The Idylle Ensemble

Sunday Classical Concert

Enjoy a classical concert featuring Mozart's Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor and Schumann's Piano Quartet in E-flat Major.

The Idylle Ensemble is composed of Sam Sharp, violin; Willie McLellan, viola; Alexa Muhly, cello; and Mio Hagle, piano.

Samuel Sharp, a Chicago native, maintains an eclectic career as a performer, teacher, composer, arranger, and transcriber. As a performer, he appears regularly with a variety of local orchestras as well as his original project Abbey Bowed, a string quartet re-envisioning of the famous Beatles' album Abbey Road, now available as an album. He has had a long and successful teaching career as well and his work as a composer has produced a considerable catalogue of works mostly for strings, and his artistic focus recently has coalesced around exploring ways to engage contemporary music with issues of climate change and climate anxiety.

Willie McLellan has performed in the Chicago music scene for the last decade. He is an experienced orchestral musician having played with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Illinois Symphony, and Elgin Symphony. In 2019 he co-founded the Kolmar Music Collective, a mixed-ensemble that performs works of diverse and underrepresented composers. In the summer of 2021 he was a featured performer in a string quartet at the American Suzuki Institute in Stevens Point.       

Cellist Alexa Muhly holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music. She has performed extensively in the United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, and Lithuania, and is an active orchestral and chamber musician in the Chicago area. Ms. Muhly received early recognition as first-prize winner in the Iowa Center for the Arts competition as well as prize winner in the Jugend Musiziert national competition in Germany.  She was the cellist for the new music ensemble Opus 21 with whom she has performed at Symphony Space and Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Mio Isoda-Hagle has been heard in concerts as soloist and chamber musician throughout her native Japan, United States, France, Belgium, and England. Mio’s studies were at the Juilliard School, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Conservatoire National Superieur de Danse et de Musique de Paris, where she received the Premier Prix in 1991, and the Mannes College of Music, where she completed her Master’s Degree as a student of Jacob Lateiner. Mio teaches at the Merit School of Music in Chicago, and performs by herself, in chamber music, and as a duo with her husband, Matthew Hagle.

Upcoming events