The 2023 Semifinalists

Vincent Garcia-Hettinger, age 17, is a student of Ken Freudigman. Vincent began his cello studies at the age of five, and he made his solo debut at thirteen with the San Antonio Symphony. Vincent was a prize winner in the 2023 Sphinx Competition and a semi-finalist for the 2022 Stulberg Competition. He was also a recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award through From The Top. In 2020 Vincent was named the winner of the Ann Arbor Symphony Young Artist Competition, and he will perform as soloist with the symphony this year. Also in 2020, Vincent worked with international soloist Johannes Moser in a series of private lessons through the Virtumasterclass program. Vincent has participated in the Heifetz International Music Institute and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. He was a 2020 recipient of the Texas Commission on the Arts Young Master’s Award, and in 2019 he was awarded a Sphinx MPower Grant. Vincent was selected as the winner of the 2018 Interlochen Concerto Competition. This fall, Vincent will study with Gary Hoffman and Peter Wiley at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Audrey Goodner, a seventeen year-old violinist from Reston, Virginia, is the 2023 winner of the Hilton Head Symphony’s Youth Concerto Competition and will perform with the orchestra in the fall of 2023. Audrey completed 2022 as a laureate of the Thomas & Evon Cooper International Violin Competition and also performed with the U.S. Army Orchestra as the winner of their Young Artist Competition. Currently in her junior year at Langley High School, Audrey was the featured soloist at Langley High School’s recent concert at Carnegie Hall. She is actively involved in her school orchestra; the American Youth Philharmonic, for which she serves as concertmaster; and the National Symphony Orchestra’s Youth Fellowship Program. Audrey studies with Ryan Meehan of the Calidore String Quartet and Jing Qiao of the National Symphony Orchestra. Summer studies have included six summers at the University of Michigan’s Center Stage Strings and this summer will be her second as a participant in the Young Performers Program at Music@Menlo. Audrey has performed in masterclasses at the American String Teachers Association National Conference and with violinists Francesca Dego, James Ehnes, Stefan Jackiw, Arabella Steinbacher, and Almita Vamos.

Twenty-year-old cellist Mei Hotta, from Torrance, California, began cello studies at the age of four. Mei has been featured twice as a soloist on NPR’s From the Top and was invited back to play with Peter Dugan and Vijay Gupta. A favorite experience was performing alongside Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl. She was also featured in the Piatigorsky Festival’s Young Artist Workshop as the youngest member and soloist. Mei competed in the 2017 and 2018 Stulberg International Competition and has been a prize winner in the Junior Bach Festival Complete Works Competition, Los Angeles Violoncello Society’s Scholarship Audition, Classics Alive Artist Competition, Bellflower Concerto Competition, CAPMT Concerto Competition, Enkor Competition, and the Edith Knox Young Artists Performance Competition. Mei has attended Center Stage Strings, National Cello Institute, the Heifetz International Music Institute, Accademia Musicale Chigiana, and was invited to Aspen Music Festival as the New Horizons Fellowship recipient. Master-classes have been with Ron Leonard, Ralph Kirshbaum, Hans Jensen, Richard Aaron, Alan Stepansky, Peter Wiley, David Finckel, Darrett Adkins, Steven Doane, Ben Hong, Marc Coppey, and Brinton Averil Smith. Prior solo studies were with Sarah Koo and Diana Parmeter. She currently studies with Clive Greensmith, pursuing a B.M. degree at the Colburn Conservatory of Music.

Born in 1999, Chinese-American cellist Haddon Kay began studying cello at the age of four. He first gained recognition as a finalist for the Chicago Symphony Young Artist Competition. The following summer, he became the principal cellist of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas for an international tour of Asia. Haddon studies cello performance at Northwestern University under the tutelage of Hans Jensen. He received his Bachelor’s degree in 2022 and will continue his Master’s studies at Northwestern as a recipient of the Eckstein Scholarship. This past year he was awarded the 2023 American Opera Society of Chicago Scholarship Award. Haddon competed in the 2nd Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium and was a winner of Northwestern’s Concerto/Aria competition, after which he performed the Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra. Haddon is a founding member of the Galvin Cello Quartet, formed in 2021, which recently won Concert Artists Guild’s 2022 Victor Elmaleh Competition and the silver medal at the 2021 Fischoff Competition. A four-time semi-finalist at the Fischoff Competition, he has won 1st prizes at the Rembrandt and Discover Chamber Music Competitions with various groups. Haddon has appeared with those ensembles on NPR’s From the Top and WFMT-FM.

Violinist Blaire Kim was born in South Korea and started playing violin at the age of 5. The winner of the 2019 Juilliard Pre-College Tzigane Competition, a finalist for From the Top, and Grand Prize winner of the Camerata Artists International Competition, Blaire has toured internationally with An Die Musik Philharmonia and the Lviv Philharmonic Orchestra in Korea and the Ukraine. She was a featured performer in the Young Tchaikovsky International Violin Competition selection ceremony. In Korea Blaire won top prizes including the Daejeon Catholic Competition and the Daejeon Music Competition where she also received a special prize from the mayor of Daejeon. She is a top prizewinner of many international competitions, including the 5th Hong Kong International Violin Competition. Blaire has participated in summer festivals including the Forum Musikae International Summer Festival (Spain), where she was the youngest performer; the Academie Internationale D’ete de Nice Festival (France); and the Crans Montana Summer Camp. She also attended the summer Perlman Music Program in 2021 and 2022. Blaire studied with Sunny Lee and Jaesung Jeong before acceptance to Juilliard Pre-College, where she studied with Li Lin since 2017. Currently in her first year at The Juilliard School Blaire studies with Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin.

Violist Zechariah Mo is a Junior at Colburn Conservatory pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree studying under Tatjana Masurenko. Zechariah won top prizes from the IL ASTA Competition, Society of American Musicians Competition, DePaul Concerto Competition, West Suburban Concerto Competition, Fox Valley Youth Concerto Competition, Chinese Fine Arts Society Competition, Sejong Competition, the Rising Star Concerto Competition, and the Silver Medal in the 2020 Fischoff Competition. He has performed with the Music Institute of Chicago Academy Chamber Orchestra, La Crosse Symphony Orchestra, West Suburban Symphony Orchestra, Fox Valley Orchestra, and has also performed twice with the Oistrakh Symphony of Chicago. Zechariah participated at the Bowdoin Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, and the Santa Barbara Music Academy of the West. His previous teachers include Roland and Almita Vamos, and Paul Coletti

Ray Ushikubo is a twenty-one-year-old Japanese-American pianist and violinist who has performed on the stages of Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall, and appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Ushikubo made his orchestral debut at age ten with the Young Musicians Foundation Orchestra in Los Angeles’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. A 2014 recipient of the prestigious Davidson Fellow Laureate Award, Ushikubo was named a Young Steinway Artist and won the 2017 Hilton Head International Piano Competition, and the 2016 Piano Concerto Competition at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Ushikubo has soloed with the Fort Collins, Hilton Head, New West, Modesto, Pasadena, and San Diego Symphony Orchestras; and the Buffalo, Los Angeles, Reno, and Westchester Philharmonic Orchestras on both piano and violin – sometimes in the same concert. Ushikubo received his Bachelor’s degrees at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied piano with Gary Graffman and Robert McDonald and violin with Shmuel Ashkenasi and Pamela Frank. Currently, he is pursuing Master of Music degrees at the Colburn Conservatory of Music studying piano with Fabio Bidini and violin with Robert Lipsett.

American violinist Sophia Werner, 20, is pursuing her B.M. at The Juilliard School, where she studies with Laurie Smukler. Recently, Sophia was selected as a semifinalist of the Stulberg International String Competition, finalist of the 2023 Juilliard Concerto Competition, and 2022 winner of the Adelphi Young Artist Competition. Prior to Juilliard, cherished teacher Linda Case prepared Sophia for appearances with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes, and Ithaca Community Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, Sophia spent four years at Greenwood Chamber Music Camp, and will return for a second summer at Kneisel Hall with her piano trio. Her greatest influences include Laurie Smukler, Joel Krosnick, Rebecca Fischer and Ronald Copes. Orchestrally, she performs with the Juilliard Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, where she has held leadership positions. In 2021, she received a fellowship to study at the Aspen Music Festival and School. More recently, she performed as a Fellow with the Apex Ensemble in 2022. On the weekends, Sophia performs with a piano trio in a variety of community settings as a recipient of Juilliard’s Gluck Fellowship. Sophia plays on a 1864 J. B. Vuillaume violin, generously on loan to her through Juilliard’s Stringed Instrument Collection.

18 year old Toronto-based violist Emad Zolfaghari was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music at 16, where he currently studies with Hsin-Yun Huang and Misha Amory, and serves as co-principal viola of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. Emad has been the recipient of many prestigious awards, including second prize at the Johansen International String Competition, Grand Prize at the OMNI Music Competition, second prize at the Ronald Sachs International Music Competition, fourth prize and the Paul J. Bourret Memorial Award for Best Performance of the Test Piece at the Shean Strings Competition and first prize at the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra Competition. Emad has appeared as a soloist with several major symphony orchestras, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; l’Orchestre Métropolitain, Montréal; National Philharmonic, Oakville Chamber Orchestra, and the National Metropolitan Philharmonic. In 2018, Emad was accepted into the Phil and Eli Taylor Performance Academy for Young Artists on full scholarship where he studied with Theresa Rudolph for four years. Also a member of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, he often performed as principal viola. Emad has attended the Morningside Music Bridge international summer festival and the Center Stage Strings festival on full scholarship, and the Perlman Music Program summer 2022.