Nadia Sirota and James Benjamin Lemkin were married Oct. 22 at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, Calif. Soaring Starkey, an interfaith minister ordained by the New Seminary of New York City, officiated.
Ms. Sirota, 36, is a viola soloist, chamber musician, curator and broadcaster. She is the New York Philharmonic’s Creative Partner, for which she hosts two concert series, “Nightcap” and “Sound On,” and curates the latter. On Oct. 17, she played the viola solo in Nico Muhly’s “Keep in Touch’’ concerto performed by the New World Symphony orchestra at the New World Center in Miami Beach. She is a member of yMusic, a chamber sextet that has worked with artists, including Paul Simon. She is a creator and the host of the Peabody Award-winning podcast “Meet the Composer” and is on the board of Chamber Music America in New York. She graduated from the Juilliard School, from which she also received a master’s degree in viola performance.
She is the daughter of the Rev. Canon Victoria Sirota and Robert Sirota of Yonkers, N.Y. The bride’s father, a composer, until 2012 was the president of Manhattan School of Music, and before that was the director of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. His works include “String Quartet No. 1: Tryptych” and “Luminous Bodies,” a septet for piano commissioned by yMusic. He is the president of the board of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and on the board of Sandbox Percussion, a contemporary percussion quartet, both in New York. Her mother, an Episcopal priest and concert organist known as Mother Vicki, is the rector at St. John’s Church in Yonkers. She is on the board of St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers.
Mr. Lemkin, 39, an artist manager and tour manager, is the owner of Eclipse Projects based in Los Angeles and New York. The firm manages classical artists including Ms. Sirota, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid and the cellist Gabriel Cabezas; and has been the tour manager for Ben Folds, the pianist, composer and songwriter.
He is a son of Linda J. Lemkin and Charles L. Lemkin of Vernon, Conn. The groom’s mother retired as a seventh-grade science teacher at Windham Middle School in Willimantic, Conn. His father, a certified public accountant, is a partner in GitlinCampisePrendergast in West Hartford, Conn.
The couple met in 2015 while Ms. Sirota was performing in an international concert tour with Mr. Folds. Ms. Sirota and Mr. Lemkin would stay up until the wee hours discussing the state and future of classical music, during their year and a half of intermittent travel. By the end of the tour Mr. Lemkin agreed to work on a couple of Ms. Sirota’s upcoming projects, and a year later their friendship and collaboration took a romantic turn while they were working on Ms. Sirota’s 2017 album “Tessellatum,” composed by Donnacha Dennehy.
