As the winner of the 2018 Aspen Piano Concerto Competition, Biguo Emma Xing appeared as soloist with the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Patrick Summers. She has won numerous prizes, including at the 1st Beijing International Fryderyk Chopin Competition For Young Pianists, Hilton Head International Piano Competition, and the Xinghai Cup Piano Competition. Biguo is also the winner of the BNP Paribas “Rising Stars” Piano Festival Award, participated in the XVIII Chopin International Piano Competition and 10th Hamamatsu International Piano Competition.

Biguo Emma Xing has appeared as soloist at Benedict Tent and Harris Concert Hall at the Aspen Music Festival, at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Beijing Concert Hall, Embassy of Poland in Washington D.C., Warsaw Philharmonic Chamber Music Hall, ACT CITY Hamamatsu Concert Hall (Japan), Meany Hall of Performing Arts (University of Washington) and Tsinghua University Concert Hall (Beijing). She has also appeared at the Piano aux Jacobins Festival in China, the Juilliard Focus! Festival in New York, and on China Central Television (CCTV).

Biguo has received many fellowships and scholarships, including the New Horizons Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival and School, a Yamaha Music Scholarship, and the Rose Piano Fellowship at The Juilliard School.

She received her Bachelor of Music with Academic Honors and Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School, where her individual instructor was Hung-Kuan Chen and her chamber music coaches included Emanuel Ax and Jerome Lowenthal. As a graduate student, she served as a Teaching Fellow in Juilliard’s Secondary Piano and Keyboard Skills and Music Theory and Analysis departments.

A Columbia-Juilliard Exchange student, she also studied philosophy at Columbia University, was a member of the Columbia Debate Society, and served on the judging panel for the Ivy League Parliamentary Championship, hosted by Columbia University and Yale IV.

She currently pursues her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying with David Kaplan.

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.

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 in 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).