Artist Profiles

member of the Brooklyn-based chamber orchestra The Knights. Recent projects include Silkroad’s Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home, an upcoming release of the Brahms and Beethoven violin concertos with Gil Shaham and The Knights, the world premiere tour of Osvaldo Golijov’s Falling Out of Time (commissioned by Silkroad), as well as an international tour of the new performance-art piece The Head & the Load created by South African visual artist William Kentridge.

Conley can also be heard on The Knights’s album Azul, featuring Silkroad founder Yo-Yo Ma. As a studio musician, he has performed on multiple soundtracks including True Grit, Moonrise Kingdom, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and the Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Conley studied at Rice University with Paul Ellison and in Paris, France, with Francois Rabbath.

Emi Ferguson flute

Emi Ferguson is excited to be back at the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. A 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Ferguson can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including 2022 Ojai Festival Music Director AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), the Handel and Haydn Society, the New York New Music Ensemble, and the Manhattan Chamber Players. Her recordings celebrate her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present. Her debut album, Amour Cruel, an indie-pop song cycle inspired by the music of the 17thcentury French court, was released by Arezzo

Music in September 2017, spending four weeks on the classical, classical crossover, and world music Billboard charts. Her 2019 album Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes, a collaboration with continuo band Ruckus, debuted at #1 on the iTunes classical charts and #2 on the Billboard classical charts, and was called “blindingly impressive ... a fizzing, daring display of personality and imagination” by the New York Times A passionate chamber musician of works new and old, Ferguson has been a featured performer at the Marlboro, Lucerne, Ojai, Lake Champlain, Bach Virtuosi, and June in Buffalo festivals, often premiering new works by composers of our time. Ferguson has spoken and performed at several TEDx events and has been featured on media outlets including the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, WQXR, and Vox talking about how music relates to our world today. As part of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, she created the series “This Composer is SICK!” with Max Fine that explored the impact of syphilis on composers Franz Schubert, Bedrich Smetana, and Scott Joplin, in addition to guest hosting WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase. This summer, her book co-written with David and Nicholas Csicsko, Iconic Composers, will be released by Trope Publishing, introducing kids and adults to 50 incredible composers. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York City.

Born in Japan, Mario Gotoh is recognized as a Grammy Award winner, sought for distinguished roles as an innovative and creative violinist, violist, passionate educator, and composer with a remarkably unique style of expression in all genres, performing worldwide. An avid interdisciplinary collaborator, Dr. Gotoh performs worldwide as a member of the Silkroad Ensemble (founded by Yo-Yo Ma), and is also a member of The Knights, a collective based in NYC. Dr. Gotoh has performed at the Park Avenue Armory, Holland Festival, Tate Modern, and Ruhr Festival as an original featured actor in William Kentridge’s large-scale production, The Head & The Load, about Africans in the First World War. Dr. Gotoh frequently performs as soloist, concertmaster, and principal of numerous ensembles. She regularly premieres and records new works; and also records and performs with numerous renowned artists and on soundtracks, including: Succession, Moonlight, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, Roger Waters, Sting, Doja Cat, Ed Sheeran - performing live on The Grammys, SNL, MTV VMAs, Colbert, Letterman, The White House, Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, Elbphilharmonie, Musikverein Vienna, Newport Folk Festival, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Aspen, Banff, to name a few. She was the original violinist-violist in Hamilton: An American Musical on Broadway, Original Cast Recording, and Movie. Dr. Gotoh holds dual-degree Doctorates in both Violin and Viola Performance. She is currently on faculty at Longy School of Music of Bard College, teaches workshops through Silkroad Connect and Kennedy Center’s Turnaround Arts, and has taught workshops and classes in Taiwan, China, Canada and colleges and institutions across the US. Dr. Gotoh is inspired by her community activism, language, literature, cooking, writing, visual arts, film, swimming, and exploring cultures everywhere.