Juilliard String Quartet

Areta Zhulla, Violin

Praised by the critics for her “rare emotional sensitivity and internal articulation,” Greek violinist Areta Zhulla has gained recognition as a passionate and poetic artist. She has been recently named “Young Artist of the Year” by the National Critics Association in Greece, and is a recipient of the prestigious Triandi Career Grant as well as the Tassos Prassopoulos Foundation Award. In 2018, Ms. Zhulla joins the Juilliard String Quartet as their first violinist, and will be serving on the violin and chamber music faculties at The Juilliard School.

Ms. Zhulla has appeared as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, and Asia, at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, Alice Tully Hall, Kennedy Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Arts Centre of Canada. Ms. Zhulla was a member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center, where she performed and toured regularly with some of today’s most acclaimed artists. Memorable collaborations include performances with Itzhak Perlman at Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center, as well as collaborations with legendary conductor Michel Plasson, Pinchas Zukerman, Gary Hoffman, Gilbert Kalish, Colin Carr, and members of the Cleveland, Emerson, and Cavani String Quartets. Her performances have been broadcast on PBS “Live from Lincoln Center,” The Kennedy Center Honors, and on WQXR, among other radio stations throughout the world.

A passionate educator, Ms. Zhulla has served as teaching assistant to Itzhak Perlman at Juilliard for the past two years. She is on the violin and chamber music faculties at Juilliard’s Pre-College division, and serves as chamber music faculty at the prestigious Perlman Music Program, of which she is an alumna. Ms. Zhulla is Artistic Director of the newly formed Perlman-Genesis Violin Project, a series of workshops at the Tel-Aviv Conservatory in Israel.

Ms. Zhulla holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School in New York City, where she studied with Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho, and was a recipient of the Vergotis Scholarship. Other teachers include Pinchas Zukerman, Patinka Kopec, and her father, Lefter Zhulla.

Ronald Copes, Violin

Praised by audiences and critics alike for his insightful artistry, violinist Ronald Copes has received international acclaim as concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. Having appeared as a featured performer in the Marlboro, Tanglewood, Bermuda, Cheltenham, Colorado and Olympic music festivals, Mr. Copes has toured extensively with Music From Marlboro ensembles, the Los Angeles and Dunsmuir Piano Quartets, and, since 1997, with the Juilliard String Quartet in concerts throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and North America. During the 2011-13 seasons, he and Seymour Lipkin performed cycles of the complete Beethoven Sonatas for Piano and Violin at the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival and the Juilliard School.

​He has recorded numerous solo and chamber music works for radio and television broadcast as well as for labels including Sony Classical, Orion, CRI, Klavier, Bridge, New World Records, ECM and the Musical Heritage Society. Devoting considerable energy to the development and presentation of contemporary string literature, he has worked closely with composers including Stephen Hartke and Donald Crockett, and has given the first performances of solo and chamber works by Stephen Dembski and Robert Kraft, among others. With the New York New Music Ensemble, he recorded Ralph Shapey’s Three for Six, and was presented in solo recital by the International Society of Contemporary Music in New York.

Mr. Copes has garnered prizes in several national and international competitions including the Artists’ Advisory Council International Competition, the Merriweather Post Competition and the Concours International d’Exécution Musicale in Geneva. For two decades, he served as Professor of Violin at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and, in 1997, joined the faculty of The Juilliard School, where he serves as chair of the violin department. With the JSQ and individually, Mr. Copes has coached string quartets and given master classes at Juilliard, Tanglewood and on tour. During the summer he is on the artist-faculty of the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival.

Roger Tapping, Viola

Roger Tapping joined the Juilliard Quartet and the Juilliard School viola faculty in 2013, replacing Samuel Rhodes after his 44 year tenure. Mr. Tapping had moved from London to the USA in 1995 to join the Takács Quartet. During his decade with them, their career included many Beethoven and Bartok cycles in major cities all over the world. Their Decca/London recordings, including the complete quartets of Bartók and Beethoven, placed them in Gramophone Magazine’s Hall of Fame and won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy and three more Grammy nominations, among many other awards.

​In recent years he was on the viola faculty of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he also directed the Chamber Music program. He has also taught at the Boston Conservatory and at Longy. In the summers his faculty activities include the Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, the Tanglewood String Quartet Seminar and Yellow Barn. He has also given viola master classes at Banff and at other festivals and conservatories in North America, Europe and Asia.

Born in England in 1960, Mr. Tapping played in a number of London’s leading chamber ensembles, making several highly-acclaimed CDs, before joining Britain’s longest established quartet, the Allegri Quartet. He taught at London’s Royal Academy of Music, was principal viola of the London Mozart Players, a member of the English Chamber Orchestra and a founding member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He has performed frequently as a guest with many distinguished quartets from the U.S. and Europe, and he was a member of the Boston Chamber Music Society.