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🛋🎶 Today's Couch Concert: our Friday spotlight on our artistic partners features classical selections from NSO musicians Marissa Regni, Alexander Jacobsen, Mahoko Eguchi with John Hughes.

Marissa Regni is Principal Second Violin of the National Symphony Orchestra, a position she assumed in September of 1996. Before coming to Washington, D.C., she was a member of the Saint Louis Symphony, where she served as Assistant Principal Second Violin. Regni is a member of the critically acclaimed Manchester String Quartet, and was a founding member of the Kennedy Center Chamber Players. With the Chamber Players, she performed concerts on a transatlantic crossing of the Queen Mary 2, and at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, during the NSO's Americas Tour in 2012. Regni has made solo and chamber music appearances throughout the United States, Germany, and Mexico. She has collaborated with such artists as Christoph Eschenbach, Joseph Silverstein, Julius Baker, The Angeles Quartet, Arturo Delmoni, The Walden Chamber Players, and 20th Century Consort. Solo appearances with orchestra include the Saint Louis Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Virginia Chamber Orchestra, Livingston (New Jersey) Symphony, and the Ridgewood (New Jersey) Symphony. She has been a featured artist on NPR and The MacNeil/Lehrer Report. In addition to her orchestral, chamber, and solo work, Regni has a strong passion for educational concerts. She developed a popular series of children programs, which she performs at the Kennedy Center, around greater Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States. She has been the co-creator and host of the National Symphony Orchestra Young People Concerts since 2014.

NSO bassist Alexander Jacobsen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Edgar Meyer and Harold Robinson. He was appointed to the NSO in 2013, and won third place in the International Society of Bassists’ Solo Competition in 2015. Alex is professor of classical bass at George Washington University and Howard University. He also teaches at the NSO’s Summer Music Institute, coaches sectionals for the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestras, and has been a guest clinician at the University of Maryland, the Peabody Conservatory, and Montgomery College. When he isn’t busy performing with the NSO or teaching, Alex enjoys working on many musical side projects, such as writing music, playing chamber music concerts, and transcribing solo pieces for bass. As a composer and arranger he has produced works for big band, string orchestra, full orchestra, bass orchestra, and many smaller ensembles. Alex decided that he wanted to be an orchestra musician after playing the finale to Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony as part of his All-State Orchestra in the ninth grade. That his entire career was spurred into motion by one of the most famous instances of musical sarcasm ever written is a little troubling to him, but he carries on.

Mahoko Eguchi has performed throughout the United States and Japan, as well as in France, Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. As a member of the Arianna String Quartet, she was a finalist at the first International String Quartet Competition of Bordeaux. She has appeared in performances at festivals such as Strings-in-the-Mountains, Tanglewood, Taos, Spoleto, Norfolk, and Moonbeach (Japan), and in chamber music series such as Japan Airline Young Artists Series, MIT Chamber Music Series, Fermilab Chamber Music Series, Chicago's Mostly Music Series, premiere Performance Series in St. Louis, the Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg, Doheny Soiree Series in Los Angeles, and Fortas Chamber Music Series at Kennedy Center. Ms. Eguchi has been heard in live broadcast performances in Osaka, Japan, on Chicago's prestigious Dame Myra Hess Series, and on NPR'S performance Today program. Her recording of George Frederick McKay Suite for Viola and Piano was released in 2002 on the Naxos label. She received her D.M.A., M.M.A., and M.M. degrees from Yale University and B.M. from Indiana University, studying with Henryk Kowalski, Josef Gingold, Syoko Aki, and Richard Young. Prior to joining the National Symphony, she served on faculty of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Eastern Michigan University, and University of Michigan School of Music. She joined the National Symphony Orchestra in September 2001.

John Hughes served as the associate concertmaster of the Detroit symphony orchestra, and as the concertmaster of the Detroit Pops for 14 years. He was also a guest concertmaster of the London Symphony. As a former student of Josef Gingold, he has collaborated with many renowned artists such as Joshua Bell, Itzhak Perlman, and Jamie Laredo among others. John has recorded strings tracks with Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, the Four Tops, the Backstreet Boys, R. Kelly and many others.