This Midday Concert @ 1:00 will take place on May 9th in the theater of the Moore Community Center at 125 State Street in Ellsworth, Maine.
Described by The Boston Musical Intelligencer as “incisive and with innate musicality,” Alice Chenyang Xu has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in Germany, USA, Canada, and throughout China. Notable concerts include solo performances and recitals at Chicago Symphony Hall, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series at the Chicago Cultural Center, Corbett Auditorium in Cincinnati, Hochschule Musik Hall in Leipzig, Germany, and Jordan Hall in Boston, concerto performances in Chicago Auditorium Theatre, JIAOZI Concert Hall and Chengdu Concert Hall in China, and chamber music performances at Lincoln Center, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Dorflinger Glass Museum and more.
Xu has appeared in various summer music festival around the world including Yellowbarn, Internationale Mendelssohn-Akademie, Art of Piano, and Morningside Music Bridge and has collaborated with Borromeo String Quartet and members of the Cleveland Quartet, violinist Anthony Marwood, cellists John Myerscough and Bonnie Hampton, soprano Lucy Shelton, baritone William Sharp, pianist Christina Dahl and the Chicago Chamber Musicians (CCM). Xu has worked directly with composers George Crumb, Jörg Widmann, Shulamit Ran and Helen Grime, and performed for former Secretary of State Colin Powell under the auspices of the Eisenhower Fellowships.
Xu serves as the artistic director of Music on the Hills concert series in Quincy, MA and helps raise money for various causes and people in need. Her piano duo Xuberg with her husband Miles Fellenberg has been actively performing in the east coast area such as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and more. They edited/rearranged the four-hands version of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 by Hugo Ulrich and premiered it in 2021.
As an active educator, Xu has been teaching since 2006 and has taught at various music schools in China, Chicago and Boston. Her students’s awards include ABRSM exam merit award from Grade 1-8, Honorable mention at the 2012 Music Institute of Chicago Student Competition and 2009 Southwest Regional Piano Competition 3rd Prize in China. Xu also conducts an annual private piano workshop at Sichuan Conservatory of Music in China. She was invited to give a lecture recital on music education and collaborative piano at the Consulate General of the United States, Chengdu in 2019.
Xu was a recipient of the Dorothy Hinton-Congleton Memorial Presidential Scholarship, second prize-winner of the 10th Missouri Southern International Piano Competition, third prize-winner of the 2nd SEILER International Piano Competition in Germany, winner of 2012 Chicago College of Performing Arts Solo Competition and Concerto Competition, winner of 2018 Borromeo Artist Award and 2020 Honors Ensemble Program at NEC.
She graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music and Roosevelt University and is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at New England Conservatory of Music. Xu serves on the piano faculty at Tufts University and is the coordinator for Piano for Non-Majors Class at New England Conservatory. Xu will be the artist-faculty at the InterHarmony International Music Festival in Piedmont, Italy this summer, 2023.
Aaron Wolff is a New York City-based cellist and performer active in solo, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary capacities. Recent performances include Schumann Quartets with Yellow Barn Artist Residencies, Marc Migo’s “La Dona d’Aigua” with the Juilliard Orchestra, and Debussy’s Cello Sonata on CNN’s Quest Means Business.
Aaron has also found creative outlets in acting – most notably in a lead role in the Coen brothers’ film A Serious Man – and in arranging and writing about music: he has provided string arrangements for Comedy Central’s Broad City and covered New York’s new music scene for the online journal I Care If You Listen.
As a high school student of Natasha Brofsky, Aaron won First Prize in the Boston Symphony Concerto Competition, and as a college student of Darrett Adkins was winner of the Oberlin Concerto Competition. Aaron was a finalist in both the 2021 Young Concert Artist International Auditions and 2021 Juilliard Concerto Competition, and was one of four American candidates at the 2021 Geneva International Cello Competition. As the winner of the Leo B. Ruiz Memorial Recital, he will give his Carnegie Hall debut in December 2023.
Equally at home in chamber music, he has collaborated with the Argus Quartet, A Far Cry, The Boston Trio and eighth blackbird, and has spent return summers at Yellow Barn, the Perlman Music Program, and Lucerne Festival Academy. He currently plays with numerous groups including Metropolis Ensemble, New York Classical Players, PinkNoise Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Argento New Music Project and Princeton Symphony.
Aaron received a B.A. in comparative literature and B.M. in cello performance from Oberlin College & Conservatory. He then completed Master’s degree at Juilliard, where he was a Kovner Fellow under Joel Krosnick, and an Artist Diploma under Tim Eddy and Fred Sherry. He plays a Perry-Wilkinson cello, made in Dublin in 1791.