The founder of the NEW ARTS TRIO, Rebecca Penneys (www.rebeccapenneys.com) is Professor of Piano at Eastman School of Music, Chair of the Chautauqua Piano Department, and Visiting Artist, St. Petersburg College. She leads a distinguished career as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral soloist and teacher. In recent seasons she has appeared in East Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, Israel, South America and throughout the United States and Canada. Born in Los Angeles, Ms. Penneys has received many prestigious awards including the unprecedented Special Critics' Prize at the Seventh International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland and was twice awarded the Naumburg Award for Chamber music. Her teachers include Aube Tzerko, Leonard Stein, Rosina Lhevinne, Artur Rubinstein, Menahem Pressler, Gyorgy Sebok and Janos Starker. Current CD's are: On the Centaur label, The Voice of the Piano, (works by Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Gershwin), and The Complete Chopin Etudes; On Fleur De Son Classics, All Brahms (Op. 10, 116 & Hungarian Dances), and Recital Gems from Chautauqua (works by Bartok, Mozart, Chopin, Debussy, Balcom, Albright and Schumann-Liszt). A renowned pedagogue, she is co-author of a book entitled The Fundamentals of Flow State Learning in Music.  In 1999, JACQUES ISRAELIEVITCH joined the NEW ARTS TRIO. Born in Cannes, France he performed on French National Radio at 11 and graduated from the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 16 with three first prizes. A disciple of Henryk Szeryng and teaching assistant to Josef Gingold, he was just 23 when Georg Solti appointed him assistant concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony. Six seasons later he joined the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra as Concertmaster and held that position for 10 years. In 1988 he was appointed Concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He is in great demand as a recitalist and chamber musician and has appeared as soloist with many of the world's leading conductors including the late Georg Solti, Carlo Maria Giulini, Raymond Leppard, Jukka-Pekka Saraste & Leonard Slatkin. He also conducts and teaches regularly in North America, Europe and Japan. In 1995, in recognition of his contribution to the world d of music, he was awarded a knighthood by the French government in the order of Arts et Lettres. His recent CD's include the Juno Award nominated Suite Hebraique as well as the recent Suite Francaise and Suite Enfantine. ARIE LIPSKY was born in Haifa, Israel where he received degrees in Aeronautical Engineering and Music before serving in the Armed Forces. He was as principal cellist of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra for seventeen years and performed the major concerto repertoire in Buffalo and on tours. Mr. Lipsky studied with Leonard Rose, Pablo Casals and Alan Harris; he graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music with distinction. He was a top prizewinner in the Chicago Cello Society Competition and performed as principal cellist with the Haifa Symphony, the Cleveland Opera, and the Colorado Music Festival.  Mr. Lipsky was Resident Conductor of the Buffalo  Philharmonic for twelve years. Currently, he is Music Director of the Ann Arbor Symphony in Michigan and the Ashland Symphony in Ohio and is a frequent guest conductor with orchestras in Europe, Israel and North America. He participates in many chamber music festivals. In 1996, he joined the NEW ARTS TRIO and is Chair of the Chamber Music Department at Chautauqua. “This is a delightful team, with a collective personality that seems to sum up the joy of making music with each other, which, after all, is the essence of chamber music.