Leadership

Catherine Huang, from San Jose, CA, studies with Hans Boepple. Passionate about musical outreach, she kickstarted H.O.P.E. to unite pianists and audiences across the world amidst these trying times. Additionally, she is the Vice President of Lynbrook High School Music for Community, organized a benefit concert raising over $4,000 to aid California Wildfires victims, and has taught keyboard for free to underprivileged students. Catherine also enjoys dance, coding, Spanish, and exploring the outdoors. She is a rising freshman at Harvard College.

A Young Steinway Artist and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center guest artist, Benjamin T. Rossen, Great Neck, NY, is a multifaceted musician. He is a pianist, composer, and French hornist. He graduated from the Manhattan School of Music Precollege Division in 2020 under Professor Jeffrey Cohen and Professor Sharon Moe as a double major candidate in piano and French horn. In addition to H.O.P.E., Benjamin was the founder of the Music Creators Society, an extracurricular program that facilitates collaboration between artists, composers, and writers to produce interdisciplinary works. In the fall of 2020, Benjamin will be attending Harvard University and the New England Conservatory through the A.B./M.M. five-year program.

Josephine Chou, a rising senior from Saratoga, California, studies with Hans Boepple. She is the president of her school’s Tri-M, a club that aims to unite students in their love of music, bring students’ musical talents to community centers, and partner with other Bay Area schools to raise money for causes. In addition to music, she is an avid writer who has had her poems published in literary journals. She also enjoys baking and hiking.

Simon is a sophomore at Stanford University, studying Materials Science and Computer Science. He studied with Professor John McCarthy, and is currently struggling to read through Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2. Some of his interests include playing with feathered birdies and rackets, as well as cooking, making and drinking boba, and unhealthily procrastinating on homework. Currently, Simon is also working on Wave Learning Festival, a multi-college-student run platform that gathers people to teach their hobbies and interests to younger students, and would love to see you teach there too!

Lucas Amory is an incoming freshman at the New England Conservatory of Music, studying with Hae-Sun Paik and Princeton University Class of 2025 from New York City. Previously, he was enrolled in the Juilliard School’s Pre-College program, studying with Professor Julian Martin. He likes avocados and Avatar the Last Airbender. He dabbles in composing and conducting apart from piano and has a passion for musical community service initiatives. He hopes to bring a more accessible approach to the H.O.P.E. project, whether it be through interviews, vlogs, or educational crash courses on music and pianism.

Ben Kim lives in Seoul, South Korea, studies with Julian Martin at Juilliard Pre-College, and is a rising junior and boarding student at Milton Academy in Milton, MA. Ben is a charter member of the Music Inclusion Program in Boston, helping disabled students at Henderson Inclusion School, and is founding an association uniting boarding and day schools in New England musically. He loves composing and conducting. Aside from music, he enjoys STEM, writing about virtually anything, learning languages (he’s okay at Chinese and a bit better at Spanish), soccer (FC Barcelona!), golf, swimming, binge-watching YouTube… the list goes on.

Alex Chen is a rising high school sophomore from St. Louis, Missouri, studying with Zena Ilyashov. As the youngest member of the H.O.P.E. Board, Alex coordinates communications and relays information between Board and non-Board members, earning him the unofficial role of "The Diplomat." Outside of piano, his hobbies include 3D-printed-model-rocketry (a combination which so far has yielded "limited results" and "dangerous explosions"), math, tennis, cross country, and annoying entertaining his two younger brothers.

Hannah Lin, from San Jose, CA, is a first-year at UCLA studying mechanical engineering and musicology. In high school, Hannah studied piano with Ms. Kai Chi Zhu and was an active pianist and cellist in the Bay Area Youth Music Society- a group dedicated to spreading the love and joy of music through community service. Aside from musical endeavors, Hannah enjoys photography, watching ASMR baking videos, and making H.O.P.E. graphics alongside the queens Erin and Vanessa!

Erin Yuan is a pianist, violist, and incoming Harvard College student from Chicago, IL, with an unhealthy obsession with the key of D-flat major. Her hobbies include trying to master the art of spontaneous napping, telling viola jokes at her own expense, and annoying her family when she practices. As a subpar amateur art enthusiast, she crafts graphics for H.O.P.E. with much-appreciated input from her talented best buds Vanessa and Hannah!

Vanessa Yu is from Toronto-ish, Canada, where she vicariously enjoys good weather through her fellow California-based H.O.P.E. members. She studies piano with Dr. Michael Berkovsky and will be continuing her musical studies at the University of Toronto this fall. Through chairing and serving on a number of Greater Toronto Area arts councils and organizations, she has enjoyed bringing music to the community through fundraisers, outreach concerts, and collaborative initiatives. Some of her hobbies include eating cake for breakfast, teaching bullet journal and calligraphy workshops, and expanding her succulent collection. Vanessa feels incredibly honoured to be creating H.O.P.E.’s graphics alongside Hannah and Erin!

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Karina Tseng studies with Olya Katsman. During her free time, she can be found hiking, hanging out with friends, or watching football (cheesehead alert!). This fall, Karina will be an incoming freshman at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester, studying piano performance and business.

Kevin Yang is a rising college freshman at UC Berkeley studying chemical biology and music. During high school he studied piano with Sharon Mann, and he was active as an accompanist for his middle school and high school’s choirs. When Kevin is not at the piano, he likes to compose, listen to music, and code.

When he’s not skiing, reading, or painting, Soda likes to dabble in music. He and his compositions have been received in concert, written and performed for causes ranging from wildfire relief to Effective Altruism. A student of Anna Semyanovsky in Mountain View and Joseph Kalichstein at the Juilliard School, he’ll start at Columbia University in the fall of 2021, where he wants to study math. He’s currently halfway through Tolstoy’s Prisoner in the Caucasus, the Catullus carmina, and the 2003 MIT integration bee, if you’d like to meet him there.

Elizabeth Qiu is a junior at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland. She is a piano nerd, half-marathoner, and STEM enthusiast. When she’s not playing the piano, she’s probably trying to expand music programs in her community, running long distances, coding, exploring politics, and advocating for mental health awareness. She is also the only female organizer for MoCoHacks, which is the largest high-school hackathon in her county. Elizabeth studies with Dr. Marjorie Lee.

Ophir is a sophomore computer science student at Stanford University, where he is a piano student of Frederick Weldy. His interests include biking, cooking, philosophy, and listening to a wide array of musical genres, ranging from classical and jazz to shoegaze and retrowave. An avid Brahms fan, he is currently undertaking a project of orchestrating Brahms’ three piano sonatas for symphony orchestra.

Ben Hoang, from Cupertino, California, is a homeschooled rising senior and studies piano with Jed Galant and Olya Katsman. Before moving to California in 2019, Ben attended high school in Austin, Texas, and was a member of the Austin Youth Music Ambassadors and the instrumental choir at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church. Ben is also a From The Top alumni and participated in their Arts Leadership program. Besides piano, Ben is very interested in STEM, especially computer programming, and has been developing websites and various applications. Currently, he is working on a project enabling automatic audio and video synchronization. Ben also enjoys playing tennis, biking, and sightseeing.

Andy Dai, from Chapel Hill, NC, is a dual-enrolled rising senior at ECHHS and NCSSM. He studies piano with Teddy Robie and loves improvising (while procrastinating on practice). Aside from piano, Andy is also very passionate about STEM, tackling projects ranging from mosquitoes to AI. He is extremely excited to virtually conduct cancer combination therapy research from home this summer of 2020.

A recent graduate of the pre-college program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Charlotte Wong has studied with professor Corey McVicar since 2015, beginning her piano studies at the age of five. Besides playing the piano, she enjoys getting boba with friends (her current favorite is black sugar hojicha from Boba Guys!), doing calligraphy and embossing, reading, traveling, and going hiking! A rising freshman at UC Berkeley, Charlotte is planning to major in microbial biology and bioengineering.