Wendy Wen (born 30 June 2008) started to play the piano at the age of four with the pianist X.I.E. Yashuangzi and then Professor ZHOU Wei from Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She then began to play the violin at age six with the violinist ZHU Yue, then with violinists Yu-Ru WU and Yi-Miao HUANG. She became a member of the Shanghai Young String Chamber Ensemble at nine in 2018. She participated in the Very Young Composers Workshop at the Music in the Summer Air Festival in 2019 at eleven. After that, she started her music composition lessons with her father Deqing Wen, a composer and composition professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

In 2020, she was admitted to Geneva Popular Conservatory of Music, learning composition with Arturo Corrales and piano performance with Eugénie Grenier Borel. In the same year, she composed her first orchestral work, “Lady Liberty in a Thunderstorm”, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to mark the 100th anniversary of Women’s constitutional right to vote in the U.S., and it was premiered by the New York Philharmonic at Alice Tully Hall in New York on 5 March 2022. In addition, she won the first prize of Zurich Camerata (Switzerland) with her string orchestral work “Chant d’Oiseau” in 2021. The same year, she won first prize in the 14th Shanghai International Youth Piano Competition 2021 (Shanghai Section). In 2022, her 2021 completed work “The Triangular Prism II” for violin and piano won the first prize in the Swiss Youth Music Competition 2022.

She finished her middle school program at Indian Hills Middle School and currently is a ninth grader at Shawnee Mission East High School in Kansas City, U.S.A. She continues to learn piano performance with Regina Tanujaya, D.M.A. in piano performance, and with Yu-Ru WU and then Yi-Miao HUANG, both D.M.A. in violin performance. She is also newly accepted as a Youth Symphony of Kansas City member, playing the violin.

Evelyn Holmes, born December 8th, 2007, grew up in an arts-rich family of dancers and musicians. At age eight, she began violin lessons, and she continues to study with Destiny Mermagen. She has received numerous honors including concertmaster of the Junior Heartland Chamber Music Festival, the Youth Symphony of Kansas City’s Academy division, and Shawnee Mission East Orchestra’s most advanced class. In early 2022, Evelyn entered the Young Artist Competition and performed a concerto as a soloist with the Overland Park Orchestra. Evelyn is a member of local organization the Village Players and performs with them regularly as soloist and chamber musician. Evelyn hopes to continue her musical journey and someday enter music professionally as a violinist.

11-year old Will Savage is in sixth grade at Lakewood Middle School in Overland Park. He studies cello with Susie Yang and plays in the KC Youth Symphony Philharmonic Orchestra. In May, Will gave his concerto debut in Kauffman Center’s Helzberg Hall with the Kansas City Civic Orchestra after winning the Chatelaine Young Artist Competition. Will started studying when he was three in WA state with Sheila Kilcoyne, after falling in love with the cello and begging to start lessons as a one-year-old. Will dreams of playing Mahler as a cellist in the New York Philharmonic and writing a symphony someday. He also enjoys basketball, ping-pong, board games, math, reading, composing, Lego, Animal Crossing, and cheering on the Chiefs.