2026 Sacred Music Florida Judges

Korean-American violinist Dr. Brian Bak enjoys a career as a sought after performer and teacher. Dr. Bak received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School, where he was a recipient of the C.V. Starr scholarship, the Juilliard Merit Scholarship, and the Samsung scholarship. He received the prestigious Artist Diploma from Yale University, and his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from Stony Brook University. His principal mentors have included Hyo Kang, David Chan, and Philip Setzer.

Bak has been featured as a soloist with the Tampa Bay Symphony, the Central Florida Philharmonic, the Sewanee Festival Orchestra, the Florida Young Artists Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, and others. He was a winner of the 2016 Stony Brook University Concerto Competition and a featured soloist with the Stony Brook Symphony. A versatile instrumentalist, Bak is also an accomplished cellist, and has performed with the Florida Young Artists Orchestra and the Chicago Chamber Orchestra as a soloist on cello. 

An avid chamber musician, Bak is a 2 time winner of the Ackerman Chamber Music Competition. He has collaborated with renowned performers and ensembles such as the Emerson String Quartet, flautist Carol Wincenc, harpist Nancy Allen, and several members of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. As a founding member of both the Deka String Quartet and Trio de Novo, he has held chamber music residencies at the Banff Centre, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the New Music for Strings Festival in Aarhus, Denmark. With the Deka Quartet, Bak served as an Artist-in-Residence through the Rockefeller Institute of Government, performing and teaching students from SUNY Schenectady and the Empire State Youth Orchestra. Trio de Novo has been praised as “a talented group who performed with detailed intensity… exceptional poise” (Sequenza 21). He has also often served as concertmaster of the New York Classical Players, leading performances and recordings, including for the album “Samuel Adler: Music for Chamber Orchestra” on Toccata Classics. Bak has also performed with the International Sejong Soloists, and the New Asia Chamber Music Society. He has been a featured guest artist for the Las Vegas Music and Wine Festival, and the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival.

Dr. Bak has held principal positions with the Juilliard Orchestra, the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, and the Yale Philharmonia. He was a selected member of The Juilliard Orchestra's China Tour in 2008, and in 2011 he was appointed by the legendary conductor Lorin Maazel to be the principal violinist of the Castleton Festival Orchestra for a series of critically acclaimed performances.

Bak has been a part of numerous renowned summer music festivals, including the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, Schlern International Music Festival in Italy, Aspen Music Festival and School, the Kennedy Center Summer Music Institute, the Castleton Festival, Music Academy of the West, Great Mountains Music Festival and School, the Pacific Music Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. Dedicated to musical outreach, Bak was a member of Lincoln Center's Community Outreach Program and was a recipient of the Gluck Community Fellowship.

As an educator, Dr. Bak has been a faculty member at the New York Music School, Music & Art of Long Island, the St. Andrew’s Conservatory, and was a Teaching Artist at Yale University. Dr. Bak’s students have won top prizes at several competitions, including the International Grande Music Competition, the Rondo Young Artist Competition, the Prima Volta Music Competition, the Crescendo International Music Competition, the Florida Federation of Music Clubs, and the New York Young Virtuoso Competition, and have been accepted into elite pre-college programs, youth orchestras, NYO2, and All-State orchestras.

In addition to his musical achievements, Bak has faced profound personal challenges in dealing with a spinal cord injury. His journey through recovery has shaped his perspective on resilience, artistry, and the healing power of music. Dr. Bak often gives lectures on his experiences and how they have shaped his understanding of neuromuscular function as it relates to playing instruments.

Brian Bak performs on a 2015 Samuel Zygmuntowicz violin.

As an organist and composer, Phoon Yu is active both in Singapore and in the United States. In Singapore, he has performed as a soloist multiple times in the Victoria Concert Hall Organ Series since 2015, as well as at the Esplanade –Theatres by the Bay and St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Previous solo recitals in the U.S. include performances in New York, NY (St. Thomas’s Church at Fifth Avenue and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine), Winter Park, FL (All Saints EpiscopalChurch), Lloyd Harbor, NY (Seminary of the Immaculate Conception), Scarsdale, NY (Hitchcock Presbyterian Church), and in Baltimore, MD (St. David’s Episcopal Church), while he performed in 2024 alongside the Orlando Sings Symphonic Chorus and the Solaria Players for their productions of J.S. Bach’s B Minor Mass

and Fauré’s Requiem in D minor in Orlando, FL. His début album, SEVEN – Organ Music of Singapore, featuring the solo works of up-and-coming Singaporean composers, was released by Centaur Records in April 2022. In November that same year, Phoon Yu performed alongside his co-composer Jonathan Shin with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony Chorus, the Singapore Symphony Youth Choir, and the Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir for the premiere of Illuminations – Symphony for Organ, Chorus, and Orchestra, which was commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the Esplanade. 

Phoon Yu’s performance career as an organist is supplemented by his composing and arranging ability. His compositions – for various solo instruments and chamber groups – have been performed and premiered across various venues in Singapore, China, Finland, and the U.S.. Aside from

Illuminations, notable premieres include his Straits in Sepia – Duets for 4 Hands and Feet for organ duet in Victoria Concert Hall in 2025 (commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra); his A Transi for the Common Man for acoustic guitar, ‘cello, erhu, guzheng, and pipa in the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (commissioned by the TENG Company) and his cantata for tenor and piano

Dream A Granted Sky, based on the poetry of Felix Cheong, both in 2024; and his Piece no. 5 for Organ and Trumpet, premiered in 2023 at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church in New York City. His arrangements have been performed by the Orchestra of the Music Makers, Spot Pocket Opera Theatre, The Opera People, Singapore Sounds, the SMU Symphonia, and the NUS Chinese Orchestra. His Three Organ Anthems were published and released by Muziksea, a Southeast Asian publisher specializing in choral music, in 2020. 

Phoon Yu was previously a C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School, pursing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance under the tutelage of Paul Jacobs. For his dissertation on Handel and Porpora’s settings of Siroe, re di Persia in connection to Jacobitism, Phoon Yu was awarded the Richard F. French Doctoral Prize. Previously, he did his Bachelors of Music in

music composition at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music under full scholarship, participating during his undergraduate studies in the partnership between the Conservatory and the Peabody Institute in their Joint Degree Programmed. He then did his Masters of Music in organ performance at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, being awarded the Bruce R. Eicher prize at the conclusion of his studies. His other teachers included Professor Donald Sutherland and Dr. Evelyn Lim for organ, and AssociateProfessor Ho Chee Kong and Dr. Oscar Bettison for composition. Phoon Yu is

currently the Parish Organist at All Saints Episcopal Church in Winter Park, FL.

 Aaron Patterson is a recent graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship and earned his Master’s Degree in organ performance under the tutelage of Paul Jacobs. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree as the Charles and Judith Freyer Annual Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied organ performance with Alan Morrison. He also received a certificate in harpsichord performance with Leon Schelhase. Prior to this, Mr. Patterson studied organ with Dennis Elwell and piano with Dolly Krasnopolsky.

Mr. Patterson won first place at the 2017 Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition and the 2016 West Chester University International Organ Competition. He has also been a recipient of the Pogorzelski-Yankee Memorial Scholarship from the American Guild of Organists and the Bart Pitman Memorial Music Scholarship from the Delaware Valley Music Club.

Mr. Patterson loves collaboration and has performed with orchestras, violinists, flautists, choirs, and other keyboardists. His performance venues include the Wanamaker Grand Court, where he is an assistant organist, Boardwalk Hall, and the Kimmel Center. Mr. Patterson is director of music at Cresheim Valley Church in Philadelphia. He formerly served as assistant organist at Tenth Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia) and organ scholar at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh, PA.

A Christian and a native of Philadelphia, Mr. Patterson enjoys Bible study, reading, hiking, cooking, and following Major League Baseball.

 Olga Kolpakova, a native of Ukraine, received her Master’s of Music in Violin Performance from Kyiv Tchaikovsky Conservatory. While in Ukraine, Mrs. Kolpakova toured Europe and America with Kyiv Chamber Orchestra and Kyiv Symphony. After moving to Florida, US, have been a member of Orlando Philharmonic, Bach Festival and Brevard Symphony Orchestras for the past 25 years. Mrs. Kolpakova is a dedicated teacher, teaching violin and piano at St. Andrews Music Conservatory, and is frequently performing in Daytona Solisti chamber orchestra, where she is the concertmaster and the soloist performer.

Since her debut at Carnegie Hall at age 18 American Mezzo-Soprano Joan Marie Peitscher has coupled her “compelling star performances” with a “rich, beautifully colored voice" singing roles from Verdi to Sondheim. Known as a versatile singing actress, Peitscher's outstanding presence and true Golden Era voice have garnered critical acclaim for performances as Carmen in Bizet’s Carmen, Amneris in Verdi’s masterwork Aida, Suzuki in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, Lola in CavalleriaRusticana and as the Queen of France in the world premiere of Les Trois Musqueterres, among many others. 

Concert performances include Verdi’s REQUIEM Gateway Classical Music Society, Handel’s MESSIAHwith the Erie Philaharmonic, Beethoven’s NINTH SYMPHONY with the Erie Philharmonic, and the world premiere of Requiem: Tribute to 9/11 at St. Mark’s of the Bowery in NYC. A lover of song repertoire, she performed Respighi’s IL TRAMONTO with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, as well as a Solo Recital through the Arts Bridge Concert series in Benton Harbor MI where she was also interviewed on PBS. Most recently, Joan sang in Pergolesi’s deeply moving Stabat Mater with the Florida Singing Sons in Fort Lauderdale as well as various concert solos at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, in their esteemed seasonal concert series.

After completing studies at Gordon College, Ms. Peitscher joined the Palm Beach Opera Young Artist Program. She has been a grant recipient and prizewinner The Gerda Lissner Foundation and the Young Aspiring Artist Prize at Carnegie Hall.

Joan is also passionate about helping cultivate the next generation of voices. She started teaching private lessons in 2016 and has enjoyed passing down the vocal traditions of her technique.  Her technical work has helped singers of all levels, voice types and style. She is currently also proud to beteaching privately at The Diane Bish Center for Music and the Arts, through theInstitute for Faith and Culture at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale.