Music Meets Design

Mei Ching Huang became a member of The Philadelphia Orchestra in January 2015. Previously, she was associate principal second violin of the San Diego Symphony and prior to that, a member of the New York Philharmonic and the Grant Park Orchestra in Chicago. A former student of Keng-Yuen Tseng at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, Ms. Huang has won numerous awards and honors, including first prize in the Marbury Violin Competition, second prize in the National Symphony Orchestra Young Soloists Competition, a top prize in the Hellam Young Artists’ Competition, and a semi-finalist in the Michael Hill International Violin Competition in New Zealand. She is also the recipient of scholarships from such diverse organizations as the Leni Fe Bland Foundation, Peabody Career Development Grants, and the Taiwan Culture and Arts Foundation. Ms. Huang holds a graduate diploma and a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where her principal teacher was Robert Mann. She is a recipient of a Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation scholarship, through which she continued graduate studies with Midori Goto at USC’s Thornton School of Music. Additionally, she has studied with David and Linda Cerone at Encore School for Strings. An avid chamber musician, Huang appears on the New York Philharmonic Ensembles chamber music series and The Philadelphia Orchestra chamber series. She is also the founding member of the Voyage String Quartet, formed in 2009 in Taiwan, where the quartet has made appearances at national concert halls and various institutions. In addition, Huang also devotes her time to education and community access through music, such as Philadelphia International Music Festival and the music therapy program for the homeless, in collaboration with Temple University’s Arts and Quality of Life Research Center and Broad Street Ministry. In 2018, she joins the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan as a visiting associate professor.

Cellist, Hai-Ye Ni joined The Philadelphia Orchestra as principal cello at the beginning of the 2006–07 season after having served as associate principal cello of the New York Philharmonic since 1999. She first came into prominence after her critically praised New York debut at Alice Tully Hall in 1991, a result of her winning First Prize at the Naumburg International Cello Competition. Other awards include a 2001 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She made her solo debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra in 2010 in Saint-Saëns First Concerto, and she was also featured in Tan Dun’s The Map, Concerto for Cello, Video, and Orchestra; Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1; Brahms’s “Double” Concerto; and Beethoven’s “Triple” Concerto.

Among the ensembles with which Ms. Ni has appeared as soloist are the Chicago, San Francisco, Vancouver, Shanghai, Singapore, and Finnish Radio symphonies; the New York, Hong Kong, and China philharmonics; the Orchestre National de Paris; and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Her recital performances include the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institute, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Wallace Collection in London. She has performed at festivals including Ravinia, Marlboro, La Jolla SummerFest, Chamber Music Dolomiti(Italy), Kuhmo (Finland), Spoleto (Italy) and Aspen. Highlights of past performances include an all-Baroque concertos program with the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra as soloist and conductor. A respected musician, Ms. Ni served on the jury of Finland’s V International Paulo Cello Competition in 2013 and has given master classes at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Mannes College of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the Shanghai Conservatory, the Central Conservatory in Beijing, and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in Singapore.