Guest Artist Recital: Laurie Smukler, violin and Qing Jiang, piano

Guest Artist Recital: Laurie Smukler, violin, and Qing Jiang, piano
Saturday, December 5, 2026, at 4:00 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space

Join violinist Laurie Smukler and pianist Qing Jiang for an afternoon of Brahms, featuring all three of his Violin Sonatas.

Violinist Laurie Smukler, praised for her “powerful and deeply affecting” artistry, has a career spanning chamber music, solo performances, artistic direction, and teaching. With her husband of over 40 years, Ira Weller, she was a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet. As the ensemble’s first violinist for eight years, she performed across the United States and recorded works by Schoenberg, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, and Mozart.

Smukler has taught at Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival since 1997 and became its Artistic Director in 2016. Since 2014, she has served on the faculty at Juilliard, teaching violin, coaching chamber music groups, and co-directing the String Quartet Survey. She previously taught at the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes, SUNY Purchase, and the Bard Conservatory of Music.

Pianist Qing Jiang, praised for her “spirited” playing and “vigorous and passionate” performances, has appeared as a soloist at Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, and Snape Maltings Hall in the U.K. Her chamber music collaborators have included Itzhak Perlman, Joel Krosnick, David Shifrin, and the Juilliard, Shanghai, Jasper, Aeolus, and Parker string quartets. She has performed extensively with Smukler, including on a multi-city tour of China, and has appeared at festivals including Ravinia, Britten-Pears, Music@Menlo, Garth Newel, Yellow Barn, Interlochen, Perlman Music Program, and Aspen.

Jiang has worked with composers Jennifer Higdon, Jörg Widmann, and Colin Matthews, and commissioned works by Shulamit Ran, Zhou Tian, Juri Seo, Eric Nathan, and Daniel Temkin. She is an Associate Professor of Piano and Director of Collaborative Keyboard Arts at Florida State University and a faculty member at Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival. She previously taught at Curtis, NEC Prep, and Bucknell.

Free and open to the public.

For more information, call 845-758-7196 or email [email protected].