Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Naomi spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Naomi is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for her work, including the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle, the Lavan Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Carity Randall Prize, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and many Pushcart Prizes. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and she was a Witter Bynner Fellow. From 2010 to 2015 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018, she was awarded the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. Naomi was the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate from 2019-2022.

 

Daniel Chong, founding first violinist of the GRAMMY Award-winning Parker Quartet, he has garnered wide recognition for his performances in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Musikverein, and Wigmore Hall. His recent solo engagements include appearances at National Sawdust in New York City, Seoul Arts Center, and Jordan Hall in Boston. Daniel has received several awards and prizes such as the Cleveland Quartet Award and top prizes at the Concert Artists Guild Competition and the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition. In addition to being both a participant and a faculty member at Yellow Barn, Daniel has performed at major music festivals including the Marlboro Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Mostly Mozart, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the Perigord Noir Music Festival. He has worked closely with composers György Kurtág, Augusta Read Thomas, Helmut Lachenmann, and Chaya Czernowin. Daniel currently serves as Professor of the Practice at Harvard University, and in 2025 was appointed Co-Artistic Director of the Concord Chamber Music Society.

 

Jessica Bodner is the founding violist of the Parker Quartet (winners of the GRAMMY Award for Chamber Music Performance), and has appeared with the Quartet and as an individual at Carnegie Hall, 92nd Street Y, Library of Congress, Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, and Seoul Arts Center, and has appeared at festivals including Yellow Barn, Edinburgh International Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Moab Music Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Denver Chamber Music Festival, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Perigord Noir, Monte Carlo Spring Arts Festival, San Miguel de Allende, Istanbul’s Cemal Recit Rey, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hitzacker, and Heidelberg String Quartet Festival. In 2025 she was appointed Co-Artistic Director of the Concord Chamber Music Society. Jessica has held visiting teaching positions at New England Conservatory and Longy School of Music, has been on faculty at Yellow Barn and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and is currently a faculty member of Harvard University's Department of Music as Professor of the Practice in conjunction with the Parker Quartet's appointment as Blodgett Quartet-in-Residence.

 

Daniel Anastasio is a soloist and chamber musician based in San Antonio, Texas. As Artistic Director of several organizations including Agarita and the San Antonio Chamber Music Society, his programs have included collaborations with dancers, writers, museums, photographers, glass-blowers, and more. As a performer with a diverse skillset, he has performed Bach’s Goldberg Variations on harpsichord one week, and premiered a multimedia work by Rome Prize-winning contemporary composer Christopher Stark on MIDI keyboard the next. He is the co-founder and pianist of Unheard-of Ensemble, a group that creates engaging interdisciplinary works in direct collaboration with emerging artists and composers across the United States, and tours actively. An Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Keyboard Studies at San Antonio College, Daniel received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Music and Philosophy from Cornell University under Xak Bjerken, a Master of Music degree from Juilliard under Jerome Lowenthal, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University, where he studied with Gilbert Kalish and Christina Dahl.