US violinist Karisa Chiu, 27, has won the Gold Medal at the 12th International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.
Elli Choi, 25, also from the US, received the Silver Medal, while Aozhe Zhang, 18, from China, took Bronze. Xunyue Zhang, 22, from China, placed fourth; Yesong Sophie Lee, 22, from the US, fifth; and Lina Nakano, 21, from Japan, sixth.
Internationally renowned composer Huang Ruo will serve as the company’s first-ever composer-in-residence beginning in 2027. Lasting three years, the residency launches with the Seattle premiere of M. Butterfly and will culminate in the world premiere of The Wedding Banquet, a comic opera inspired by Ang Lee’s 1993 film as well as Andrew Ahn’s re-imagined version from 2025, with a libretto by screenwriter James Schamus.
“Huang Ruo is one of the foremost composers of opera in the United States, and I couldn’t be prouder to announce his residency with Seattle Opera,” said general director James Robinson, who has directed several of Huang Ruo’s operas, beginning with the North American premiere of Dr. Sun Yat-sen at Santa Fe Opera in 2014.
“Beyond his accomplished record as a composer, Huang Ruo is also a compelling advocate for opera who believes deeply in the art form’s power to bring people together. He’s one of the most engaging and enthusiastic people I know, and I think Seattle Opera audiences will be fascinated by his perspectives.”
“I’m deeply humbled and honored by this invitation to serve as Composer-in-Residence for Seattle Opera,” said Huang Ruo, who conducted his chamber opera Bound at Seattle Opera in 2023. “It is rare for opera companies to engage Composers-in-Residence, so I think this partnership demonstrates both Seattle Opera’s bold vision for the future of the art form and an exciting model for how opera companies can work with living creators to create, present, and engage the community around new opera. I am excited for this new adventure and I feel a sincere responsibility as an artist and educator to help people better understand both ourselves and our world through opera.”
For Seattle audiences, James Ehnes is more than another internationally celebrated soloist dropping in for a guest appearance. He has described both the city and Benaroya Hall as places he thinks of as home….
Some thoughts on Yulianna Avdeeva’s recent recital presented by Seattle Chamber Music Society – reviewed for Bachtrack:
Yulianna Avdeeva opened Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Signature Series at the Illsley Ball Nordstrom Recital Hall in notably changed surroundings. Over the summer, Benaroya Hall underwent an extensive renovation of its public spaces, leaving both performance venues untouched while transforming their surrounding lobbies. The recital hall’s newly redesigned, mid-century-modern-inflected foyer is now dominated by Robert Rauschenberg’s Echo…
Seattle Symphony’s opening-night concert Saturday included an unusual extra audition: Benaroya Hall’s newly renovated public spaces met their first concert audience. A $20 million overhaul — the hall’s first major renovation since it opened in 1998 — has given the lobbies serving both auditoriums a striking makeover.
Evergreen Ensemble impressed me when I heard them last spring in the premiere of Connor Koppin’s To Look West for choir, string quartet, and piano, and I’m looking forward to their participation in the Seattle Bach Festival’s upcoming performances of Bach’s Mass in B minor.
This afternoon, the Edmonds-based choir, led by David Hendrix, is presenting English composer Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles, an cappella work inspired by the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and evoking its spiritual and emotional dimensions.
Written for Tenebrae and premiered in 2005, Path traces the journey in four movements, setting a libretto by poet Robert Dickinson reflecting on the pilgrimage, with mediaeval texts interspersed.
Sunday, September 20, at 3 pm
Holy Rosary Catholic Church (West Seattle)4210 SW Genesee StSeattle, WA 98116
It was such a pleasure meeting and hearing the Banff-winning, innovative Poiesis Quartet at Lucerne Festival, where they played in the prestigious Debut series. Here’s my interview with violinist Sarah Ying Ma and cellist Drew Dansby for The Strad:
On the eve of their Lucerne Festival debut, Sarah Ying Ma and Drew Dansby of the Banff-winning American Poiesis Quartet talk about a changing line-up, an expanding repertoire and the ideas shaping the ensemble’s next chapter….
Augustin Hadelich is of course a familiar and well-loved figure in Seattle, where I last heard him in March in a memorable, thoughtfully programmed recital with Francesco Piemontesi at Meany Center for the Performing Arts. What a pleasure to encounter him in varied contexts at this summer’s Lucerne Festival as ‘artiste étoile.’
The first concert of my visit here brought the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko – a kind of anti-concerto in its resistance to conventional virtuoso display that, paradoxically, became one of the great models for the Romantic violin concerto and that is also extraordinarily difficult to play convincingly.
I was blown away by Hadelich’s signature blend of warmth and poetry, and also by the natural give-and-take between him and this collective of world-class musicians, each with such a strong musical personality. As an encore, he offered his own touching arrangement of Schumann’s Träumerei.
Over the weekend, Hadelich joined with Mark O’Connor and Maggie O’Connor (all pictured here together) for ‘Fiddle Night’ in the smaller venue that is used for many of the Lucerne Festival Academy concerts. The program opened with a set by the O’Connors, charmingly introduced from the stage and including ‘Wildflowers’ as a tribute to Dolly Parton. (Mark O’Connor also played on the original 1987 recording with Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris.)
Hadelich then took the stage alone for his arrangement of Howdy Forrester’s ‘Wild Fiddler’s Rag’ – also included on his American Road Trip album – and O’Connor’s ‘Menuhin Caprice,’ written for the Menuhin Competition, a witty take on virtuosity that fuses American fiddling with the classical caprice tradition.
The high point was O’Connor’s calling-card tune, ‘Appalachia Waltz’ – played by all three violinists together as an unhurried, shared meditation that seemed to reflect on Lucerne Festival’s ‘American Dreams’ theme with a certain ache – looking back at what the American dream once promised, and asking whether it still has a future.
Mezzo-soprano Abigail Nims with James Garlick and Kristin Lee, violins; Maiya Papach, viola; Silver Ainomäe, cello – photo: Dewi Sprague
I ecently paid a visit to Port Angeles for the opening of Music on the Strait‘s 2026 Festival. My report for The Strad:
Music on the Strait (MOTS) has always been a festival shaped by string players. Founded in 2018 by violinist James Garlick and Takács Quartet violist Richard O’Neill – longtime friends both raised on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula – MOTS brings chamber musicians from the international circuit to the Peninsula’s largest population centre, overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca towards Vancouver Island….
Happy birthday toLiza Lim – the day after an extraordinary world premiere at Lucerne Festival by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra of her Roche Commissions composition Tongue of the Land. It’s a thrillingly original and powerful new work that brings a reconstructed 2,000-year-old Celtic bronze trumpet – aka the carnyx – into a modern orchestra. Lim wrote it for the trailblazing Dutch trumpeter Marco Blaauw as soloist.
Tonight – Sunday 30 August at 10pm–Midnight PDT (UTC−7) – Seattle-based composer, writer, and broadcaster Michael Schell will broadcast a new interview with Liza on Flotation Device on 91.3 KBCS, a long-running program devoted to contemporary, experimental, and improvised music. It will be available afterwards in podcast format at https://www.mixcloud.com/flotationdevice/
SRF 2 Kultur Swiss Radio has made last night’s complete Lucerne Festival concert available to listen to on demand here. The program also features Jörg Widmann as soloist in Mark Andre’s über for clarinet, orchestra, and live electronics, as well as John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony. Peter Rundel’s conducting was superb – precise but passionate while navigating three entirely different sound worlds. Tongue of the Land comes at the beginning of the second half, starting just after 1:11:00. (A VPN is required to listen from outside Switzerland.)
I also had the privilege of editing the accompanying book published by Roche, which commissioned Tongue of the Land through the biennial Roche Commissions series. Brilliantly designed by award-winning designer Alexey Murashko, it traces Liza’s creative process and the remarkable journey of the carnyx into this new work. I’ll share a link as soon as it becomes available:
Details and tickets 
