Chamber Music
Week 1-2

A black and white drawing of a man sitting under a tree

The Troubadour, c. 1820 (stipple engraving) by an unknown engraver, published by Noël Frères. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Orme Wilson.

Donald Crockett

A native of Southern California, Donald Crockett composes in a style that is remarkably free from the systems and techniques of East Coast Modernism. Crockett studied music at the University of Southern California. After earning a doctorate from the University of Santa Barbara, he returned to USC as a faculty member in 1981. His principal composition teachers in America included Robert Linn, Halsey Stevens, and Edward Applebaum, in addition to the British composers Peter Racine Fricker and Humphrey Searle.

When discussing his own music, Crockett talks in terms of traditional parameters such as harmony, melody, tonality, lyricism, and (perhaps most importantly) beauty. “One of my chief pleasures in composing music that I want to hear . . . is the beauty of sound,” he observes. “I am interested in the kind of music where the sonority is both beguiling but also profound in a way. I like music that does have real substance, but I like music with a kind of surface elegance and beauty at the same time.”

That attention to substance, elegance, and beauty finds expression in Crockett’s 2009 chamber concerto for viola and six instruments, titled to airy thinness beat. This concerto was composed especially for the Australian violist Kate Vincent. Crockett has also collaborated with Vincent on other works, following up this piece with a Viola Concerto in 2013 (and, in the interim, marrying Vincent as well). Crockett composed parts of to airy thinness beat in Australia, completing the work in Boston and California.

The title is drawn from a poem by the seventeenth-century metaphysical poet John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. In this poem, two lovers part but pledge to remain bonded even though distance separates them:

Our two souls, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

Crockett’s title might be somewhat autobiographical in its reference, but the music itself does not rely on programmatic associations for its effect. The opening movement floats long-held, suspended notes in the strings and clarinet over sparse piano reverberations. A searching viola melody in the central section finds faint echoes in the other strings before a recapitulation of the opening material. The angular and percussive middle movement draws a wide kaleidoscope of colors from the small ensemble as it explores a sequence of bustling motifs. The energy then continues into the finale but is periodically interrupted by plaintive reflections that, at the conclusion, float upwards and evaporate into silence. — © Luke Howard

A painting of a city with lots of tall buildings

Magdeburg um 1600, c. 1600 (oil on canvas) by Jan van de Velde the Elder. Kulturhistorisches Museum Magdeburg. Magdeburg was the birthplace of Telemann.

Georg Philipp Telemann

Concertos for Four Violins: No. 3 in C Major, TWV 40:203 | No. 1 in G Major, TWV 40:201

Georg Philipp Telemann was one of the three principal composers of late Baroque music, if not the principal composer. Along with his contemporaries Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, he was known for his achievements in both vocal and instrumental music. But if Handel and Bach loom larger today, Telemann was more widely celebrated as a composer in his time. He established himself as the director of music in Hamburg in 1721, a role he held until his death in 1767. Just one year into that position, though, he nearly departed for Leipzig, when he was offered the role of cantor of St. Thomas’s Church; he turned it down to stay in Hamburg, and the Leipzig post ultimately went to none other than J. S. Bach. Hamburg had previously been a home base for the far more internationally oriented Handel; by this point his career was based in London. Unlike Handel, Bach remained in German-speaking Europe his whole life, and Telemann nearly did (with the exception of a brief period in Paris in the late 1730s).

All three composers found particular success in the concerto, a genre that today conjures up images of a soloist (or more than one) against the backdrop of a large orchestra. In the Baroque period, however, the term captured a wide variety of styles and approaches, including pieces like Telemann’s concertos for four violins, which lacked the additional accompaniment usually associated with the genre. (While these pieces are often seen as part of a group of four concertos for four violins, only the first three are authentically Telemann’s.) Composed before his Hamburg period, these concertos are among Telemann’s earlier works.

In the Third Concerto for Four Violins in C Major, the slow, atmospheric introductory movement is rich with suspensions, sustained pitches, and downward, sighing leaps, though the movement’s conclusion slightly picks up the pace. The bustling second movement is cast in two repeated sections; the movement is mostly cheerful but is also occasionally stormy, especially in a passage of repeated notes in its second half. The Concerto’s slow third movement offers a fascinating play on texture: a gently bouncing accompaniment underpins longer-held pitches that generate a fragmentary melodic line, with all four violins delicately exchanging their melodic and supporting duties throughout. The light, spirited finale contrasts and overlays two kinds of material: the opening joyful fragment of a melody and a descending passage that is played in both fast figures and sustained notes.

Telemann’s First Concerto for Four Violins in G Major is also in four movements in a slow-fast-slow-fast format, a typical choice for Baroque concertos. In the gentle opening movement a dissonant piling-up of repeated notes underpins a lyrical line. Toward the end of this movement, the persistent accompaniment relents briefly in a wave-like gesture and a recitative-like ending. This leads to the second movement’s relentless fugue, whose stately main subject plays against more vigorous, fast-moving material. The sustained notes in the slow—and very brief—third movement offer a somber wash of dissonance. The contrasting finale begins with repeated notes and resolute triadic motion, a forceful, fanfare-like flourish more associated with trumpets than strings, which all four violins play in unison. This gesture is a clear reference to the sound of hunting horns. A lively folk-like melody follows, adding to the movement’s festive atmosphere. Telemann continues exploring the interplay of the fanfare and folk; the fanfare has the last word at the movement’s conclusion.

— © Matthew Mugmon

A painting of a city with people and animals

Krishna Abducts Mitravinda, folio from a Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Stories of the Lord), c. 1775–1800 (watercolor and ink on paper) by an unknown Nepali artist.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This painting depicts the god Krishna’s elopement with Princess Mitravinda, whose brother sought to deny the courtship.

Reena Esmail

Saans

Indian-American composer Reena Esmail wrote her piano trio Saans as a labor of love. Inspired by the romantic story of Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata—which was offered as a wedding gift to violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and his wife, Louise—Esmail adapted Saans as a wedding gift to her friend Suzana Bartal, a pianist, and her new husband Eric. Esmail describes her friendship with Bartal, the only other woman in her cohort of Yale’s Doctor of Musical Arts program:

In recent years, I’ve realized how deeply inspired I am to write music by the very people I write it for. . . . [Bartal and I] supported each other unconditionally through some of the toughest moments of our lives, celebrated our accomplishments with each other, and developed a deep and lasting friendship.

In addition to underlining the special role that friendship plays in her musical life, Saans also demonstrates the composer’s commitment to bridging Indian and Western musical cultures. Saans (“Breath” in Hindi) was arranged from a movement of her Clarinet Concerto (2017). The Concerto was written for Shankar Tucker, who like Esmail trained extensively in both Western and Hindustani musical traditions. Esmail notes that, in keeping with the aural tradition of Hindustani music, many of the piece’s melodies derived from Shankar’s improvisations: “The aural transfer of these melodies to the Western musicians is embedded in the piece itself, and the exchange of musical cultures is taking place in real time, before your ears.”

Saans thus begins with ornamented, improvisatory flourishes from the piano. The music develops into a lilting conversation between cellist and pianist before the entire trio blossoms into an overlapping outpouring of expressivity. A secondary texture emerges as the piano plays pulsing chords under soaring lines from the strings. The piece ends in sensual serenity, with the return of the piano ornamentations and final ethereal tones from the strings. — © Kamilla Arku

A sculpture made out of various colored wire

 

Viet Cuong

Wax and Wire

Vietnamese-American composer Viet Cuong is drawn to peculiar pairings. His compositional output is littered with unexpected sounds: tubas battling oboes; sandpaper, Ikea stemware, and compressed air containers turned into percussive devices; and an endless array of extended instrumental techniques. In his piano quartet Wax and Wire (2014), the composer explores the dualities expressed in the figurative wire sculptures of artist Michael Gard.

Made of metal wire, the sculptures depict dancers in motion. Cuong was inspired by how the poses impart “a delicate quality to their innately harsh material,” and was fascinated by Gard’s self-described process:

Each figure begins as a block of clay and a spool of wire. The clay is sculpted. This sculpture is reproduced in wax. Individual lengths of wire are woven and knotted stitch-by-stitch around the wax form. Finally the wax is melted away, leaving a rigid figure, both light and strong.

Cuong’s work translates Gard’s process, rendering in music how the wax sculpture “provides a firm foundation, but disappears from the final work, becoming at first soft and then formless.” The music imitates the interplay between the materials, especially how the wire initially bends “to the will of the wax, preserves the structure, but in a way that gives bounce to the remarkably intricate skeleton.”

Wax And Wire uses what Cuong calls musical “smears” to translate Gard’s medium into music. The smears—chromatic scales in the piano part—are interrupted by the clarinet’s quartertone embellishments and the violin’s glissandos. We hear these smears almost immediately; the punchy opening revels in the tensions between dueling textures. Percussive elements contrast with melting melodies, and the piece never settles into a groove for more than a few bars before dancing away. By the end of the work, the smears dissipate; like the sculptures that inspired it, the music celebrates the transformation of rigidity into softness. — © Kamilla Arku

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart

Sonata in D major for Two Pianos, K. 448

Josepha Barbara Auernhammer (1758–1820) was the musical daughter of a Viennese family whom Mozart got to know well during his early months in Vienna, when he was trying to get settled there financially in the last half of 1781. Barbara became one of his piano pupils. She apparently fell in love with him, rather to his dismay. In June he had written to his father telling of his visits to the Auernhammer household and commenting, somewhat cruelly, “the young lady is a fright, but she plays enchantingly, though in cantabile playing she has not got the real delicate singing style. She clips everything.” He nevertheless appreciated her playing, appearing with her in public concerts in 1782, as well as in what may have been their first performance together, a musicale at the Auernhammers’ home in November 1781. By this time Mozart was quite close to the family. In the same letter in which he described the audience and their reaction to the music, he added that six of his sonatas for violin and keyboard had just been published in Vienna—works that he dedicated to this fine piano student.

At the concert he offered works composed for two keyboards, one an older concerto in E-flat major (K. 365 [316a]) that he had composed in Salzburg almost a year earlier and premiered there with his favorite keyboard partner, his sister Nannerl. The performance with Barbara Auernhammer would have been its Vienna premiere.

He clearly wrote the new Sonata in D major as a novelty designed to attract attention to his brilliance as a keyboardist, but also to show off his effectiveness as a teacher. Confident in his student’s ability, he assigned the leading Piano I part to the daughter of the house, retaining the Piano II part for himself. In one sense the choice did not matter, since both pianists had music that was equally brilliant and challenging. The piece was, as he explained in a letter to his father on November 24, written “for the occasion” and enjoyed “a great success.” The guests included several counts, countesses, and barons—all contributing, no doubt, to Mozart’s growing reputation and his hoped-for success in Vienna.

After an assertive fanfare marching down the notes of the D-major chord, the first movement turns into a playful dialogue, with Piano I setting forth an idea to which Piano II comments, “OK.” But then the parts take turns in brilliant traceries that alternate and then combine into a concerto-like close in the dominant. The lyrical second theme in Piano II (with a tiny echo in Piano I) rather quickly returns to brilliant traceries building to a firm close. The development begins with a new figure alternating in the two pianos before again turning to brilliant conversation with richly scored textures between the two parts.

The Andante features gently flowing lines mostly given to Piano I. (Was this delicious sylvan music, embellished with bird-calls between the players, an exercise created by Mozart to encourage Barbara Auernhammer’s legato playing?)

The short-breathed theme that opens the Molto allegro, a rondo, initiates a movement of lively passages, varied contrasting themes, and climactic, almost orchestral textures produced by the four hands. Little wonder that Mozart and his pupil achieved a great success with it. — © Steven Ledbetter

“. . . the parts take turns in brilliant traceries

that alternate and then combine . . .”

A woman is holding a violin and smiling

 

Renata Arado began violin instruction in the Suzuki method in Chicago at age two. She continued her studies at the University of Michigan and Rice University with Camilla Wicks and earned a master’s degree at the San Francisco Conservatory in the chamber music program. Renata has been concertmaster of the Southwest Florida Symphony and the Gulf Coast Symphony and guest concertmaster of the Charleston Symphony. Ms. Arado was principal second violin of Norway’s Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra for sixteen years. She has performed with chamber groups around the globe, collaborating with Isaac Stern, Julia Fischer, Robert Mann, Yefim Bronfman, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, and Andrew Armstrong. She has appeared as soloist at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, where she debuted the Concerto for Two Violins by Dinos Constantinides. She additionally performed the chamber works of Mr. Constantinides in recital at Carnegie Hall. Ms. Arado performs regularly in recital series including the Tribby Arts Center; Captiva Island Cultural Festival; Sanibel Music Festival; and B.I.G. Arts Concert Series of Sanibel, of which she is currently an artistic council advisor.

 

A black and white photo of a man smiling

 

Donald Crockett, conductor, received a 2013 Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow. He has received grants and prizes from many institutions, including the Barlow Endowment, Bogliasco Foundation, Copland Fund, Copland House, Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, Meet the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, and New Music USA. His music is published by Keiser Classical and Doberman/Yppan and recorded on the Albany, BMOP Sound, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM, Innova, Laurel, New World, Orion, and Pro Arte/Fanfare labels. For many years Crockett has maintained an active affiliation with the famed Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, where he acts as both composer and conductor. Through the USC Thornton Symphony’s annual New Music for Orchestra series, Crockett has conducted over 125 orchestral premieres by outstanding Thornton student composers. His conducting recordings can be heard on the Albany, CRI, Doberman/Yppan, ECM, and New World labels. At the USC Thornton School of Music Crockett is professor and chair of the composition program and director of Thornton Edge new music ensemble. He also serves as senior composer-in-residence with the Chamber Music Conference and Composers’ Forum of the East. The residency of Donald Crockett is made possible by an endowment gift from Susan and Ford Schumann.

A woman holding a violin in her right hand

 

Cornelia Heard is the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Violin at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. She has served on the artist faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School since 2005 and is a member of the Blair String Quartet, with whom she has toured extensively throughout the United States. Her work has been recorded on labels including Naxos, Innova, Warner Reprise, New World, Blue Griffin, and Pantheon. Ms. Heard has performed and taught at festivals in Guangzhou, China; Santiago, Chile; Loja, Ecuador; Italy; and Iceland. She has performed at renowned venues including the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, New York’s 92nd Street Y, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, and Carnegie Hall. Dedicated to nurturing the next generation of musical talent, Ms. Heard has given masterclasses across the U.S. and in China and South America. Her students have been prizewinners in national and international competitions. Former students hold university teaching positions and orchestral chairs and participate in a wide variety of professional endeavors. Ms. Heard attended The Juilliard School, where she earned both Bachelor and Master of Music degrees, and Sarah Lawrence College, where she received a bachelor’s degree. She studied violin with Dorothy DeLay and chamber music with Robert Mann, Felix Galimir, Earl Carlyss, Samuel Rhodes, Ruth Laredo, and Jan DeGaetani.

A black and white photo of a woman

 

Yoheved Kaplinsky, piano, began her musical career as a prizewinner in the J. S. Bach International Competition in Washington, D. C. Born in Israel, she studied at the Tel Aviv Music Academy before entering Juilliard as a scholarship student of Irwin Freundlich. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Juilliard and continued studies with Dorothy Taubman in New York. Kaplinsky has appeared throughout the U.S. as recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral soloist. She has given lectures and master classes in the U.S., Israel, and Korea. She joined Juilliard’s piano faculty in 1993 and has served on the faculties of Baltimore’s Peabody Institute and the Manhattan School of Music. In addition to the AMFS Kaplinsky teaches regularly at summer festivals including Maine’s Bowdoin, Tel Hai International Master Classes in Israel, Texas Conservatory for Young Artists, the Cliburn Institute, and Long Island’s Pianofest. Kaplinsky has adjudicated international competitions including the Cleveland, Rubinstein, Dublin, Cliburn, and Tchaikovsky competitions. In 2003 she received the Presidential Scholars Teacher Recognition Award. In 2007 she was appointed artistic director of The Juilliard School Pre-College Division. The residency of Yoheved Kaplinsky is made possible by an endowment gift from the Simms Family Foundation. She is an artist-faculty member of the New Horizons program, which is made possible by an endowment gift by Kay and Matthew Bucksbaum.

A man in a suit holding a cello

 

Cellist Kangho Lee has been a sought-after soloist and chamber musician since his orchestral debut with the Seoul Philharmonic at age twelve. He was a featured soloist for the Seoul Philharmonic’s 2001 New Year’s Eve gala. His acclaimed performances with the Korean Broadcast System (KBS) Symphony, Korean Symphony Orchestra, Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, and Kumho Recital Hall have been broadcast nationally on KBS radio. On the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea, Lee gave recitals in Paris, Lyon, Milan, Rome, and Geneva. He has also performed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Boston. Lee has played chamber music at many international festivals, including Seoul Spring Festival and Kangnung Music Festival. Lee is a member of the Antonin Ensemble and the Byuksan Award–winning Tonus Piano Trio. Lee has served on the juries of many cello competitions, including Isang Yun, Penderecki, Popper, and major Korean competitions. Lee is professor of cello and dean of the Korea National University of the Arts. His students have won prizes at competitions including Isang Yun, Tchaikovsky, Enescu, Geneva, Paulo, Penderecki, and Young Tchaikovsky. Lee holds degrees from Swarthmore, Yale, and New England Conservatory.

 

A black and white photo of a man in a suit

 

Winner of the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall, Anton Nel continues to tour internationally as recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. Highlights in the U.S. include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, and Detroit symphonies as well as coast-to-coast recitals. Overseas he has appeared at Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and major concert halls in China, Korea, and South Africa. He holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at Austin, where he heads the division of keyboard studies. He also teaches annual masterclasses at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto and the Manhattan School of Music. During the summers he is on the artist-faculties of the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival and the Orford Music Academy in Quebec. Nel also frequently performs as a harpsichordist and fortepianist. His teachers have included Adolph Hallis at the University of the Witwatersrand and, at the University of Cincinnati, Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock. He first appeared at the Aspen Music Festival and School in 1988 and joined the faculty in 1997. More information at www.antonnel.com 

A man in a suit sitting next to a saxophone

 

Michael Rusinek joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 1998 as principal clarinet. He has also performed as principal clarinet with the Philadelphia and St. Louis orchestras, the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada; and as assistant principal clarinet with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. In 2008 Rusinek premiered a new concerto by Alan Fletcher with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He has performed as a soloist and recitalist throughout Canada, the United States, and Israel, and has made appearances with the Belgrade and Czech philharmonics and the Toronto Symphony. In 1985 Rusinek received the grand prize in the International Clarinet Society Competition. He returns regularly to the Grand Teton, Santa Fe Chamber, and Aspen music festivals. He has also participated in the Tanglewood and Marlboro festivals and toured with the acclaimed Musicians from Marlboro. Rusinek is on the music faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and joined the Curtis faculty in 2012.

A woman in a dress holding a violin

 

Augusta Schubert, violinist, is an avid chamber musician and performer from Waco, Texas. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Mercer University’s Robert McDuffie Center for Strings in 2022. In 2024 Augusta received a Master of Music degree at the Shepherd School of Music under the mentorship of Cho-Liang Lin. Recent appearances include solo performances with the Austin Civic and Temple Symphony orchestras. She has spent the past year performing with the Houston Symphony and the Houston Grand Opera, and this fall will mark the beginning of her time as a fellow with the New World Symphony. Augusta is the recipient of a Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Scholarship.

A woman in a black dress sitting on a wall

 

A consummate musician recognized for her grace, subtlety, and brilliance, the pianist Orli Shaham is hailed by critics on four continents. Orli Shaham has performed with many of the major orchestras around the world and has appeared in recital internationally, from Carnegie Hall to the Sydney Opera House. She is Artistic Director of Pacific Symphony’s chamber series Café Ludwig in California since 2007 and was Artist-in-Residence at Vancouver Symphony (USA) 2022–24. In 2025–26 Orli Shaham and Pacific Symphony release an album of American chamber music including commissions by Margaret Brouwer and Avner Dorman alongside works by Reena Esmail, Viet Cuong, and others. Her 2024 set of the complete sonatas by Mozart received critical acclaim worldwide. Shaham’s discography includes over a dozen titles on Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Canary Classics, and other labels. Orli Shaham is on faculty at The Juilliard School and is a co-host and creative for the national radio program From the Top. She founded the interactive children’s concert series Orli Shaham’s Bach Yard in 2010, and is chair of the Board of Trustees of Kaufman Music Center.

A woman holding a violin in her right hand

 

Naoko Tanaka, violin, is a faculty member at Juilliard, New York University, and the AMFS. She was born in Tokyo and began her studies at the Toho School, where she won several prizes and competitions, including the Mainichi Young Musicians Competition. She began her career in the U.S. at Juilliard and is also an alumna of the AMFS, where she studied with Dorothy DeLay. Tanaka is a founding member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra—an ensemble she previously led as concertmaster in performances at Carnegie Hall, in concerts throughout Europe, Asia, and North and South America, and on more than thirty Deutsche Grammophon recordings. She is concertmaster of St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble and is also a current member of the Raphael Trio. Tanaka regularly performs as soloist and concertmaster at the Caramoor Festival and has appeared at the Sitka, Ravinia, and Marlboro festivals. Her former students have won the Concours Long Thibaud, ARD Munich, and Pablo Sarasate international competitions, and have earned positions in orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the St. Louis, San Francisco, Houston, Lucerne, and Washington National symphonies, and the Berlin Philharmonic.

A man holding a violin in front of a stone wall

 

Felix Veser, twenty-three, is a violist on a diverse musical path, with recent concerts ranging from Carnegie Hall to Ohio’s Grafton Correctional Institution. Felix has served as principal viola of orchestras at the Oberlin College and Conservatory and the Chautauqua Music Festival School Orchestra; this summer marks his third year as the violist of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. Felix is currently pursuing his master’s degree at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University under the tutelage of James Dunham. He previously studied with Peter Slowik at Oberlin, where he majored in politics and viola performance. Felix is a recipient of the Susan and Ford Schumann Scholarship

A woman holding a violin in her right hand

 

Violinist Bing Wang joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic as associate concertmaster in 1994. She previously held the position of principal second violin with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Since 2009 she has also been guest concertmaster of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, where she has been highlighted in televised concerts conducted by Riccardo Muti, Daniele Gatti, and Jaap van Zweden. As a soloist Wang has won critical praise for her performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She appears annually as both concertmaster and soloist at the Hollywood Bowl, where she performs solos from movie classics under the baton of composer John Williams. She has also been a featured soloist with the Oregon, Pacific, and Eugene symphonies, the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra, and the American Youth Symphony. Wang has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Lang Lang, Yefim Bronfman, Emanuel Ax, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Born in China, Wang attended the Music Middle School affiliated with the Shanghai and Peabody conservatories and the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Berl Senofsky and Glenn Dicterow. Wang is adjunct associate professor at the USC Thornton School of Music, has been with the AMFS since 2003, and is an artist-faculty member of the New Horizons program, which is made possible by an endowment gift by Kay and Matthew Bucksbaum.