ANDREW DEWEESE, violin

Andrew DeWeese, 21, will graduate from Yale University this year with a B.A. in Classics and Certificate of Advanced Study in Chinese. Though he plans to pursue a career in foreign affairs, Andrew believes strongly in cultural diplomacy and has used his performance abilities as a musical ambassador. He has played with the Yale Symphony Orchestra for all four years of college, serving as first violinist, concertmaster for the university’s 2023 performance of Handel’s Messiah, and international tour liaison. Born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, Andrew is also violinist and founding member of the Charlotte Piano Trio, a professional chamber music ensemble dedicated to providing biannual community concerts throughout the Carolinas.

Music has taken Andrew to four continents for performance and collaborative work, including in the renowned venues of Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House. Most recently, Andrew was selected by Carnegie Hall to perform in an all-stars concert comprised of professional alumni of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA) commemorating the ensemble’s ten-year anniversary. In this first-of-a-kind performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and Gershwin’s Piano Concerto, broadcast worldwide by Deutsche Grammophon, he shared the stage with classical music stars Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Daniil Trifonov.

Andrew's international performance experience also includes a several month stint with the Taipei Civic Symphony Orchestra, culminating in a performance at the Weiwuying Concert Hall in Kaohsiung, the world’s largest single-roof performing arts theater. As tour liaison of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, he helped design the orchestra’s tour to Peru, and in the wake of an untimely coup, organized a four-concert alternative with sold-out performances spanning Central Mexico. Apart from the YSO, Andrew has performed on numerous occasions at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, both on tour and as an artist in residence in the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute. In 2020, he performed alongside internationally acclaimed tenor Andrea Bocelli for part of his North American Valentine’s Day tour.

Andrew began studying violin at the age of 4. He developed his skills under the instruction of Dr. Ernest Pereira, violinist with the Charlotte Symphony, and Marc Rovetti, assistant concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He spent six years playing with and eventually leading the Charlotte Symphony Youth Orchestra and Youth Orchestra of Charlotte. A proud alumnus of Charlotte Latin School, he played with and led the upper division orchestra for all four years of high school. Andrew also participated annually in North Carolina’s regional and all-state orchestras and nationally in the Honor Orchestra of America, which he helmed as concertmaster. In 2020, he joined Carnegie Hall’s NYO-USA, whose North American tour with Carlos Miguel Prieto and violinist Midori was ultimately canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Andrew’s dedication to music education and outreach led him to co-found the nonprofit organization Melodic Minors, a group which has brought the joy of music to numerous underserved communities in the greater Charlotte area through nearly two hundred concerts. These concerts have included performances at veterans’ hospitals, senior living centers, and Title I schools with non-existent or limited music education programs. Since then, as a Teaching Artist with the Yale School of Music’s Music in Schools Initiative, Andrew has instructed and mentored various high school students in New Haven, and in his individual capacity, an aspiring violinist from southern Ukraine.

Andrew is deeply committed to bridging his professional path in foreign affairs with a fulfilling career in music. Most recently, he has leveraged his dual experience in concert with leaders such as Nirupama Menon Rao, former foreign secretary of India and founder of the South Asian Symphony Orchestra. Andrew works closely with Ambassador Rao and plans to collaborate with the orchestra for a special performance in Mumbai in late 2024. Andrew's passion for cultural diplomacy through classical music will continue as he moves to China later this year, pursuing a master’s degree in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing as a Schwarzman Scholar. While in Beijing, he hopes to continue performing extensively, touring the country, and strengthening connections between American and Chinese classical musicians.

DREW DANSBY, cello

Drew Dansby (he/him/his), 23, is the youngest member of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and cellist of the award-winning Poiesis Quartet. He will graduate in 2024 with a B.M. in Cello Performance under Darrett Adkins and a B.A. in Chemistry with minors in Sociology and Comparative American Studies from Oberlin College and Conservatory. Originally from Charlotte, Drew is also the cellist and founding member of the Charlotte Piano Trio, which has performed for five years in venues across North Carolina. Drew previously served as principal cellist of the Verbier Festival Orchestra, one-year acting cellist in the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, and associate principal cellist of the New York String Orchestra.

With the Poiesis Quartet, Drew won the Grand Prize, Senior Strings Division Gold Medal, and the Lift Every Voice prize at the 2023 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, as well as the gold medal and BIPOC prize at the 2023 St. Paul String Quartet Competition. Having achieved these successes after forming less than a year earlier at Oberlin, Poiesis has been lauded as an “ensemble to watch” (Hyde Park Herald) with an “extraordinary, honeyed group sound” (Cleveland Classical). Highlights of the 2023-24 season include a recording project with Grammy-winning producer Elaine Martone and mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, the quartet’s New York City debut on the Schneider Series at the Mannes School of Music, a summer residency at the Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy. The Poiesis Quartet is continuing their studies in the Graduate Quartet Program at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, mentored by the Ariel Quartet. Poiesis is a queer ensemble that strives to embody accessibility in chamber music through interdisciplinary and multi-instrumental performances, educational outreach, and platforming commissions and works by emerging artists.

Drew began playing both violin and cello at the age of 4 and continue to perform both instruments. He was a member of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States for three international summer tours, including as violinist in 2018 and principal cellist in 2019, and was recognized as the first person in the history of the orchestra to be accepted on two instruments. Drew’s first orchestral experience was in the Charlotte Symphony Youth Orchestras, in which he switched each year between violin and cello for ten years. In Charlotte, Drew was a violin student of Ernest Pereira and cello student of Alan Black, both Charlotte Symphony musicians, and was a student and merit scholarship winner at Community School of the Arts for nine years.

Besides his vast orchestral and chamber experience, Drew is also accomplished as a soloist. He is one of four winners of Oberlin’s 2023 Senior Concerto Competition and performs David Baker’s Concerto for Cello and Jazz Band with the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in April 2024. Drew made his solo debut with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra at age 15, and a few months later performed with the Eastern Festival Orchestra as a winner of the Eastern Music Festival Concerto Competition. At 16, he appeared on a recital with pianist Keona Lim-Rose on the Davidson College Concert Series. At Oberlin, Drew also performed as a violin soloist on Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No. 1 with Jasper de Boor and the Musikos Chamber Orchestra. Drew has been recognized as a National YoungArts Winner and a gold medalist in the annual Cleveland Cello Society competition.

Drew is committed to using music as a tool for community building, especially through long-term educational engagement. In the summer of 2022, he founded and directed the Myers Park Summer Series, a free series of six innovative chamber music concerts fundraising for mutual aid organization Feed the Movement CLT, featuring 18 musicians from western North Carolina including Charlotte-based R&B artist Nia J. Drew is an active cello teacher; for two years he taught for Through the Staff, a national volunteer organization expanding access for young people to private music instruction. During his year in the Charlotte Symphony, Drew was a volunteer coordinator for the symphony’s after-school strings program, Project Harmony. At Oberlin, Drew was a co-founder of Ambrosia, an initiative for students of jazz, classical, and non-Western genres to collaborate and share knowledge. In high school, Drew as Artistic Director of Melodic Minors, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, coordinating volunteer musicians and repertoire for dozens of concerts at nursing homes, hospitals, after-school programs, and fundraisers.

As a chemistry major at Oberlin, Drew conducted molecular dynamics and computational chemistry research under Professors Manish Mehta and Shuming Chen, and he was awarded the Norman C. Craig Chemistry Scholarship and inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honors society as a member of the junior class. Drew has also interned as an air quality analyst at the Charlotte branch of Civil and Environmental Consultants and conducted atmospheric chemistry research with Dr. Terry Miller at The Ohio State University.

In the 2023-24 season, Drew performs on a 1795 Joseph Klotz Mittenwald cello, generously loaned by Oberlin Conservatory, and a 1956 Luigi Lanaro cello made in Mexico City, generously loaned by Jonathan Solars Fine Violins.

CRISTIAN MAKHULI, piano

Cristian Makhuli, 19, is a first-year undergraduate student at the Curtis Institute of Music, under the tutelage of Mr. Robert McDonald. His musical journey began at the age of nine when his parents could no longer handle his outrageous riffs on his 61-note electric keyboard. At 13 years old, Cristian made his orchestral debut with the Winston Salem Symphony. In 2022, he was recognized as a YoungArts winner and a National MTNA Competition Finalist. Cristian is scheduled to perform Liszt’s Concerto No. 1 with the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra during their upcoming season. Born and raised in Charlotte, NC, Cristian is the pianist and founding member of the Charlotte Piano Trio.

This summer, Cristian will attend Les Écoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau as the Robert Casadesus fellow studying with Robert Levin. While in France, he will compete in the Prix Ravel alongside his Curtis classmates Anaïs Feller and Carson Ling-Efird, who together form the Orbit Trio. He will also be a fellow at the 2024 Gilmore Festival, where he will study with Piotr Anderszewski. This past summer, Cristian received the Ronit Amir Lowenthal Scholarship to study as a fellow at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA, where he studied with Jeremy Denk. At Music Academy, he had the privilege to be part of the World Premier of Samuel Carl Adams’ Études in Hahn Hall. He has spent previous summers at the Aspen Music Festival and the SouthEastern Piano Festival

Prior to his studies at Curtis, Cirstian went to high school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where he studied with Dr. Dmitri Vorobiev. His childhood mentor was Dr. Paul Nitsch from Queens University of Charlotte who profoundly inspired his artistic curiosity. Besides playing piano, Cristian enjoys studying math and physics, and playing sports.

He is the William A. Horn M.D. fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music.