James Burdick:

At PCM, James studied primarily with Felix Bullock and took master classes with Scott Tennant, William Kanengiser, Benjamin Verdery, and David Russell. He has also competed in many local and international competitions, and was a 1st prize winner of the youth ASTA/Aron Green competition and a prizewinning competitor in the youth division at the inaugural Parkening International Guitar Competition.

While at college, James studied mechanical engineering, graduating with a B.S. from UCLA in 2013 and an M.S. at USC in 2015. At UCLA, he was active in the guitar program under the instruction of Peter Yates and was honored to perform the Concierto de Aranjuez by J. Rodrigo with UCLA Symphony, the first instrumentalist to play a concerto with the orchestra as a non-music major. James now works at NASA/JPL, working as a hardware engineer for the Mars 2020 rover.

Adriana Shen:

A former student of Felix Bullock at PCM, Adriana is currently a junior at USC studying Health Promotion and Disease Prevention with a minor in Musical Studies. She began taking guitar lessons in the second grade, and throughout her musical career has performed and competed individually and as part of a guitar quartet with other PCM guitar students. She is pursuing a career in medicine, but declared a minor in music to continue taking lessons and playing an active role in the classical guitar community at USC