Guest Artists

Guest Artists

Joseph Lin, violin

Joseph Lin, the newly-appointed first violinist of the renowned Juilliard String Quartet, has earned broad recognition for his mature artistry. He was awarded First Prize at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition in 1996 at the age of seventeen, and was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts the same year. In 1999 he became the youngest musician ever to receive the Pro Musicis International Award. In 2000 he won one of the top prizes at the Hanover International Violin Competition, and the following year he won First Prize at the inaugural Michael Hill World Violin Competition in New Zealand. An active concerto soloist, Joseph Lin has appeared with the Santa Fe Symphony, New Japan Philharmonic, Sapporo Symphony, Taiwan National Symphony, Kiev Chamber Orchestra, Moravian Philharmonic, and the Auckland Philharmonic. Other concerto engagements have included the Fort Worth Symphony with Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the Orchestra of St Luke's with Peter Oundjian, the Boston Symphony with Seiji Ozawa, the Boston Pops conducted by Keith Lockhart and the orchestras of Grand Rapids and Kansas City.

Joseph Lin began his violin studies with Mary Canberg. He attended the Juilliard School Pre-College Division as a student of Shirley Givens and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College while studying violin with Lynn Chang.

Tharanga Goonetilleke, soprano

Tharanga Goonetilleke is a native of Sri Lanka. She graduated with her Artist Diploma for Opera Studies from The Juilliard Opera Center, New York, NY in 2010. She also obtained her Master of Music degree in Voice and Opera at The Juilliard School, where she was the first woman from Sri Lanka ever to be accepted, and her Bachelor of Music degree from Converse College, Spartanburg, SC. She is also an Associate of the Trinity College of Music, London, England. Tharanga's operatic experience includes performing the roles of Mimi in La Bohème (Puccini), Lauretta and Nella in Gianni Schicchi (Puccini), Pamina and Erste Dame in Die Zauberflöte (Mozart), the title role of Iphigénie en Aulide (Gluck), Despina in Così fan tutte (Mozart), Antonia in Les contes d'Hoffmann (Offenbach), Venus in Orphée aux enfers (Offenbach), Genevra in Ariodante (Handel), and Blanche in Dialogues des carmélites (Poulenc). Last summer she sang La princesse and La bergère in L'enfant et les sortilèges (Ravel) for the Castleton Festival, VA under the baton of Lorin Maazel. Tharanga made her New York City Opera debut in 2010 as Resi in Intermezzo (R. Strauss) under the baton of George Manahan.

Her most recent concert highlights include the soprano solo in Mendelssohn's Incidental Music to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Dame Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons as narrators (Toronto, Canada and Washington, DC) and the Castleton Festival's Bizet extravaganza where she performed Michaela alongside Denise Graves as Carmen - both concerts conducted by Lorin Maazel. This month she performed Songs of the Wayfarer by Gustav Mahler with the Argento Chamber Ensemble.

In her home country, Tharanga made her solo debut with The Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka (SOSL) after winning the Concerto Competition of Sri Lanka in 1998. In addition, she has won the Trinity College of Music examination prizes in singing for three consecutive years, and for this achievement she was awarded the Yamaha Trophy in 1997. Since then she has reappeared as soloist of SOSL in 1999, 2000 and 2011. In the US she has been adjudged a winner in both New York and South Carolina districts at The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She is also a winner of the Palmetto Opera competition in Columbia, SC. And at Juilliard, she was awarded the Makiko Narumi Memorial Prize.