Annett Ho
Member Since Fall 2018; R.D. since Fall 2019
Thomas, 17, currently studies cello with Jonathan Koh at the San Francisco Conservatory. Thomas has participated in numerous competitions and was a top prize winner in several solo and chamber music competitions. Thomas studied at the prestigious Meadowmount School of Music in the summers of 2015 and 2016. In addition, he has worked with renowned musicians including Lynn Harrell, Hans Jorgen Jensen, Patricia McCarty, and members of the American, Tokyo, Orion, Juilliard, and Alexander String Quartets. Thomas is currently a senior at Saratoga High School where he is an active leader in the local music community, coordinating student
outreach performances and working with district orchestra students to promote music education.
Thomas Lim
Member Since Fall 2018; R.D. since Fall 2019
Thomas, 17, currently studies cello with Jonathan Koh at the San Francisco Conservatory. Thomas has participated in numerous competitions and was a top prize winner in several solo and chamber music competitions. Thomas studied at the prestigious Meadowmount School of Music in the summers of 2015 and 2016. In addition, he has worked with renowned musicians including Lynn Harrell, Hans Jorgen Jensen, Patricia McCarty, and members of the American, Tokyo, Orion, Juilliard, and Alexander String Quartets. Thomas is currently a senior at Saratoga High School where he is an active leader in the local music community, coordinating student
outreach performances and working with district orchestra students to promote music education.
Heather Hsun Chang
Member Since Fall 2015; LOA 2019
20-year-old pianist Heather Hsun Chang has already performed quite extensively, both as a very young pianist in her native country, Taiwan, and in more recent years, in various cities on both coasts of the United States. Heather is currently a sophomore at Columbia University majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior, and she is a part of the Columbia Music Performance Program studying under Reiko Uchida and Magdalena Baczewska. She attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Division where she is a Hurlbut-Johnson Preparatory scholarship student. Heather has participated in numerous competitions and was a top prize winner in the New York Piano Competition, the American Prize, the Young Pianist’s Beethoven Competition, the ENKOR International Piano Competition, Ross McKee Piano Competition, Pacific Musical Society Competition, the San Francisco Chopin Competition, and the Kawaii Piano Competition, Taiwan Regional. To add on, Heather was chosen as a finalist winner for the National YoungArts Foundation, and was invited to 2015 YoungArts Week in Miami, Florida. Her musical studies continue in the summer, when she attended the Bowdoin International Music Festival studying under Douglas Humpherys (2016); the Southeastern Piano Festival (2016); the Dominican University Chamber Camp (2015); the Morningside Music Bridge Music Festival in Calgary, Canada (2014); and the Walnut Hill Music Festival in Natick, Boston (2012), all with scholarships. In November of 2015, she was interviewed by Palo Alto Weekly in the article “A Passion for Piano” (http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/11/13/a-passion-for-piano). Her previous piano teachers include Corey McVicar, Chiao-Han Liao, and Mack McCray. Besides music, she enjoys working in the Axel Laboratory in Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, researching about olfactory neural circuits. For more information, please visit www.heatherchangpiano.com. Heather joined the “Back to BACH” project in the fall of 2015, as regional director of the San Francisco region. She has started in her new role as an Associate in Global Development in June 2017. She leads the "Back to BACH" Project Upper NYC with Yael Cohen.
Yael Cohen
Member Since January 2016; DoGO Fall 2019
Originally from Palo Alto, California, Yael Cohen currently resides in New York City as a trumpet phenom pursuing an emerging career as a soloist and orchestral musician while also engaging with her studies as a third-year student at Columbia University studying Psychology and Information Science. She is twenty-one years old and has been playing trumpet for eleven years under the tutelage of Richard Roper, Raymond Mase, and David Krauss. Yael is an award-winning musician who made her soloist debut at Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony in 2019, and was a finalist of the 2016 International Trumpet Guild’s Solo Competition for the undergraduate division as a junior in high school. Furthermore, she has toured internationally with a myriad of orchestras, and she has experience playing in diverse musical settings across all genres. She is currently the principal trumpet player for the New York Youth Symphony and the Columbia University Orchestra. Additionally, Yael was a founding member of the San Francisco branch of the Back to Bach Project in its emancipation in 2015, she founded the Upper-Manhattan branch in 2018, and she is currently serving as a director of global operations for Back to Bach. She is working towards expanding Back to Bach’s offerings with supplementary programming, and is excited to be making vast strides to keep classical music beloved and relevant, act as an ambassador for female brass players to children worldwide, and instigate palpable change in school districts with critically underfunded music programs.
David Padilla
Member Since January 2017
David Padilla is an ambitious violist who continues his involvement in the world of classical music. He has performed with the North Jersey School Music Association Region 1 Intermediate Orchestra, where he played as associate principal violist, and the North Jersey Music Educators Association All-State Junior High School Orchestra. He is a former member of the Northern New Jersey Youth Orchestra, where he was their principal violist, as well as the William Paterson Symphony and Chamber Orchestras. In 2014 and 2015, David participated in the ASTA/Chamber Music Institute, a summer camp where he studied chamber music with world class artists such as solo pianist Alison Brewster Franzetti, and Associate Concertmaster of the New Jersey Symphony Brennan Sweet. This past summer, David attended the Meadowmount School of Music, one of the most prestigious string camps in the nation, where he studied with 3rd prize winner of the Primrose Viola Competition and former violist of the Boston Symphony, Patricia McCarty. He also studied chamber music under Mrs. McCarty and performed in solo masterclasses and chamber masterclasses under guest artists such as Paul Katz of the Cleveland Quartet. A dedicated student at the Juilliard Music Advancement Program, David attends weekly chamber music, composition and orchestra rehearsals as part of his studies. He currently studies privately with Craig Mumm, Associate Principal Violist of the Metropolitan Opera who he has been studying with for 3 years.
Sein An
Member Since Fall 2018
Sein An, 20, began violin at the age of three in Seoul, Korea. She received numerous awards in the competitions, such as the Grand Prize of the 16th International Violin Competition “Remember Enescu” in Romania, Honorable Mention in the Junior Division of the 2013 and the 2014 Philadelphia Orchestra Albert M. Greenfield Competition, 2009 North Carolina Symphony Concerto Competition, and the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award through the NPR’s top-rated radio show From the Top, on which she has appeared three times. As a soloist, she has performed with the Wilmington Symphony, Temple University Symphony, Cairn University Symphony, Ambler Symphony, and North Carolina Symphony. In the summer, she has attended the Hotchkiss Summer Portals Chamber Music, Meadowmount School of Music, Mozarteum Summer Academy in Salzburg, Austria, National YoungArts Week in Miami, National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, and most recently, the Ashkenasi-Kirshbaum chamber music seminar at the Heifetz Institute. Now a third- year student at Columbia University and Juilliard School, Sein majors in Economics and studies violin with Catherine Cho. In her free time Sein enjoys baking treats for her one-year-old golden retriever, Ronks.
Jayant Subramanian
Member Since Fall 2018
Jayant Subramanian is a 19-year old cellist from Vienna, VA currently studying Mathematics-Statistics at Columbia University. He has been playing the cello for 11 years, and has been affiliated with various orchestral and chamber ensembles in the DC Metro area, including the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, the Thomas Jefferson Quartet, the Northern Virginia Senior Regional Orchestra, and the All-Virginia Orchestra. He previously studied under Jungnim Cook in the DC area and has attended workshops and master classes with accomplished musicians from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the National Symphony Orchestra. He is currently a member of the Columbia University Orchestra and Columbia Pops. In his free time, he enjoys going to the gym, spending time with friends and family, coding, and making covers.
Jason Vassiliou
Member Since Fall 2018
Jason Vassiliou is a violinist studying with Catherine Cho at The Juilliard School as a participant in the Columbia University-The Juilliard School Exchange Program. Concurrently, he is pursuing a BA in Economics-Mathematics at Columbia. He was an Honorable Mention winner in the 2017 National YoungArts Foundation competition. Previously, he toured internationally, serving as concertmaster and principal second violin of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA and performed at Carnegie Hall, The Royal Concertgebouw, Tivoli Gardens, and the Chinese National Performing Arts Center, among others. He performed for President of Iceland Guðni Th. Jóhannesson in the presidential mansion (Bessastaðir) as concertmaster of the Youth Chamber Orchestra of Temple University’s Center for Gifted Young Musicians in their 2017 Iceland tour. In 2015, he was a finalist in the Philadelphia Orchestra Greenfield Competition, performing in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center. In 2016, he studied with Paul Kantor at the Aspen Music Festival, and in the summer of 2018, he attended Kneisel Hall. Past teachers include Hirono Oka, Ellen DePasquale, and Julian Meyer, with chamber music coaching from Ronald Copes, Dmitri Kouzov, Catherine Murdock, Qing Jiang, Matti Raekallio, Tim Cobb, and the Jasper String Quartet. He has taken master classes with Janine Jansen, Jennifer Koh, Kim Kashkashian, Robert Chen, and the Aizuri and Escher String Quartets. Jason is a substitute violinist with Symphony in C. He also composes music.
Tao Gu
Member Since April 2019
Tao Gu, 20-year-old guitarist studying at Columbia University. He has studied the instrument with Brazilian guitarists Arthur Kampela and Leo Traversa, and been performing in China, Costa Rica and now the United States. Apart from the influences of Robert Dy Campillo and Lisa Liu, he also furthered the learning of flamenco guitar with Dayán Morún Granados. Within the university, he has performed as a guest guitarist in Columbia Wind Ensemble for the world premiere of composer Brent Morden’s “Danzón”, as the lead guitarist for the Columbia Musical Theatre Society’s production of “Godspell”, and currently as the guitar player for the Columbia Jazz Ensemble directed by Victor Lin. In his free time he enjoys doing fitness and spending quality time with friends
Samuel Fu
Member Since April 2019
Samuel Fu is a sophomore computer science student studying at Columbia University. He has participated in the San Diego Youth Symphony from 2013-2017, and the San Diego Civic Ballet Orchestra. At The Bishop's School, Samuel was part of the Jazz ensemble as the upright bass, and the cello chair for their orchestra.
Jaycee Cardoso
Member Since Fall 2017