Cello, a member of UCLA’s Cello Studio, studies under the direction of Ben Hong.

Mana Tatsuki is a junior at UCLA pursuing a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance. She studies violin with Movses Pogossian and Varty Manouelian. Former music mentors have included Jin-Shan Dai, Peter Marsh, Hana Kim, Moni Simeonov, Mathew Ward, and Sakura Tsai.

Mana has attended prestigious summer programs including the Interlochen Arts Camp, Boston UniversityTanglewood Institute’s Violin Workshop/Young Artists Orchestra program (where she served as assistant principal second violin), and the American Institute of Music Studies. She was recently chosen as a new member of the California Young Artists Symphony.

A high school graduate of the California School of the Arts-San Gabriel Valley, Mana was a leader in its Strings and Orchestra Program and Instrumental Music Conservatory, serving as concertmaster of the school’s orchestras, performing in its flagship chamber ensemble, and working as Assistant to the Music Director for numerous gala, musical, ballet, and opera productions. An enthusiastic advocate for collaboration in the performing arts, Mana performed as first violinist in the L.A. Opera’s production of Nathan Wang’s On Gold Mountain at Huntington Gardens in Pasadena.

With her colleagues, Mana also co-founded the non-profit organization group ARCK Chamber, which performs in hospitals and retirement centers and provides immersive musical experiences to those who have limited access to live classical performances.

Qeanu Smith is a saxophonist and educator from Massachusetts, currently based in Los Angeles, California. She is currently a first year master’s student at UCLA, where she studies under Dr. Jan Berry Baker. In addition to her graduate studies, Qeanu serves as a graduate teaching assistant for the UCLA Bruin Marching Band under the direction of Dr. Justin McManus.

Qeanu currently serves as one of the western region outreach coordinators for the Women of Color in Classical Saxophone Organization. She is the baritone saxophonist for the Zuma Saxophone Quartet, which is a group founded as part of the UCLA Gluck Fellows Program in order to provide educational performances to the Los Angeles Country community. Most recently the group was names as finalists in the North American Saxophone Alliance Quartet Competition. 

Qeanu earned dual undergraduate degrees in music education and saxophone performance from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studied with Jonathan Hulting-Cohen. During her time there, she performed extensively with ensembles including the UMass Wind Ensemble, and The Valley Winds Ensemble.

Outside of her academic and performance endeavors, Qeanu continues to explore interdisciplinary projects that connect music with storytelling, visual art, and social engagement. She aspires to use her platform as a performer and educator to inspire dialogue, representation, and innovation within the classical saxophone community.

Damian Eloy Silvera, 18, born in Woodland Hills, California, is a Spanish- and Jamaican- American undergraduate clarinet performance major at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where he studies with Boris Allakhverdyan. An active orchestral, chamber, and solo musician in Southern California, Damian performs regularly with the UCLA Symphony and UCLA Wind Ensemble and is deeply engaged in both ensemble and solo performance.

Damian has received significant recognition in regional and national competitions. He is a first prize winner of the virtuoso category of the Southern California Philharmonic Orchestra Young Artists Solo Competition and a second prize winner of the 38th Annual Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts Instrumental Competition (Woodwinds). He has also been recognized through multiple concerto and solo competitions, including the Kadima Conservatory Philharmonic Orchestra Concerto Competition, where he performed movements from the Krommer Clarinet Concerto and Mozart Clarinet Concerto. In addition, he is a UCLA All-Star Solo Competition winner.

As an orchestral musician, Damian has served as principal clarinet of the Kadima Conservatory Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kadima Senior Philharmonic, demonstrating leadership and artistic responsibility within large ensembles. He was selected as a California All-State (CASMEC) Wind Symphony clarinetist and performed at the California Music Educators Association Conference, one of the state’s most prestigious honors for high school musicians.

In addition to his classical training, Damian has experience performing in a wide range of musical settings and values music as a means of connection and outreach. He is committed to musical growth, collaboration, and disciplined preparation, qualities that continue to shape his development as a young artist. Outside of music, Damian enjoys cooking, cycling, swimming, practicing jiu-jitsu, and traveling.

Haruka Taguchi originally hails from Seymour, Indiana. She is currently a doctoral student at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music studying under Dr. Jan Berry Baker. She is a Gluck Performance Fellow and an Outreach Coordinator for Women of Color in Classical Saxophone. 

She previously earned her maste’rs degree at Michigan State University under Professor Joseph Lulloff and her bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan under Dr. Timothy McAllister. During her time in the state of Michigan, she performed under and collaborated with renowned artists such as Akropolis Reed Quintet, Col. Jason Fettig, Dr. Michael Haithcock, and Dr. Kevin Sedatole. 

Haruka has performed and participated at many competitions, conferences, and clinics including the Hamamatsu Wind Academy, the International Andorra Saxophone Competition, the National Repertory Orchestra, and most recently was named a finalist for the North American Saxophone Alliance Collegiate Solo Competition.

Sofia Dell’Agostino is an undergraduate double majoring in voice performance and music composition at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Sofia was born and raised in San Francisco, California. She attended the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts studying Vocal Music under the direction of Michael Desnoyers from 2019 through 2023, where she was student conductor her senior year. She has attended various programs including the High School Composition Intensive as well as the Vocal/Choral Intensive at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, San Francisco Opera Scouts, the International Vocal Artists Academy of Payerbach, and UCLA Chamber Singers. Sofia studied voice privately with Victor Cervantes (2019-2022) and with Sergio Gonzalez (2022-2023) at Inspire Music SF, and she also studied piano privately with Jeffrey Huspek (2019-2023) at Inspire Music SF.

Sofia first studied composition with Naveed Perkins. She has also contributed to and performed in various projects with aspiring music educators and new music composers. While at UCLA, she has performed in several opera productions under the music direction of Rakefet Hak and the stage direction of Professor Emeritas Peter Kazaras and James Darrah, the director of Opera UCLA. Her appearances include Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, “Opera Scenes,” The Grand Hotel Tartarus by Richard Danielpour, and the Kurt Weill Cabaret. She additionally premiered the role of Young Wolfgang in the new pop opera Nannerl by Mia Ruhman. She most recently performed as Miles in The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten.

Sofia’s piano suite premiered at the UCLA Composers’ Spring Concert in 2025. She currently studies voice with Vladimir Chernov and music composition with Ian Krouse and Richard Danielpour.

Jessica Li is a fourth-year undergraduate student double-majoring in biochemistry and piano performance at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her musical journey began eighteen years ago and has taken her across the globe. Jessica has previously studied with several renowned pianists, including John Perry and Mina Hirobe-Perry at the John Perry Academy of Music, John McCarthy at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Hans Boepple from Santa Clara University. Currently, she is under the tutelage of Inna Faliks at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

Jessica’s passion for piano has earned her numerous accolades and opportunities to perform both locally and internationally. In her first year of the UCLA piano program, Jessica was invited to play a solo concert by former Chancellor Gene Block and Mrs. Block to perform at the UCLA Chancellor’s Residence. Following this concert, she received top prizes at the UCLA 20th, 21st, and 22nd Annual Benno Rubinyi Piano Competition. Among her other honors are Grand Prize at the Mondavi Center National Young Artist Competition, first place at the American Beethoven Young Pianist Competition, first place at the Music Teachers Association of California Piano Solo Competition, and first prize and debut performance at Carnegie Hall in the AADGT International Young Gifted Musicians Competition. Jessica has also been invited to perform with international orchestras, such as her 2017 debut with the Virtuosi Brunensis Orchestra in Perugia, Italy. Additionally, Jessica has performed in masterclasses with a number of classical pianists, including Jon Nakamatsu, Gary Graffman, Matti Raekallio, and Pedja Mužijević.

Besides playing the piano, Jessica is also involved in various extracurricular activities. She is the former co-president of the UCLA American Medical Women’s Association undergraduate division, current senior vice president of UCLA’s first and only East Asian professional business fraternity, Eta Omega Chi, and current recruitment chair of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute Research Associates Program (CTSI-RAP). Outside of school, she participates in clinical research with the UCLA Department of Cardiology, teaches piano to local K-12 students with the UCLA Music Partnership Program, and performs in the clarinets and piano trio with the UCLA Gluck Program. In her free time, she enjoys singing karaoke and trying new cafes and restaurants.

Oliver Chan is a conductor, pianist, harpsichordist, and organist. He earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music degrees in piano performance at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where he studied with Walter Ponce. He then received a Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music of Cal State Long Beach, where he studied with Johannes Müller Stosch. Chan currently pursues his doctoral degree in orchestral conducting at UCLA with Neal Stulberg. Other conducting teachers have included Dean Anderson, Jacob Sustaita, Edward Dolbashian, Andreas Mitisek, Mark Gibson, Neil Varon, and Kenneth Kiesler. Chan is currently music director of the Los Angeles-based opera company Opera Italia and staff accompanist at UCLA and Santa Monica College. In November 2025, he served as assistant conductor of Opera UCLA’s production of Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw.”

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 in vocal performance from Case Western Reserve University and a master’s 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 doctoral 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,  and currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Music Performance and Artistic Director of UCLA’s Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.

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, Richard Danielpour, 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. In 2023, Stulberg led acclaimed performances of Dave Brubeck’s cantata, The Gates of Justice (1969) and the West Coast premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Symphony No. 6 (Vessels of Light) (2022) as part of the School of Music’s Music and Justice series, presented in collaboration with the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.  And in May 2025, he conducted West Coast premiere performances of Tod Machover’s 2018 opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood, as part of the celebration of Arnold Schoenberg’ sesquicentennial.

Collaborators have included John Adams; Leonard Bernstein; Chris, Dan and Darius Brubeck; Dee Dee Bridgewater; John Clayton; Omar Ebrahim; Mercer Ellington; Michael Feinstein; Philip Glass; Morton Gould; David Krakauer; Lar Lubovitch; Tod Machover; 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 State Conservatory (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 and returned to conduct its symphony orchestra in June 2024.  In March 2026, he conducts the Carlos Chávez Youth Orchestra in Mexico City.

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.