Violinist Laura Kobayashi and pianist Susan Keith Gray
are enthusiastically praised for their blending of brilliant technique, beautifully expressive musicianship, impeccable ensemble and stimulating programming. In 1993, the Duo toured South America and the West Indies as winners of the USIA Artistic Ambassador auditions and in 1995 received second prize in the Contemporary Record Society's National Competition for Performing Artists. They frequently tour throughout the United States performing standard works as well as compositions by women composers. Their recording, Boldly Expressive! Music by Women, is on the Albany Records label. It includes the premiere recording of Grande Sonate, Op.8 by nineteenth century French composer Marie Grandval, a work the Duo edited for publication by Hildegard Publishing Company.

Laura Kobayashi performs extensively as a soloist and chamber musician and has participated in numerous music festivals throughout the United States. A former member of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, she has taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the University of Georgia, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the Brevard Music Center. Currently she is serving on the faculty at West Virginia University and performs with the West Virginia Piano Quartet. A native of Seattle, Washington, she has studied violin with Dorothy DeLay, Andrew Jennings, Paul Kantor and Denes Zsigmondy and has performed in the masterclasses of Nathan Milstein, Ruggiero Ricci, Arthur Grumiaux, and Gyorgy Pauk. Chamber music studies have been with members of the Juilliard, Tokyo and American String Quartets as well as with pianists, Robert McDonald and Samuel Sanders. Kobayashi earned degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale University and the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan.

Susan Keith Gray is frequently heard as a collaborative pianist. Artists with whom she has performed include cellists Wendy Warner and Anthony Elliott, flutists Leone Buyse and Torkil Bye, clarinetists Richard Hawkins and Theodore Oien, and singers Bruce Rameker, Earl Coleman, Patricia Prunty and Nicole Philibosian. Three times she has served on the instrumental accompanying faculty of the Music Academy of the West and has accompanied for numerous national competitions. As a member of the University of South Dakota Rawlins Piano Trio, Gray has recorded American piano trios, also on Albany Records, and has twice performed the complete cycle of Beethoven piano trios. Other recordings include The Unknown Flower: Song Cycles by American Women Composers with soprano Charsie Randolph Sawyer, and song cycles of African-American composers for public radio and compact disc. Gray holds degrees from Converse College and the University of Illinois, and the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. She has studied piano with George Lucktenberg, Ian Hobson, Theodore Lettvin, and Louis Nagel and collaborative piano with Martin Katz and Eckart Sellheim.