Dawn Posey is the BSO's new concertmaster, and an active chamber musician, teacher and performer. She has performed with the Boston Conservatory Honors Quartet, Festival A Tempo in Caracas, Venezuela, the Chamber Music Festival of Amman, Jordan, Blossom Music Festival, and Tanglewood Music Center. Additionally, she has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in Missouri, Indiana, and England.
She is a founding member of Kassia Ensemble, a new chamber music ensemble in Pittsburgh made up entirely of female performers. Kassia Ensemble seeks to empower women through quality performance, collaboration, and outreach.
Dawn is a devotee of baroque performance practice, and a frequent guest artist with Chatham Baroque. She has toured with the ensemble to Ecuador and Los Angeles.
Shu-Hsin Ko is a native of Taiwan and has performed professionally throughout the world. She started violin at the age of 7 and attended the National Institute of the Arts in Taipei. She has been involved in numerous international festivals such as Aspen Music Festival, Salzburg Mozarteum and the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.
She holds a master’s degree in violin performance from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. In NYC she has performed professionally with orchestras and bands at renowned music venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Blue Note Jazz Club. She has travelled throughout the world to play in Austria, China, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Singapore and her native Taiwan. Locally she performs with the Auburn Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony and the Bellingham Festival of Music. She is currently the assistant concertmaster for the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra and her chamber group regularly represents the orchestra at performances throughout Whatcom.
When Shu-Hsin is not practicing her violin, she battles music lessons with her three kids. Every summer she blindly follows her husband’s dream to go mountain climbing in the Alps. She plays a modern Italian violin made by Mario Gadda 1950.
Yuko Watanabe is originally from Tokyo, Japan. She has enjoyed playing chamber and orchestral music with various groups and symphonies around the nation, and currently performs with the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra as the Principal Second Violin. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, under the instruction of Victor Danchenko and Richard Field.
She completed her Masters of Music degree at Rice University under Martha Katz and Wayne Brooks. Later at the University of Houston, she was a member of the Tomatz String Quartet, while she pursued studies in music education and performance pedagogy under Lawrence Wheeler. Yuko has significant experience teaching students both violin and viola at nonprofits, public school districts, and private lesson venues.
In her free time, she enjoys gardening, working out, hiking, camping and traveling.
