A devoted educator, Mr. Smith serves on the oboe and chamber music faculties of Stony Brook University, the Manhattan School of Music and Purchase College. His festival appearances include Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Lucerne, Bowdoin, Orlando, Stift, Schleswig-Holstein, Stellenbosch, Bay Chamber Concerts, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Spoleto USA; he has performed with the St. Lawrence, Orion, and Parker string quartets and recorded for the Nonesuch, Bridge, Mode, and Kairos labels.  Mr. Smith holds a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music and Bachelors of Arts (Political Science) and Music degrees from Northwestern University. He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Mendelssohn Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany and is an alumnus of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. Mr. Smith’s principal teachers are Stephen Taylor, Christian Wetzel, Humbert Lucarelli, and Ray Still.

He has collaborated with many of the world’s finest string ensembles such as the St. Lawrence, Brentano, Borromeo, Pacifica, Daedalus, and Ying quartets, and has also shared the stage with sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Elizabeth Futral, Heidi Grant Murphy, and Dawn Upshaw, and many other notable instrumentalists. He has championed Osvaldo Golijov’s Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind around the world and commissioned the theater work Orpheus and Euridice by Ricky Ian Gordon, which was presented by Great Performers at Lincoln Center in 2005. He was a winner of the Young Concert Artist International Auditions, and has participated in numerous music festivals in the US and abroad.

Kozasa's solo career took off when she won the 2011 Primrose International Viola Competition, where she also captured awards for Best Chamber Music and Commissioned Work Performances. Following the competition, she joined the Astral Artists Roster and became a grant recipient from the S&R Foundation, an organization recognizing and supporting young aspiring artists of all mediums. Most recently, she commissioned a work by Brooklyn composer Paul Wiancko for viola and cello, which she premiered in Washington D.C. at the S&R Foundation.

Roman is also a composer, collaborator (most recently with Anna Deavere Smith), educator (via his Popper Project video series), and curator (Artistic Director of Seattle Town Hall’s TownMusic series). He has performed all over the world—from refugee camps and HIV clinics in Africa to the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and the U.S. State Department (with Yo-Yo Ma for national and international leaders). He plays an 1899 cello, lent to him by Giulio Degani of Venice.

Burns has appeared at Yellow Barn, both as a summer participant and as an artist-is-residence, and has performed with the Borromeo String Quartet as a winner of their annual Guest Artist Award competition. Burns attended the New England Conservatory for her undergraduate studies with Donald Palma, and pursued her graduate studies at Boston University under the tutelage of Ed Barker.