Alexander Cai Knecht, born in 1991, completed a DMA under full scholarship at USC in 2018, where he studied with Brian Chen and Bing Wang. He holds a master's degree from Juilliard, where he studied with Masao Kawasaki, and bachelors' degrees from La Sierra University, where he studied with Jason Uyeyama. In 2018, he became a member of the viola section of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra. This year, he began working weekly as a musician at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Loma Linda. This summer, he taught and performed as a faculty member in the inaugural season of the Concordia Summer Chamber Music Camp. Since 2019, he has served as a Teaching Artist for the Caesura Youth Orchestra at Columbus Elementary School in Glendale. In 2019, he founded a free violin class outreach program at the Los Angeles Chinese Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He has been a mentor teaching strings in the CKC-Music community engagement program in San Bernardino since its founding in 2008, continuing to the present day through Zoom. He has recently self-produced several online solo concerts, including one on the Groupmuse platform, two for the Glendale Noon Concerts series, and two online concerts for local hospitals through Fulcrum Arts during the past year. Last summer he performed in an online celebration of the violin caprices of Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Grammaté, as part of a celebration of Canada Day hosted by Scott St. John of the Colburn School. He remains an active teacher and performer both online and in person. Apart from professional life, in 2019 he founded a music ministry serving the local Chinese-American community focusing on a group violin class at the Los Angeles Chinese Seventh-Day Adventist Church. He has volunteered as a musician at the Jerry Pettis Memorial VA Hospital and LLU Medical Center in Loma Linda, for which he garnered appearances in local TV and the LA Times. In past summers he has been a fellow at the Gonggeng Music Festival in Zhejiang Province, China, as well as the Aspen Music Festival and the Music Academy of the West. He has played in masterclasses for Kim Kashkashian, Paul Kantor, Paul Coletti, and Donald McInnes. He was a member of the piano quintet Quintessential, winner of the 2013 JCM-USC Chamber Music Competition, and winner as soloist of the 2013 Redlands Bowl Young Artists auditions and La Sierra University Concerto Competition. He comes from a musical family of Chinese, Korean and Caucasian ancestry including three siblings, all of whom play and teach string instruments.