Guest orchestra Harmonia (William White, director) performs winning concerto excerpts by Rachmaninoff, Poulenc, Brahms, and Grieg with UW piano students Jeffrey Tso, Jiayi Wang, Alex Fang, and Katherine Lee.
This performance is made possible with support from the Willard Schultz Piano Fund in the School of Music.
Program
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907): Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16,
1. Allegro molto moderato
Katherine Lee
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, op. 83,
1. Allegro non troppo
Alex Fang
-Intermission-
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Piano Concerto
1. Allegretto
3. Rondeau à la française
Jiayi Wang
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943): Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor
3. Allegro scherzando
Jeffrey Tso
Biographies
Katherine Lee is a fourth-year undergraduate majoring in piano performance with a minor in business. Born in Seattle, she spent most of her childhood and early teenage years in Taiwan before returning to Seattle in 2017. Coming from a musical family, Katherine began studying the violin with her late grandfather at the age of three and started piano lessons before the age of four. She previously studied piano with Jessica Choe and briefly with Oana Rusu Tomai. She is currently studying under Professor Craig Sheppard.
Alex Fang is pursuing his doctorate under the guidance of Craig Sheppard at the University of Washington. He received his masters from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and his bachelors from Northwestern University, where he additionally completed a combined bachelors/masters in computer science. Notable performances include Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra, Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Bainbridge Symphony Orchestra, and chamber performances alongside faculty members at Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival in Leavenworth.
Jiayi Wang is a PhD student in physics at the University of Washington, focusing on computational biophysics to uncover the physics of life. Born and raised in Beijing, she has always been drawn to science and has played piano since age five. In college, she discovered a strong interest in music and ended up double majoring in physics and music. She studied piano with Dr.Christopher Atzinger at St.Olaf College and is now under Dr.Cristina Valdes’s instruction. Jiayi enjoys being creative in both her research and performance. In her free time, she likes hiking, eating delicious food, playing with her guinea pig, and occasionally composing music.
Jeffrey Tso is a freshman at the University of Washington studying computer science and piano performance. He began learning the piano at the age of four and is currently studying with Dr. Cristina Valdés. Along with winning the Colliver top prize award at the 2024 Monday Musical competition, recent accolades include an alternate placement in the Oregon MTNA Senior Piano Competition and first prize at the Oregon Federation of Music Clubs Marjorie Trotter Memorial Scholarship Competition. Outside of music, Jeffrey enjoys playing chess and racquet sports with his friends.
Harmonia
Harmonia is a vocal-instrumental ensemble unique among Pacific Northwest musical organizations, combining a 70-member orchestra with a 55-voice chorus to perform oratorio masterworks alongside symphonic and a cappella repertoire, world premieres and chamber music.
Founded by George Shangrow in 1969 as the Seattle Chamber Singers, from its inception the group performed a diverse array of music — works of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods to contemporary pieces and world premieres — accompanied by an ad hoc group of instrumentalists for Bach cantatas and Handel oratorios (many of which received their first Seattle performances at SCS concerts).
A decade later, in 1979, Shangrow formed an orchestra at the request of these musicians, calling it the Broadway Chamber Symphony (after the Broadway Performance Hall on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, where it gave its first concerts). The orchestra’s name soon became the Broadway Symphony and then (beginning with the 1991–1992 season) Orchestra Seattle. With Shangrow on the podium (or conducting from the harpsichord), the combined ensembles became renowned for performances of the Bach Passions and numerous Handel oratorios — particularly Messiah. During the “Bach Year” of 1985, the organization presented 35 concerts devoted to dozens upon dozens of Bach’s works to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
Over the past five decades, the ensemble has performed all of the greatest choral-orchestral masterpieces, from Beethoven’s Ninth and Missa Solemnis to Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Mendelssohn’s Elijah to Brahms’ German Requiem, and Haydn’s The Creation and The Seasons to Britten’s War Requiem. Meanwhile, the orchestra, partnering with world-class soloists, has explored the symphonic repertoire, programming beloved warhorses alongside seldom-performed gems. Throughout, Shangrow championed the music of local composers (in particular Huntley Beyer, Robert Kechley, Roupen Shakarian and Carol Sams, pictured below), presenting well over 100 world premieres.
George Shangrow lost his life in a car crash on July 31, 2010, an event that shocked not only our musicians and our audiences, but the entire Pacific Northwest musical community. Over the ensuing three seasons, the volunteer performers of our orchestra and chorus partnered with a number of distinguished guest conductors to carry on the astounding musical legacy Shangrow created. A search process during the 2012–2013 season led to the selection of Clinton Smith as the group’s second music director. Clinton led the ensemble for four seasons.
The 2017–2018 season brought four music-director candidates to the podium, resulting in William White being named music director and principal conductor beginning with the 2018–2019 season. White’s tenure has already been marked by several notable developments: a season devoted to the works of Lili Boulanger; the organization’s 50th anniversary celebrations; a pandemic year commissioning project; and the adoption of a new name: Harmonia.
William White
The 2024–2025 season marks William White’s seventh as Harmonia’s music director. Maestro White is a conductor, composer, teacher, writer and performer whose musical career has spanned genres and crossed disciplines. For four seasons (2011–2015) he served as assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, working closely with music director Louis Langrée and an array of guest artists, including John Adams, Philip Glass, Jennifer Higdon, Itzhak Perlman and James Conlon. A noted pedagogue, he has led some of the nation’s finest youth orchestra programs, including Portland’s Metropolitan Youth Symphony and the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Mr. White has long-standing associations with a number of musical organizations, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and the Interlochen Academy. In addition, Mr. White maintains a significant career as a composer of music for the concert stage, theater, cinema, church, radio and film. His music — which includes a symphony, an oratorio, chamber music of all varieties, and several works intended for young audiences — has been performed throughout North America as well as in Asia and Europe. Several of his works have been recorded on the MSR Classics, Cedille and Parma record labels. Recordings of his music can be heard at www.willcwhite.com, where he also maintains a blog and publishing business.
Mr. White earned a master’s degree in conducting from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, studying symphonic and operatic repertoire with David Effron and Arthur Fagan. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of Chicago, where his principal teachers were composer Easley Blackwood and conductor Barbara Schubert. In 2004, he began attending the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors under the tutelage of Michael Jinbo, later serving as the school’s conducting associate, and then as its composer-in-residence.
Hailing from Bethesda, Maryland, Mr. White began his musical training as a violist. (You can keep any jokes to yourself.) He is active as a clinician, arranger and guest conductor, particularly of his own works. Mr. White is editor of Tone Prose, a weekly Substack newsletter about the ever-changing world of classical music. From 2020 to 2022, he produced and co-hosted The Classical Gabfest podcast and he has dabbled in the world of educational YouTube videos with Ask a Maestro.
On May 3, 2018, William White was named the third music director of Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers, now known as Harmonia.
Harmonia
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