Shannon Thomas is the Assistant Professor of Violin at Florida State University. Shannon earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she was Paul Kantor’s teaching assistant. She received a Master of Music at Yale University and a Bachelor of Music at Vanderbilt University, and also pursued graduate work at Arizona State University, where she was the first student to be accepted into the Artist Diploma program. She studied chamber music with Peter Salaff, Merry Peckham, George Sopkin, Christopher von Baeyer, Laurie Smukler and members of the Juilliard, Blair, Tokyo, and Cavani String Quartets. Her principal teachers have included Paul Kantor, Cornelia Heard, Jonathan Swartz, Robert Lipsett, and Ani Kavafian. For more information, visit shannonthomasviolin.com.

She is joined by pianist Stinjn DeCock! As a student, Dr. De Cock was admitted to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels at the unusually young age of fifteen in the studio of Evgeny Moguilevsky. He was trained in the tradition of Russian pianism, as Moguilevky himself is a former student of Moscow Conservatory's legendary teacher, Heinrich Neuhaus, whose formidable students included Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, and Radu Lupu. Dr. De Cock graduated from the Royal Conservatory with a Premier Prix, and holds a Master’s Degree and Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, which he pursued under tutelage of Logan Skelton. Dr. De Cock has also received guidance from artists such as Claude Frank, Robert McDonald, Yehoved Kaplinsky, Julian Martin, Matti Raekallio, Boris Slutsky, Malcolm Bilson, Martin Katz, Margot Garrett, and Marilyn Horne. For more information, visit www.stijndecock.com.