2024 Artists — Music in May

Chelsea Chen - Festival Guest Artist

Chelsea Chen’s dynamic playing has taken her to the far corners of the world. Her solo concerts offer a unique mix of traditional organ repertoire along with piano/orchestral transcriptions and contemporary music. The Los Angeles Times has praised her “rare musicality” and “lovely lyrical grandeur,” and a compositional style that is “charming” and “irresistible.” Recent highlights include performing with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Singapore Chinese Orchestra (a traditional Chinese instruments ensemble) and the Lou Harrison Festival Rutgers Orchestra at Trinity Wall Street in Manhattan; the NYC concert was hailed by the New York Times as one of the top ten classical events of 2017. Learn more.

Bridget Kibbey - Festival Guest Artist

“...the Yo-Yo Ma of the harp” -Vogue Magazine Extraordinary harpist Bridget Kibbey is in demand for her virtuosic and soulful performances that transcend her instrument. At ease crossing classical, global, and jazz genres, Kibbey dives deep into historic narratives —from the baroque, to the French Belle Époque to Persian Modes, to Nuevo Latino traditions and beyond – while resonating within the vanguard of the new. Through it all, Kibbey is illuminating the powerful expressive range of the concert harp to new audiences worldwide! Her chameleon tendencies at the harp — and love for producing her own touring projects — find her performing with a growing rolodex of curation-meets-performance appearances. Learn more.

Elizabeth Schumann - Festival Artist

Pianist Elizabeth Schumann has a diverse career portfolio of projects, recordings, and performances which have brought her all over the world as recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist. The Washington Post noted her playing as “deft, relentless, and devastatingly good—the sort of performance you experience not so much with your ears as your solar plexus.” Carrying on the pedagogical tradition of her teacher, Sergei Babayan, Elizabeth is the Billie Bennett Achilles Director of Keyboard Studies at Stanford University, where she focuses on integrating classical music training with strategies from neuroscience, psychology, biomechanics, and ergonomics. Learn more.

Angela Lee - Festival Artist

Since giving her Carnegie Hall debut in 1994, Angela Lee’s “amazing finesse, control and coloration” [San Francisco Chronicle] and “astonishingly rich tone” [San Francisco Examiner] has been celebrated with recitals in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Victor Borge Hall at Scandinavia House in New York, Chicago’s Cultural Center, The Phillip’s Collection and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Copenhagen’s Nationalmuseet and the Purcell Room at South Bank Centre in London. Using music to foster peace and goodwill, Angela Lee has made numerous humanitarian trips to the Republic of the Philippines and the former Yugoslavia. While on a U.N.-sanctioned tour of six war-torn cities throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, she performed for American and NATO troops and displaced civilians. Learn more.

Ani Bukujian - Festival Artist

Ani Bukujian is the Principal Second Violin of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and Concertmaster of the Marin Symphony. She was born into a musical family in Los Angeles, beginning the violin at age two and a half, making her solo debut at seven. She has won numerous awards, including three gold medals at the World Championship of Performing Arts. She was the first-place winner at the J S Bach Competition, ASTA Annual National Solo Competition, and Pasadena String Festival. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, and Lincoln Center, and participated in the Bowdoin Music Festival, the Miami Summer Music Festival, the Fontainebleau Festival in France, and the Samos Young Artists Festival in Greece. Learn more.

Jessica Chang - Festival Artist

Taiwanese-American violist Jessica Chang leads a versatile career as a chamber musician and educator. She is the founder and director of Chamber Music by the Bay, which brings concerts to pre K-12 schools, libraries, and communities in the San Francisco Bay Area each year. Her work as a teaching artist has led to concert residencies with Project 440, the Savannah Music Festival, and Music from Angel Fire. Festival appearances include Festival Mozaic, Bard Music West, the Perlman Workshop, Aspen, Verbier, Tanglewood, Taos, Prussia Cove, Juneau Jazz and Classics, Music from Angel Fire, and the Savannah Music Festival. Learn more.