The Juilliard School Announces New Faculty Appointments

Six new artists will join the faculty, including VC Artist Stella Chen, Hilary Hahn, and Midori

The Juilliard School, in New York, has recently announced new string faculty, who will begin this coming fall. They are violinists Stella Chen, Hilary Hahn, Midori, Sheryl Staples, and Mark Steinberg, plus cellist Nina Lee.

“With the addition of these distinguished artists, we add to the depth and breadth of instruction we offer our students,” says David Ludwig, dean and director of the Music Division. “These new faculty members share a passion for mentoring the next generation of musicians to achieve their fullest potential as young artists.”

A graduate of Juilliard, American violinist and VC Artist Stella Chen is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. The winner of the 2019 Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition, Chen is a member of the faculty at the annual Nume Festival and Academy in Cortona, Italy, has served as visiting assistant professor of violin at Shenandoah Conservatory, and joins the faculty of the Sarasota Music Festival in 2025.

Three-time Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn returns to Juilliard following her earlier tenure as visiting artist in the Music Division in the 2023–24 season. She has also recently served as visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, the 2022 Chubb Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College, and artist-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. A champion of works by more than 40 living composers, Hahn has received the Avery Fisher Prize, Musical America’s Artist of the Year title, and the Herbert von Karajan and Glasshütte Original Music Festival awards.

In addition to performing and recording regularly, Midori serves as the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and as the Distinguished Visiting Artist at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Among her accolades are being honored as a United Nations Messenger of Peace and being named in the 2021 Kennedy Center Honors. She also holds honorary doctorates from Smith College, Yale University, Longy School of Music, and Shenandoah University.  Additionally, she is the founder of the New York City-based Midori & Friends, the Japan-based MUSIC SHARING, as well as the Orchestra Residencies Program (ORP), and Partners in Performance (PiP).

Another Juilliard graduate, cellist Nina Lee joined the Brentano Quartet in 1999, with which she has performed throughout North America, Europe Australia, New Zealand, China, and Japan. She has been on the faculty at Princeton and Columbia Universities and coaches chamber music at the Yale School of Music, where the Brentano Quartet has been in residence since 2014. Regular summer performing and teaching appearances include the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Taos School of Music. She has also served on the jury of the Salzburg International Quartet Competition in 2023 and the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition jury in 2025.

A fellow Brentano Quartet member, Mark Steinberg attended Juilliard and has served as the group's first violinist since its inception, in 1992. The quartet, which is ensemble in residence at Yale University, has won many awards, including the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the inaugural Cleveland Quartet award. Steinberg has appeared often in trio and duo concerts with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, and will revisit the complete Mozart Sonatas starting in 2025 with pianist Jonathan Biss.

Violinist Sheryl Staples joined the New York Philharmonic as principal associate concertmaster in 1998. She made her solo debut with the Philharmonic in 1999, performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with conductor Kurt Masur. Prior to that, Staples served as associate concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra from 1996 to 1998. She has served on the violin faculties of Juilliard Pre-College, Manhattan School of Music, USC, and the Cleveland Institute of Music — as well as teaching in orchestral studies at Juilliard.