Northern Lights
Chamber Music Institute

sun, August 9 – wed, August 19, 2026

You are invited to participate in 11 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.

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.

Leslie Shank, Violin

Leslie Shank was a member of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for 30 years, 24 years as assistant concertmaster, and gave her Carnegie’s Weill Hall debut as a winner of the Artists International Competition. She has performed at numerous festivals, serving as concertmaster of the Music in the Mountains Festival and the Britt Festival. She toured the East Coast with Musicians from Marlboro and was a Visiting Violin Professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison for the 2014-15 school year. Her recordings include the complete Bartok Sonatas, and a CD of violin-guitar music with her husband, Joseph Hagedorn.

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 Orsen, Viola

Daniel Orsen is a member of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) and has performed as soloist with the SPCO and other ensembles along with festival appearances at Krzyzowa, Ravinia, Prussia Cove, Verbier, and the Perlman Music Program. His recordings of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Wagner’s Nightmare - an album of music Wagner would not have liked - can be heard on all good music distribution services. Mr. Orsen was taught and mentored by members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Credo, and the Perlman Music Program before his studies at the Oberlin Conservatory and the New England Conservatory.

Alice Yoo, cello

Alice Yoo is the Co-Artistic director of the Denver Chamber Music Festival and is on the faculty of Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival and Boulder Cello Festival. A sought after chamber musician, she has toured with the Musicians from Marlboro among other festival appearances and has worked closely with many of today’s outstanding composers. Her previous teaching positions include the University of Denver Lamont School of Music, Colorado State University, CU-Boulder College of Music, and Bard Conservatory’s Preparatory Division. Ms. Yoo currently resides in Madison, WI and has given masterclasses across the United States.

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)