Cathedrals of Sound

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 at 7pm
South Main Baptist Church

PROGRAM

Ravel - Piano Concerto in G major

Camille Saint-Saëns - Symphony No. 3 “Organ Symphony”

Featured Soloist: Szuyu Su, Piano

Szuyu Su is a pianist currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University under Jon Kimura Parker. In 2025, she won the Shepherd School Concerto Competition with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and will perform it with the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra in Spring 2026. She also received the Silver Medal and the Audience Choice Award at the Young Texas Artists Competition.

Szuyu attended the 2023 Music Academy of the West as a fellowship recipient, winning the Solo Piano Competition and premiering two Etudes by Samuel Adams. In 2024, she returned as a guest artist to perform a solo recital, including the premiere of in place, at hand by Anthony Cheung. 

She is a recipient of the CHIMEI Arts Award, Second Prize winner at the 2022 Mieczysław Münz Piano Competition, and the 2019 Beijing Chopin Piano Competition, where she also won Best Mazurka Performance. Szuyu advanced to the second stage of the 2021 Warsaw Chopin International Piano Competition and has since performed with orchestras and given recitals at various venues.

Originally from Tainan, Taiwan, Szuyu began playing the piano at age 4. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and her Master’s degree from the Juilliard School. 

Sounds of Nature & Color

Sunday, November 9th, 2025 at 5pm
The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts | Zilkha Hall

PROGRAM

Jonathan Peters - Sonus Colorum (The Sound of Colors), World Premiere

Sterling Maffe - Bass Trombone Concerto, Orchestra Version Premiere

Howard Hanson - Symphony No. 2 “Romantic”

Featured Soloist: Ilan Morgenstern, Bass Trombone

On a mission to live his most interesting musical life, Ilan Morgenstern is one of the leading and most unique voices in the world of trombone.

An avid soloist, Morgenstern's concerto performances have included engagements with the with the San Antonio Symphony, United States “Pershing's Own” Army Orchestra, Millennium Orchestra (Seoul, Korea), Jeju Symphony Orchestra (Jeju, Korea), and the National Repertory Orchestra.

Morgenstern has won numerous awards for his playing including the Jeju International Brass and Percussion Competition, Zellmer-Minnesota Orchestra Competition, National Repertory Orchestra's Concerto Competition, and is a recipient of the Lewis Van Haney Bass Trombone Philharmonic Prize.

Currently the Bass Trombonist of the Vancouver Symphony, and former member of the San Antonio Symphony, Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony and Kansas City Symphony, Morgenstern has also performed with the Detroit Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Utah Symphony, Houston Symphony, Virginia Symphony, New Israeli Opera, and the Israel Philharmonic.

Labeled a “Must Buy” in the International Trombone Association Journal, Morgenstern’s debut recording project It's Alive!! New Music for Bass Trombone, a collaboration with composer Robert Denham and pianist David Gilliland was released in May of 2016. When not playing, teaching, or thinking about trombone, Ilan can be found playing with Rham and Ravi, kitty Lola, and trying desperately to stay one step ahead of them with his wife Karina, a renowned arts administrator and Executive Director of the Orlando Philharmonic.

For more information about Ilan Morgenstern, visit: www.ilanmorgenstern.com

Music-in-Medicine Concert

Thursday, December 4th, 2025 at 4pm
MD Anderson Cancer Center | Mays Clinic
1220 Holcombe Blvd, Houston TX 77030

PROGRAM

Ravel - Piano Concerto in G

In addition to the piano concerto, we will be performing your winter holiday favorites!

Featured Soloist: Mei Rui, piano

Dr. Mei Rui is a Yale-trained molecular biochemist and an internationally award-winning concert pianist.  Bronze Medalist of the World Piano Competition in 2015, Dr. Rui was praised by the Boston Globe as a “riveting” virtuoso, and by Boston Musical Intelligencer as a concert artist with “deeply felt and intense musicality.” New York Classical Review writes of her Grammy-nominated recording of “Three by Three” by Eric Nathan (Albany Records): “Rui was amazing at what seemed to be impossible; an excellent pianist with extreme virtuosity.”  Her recent performances include all the Rachmaninoff Concerti with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonic, World Doctors Orchestra, and TMC Orchestra.  She has performed at some of the most prestigious concert venues around the globe, including a season-opening concert at the Louvre Auditorium in Paris, Jordan Hall in Boston; Van Cliburn Concert Hall in Dallas, Bennet Gordon Hall in Chicago, Jordan Hall in Boston; Carnegie Hall (Weill) and Steinway Hall in New York; San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Stude Concert Hall and Hobby Center in Houston; Woolsey Hall in New Haven; National Concert Hall in Taipei; Lehman Hall in Santa Barbara; Beijing Concert Hall and Shanghai Grand Concert Hall. Equally active as a chamber musician, Dr. Rui has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, Perlman Chamber Music, Yellowbarn, Taos, Music Academy of the West, Norfolk, and Van Cliburn Piano Institute. She was featured as Artist-in-Residence at Yellowbarn Festival for its 2013-2015 season, and invited to serve on the piano faculty at Yellowbarn’s YAP program.  She has collaborated with some of the most eminent musicians in the world, including Robert Trevino, Itzhak Perlman, Emanual Ax, George Manahan, Shinik Hahm, Paul Katz, Roger Tapping, and Peter Frankl.  A native of Shanghai, Mei began her piano studies at the age of 3, and was accepted into the Shanghai Conservatory of Music 3 years later.  She gave her first solo recital at the age of 10 in front of an illustrious audience that included the President of Austria and other international dignitaries at the Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna.  At age 11, she made her orchestral debut soloing with the Beijing Radio Symphony. She won numerous regional and national competitions in China, and her performances were featured multiple times on Chinese national television and radio stations. 

Voices of Heaven

Sunday, March 1st, 2026 at 5pm
The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts | Zilkha Hall

PROGRAM

Johann Strauss II - Overture to Die Fledermaus

Richard Strauss - Brentano Leider, Op. 68

Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 4 in G Major

Featured Soloist: Hila Plitmann, Soprano

With a “wondrous voice, which gleams in all registers” (Gramophone), she brings emotionally-charged fearlessness, unique expressivity, and mesmerizing drama to her performances in opera, concert, film, or theater.

Growing up in her native Jerusalem as the daughter of a Hebrew University botany professor and a musicologist mother, she was immersed in music from a young age and developed a love of all genres. In addition to her performances of traditional repertory, she has been called “a composer’s dream” (Star Tribune, MN), and is widely-recognized as one of today’s foremost interpreters of contemporary music. She has partnered with diverse array of composers, regularly premiering or featuring new works, such as the staged version of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels; Emmy Award-winner Jeff Beal’s The Paper Lined Shack, Andrea Clearfield’s The Long Bright, Pulitzer and Grammy Award-winner Aaron Jay Kernis’ Two Awakenings and a Double Lullaby, Esa-Pekka Salonen's Wing on Wing, numerous works by Grammy- and Oscar-winning John Corigliano, and music by Xiaogang YE, Paola Prestini, Danaë Vlasse, and dozens of others.

Only one year after graduating from Juilliard, she gave her first World Premiere – and on only two weeks’ notice – with the New York Philharmonic, in Pulitzer Prize-winner David Del Tredici's The Spider and the Fly. Since then, her appearances as soloist traverse the globe, and have included the Los Angeles, New York, and Israel Philharmonics, Chicago, Boston, London, BBC, National, St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Melbourne Symphonies, Minnesota Orchestra, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. She collaborated with some of the world’s foremost conductors, such as Leonard Slatkin, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kurt Masur, Marin Alsop, Thomas Adès, Giancarlo Guerrero, and Robert Spano.

She can also be heard as the featured vocal soloist on the feature-film soundtracks for The Da Vinci Code, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Hail Caesar, and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Her discography includes Oscar-winner John Corigliano’s song-cycle Mr. Tambourine Man (for which she won the Grammy for “Best Classical Vocal Performance”), Andrea Clearfield’s Women of Valor with Tovah Feldshuh, Richard Danielpour’s Toward a Season of Peace and the Grammy Award-winning Passion of Yeshua, Eric Whitacre’s Good Night Moon, and George Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill, among many others.

Hilá’s opera performances began at the age of 14, in the role of Flora in Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw at the Israeli Opera. She continues to perform with companies across the U.S., including notable roles as Mrs. Clayton in Stephen Schwartz's Séance on a Wet Afternoon, Yan in Mark Adamo's Becoming Santa Claus, Cecily in Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest, and an alien (with her “stratospherically supernatural coloratura” – Los Angeles Times) in Yuval Sharon and Annie Gosfield’s War of the Worlds.

Having received the coveted Sony ES Prize for her outstanding contribution to the vocal arts, she brings her “superb voice with an expressive range and communicative power” (Chicago Tribune) not only to traditional recital, orchestral, and operatic repertory, but also to boundary-pushing projects in jazz, film, theater, and world music. With prolific jazz guitarist Shea Welsh and tabla virtuoso Aditya Kalyanpur, she recently co-founded Renaissance Heart, a global music project melding classical, jazz, folk, rock, and world music, with which she regularly performs and records.

For her role of Exstasis in Eric Whitacre’s groundbreaking electro-musical Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings at the Boston Court Theatre in Pasadena, she was nominated as “Best Actress in a Musical” from the Los Angeles Ovation Awards and the L.A. Ticketholder Awards. She sang, acted, danced, and fought in long martial arts battles nightly for a seven-week sold-out run, a tour-de-force that prompted Theatre Mania to rave that she “fights like a warrior and sings like the angel she portrays.”

Recognized as an innovative and passionate educator, she regularly offers residencies, masterclasses, and workshops on campuses across the U.S. Bringing her diverse pedagogical methods – which include mindfulness, meditation, and energetic components – to a wide variety of sessions, she combines technical focus, tools and approaches for connecting, and a sense of inner confidence, centering, and presence.

Also reflected in Hilá’s work is her love of poetry, focus on discipline (she holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do), and engagement with nature, with which she aims to inspire light, love, beauty, and joy. She hopes her artistic risk-taking emboldens audiences to expand their comfort zones.

For more information about Hila Plitmann, visi: https://hilaplitmann.com/

Russian Fireworks

Saturday, May 9th, 2026 at 7pm
The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts | Zilkha Hall

PROGRAM

Glinka - Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila

Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor

Mussorgsky, arr. Ravel - Pictures at an Exhibition

Featured Soloist: Diego Caetano, Piano

Hailed by the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, as "a gifted pianist with a brilliant technique and musicality," Brazilian-American pianist Diego Caetano has performed as a soloist and a chamber musician throughout the USA, Brazil, Chile, Europe, Asia, and Africa.  He has been invited to appear at Carnegie Hall in New York, Philia Hall in Yokohama,  Dongwoo Hall in South Korea, Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, Sala Cecília Meireles in Rio de Janeiro, and London's Royal Albert Hall.

Caetano has worked with conductors such as Michael Palmer, Paul Hostetter, Neil Thomson, Rodrigo de Carvalho, Guilherme Bernstein, Noam Zur, and Daniel Guedes. He has been featured in performances at the Grand Teton Music Festival, Louisiana International Piano Series, Durango's Conservatory Music of the Mountains, Bangkok's Asia Pacific Saxophone Academy, and Brasília's International Music Festival. An advocate of contemporary music, he has premiered compositions by Robert Spillman, Anne Guzzo, Marlos Nobre, Roger Goeb, and Guilherme Bernstein.

Caetano has received top prizes in more than fifty national and international piano competitions, most notably from Città di Massa Concorso per Giovani Musicisti, Bonn Prize International Music Competition, Bucharest Pro Piano International Piano Competition, International Piano Competition HR Princess Lalla Meryem, MTNA Young Artist - Steinway & Sons, and "Arnaldo Estrella" Piano Competition. He has also won special awards, including Best Interpreter of Brazilian Composers, Best Interpreter of Spanish Composers, and Prix d'Excellence in Performance.

He is a member of Duo Lispector with Russian violinist Evgeny Zvonnikov and a member of Resch - Caetano Duo with German tenor Richard Resch. Recently, he released he CDs French Connection: Violin Sonatas of the 20th Century with violinist Evgeny Zvonnikov, Schubert’s Winterreise with German tenor Richard Resch and the solo albums Chansons et mélodies  and  20th Century Brazilian Solo Piano Music  for the Italian-Japanese label DaVinci Classics.

Diego Caetano maintains an active schedule as an educator. He has served as both a masterclass clinician and a competition adjudicator in educational institutions around the globe. The topics of his presentations at national and international conferences have included: pedagogical works by Brazilian composers, effective practicing techniques, and performance anxiety.  Under his guidance, his students have won prizes at national and international piano competitions.

Caetano was awarded a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a Master of Music degree from the University of Wyoming, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Universidade Federal de Goiás (Brazil). His teachers have included Dr. David Korevaar, Bob Spillman, Dr. Theresa Bogard, Dr. Maria Helena Jayme, Lílian Carneiro de Mendonça. He has also studied with Dr. Nadezhda Eismont at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, in Russia.

He is the co-founder and Artistic Director at Ávila International Music Festival in Ávila (Spain). Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Piano at Sam Houston State University, and is a Shigeru Kawai Artist.

For more information about Diego Caetano, visit https://www.diegocaetanopiano.com


*Concert Season Underwritten by Texas Children's Hospital

Please Note: Patrons, staff, volunteers, performers, and guests must adhere to the venue’s health and safety protocols for all performances.


Past Concerts


Musical Odyssey: Tales of Adventure and Passion

Saturday, May 31, 2025 at 8:30 pm
Miller Outdoor Theatre

Program

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64

Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Featured Soloist: Mann-Wen Lo, Violin


From Darkness to Light

Saturday, May 10, 2025 at 7pm
The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts | Zilkha Hall

PROGRAM

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64

Mahler: Symphony No. 5

Featured Soloist: Mann-Wen Lo, Violin

Violinist Mann-Wen Lo performs extensively throughout the world in some of the most prestigious venues as a soloist and chamber musician. Lo has been a recurring artist in performances at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Walt Disney Hall, among others. Featured on radio and TV broadcasts in the United States, Taiwan, Japan, and France, Mann-Wen has gained recognition at numerous competitions and awards. Most recently, her recording with the Mana Music Quartet featuring music of Queen Liliʻuokalani won Instrumental Album of the Year at the 2021 Na Hoku Hanohano Award

Mann-Wen has been a featured recording artist under labels such as Warner Classics, Navona Records, and CMH Label Groups. She has collaborated with musicians from world-renowned string quartets, including the Juilliard String Quartet, the Cleveland Quartet, and the Takács Quartet. Her festival appearances include Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Saito Kinen Festival, Hawaii International Music Festival, Hawaii Chamber Music Festival, Alfredo de Saint Malo International Music Festival (Panama) and Rencontres Franco Américaines de Musique Chambre.

Mann-Wen exploration beyond the Western Classical genre has led to collaborations with Grammy award winning artists such as Jake Shimabukuro (ukulele), Bèla Fleck (banjo) and Kalani Pea (Singer). She is also a recording artist with the Vitamin String Quartet, known for its popular renditions of rock and pop music.

In addition to serving as Professor of Practice at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, Mann-Wen is a recurring faculty at the Deutsch-Polnische Festival für junge Musiker in Bremen, the Montecito International Music Festival and Texas Music Festival. She has served as a jury member for the International Music Competition Opus 2022, Houston Virtuosi Concerto Competition 2023, World Wave Music Festival, and AAMA 10 Th Young Musicians Festival Competition.


Tales of Adventure and Passion

Sunday, March 2, 2025 at 5pm
The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts | Zilkha Hall

PROGRAM

Strauss: Don Juan

André Waignein: Rhapsody for Alto Saxophone
featuring Rachel Jimenez, saxophone, Young Texas Artists competition winner

Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Featured Soloist: Rachel Jimenez, Alto Saxophone

Rachel Jimenez is in her second year at Sam Houston State University pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education while studying with Dr. Scott Plugge. Early in her development as a saxophone player, Rachel excelled at every opportunity, ranging from district and region band competitions, solo opportunities, and auditioned scholarships. She was a member of the Texas Music Educators Association Region 9 Band three times, Area F Band twice, and the 2023 TMEA 6A All-State Symphonic Band. Additional individual accolades include a second place finish at the Grand Oaks High School Concerto Competition, a second place finish at the prestigious 15th Annual Houston Underground Saxophone Competition - Solo Division, and a number of auditioned scholarships such as the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and Fisher Tull Endowed Scholarship. Most recently, she was awarded the Gold Medal and Audience Choice Award at the Young Texas Artists Music Competition.

As the Soprano Chair of the Tango Quartet, of which she was a founding member, Rachel also led the group through many prestigious competitions. The quartet were semi-finalists at the 49th and 50th annual Fischoff National Chamber Music Competitions, selected to perform at the 2023 Music For All National Chamber Music Festival, selected to compete at the 10th Annual Coltman Chamber Music Competition, and were finalists in the 2023 UIL Texas Chamber Music Competition. Tango ended their 2023 competition circuit by placing 2nd at the 15th Annual Houston Underground Competition.

Rachel has already begun her professional playing career as a multi-woodwind (clarinet, flute and saxophone) artist by performing alongside some of Houston’s top freelance musicians in Bridgeland High School’s production of Follies, with more performances in that capacity upcoming. Additionally she’s been invited to perform with several local orchestras, such as the Woodlands Symphony Orchestra and the Texas Medical Center Orchestra.


Voices of Resilience

Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 5pm
The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts | Zilkha Hall

PROGRAM

Max Vinetz - Lost Child, World Premiere

Laura McCall Torno - I’m not home

Peter Boyer - Fanfare for tomorrow 

Peter Boyer - Seven for action

Richard Rogers - You’ll Never Walk Alone 

Peter Boyer - Coming Home 

Peter Boyer - Darkness Approaching 

Peter Boyer - the Journey within

Michael Gott - Love can move the world

Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4

Featured Artist: Max Vinetz, Composer

Max Vinetz’s music draws inspiration and meaning from intersections between improvisatory, popular, and traditional forms/aesthetics, and how these various intersections can be mapped onto identity transformation over time. His work centers the perception of rhythmic and timbral events and is concerned with the relationships between narrative, storytelling, musical objects, and sonic artifacts as they relate to music and other forms of media.

Max is a recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (2018/2020), the Paul and Christiane Cooper Prize, and the Gardner Prize from the American Viola Society. He has received additional recognition and awards from Voices of Ascension, the Doug Davis Composition and Performance Endowment, Musiqa, Copland House, Mizzou International Composers Festival, loadbang, the Hausmann Quartet, Young Concert Artists, New York Youth Symphony, BMI, Danbury Music Center, Symphony No. 1, Donald Sinta Quartet, Tesla Quartet, and Yale University, and the Shepherd School of Music.

As a Yale undergraduate, Max won the Beekman Cannon Friends Prize, awarded for a “musical composition exhibiting unusual originality and promise,” the Abraham Beekman Cox Prize awarded to the “most promising and gifted composer” in the junior class, and was also awarded the Lewis P. Curtis Fellowship, the Tristan Perlroth Prize, and the R.J.R. Cohen Fellowship for Musical Performance (2017, 2018).

Max's works and have been performed and recorded by Alarm Will Sound, TAK ensemble, Bergamot Quartet, arx Duo, Stare at the Sun, Bearthoven, Vicky Chow, Contemporaneous, DITHER, Hub New Music, Variant 6, Sō Percussion, Bakken Ensemble, The Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, Arditti Quartet, Bakken Ensemble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Miranda Cuckson, NUNC, Ensemble for New Music Tallinn, Hear&Now, Music from Copland House, DeCoda, Mivos Quartet, unassisted fold, Yale Symphony Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, Icarus Duo, members of Yale Voxtet, and Yale Schola Cantorum, among others. Upcoming projects include an evening length staged electroacoustic song cycle, The New Manila Envelope, for panSonus, new orchestral works for New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Texas Medical Center Orchestra, and San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, a collection of chamber works for soprano/double bass for Confluss, and an electric guitar concerto for Joseph Ehrenpreis.

A graduate of both Yale and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Max is a PhD candidate in Composition at Princeton University, holding a Naumburg Doctoral Fellowship.


Hollywood Rhapsody

Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 8:30pm
Miller Outdoor Theatre

PROGRAM

Gershwin: Overture to Girl Crazy

Gershwin: An American in Paris

Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue featuring Mei Rui, Pianist

Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 (New World Symphony)

Featured Soloist: Mei Rui, Pianist

Dr. Mei Rui is a Yale-trained molecular biochemist and an internationally award-winning concert pianist.  Bronze Medalist of the World Piano Competition in 2015, Dr. Rui was praised by the Boston Globe as a “riveting” virtuoso, and by Boston Musical Intelligencer as a concert artist with “deeply felt and intense musicality.” New York Classical Review writes of her Grammy-nominated recording of “Three by Three” by Eric Nathan (Albany Records): “Rui was amazing at what seemed to be impossible; an excellent pianist with extreme virtuosity.”  Her recent performances include all the Rachmaninoff Concerti with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonic, World Doctors Orchestra, and TMC Orchestra.  She has performed at some of the most prestigious concert venues around the globe, including a season-opening concert at the Louvre Auditorium in Paris, Jordan Hall in Boston; Van Cliburn Concert Hall in Dallas, Bennet Gordon Hall in Chicago, Jordan Hall in Boston; Carnegie Hall (Weill) and Steinway Hall in New York; San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Stude Concert Hall and Hobby Center in Houston; Woolsey Hall in New Haven; National Concert Hall in Taipei; Lehman Hall in Santa Barbara; Beijing Concert Hall and Shanghai Grand Concert Hall. Equally active as a chamber musician, Dr. Rui has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, Perlman Chamber Music, Yellowbarn, Taos, Music Academy of the West, Norfolk, and Van Cliburn Piano Institute. She was featured as Artist-in-Residence at Yellowbarn Festival for its 2013-2015 season, and invited to serve on the piano faculty at Yellowbarn’s YAP program.  She has collaborated with some of the most eminent musicians in the world, including Robert Trevino, Itzhak Perlman, Emanual Ax, George Manahan, Shinik Hahm, Paul Katz, Roger Tapping, and Peter Frankl.  A native of Shanghai, Mei began her piano studies at the age of 3, and was accepted into the Shanghai Conservatory of Music 3 years later.  She gave her first solo recital at the age of 10 in front of an illustrious audience that included the President of Austria and other international dignitaries at the Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna.  At age 11, she made her orchestral debut soloing with the Beijing Radio Symphony. She won numerous regional and national competitions in China, and her performances were featured multiple times on Chinese national television and radio stations.