Born in London, Roger Chase studied at the Royal College of Music with Bernard Shore and in Canada with Steven Staryk, also working for a time with the legendary Lionel Tertis, whose famed Montagnana viola he now plays.
He made his début with the English Chamber Orchestra in 1979, and in 1987 appeared as a soloist at a Promenade Concert at The Royal Albert Hall in London. He has since appeared as soloist or chamber musician in major cities throughout the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Middle East, most of Eastern and all of Western Europe and Scandinavia.
Mr. Chase has been a member of several eminent ensembles including the Nash Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Esterházy Baryton Trio, Quartet of London, Hausmusik of London, and the London Chamber Orchestra. He has been invited to play as principal violist with every major British orchestra and many others in north America and Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has recorded for EMI, CRD, Hyperion, Cala, Virgin, and Floating Earth Records, demonstrating his diverse interests by playing with a folk group on amplified viola, as a soloist on a historical instrument, and as an exponent of the avant-garde.
Roger Chase has taught at the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall School, the Royal Northern College of Music, and Oberlin College. He currently teaches at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.
Born in the small Japanese coastal town of Hazu, Michiko Otaki began her early academic and musical training in Japan. College and graduate study was pursued in the United States, at the San Francisco Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Miami, where she received her doctorate.
Ms. Otaki has been active as a chamber musician, as well as a solo performer and has performed in major cities in the United States and abroad, including Washington's National Gallery, Carnegie Hall’s Weil Recital Hall, The Chamber Music Hall of the Warsaw (Poland) Philharmonic, and Pic-Staiger Hall at Northwestern University.
In 1988, Ms. Otaki began a unique collaboration with the Warsaw Wind Quintet with whom she has made ten extensive tours of the United States and Europe, performing nearly 200 concerts in major cities such as New York, Boston, Atlanta, Cologne, Freiburg, and Cracow. She has recorded Mozart Concerti with the Brno Chamber Orchestra, with whom she toured the United States three times.