Violin 1
Rubani Chugh, Concertmaster
Johannes Eberhart
Janice Hu
Jimin Koo
Kayla Lee
Alisa Luera
Sean Takada
Mana Tatsuki
Kelly Tsai
Isaac Visoutsy
Joce Wang

Violin 2
Sophia Shih, Principal
Mattin Aframian
Rebecca Beerstein
Jason Chen
Ethan Cotta
Honor Frisco
Nathan Robinson
Bertrand Stone
Erin Tsui
Jerimiah Youngblood

Viola
James Renk, Principal
Ian Lee
Ellen Lozada
Jocelyn Pon
Layla Shapouri

Cello
Kaya Ralls, Principal
Sarah Clark
Isaac Fromme
Edward Li
Naohiro Nadahara
Dylan Renk
Aerie Walker
Aidan Woodruff

Double Bass
Skyler Lee, Principal
Dawson Lam
Luca Lesko
Leon Simmans

Flute
Katlyn Lang*
Emily Park
Kayla Pei*
*= piccolo

Oboe
Cayden Bloomer
Adam Frary*
Adelle Rodkey

Clarinet
Jacob Freiman*^
Nicholas Kim
Alex Parlee
Devin Walsh

*=Eb clarinet
^=Bass Clarinet

Bassoon
Abby Brendza
Davis Lerner

Alto Saxophone
Alden Hellmuth
Rachel Wolz

Tenor Saxophone
Matthew Harget
Dalton Humphrey

Horn
Em Ellis
Vincent Jurado
Vasilis Magaziotis
Abraham Zaman

Trumpet
Cyrus Alva
Kenneth Brown II
Andrew Smith
Nick Washburn

Trombone
Ryan Heisinger
Greg Ochotorena

Bass Trombone
Jason Bernhard

Percussion
Alejandro Barajas, Principal
Madison Bottenberg
Kevin Needham
Xavier Paul
Frankie Peacock

Guitar
Hendrix Baskin

Piano
Jonathan Wu

Harp
Chloe Bang
Alaina Stark

Tubist Daler Babaev was born in Ufa, a small city in the southern part of central Russia. Descended from a family of educators, he started piano lessons at age five at the local music school. Several years later, he transferred to the Special Secondary Music School of the St. Petersburg State Conservatory, where he majored in piano performance through middle school. Daler then emigrated to the United States where, during his junior year of high school, he developed a passionate interest in tuba and decided to purse a career as an orchestral tubist. Daler’s first formal tuba lessons began after he was admitted to the Applied Music Program at Santa Monica College, where he studied with Dr. P. Blake Cooper. Currently, Daler is a third-year transfer student at UCLA, studying with Aubrey Foard.

Flutist Nayeon Cho graduated from Sunhwa Arts Middle School and Sunhwa Arts High School in South Korea. In Korea, she won the Seoul National University of Music Alumni Association Competition, Sunhwa Arts School Chamber Music Competition, Eumyoun Competition, Flute & Flutist Young Artist Competition, J&R Music Competition, Seoul Arts Competition, and Music Education News Competition. She has participated in master classes taught by Renata Greiss-Armin, Michel Moragues, Denis Bouriakov, Linda Chesis, Samuel Coles, Mathieu Dufour, and Michel Moragues. She is currently a fourth-year undergraduate at UCLA studying with Uikyung Park, Erin Bouriakov, and Denis Bouriakov.

Alaina Stark (b. 2002) is currently a third-year undergraduate music performance student at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, studying with Lou Anne Neill. She performs with many ensembles within the School of Music, and continues to look for opportunities to share more harp music.

Violinist Ally Cho‘s musical journey began in Gold Coast, Australia, where she first picked up the violin at the age of 5. At age 10, she received a full music scholarship to All Saints Anglican School of Music, Gold Coast. At 14, she moved to Melbourne, a city brimming with artistic energy, to begin studies at the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School.

In Melbourne, Ally’s talents and skills broadened with solo performances and as concertmaster with major orchestra. She won the Bach Competition in Melbourne twice. As an exchange student, Ally lived in London, where she attended masterclasses with professors from the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music and other leading institution. In 2018, Ally crossed continents to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in classical violin at Manhattan School of Music , broadening her horizons with chamber music opportunities.

Ally is currently a first-year Masters student at UCLA, studying with Movses Pogossian and Varty Manouelian. She is a member of The VEM Quartet, UCLA’s resident string quartet.

Leland Alexander Smith is an operatic baritone who began his training at the age of eight with Shanghai Philharmonic tenor Bainian Tan. From 2016-2021, he attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College. Leland is the National First Prize winner of the 2019 Classical Singers Music Vocal Competition (High School Division), National Honorable Mention of the 2021 and 2020 Young Arts Competition in Classical Voice, National Second Prize of the 2020 Hal Leonard Vocal Competition, and two-time finalist in the Opera Buffs Inc. Artists of the Future Competition. He was also awarded Third Prize and Most Promising Sophomore award (Western Region) by the 2019 Schmidt Vocal Arts Competition.

Leland has attended many summer programs for opera, including the prestigious Curtis Summerfest at the Curtis Institute of Music. He was a full merit scholarship recipient at the Frost School of Music Program at Salzburg and at the Schmidt Vocal Summer Institute. Leland is currently a third-year undergraduate at UCLA, he is a full scholarship recipient, studying with Juliana Gondek.

Pianist Rin Homma is a second-year undergraduate at UCLA, studying with Inna Faliks. She was previously a scholarship student at the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, and has also studied with Mina Perry, Hans Boepple, and Frank Lévy.

Since performing at the San Diego Salute to Champions at age six, Rin has received prizes in several competitions, including First Place in the MTAC Piano Regional Competition for five consecutive years (winning the state finals in three of those years); Second Place in the MTNA California Junior Competition; Finalist in the 2020 San Jose International Piano Competition; Second Prize in the 2023 Edith Knox Concerto Competition; and First Prize in the 2023 Sigma Alpha Iota Scholarship Competition (Pasadena Alumnae Chapter); and winner of the 2023 California Youth Symphony Young Artist Competition. In 2018, Rin performed the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra on a three-day tour.

Isabelle Ragsac is a first-year UCLA undergraduate, studying piano performance with Inna Faliks. She started piano studies at age five. Since then, she has participated in and won competitions around California, completed the Certificate of Merit program, has been invited to play for conventions and has received state honors. In addition to music, Isabelle enjoys botany, drinking matcha lattes, and spending time with her family.

Hornist Esther Myers is student of Amy Sanchez at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. A California native, she is an alum of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and previously studied with Robert Mayes of the United States Air Force Band of the Golden West and Jessica Valeri of the San Francisco Symphony.

Esther is an active chamber musician, a two-time recipient of UCLA’s Gluck Fellowship Award and a founding member of the Los Angeles-based brass quintet, Kodiak Brass. Esther’s emerging orchestral career includes performances with the Santa Monica Symphony, Oakland Symphony, and American Youth Symphony, where she performs as their third horn Fellow. In 2023, she attended the Aspen Music Festival and School, studying with Alex Kienle of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Iranian-American mezzo-soprano, Shannon Delijani, is a doctoral student at UCLA, studying with John Buffet and the founder of MAD SCENE, an interdisciplinary production company based in Los Angeles. This season she performed as Dido in Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” with Opera UCLA and debuted her solo show “Homeland” with Prima Voce Emerging Artists at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. In May 2024, she will be singing the role of Eleni in the world premiere of Richard Danelpour’s opera, “The Grand Hotel Tartarus.”

// shannondelijani.com // @shannondelijani //

Daniel Reyes-Velarde is a classical saxophonist from Long Beach, California. He received his Bachelor of Music degree from Cal State Long Beach and is currently a first-year Master’s student at UCLA, studying with Jan Berry Baker. Other mentors have included James Barrera, Roger Przytulski, and Jeremy Koch.

Daniel has performed at venues and schools throughout the nation, including the University of Southern California, University of Southern Mississippi, and George Mason University. An active ensemble artist, he has held principal positions in wind bands such as the Symphonic Winds of the Pacific, Bob Cole Conservatory Wind Symphony, and UCLA Wind Ensemble. As a chamber musician, he has performed across Southern California and at the US Navy Band Saxophone Symposium with the LAPIS Saxophone Quartet from CSU Long Beach.

A first-generation degree holder of Mexican descent, Daniel also has roots in Northern Virginia, Duarte, California, and Anchorage, Alaska.

Max Kaminsky is a first-year clarinet performance major at UCLA and studies with Boris Allakhverdyan. He began clarinet studies at age seven and piano studies at age eight. He has has performed with youth orchestras including the Glendale Youth Orchestra, Los Angeles Youth Orchestra, Colburn Youth Orchestra, and All-State Honor Band. A recipient of the LA Teachers MA scholarship, Max has completed 10 levels with honors in Certificate of Merit and has been selected to perform at MTAC State Conventions. Max has won several national and international competitions and performed in a winners’ recital at Carnegie Hall. A two-time winner of the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic Young Artist Competition, he has performed as soloist with the orchestra.

Samuel Chung is an orchestral conducting major in the Masters program at UCLA, studying with Neal Stulberg and leading its ensembles, including UCLA Symphony, UCLA Philharmonia, and uclaFLUX.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Boston University, where his primary teachers were Lucia Lin and Jeremy Yudkin. At B.U., he was conductor of Time’s Arrow, the school’s contemporary music ensemble, and also studied with Joshua Rifkin, Steven Ansell, Peter Zazofsky and others. He received a Boston University College of Fine Arts Scholarship for violin performance and its 2023 Departmental Award in Musicology and Ethnomusicology.

As founder and artistic director of the Magari Ensemble, Chung has collaborated on interdisciplinary projects with organizations such as New England Conservatory’s Blind Glass Ensemble and Schönberg Center Vienna.

In recent summers, Chung studied with Gerard Schwarz as a Conducting Scholar at the Eastern Music Festival and was in residence at the 2023 Montecito International Music Festival as conductor of the festival orchestra. He has also assisted and prepared ensembles for conductors including Paul Phillips (Stanford University) and Larry Livingston (USC Thornton).

In 2023, Chung was named Finalist of The Respighi Prize in Conducting, issued by the Chamber Orchestra of New York and Comune di Bologna (Italy).

Chinese-born conductor Gan Xiong has led orchestras including the Case Western Reserve University Orchestra (Cleveland, OH), Tokyo Sinfonia, UCLA Symphony, Miami Music Festival Orchestra, and Bacâu Philharmonic Orchestra (Romania), and has conducted student productions of musicals including “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and “Dear Evan Hansen.” He has led youth orchestras in Shanghai including the Huangpu District Youth Orchestra and Shanghai Kite Youth Orchestra, where he served as faculty in a Baroque summer camp session and conducted its final concert in 2019.

Also a vocalist, Gan was a member of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus from 2021 to 2022, where he participated in a recording of Shostakovich Symphony No. 3 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in vocal performance from Case Western Reserve University and a Master’s Degree in orchestral conducting from The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. His teachers have included Kathleen Horvath, Bruce Hangen, Charles Gambetta, and Ovidiu Balan; he has participated in masterclasses with Mark Gibson, Arthur Fagen, Apo Hsu, Robert Ryker, and John Farrer. He currently pursues a DMA degree in orchestral conducting at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, studying with Neal Stulberg.

Heralded by the Los Angeles Times as “. . .a shining example of podium authority and musical enlightenment,” Neal Stulberg has garnered consistent international acclaim for performances of clarity, insight and conviction. Since 2005, he has served as Director of Orchestral Studies at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. From 2014 to 2018, he served as Chair of the UCLA Department of Music.

In North America, Mr. Stulberg has led the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Atlanta, Fort Worth, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Mexico City, National, New Jersey, New World, Oregon, Pacific, Phoenix, Saint Louis, San Antonio, San Francisco, Utah and Vancouver symphonies, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and New York City Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. A former assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Carlo Maria Giulini and music director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, he is a recipient of the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award.

Mr. Stulberg’s European appearances have included performances in Germany with the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln and the orchestras of Augsburg, Bochum, Dortmund, Freiburg, Herford, Jena, Münster, Nürnberg, Oldenburg and Rostock. In Holland, he has conducted the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and led the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, North Holland Philharmonic, Gelders Orchestra and Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam. He has also appeared as guest conductor with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra (Norway), Warsaw Chamber Orchestra, Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra (Lithuania), Athens State Orchestra, London Royal Ballet Sinfonia, Barcelona Liceu Orchestra and Norwegian National Opera Orchestra.

International engagements have also included the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Taipei Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, Korea Philharmonic (KBS), Queensland, Adelaide and West Australian symphonies, Haifa Symphony Orchestra, Israel Sinfonietta and Ra’anana Symphonette.

An acclaimed pianist, Stulberg has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and with major orchestras and at international festivals as pianist/conductor. His performances of Mozart concertos conducted from the keyboard are uniformly praised for their buoyant virtuosity and interpretive vigor. In 2011-12, he performed the complete Mozart sonatas for violin and piano with violinist Guillaume Sutre at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall and at the Grandes Heures de Saint Emilion festival in France. In 2018, he performed throughout South Africa on a recital tour with saxophonist Douglas Masek and in 2022, appeared as solo pianist in the world premiere of Inclusion, a new work for pianist and chamber orchestra by Hugh Levick.

Mr. Stulberg has conducted premieres of works by Paul Chihara, Mohammed Fairouz, Jan Friedlin, William Kraft, Alexander Krein, Betty Olivero, Steve Reich, Peter Schat, Lalo Schifrin, Dmitri Smirnov, Earl Stewart, Morton Subotnick, Joan Tower and Peter van Onna, among others, and has also led works by UCLA composers Münir Beken, Bruce Broughton, Kenny Burrell, Mark Carlson, Ian Krouse, David Lefkowitz and James Newton. He conducted the period- instrument orchestra Philharmonia Baroque in a festival of Mozart orchestral and operatic works, and has brought to life several silent movies from the early 1900s, including the Russian classic New Babylon, Shostakovich’s first film score. In August 2022, he conducted the North American premiere of Bas-Sheve, a recently rediscovered and orchestrated 1924 Yiddish-language opera by composer Henekh Kon and librettist Moishe Broderzon, at the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto.

Collaborators have included John Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Dee Dee Bridgewater, John Clayton, Mercer Ellington, Michael Feinstein, Philip Glass, Morton Gould, David Krakauer, Lar Lubovitch, Peter Martins, Mark Morris, Angel Romero, Cornel West and Christopher Wheeldon. He has conducted Philip Glass’ opera Akhnaten at the Rotterdam Festival and Thomas Adès’ Powder Her Face with Long Beach Opera in Los Angeles, and has recorded for Naxos, West German Radio, Donemus, Yarlung Records, Sono Luminus and the Composers Voice label.

Mr. Stulberg has maintained a career-long passion for the training of young musicians. He has conducted and taught at the New World Symphony, Indiana University Summer Institute, Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, New Zealand School of Music, Henry Mancini Institute, Los Angeles Philharmonic Summer Institute, National Repertory Orchestra, Interlochen Arts Academy, American-Russian Youth Orchestra, Turkish Music StateConservatory (Istanbul), National Conservatory of Belarus (Minsk), Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing), Capitol Normal University (Beijing), Shanghai Conservatory of Music and National Taiwan Normal University. In December 2019, he taught and lectured in Israel at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and Haifa University.

A native of Detroit, Mr. Stulberg is a graduate of Harvard College, the University of Michigan and the Juilliard School. He studied conducting with Franco Ferrara at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, piano with Leonard Shure, Theodore Lettvin, William Masselos and Mischa Kottler, and viola with Ara Zerounian.