Painting Music

Cellist Sophie Shao, winner of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and top prizes at the Rostropovich and Tchaikovsky competitions, is a versatile and passionate artist whose performances the New York Times has described as “eloquent, powerful,” the LA Times noted as “impressive” and the Washington Post called “deeply satisfying

Vincent Inconiglios is a contemporary American artist. He has lived and worked on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District of New York since 1969. He was an artist-in-residence at the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio and a visiting artist at the Living Arts Program — a multi-cultural creative project in art, music, dance, theatre, and writing. Inconiglios’s art has been featured in regional and national exhibitions. Inconiglios had his first solo exhibition in NewYork City in 1972 and in Europe in 2003. He was one of the selected artists of “Ten Downtown” in the 1970s. His work has been recognized by Barbara Rose in New York Magazine, reviewed in Artforum, and seen in The New York Times. Inconiglios’s works are held in public and private collections in the United States and abroad, including JPMorgan Chase, Norton Simon, and AT&T. 

Oskar Espina Ruiz is associate professor of clarinet at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he teaches students ranging from high school through post-graduate degrees. Born in Bilbao, Spain, his first musical training came at an early age, performing on Basque folk instruments. He later pursued the traditional conservatory training as a clarinetist and appeared with the Bilbao Symphony as its youngest member from age sixteen. He came to New York City to further his studies in clarinet at Mannes School of Music, and later won the top clarinet prizes at the Artists International and Olga Koussevitzky International Competitions. He holds an MFA from Purchase College and a DMA from Stony Brook University, where his major teachers were Charles Neidich and Ayako Oshima. Oskar Espina Ruiz has been the Music Mountain’s artistic director since 2016.