By Greg Cahill | From the March/April 2026 issue of Strings
“We like to think of our music as a melting pot of all the different influences that we love,” says violinist Jonathan Miron, one half of the electro-acoustic violin/cello duo ARKAI, when asked to describe the act’s musical mélange. “When we play, improvise, or sit down to write, it’s a synthesis of all the music that we listen to and are inspired by. An improvisational gesture might take cues from a jazz lick, a soul chord progression, or a hip-hop groove—it’s all inseparable because it all has been digested into our personal musical vocabularies. . . . We’re never thinking in a specific genre lane when we play or write: It’s just us. This means we don’t fit neatly into any genre category, which can be tricky at times from a marketing standpoint. But it’s also an identity that we have embraced because it allows us to define our own path for our music and how we share it with audiences.”
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Miron and his partner, cellist Philip Sheegog, met through a jam session in New York City while they were both attending the Juilliard School, though neither had met the other on campus. “It took a summer conference where we were nominated as ambassadors for Juilliard to actually bring us together,” Miron says. “To meet another classical string player who could jam was surprising—in the best of ways—and totally serendipitous! That’s where we first heard our unique sound—it was our lightning-in-a-bottle moment.”
Classically trained, the duo stepped into the world of electronic music during the Covid lockdown. Sheegog says, “We had a lot of time on our hands and a lot of curiosity. Countless hours were spent watching YouTube videos about guitar tone, sound design, and amp models—to say nothing of learning the raw skills of music production as well! We essentially taught ourselves a whole new side of musicianship that we hadn’t learned from our classical training.”
The result is a vibrant, cinematic sound Miron describes as 2CELLOS meets Hans Zimmer. The duo adopted a moniker that means “leader” in Greek and got a career boost through their association with Midori & Friends, the foundation created by Japanese violinist and educator Midori Gotō. “Through their programming, we’ve performed for thousands of kids throughout NYC,” Sheegog says. “We’ve also served on their Young Professionals Board.”
Arkai has toured with Oscar-winning composer and pianist Jon Batiste, violinist Lindsey Stirling, and Cirque du Soleil, to name a few. The Museum of Chinese in America in New York City commissioned Arkai to write a piece for the exhibition “Responses: Asian Americans Resisting the Tides of Racism.” Recently, the duo released Brightside, the Grammy-nominated follow-up to its 2024 debut album, Crossroads. Brightside spans a range of styles and features ten originals, including the three-movement Symphony X, and a cover of Paul Simon’s “The Sound of Silence.”
Strings asked the duo about their backgrounds, the album, and their careers.
What paths brought you to that auspicious jam session in New York that united you?
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Miron: I grew up around the world. My mom is Taiwanese, and my dad is American. I was born in Taiwan and lived there until the age of four, when I moved to Singapore. That’s when I started playing violin. When I was nine, my mom moved with me from Singapore to Cincinnati, Ohio, so that I could study violin through the Starling Prep String Project at the University of Cincinnati Conservatory with the pedagogue Kurt Sassmannshaus. I stayed in Cincinnati until the start of high school, when I moved to New York City. I’ve been in New York now for 20 years. Juilliard has been a big part of my time here, and it’s where I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Sheegog: I’m originally from Anaheim, California, just a few minutes away from Disneyland. One of my older sisters had started taking violin lessons at an early age, prompting her private teacher to encourage my parents to have me start studying cello. I started playing when I was eight, though it wasn’t until a few years later at a summer cello camp that I discovered my own passion for the instrument—presciently sparked the first time I saw the cello played in a non-classical style. While I maintained traditional classical training through middle and high school, I continued to find more and more inspirations and influences from artists who were blurring genre boundaries. During my six years studying at Juilliard, those disparate influences began to meld together into what is now my distinctive style of playing.
How did Arkai develop as an electro-acoustic ensemble?
Miron: One show at a time! From the very beginning, we found ourselves with lots of high-end, fortuitous opportunities. These were kind of “benchmark” and “prove it” moments that forced us to rise to the occasion and develop our ensemble quickly. We still have tons of these moments—the motto is, “Say yes and then freak out later!”
Sheegog: Our sound has developed quite a bit over the years and drawn on different inspirations in its evolution. We’re inspired by crossover pioneers, like 2CELLOS, the Piano Guys, and the Turtle Island String Quartet—and early electric string players like Laurie Anderson and Tracy Silverman. We both love film music, so cinematic influences from composers John Williams and Hans Zimmer made their way into our sound from the very beginning. Beyond that, we’re always drawing inspiration from the production styles of other genres: everything from EDM, funk, and trap to gospel, pop, and rock.
What led to the Brightside album?
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Miron: People often ask why we named our album Brightside, especially in light of all the chaos and hardship going on in the world. Our intention isn’t to turn a blind eye to what’s happening, but rather to reflect and focus our attention on the good. There was a moment in the creation of the album where we had an epiphany of sorts, where we looked in the mirror and realized all that we have and how much there is to be grateful for. It’s so easy to get consumed by thinking about what we don’t have and the things over which we don’t have control. What would happen if we instead put our focus and energy on what we do have? Would that be empowering in a moment when many feel powerless? This is our way of approaching life on the bright side. Brightside was recently Grammy-nominated in the Contemporary Instrumental Album category—it’s a dream come true for us!
Sheegog: We were coming off of our first album, Crossroads, and wanted to both maintain our momentum with releasing original music and dive further into the sound that we had created for that record. A year and a half later, Brightside is the new evolution of the Arkai sound—more epic, more confident, more substantive, and more emotional in many ways. Releasing an album also created a moment for us to evolve our entire brand image around the “new” Arkai and touring opportunities to showcase the project.
What, if any, challenges did you encounter?
Miron: So many, but perhaps the most challenging was simply time! We wanted to complete the project in a specific window to allow for Grammy submission and album touring. That timeline was already incredibly ambitious and demanding, and things always take longer than you imagine and plan for. This was our second album, so we had an idea of what would be required, but inevitably a lot of things came up unexpectedly and made those final deadlines pretty tight. We had to be both adaptable and relentless, while also planning prudently and trusting the process and our team.
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What role does improvisation play onstage and in the studio?
Miron: Improvisation is a huge part of our creative process when we compose. When we’re in the studio, we’ll often improvise and riff on each other’s ideas and then use the good nuggets from these jams as the foundational elements for more through-composed works. In lots of pieces, we also have designated solo sections and other moments where we’ll improvise during live performance.
Sheegog: Both of us love music beyond the Western classical canon that utilizes improvisation. Jonathan got into improv through his love for jazz and world music—Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble—while I discovered it through contemporary, avant-garde classical music. We find that there is both a beautiful spontaneity and creative freedom that comes with being able to improvise, but also that it’s an extremely valuable and pragmatic skill that has opened up countless creative and professional doors to us. We’ve been able to perform with incredible artists across genres, collaborate in production studios and writing rooms, and even create a teaching curriculum, all because we have embraced the skill of improvisation.
How would you describe the relationship between processed electronics and acoustic stringed instruments?
Sheegog: It genuinely feels like we’ve opened up Pandora’s box with all the electric and production components that music technology allows. We now see sound itself as the medium that we get to create with. The sound from our instruments can be molded, bent, crushed, polished, layered, and anything else you can imagine. A violin can sound like a violin, or it can be a cascading wave, a sharp-edged razor, or a thunderous chorus. The technology can be terrifying because of its limitless possibilities. We find that it’s ultimately exciting though, because it allows us to push our sound to places that are simply impossible through pure acoustic music, creating entirely new sonic landscapes that have never existed before.
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