. His chamber music collaborators have included the Tokyo Quartet, Sharon Isbin, Itzhak Perlman, Richard Stoltzman, Donald Weilerstein, and pianist and former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others. Mr. Wong has served as principal violist of CityMusic Cleveland, Assistant Concertmaster of the Akron Symphony Orchestra, and Associate Concertmaster of the Canton Symphony Orchestra.

As former violist of the Linden String Quartet, Mr. Wong is a laureate of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition (USA), the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, and the International String Quartet Competition “Premio Paolo Borciani.” In addition to performing with the Afiara Quartet, he is active in collaborating with directors of several of up-and-coming chamber music festivals including the Geneva Music Festival (genevamusicfestival.com) and the humanitarian initiative “Music Feeds Us” (musicfeedsus.org).

Off the clock, Mr. Wong enjoys cooking and classic television.

Adrian Fung is an arts executive, award-winning cellist, educator, and producer of critically acclaimed projects. He is Vice President for Innovation at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra where he leads the TSO’s activities in artistic, social, and economic innovation. Adrian’s work includes digital innovation in an immersive e-learning platform and TSO’s Canada Mosaic, an unprecedented year-long celebration of Canadian music for the country’s 150th anniversary. Chosen by the Government of Canada as a Signature Initiative, this historic project reaches an audience of 8.23 million and consists of over 50 commissions with over 40 partner orchestras. In addition to his role at the TSO, Adrian has held positions as Artistic Director of Mooredale Concerts and Consulting Artistic Director of Festival of the Sound. For his work as both artist and executive, he was recognized as one of Musical America’s 30 Innovators of the Year.

As the founding cellist of the critically acclaimed Afiara Quartet, Adrian is a winner of the Concert Artist Guild International Competition, Young Canadian Musicians Award, 2nd prizes at the Munich ARD and Banff International String Quartet Competitions, and the Szekely Prize for Best Interpretation of Beethoven. With the ensemble, he has performed over 600 performances throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.

This season, Adrian teaches music and the business of the arts at The Banff Centre (faculty of the program “The Concert in the 21st Century”) and Pere Lindsay Foundation at HEC Montreal School of Business. Aside from his teaching at The Juilliard School as a teaching assistant to the celebrated Juilliard String Quartet, Adrian has also led masterclasses at schools such as Escola de Música do Estado de São Paulo, Indiana University’s Summer String Academy, San Francisco State University, the Yehudi Menuhin Seminar, Chamber Music of the Rockies, among others.

Adrian holds a Bachelor’s from the San Francisco Conservatory and an Artist Diploma from The Juilliard School. In addition, he received an MBA from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. One of two nominated by the school and faculty as a graduate who ‘epitomizes excellence’, Adrian was featured in Fortune magazine as Poets & Quant’s Best and Brightest Executive MBAs.