Northern Lights
Chamber Music Institute

Tues, August 13 – Thurs, August 22, 2024

You are invited to participate in 10 fun-filled days of invigorating music making in a warm, nurturing environment. Experience exciting outdoor activities including hiking, canoeing, swimming, campfires, and sauna in your free time.
(Don’t forget your swimming suit!)

The Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute (NLCMI) offers a unique artistic experience of intense chamber music study for advanced high school through graduate school age violinists, violists, and cellists set in the pristine and breathtaking Boundary Waters.

Ariana Kim, Artistic Director & Violin

Ariana made her debut with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra as a teen and presented her Carnegie recital debut during her graduate studies at Juilliard. A winner of the 2018 Grand M-Prize and 2019 GRAMMY nominee as a violinist of the Aizuri Quartet, Ariana is a long-time member of The Knights and serves as the Co-Artistic Director of the Paesaggi Musicali Toscani in Italy and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota. Ariana is also a violin professor at Cornell University and appears widely in the US and abroad as a soloist and chamber musician.

During her 2021 sabbatical academic year, she was a visiting violin professor at Seoul National University in Korea where she also devoted her time to studying Korean traditional music including the gayageum. Ariana also periodically appears as a program host for the Minnesota Orchestra.

Sally Chisholm, Viola

Sally Chisholm is a viola professor and Artist-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Ms.Chisholm was a founding member of the Thouvenel String Quartet and in 1991, joined the Pro Arte String Quartet at the UW-Madison, which has toured the United States (including a performance at the White House), Korea and Japan. Ms. Chisholm frequently serves as Principal Violist of the Chicago Philharmonic and appeared at numerous festivals in Europe and Japan. She participates as a senior artist at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont each summer.

Daniel Kim, Viola

Daniel joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2016 and was appointed 3rd chair of the viola section during the following season. He has participated in the festivals of Tanglewood, Pacific Music, Lucerne, Aspen, and Marlboro among others, and has toured with “Musicians from Marlboro” nationally. He was also in residence with El Sistema in Caracas and appeared on Sesame Street with conductor Alan Gilbert. A participating artist in the BSO’s Concerts for Very Young People, he was also one of the first musicians to participate in the BSO-Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra musician exchange, joining the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany during the 2018-19 season. Recently Mr. Kim joined the Boston University faculty and makes frequent appearances as a chamber musician including with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players.

Michelle Djokic, cello

GRAMMY*-nominated cellist Michelle Djokic is the founder and artistic director of Concordia Chamber Players based in New Hope, PA since 1997, and recently launched a multidisciplinary performing arts space in Sand City, CA called “SandBox”. In 2017, she established Musikiwest that harnesses the collaborative power of chamber music. Michelle is a member of the New Century Chamber Orchestra and served as associate principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony for two seasons. She received her B.M and M.M from the Juilliard School where she studied with Leonard Rose and Channing Robbins.

Above the lake, within the woods, beneath the call of ravens, a violinist sways with her notes in the breeze beside her music stand. Along the shoreline, waves break against a boathouse where a chamber quartet rehearses Beethoven inside. Nearby, a squirrel lobs a pine cone at the improv fiddlers on the dining hall deck below.

It’s nature and music in tune — and inescapably integral to the Northern Lights Chamber Music Institute, an educational arm of the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota.

–Scott Stowell, Star Tribune (2018)