Juilliard Appoints Six New College Division String Faculty

April 16, 2025, 2:39 PM · On Tuesday The Juilliard School announced the appointment of six new members to its College Division string faculty: Hilary Hahn, Midori, Stella Chen, Sheryl Staples, Mark Steinberg will join the violin faculty, and Nina Lee will join the cello faculty.

All are distinguished artists with robust performing careers, many with multiple academic appointments.

"I am delighted by the news announced today by the Juilliard School," Midori said on her Facebook page. "I look forward to working with my new students from the fall as well as with my current students at the Curtis Institute."

Midori, who studied with Dorothy DeLay at Juilliard's Pre-College division in the 1980s, performs around the world as a soloist and recitalist. She holds the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Intitute and is artistic director of Ravinia Steans Music Institute’s Piano & Strings.

Hilary Hahn, a three-time-Grammy-winning, prolific recording artist whose career as a soloist regularly brings her around the world to play with top orchestras, also is known by young violin students as the violinist on the most recent recordings of Suzuki Books 1-3. Her new role with the Juilliard School follows her earlier tenure as visiting artist in the Music Division in the 2023–24 season; she has also recently served as visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, the 2022 Chubb Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College, and artist-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

Stella Chen, who earned her doctoral degree at Juilliard in 2021, gained recognition as the winner of the 2019 Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition, after which she was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. Chen is a member of the faculty at the annual Nume Festival and Academy in Cortona, Italy, has served as visiting assistant professor of violin at Shenandoah Conservatory, and joins the faculty of the Sarasota Music Festival in 2025.

Sheryl Staples has served as principal associate concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic since 1998 and has performed as soloist with more than 45 orchestras nationwide, including The Cleveland Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Before joining the New York Philharmonic, Staples served as associate concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1996 to 1998. She began teaching at the age of 17 and has served on the violin faculties of Juilliard Pre-College, Manhattan School of Music, University of Southern California, and the Cleveland Institute of Music as well as teaching in orchestral studies at Juilliard.

Mark Steinberg, a 1985 graduate of Juillard's Pre-Colleg program who also earned his masters a Juillard in 1990, has been first violinist of the Brentano Quartet since its 1992 inception. The quartet, which is ensemble-in-residence at Yale University, has performed around the world, recorded extensively, and won many awards. Steinberg has been on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and CUNY Graduate Center and has taught at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Aspen Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Steans Institute at Ravinia, and Taos School of Music.

Cellist Nina Lee, who earned her 1997 bachelor's and 1999 masters degrees at Juilliard, joined the Brentano Quartet in 1999 and is committed to teaching chamber music. She has been on the faculty at Princeton and Columbia Universities and coaches chamber music at the Yale School of Music, where the Brentano Quartet has been in residence since 2014.

The six appointments are the result of comprehensive international searches led by Music Division faculty committees and the Office of the Provost.

"With the addition of these distinguished artists, we add to the depth and breadth of instruction we offer our students," said David Ludwig, dean and director of the Music Division. "These new faculty members share a passion for mentoring the next generation of musicians to achieve their fullest potential as young artists."

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