March 20, 2016
Family CONCERT

Featuring
Kate Liu, piano
Emily Yang, narrator

Program

Mozart Symphony No. 35 in D, "Haffner"
Britten Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor

Return to 2015-16 season

Pianist Kate Liu recently gained international acclaim after winning the Bronze Medal and Best Mazurka Prize at the 17th International Fredyryk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. She is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree at the Curtis Institute of Music with Professor Robert Mcdonald, and her previous private studies were at the Music Institute of Chicago with Alan Chow, Micah Yui and Emilio del Rosario.

Born in Singapore, Kate began playing the piano when she was four years old and moved to the United States when she was eight. Since then she has won top prizes in several competitions including the 3rd Asia-Pacific International Chopin F. Piano Competition, Montreal International Music Competition, and New York International Piano Competition, to name a few. In both 2011 and 2012 she was chosen to receive scholarship awards from the Chopin Foundation of the United States.

Kate has given recitals in many halls and venues, such as the Warsaw Filharmonia Narodowa, Polish National Radio Concert Hall, Arts Canisius College, Subculture Arts Underground, Phillip’s Collection, Salmagundi Club, Ossining Library, Bohemian Club, and Temple E-manuel, and she had the chance to perform the four-hand Schubert Fantasy with world-renowned pianist Lang Lang at Symphony Center in Chicago. In 2009 she went on a tour with the Music Institute of Chicago to the East coast, where she performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall in New York as well as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Other than solo recitals, Kate has collaborated with several orchestras including the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Polish Radio Orchestra, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra, Daegu Symphony Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, Evanston Symphony Orchestra and the Skokie Valley Symphony Orchestra. She has been on NPR’s From the Top, one of the most widely known radio shows for talented young musicians. Previously she was also featured numerous times on the WFMT classical music radio, as well as the WTTW Chicago tonight television broadcast.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Emily Yang is a high school freshman at the Hun School of Princeton. She has been a vocal student of Steve Schnurman for the last three years ago. Emily is a member of Edgertones, the award winning Hun School’s all-female a cappella group. She has also been playing the zheng, a 21-stringed Chinese zither, since when she was 7 years old. Over the years, she has won numerous competitions in piano, zheng, and voice at state and international levels, including the New Jersey Music Teacher Association Young Musicians Competition, Princeton Festival Piano Competition, Princeton International Chinese Music Competition, Asian Traditional Performing Arts Competition, and Golden Key Music Festival. Besides music, Emily is also a fencer on foil, competing with fencing teams in and outside of her high school. Emily was a child actor from 3rd to 6th grade, appearing on shows and commercials such as Sesame Street, Target, and PSE&G.