YYSO Cello Masterclass

Prices:

$5 YYSO Members

$15 Non-YYSO participants

About the Master: 

Lauded by the Washington Post for her “burnish tone,” cellist Dr. Ai-Lin Hsieh is a versatile musician with a repertoire that ranged from the timeless classics to the avant-garde. She is equally accomplished as a soloist, chamber and orchestra musician.

Dr. Hsieh began her early music training on both piano and cello. After receiving the Bachelor of Music degree in cello performance from Soochow University in her native Taiwan, she continued her study at the Eastman School of Music and earned a Master of Music degree. In 2000, she was admitted by the University of Maryland, College Park near Washington, D.C. with Graduate Assistantship to pursue her doctoral study. Five years later, she was awarded Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Cello Performance. Her primary teachers include such prominent performers and pedagogues as Steven Doane, Evelyn Elsing and Kenneth Slowik. She also received her chamber music coaching from members of the Guarneri Quartet and the Ying Quartet.

As an active performer, Dr. Hsieh is a founding member of the Pennsylvania Piano Quartet. She has given many solo and chamber performance. She has collaborated with a breadth of musicians, such pianists Hiroko Yamazaki, Victor Asuncion, Eric Fung, Marco Terlizzi and Xun Pan; clarinetist Beverly Butts, violinists Peter Serotin, Raffaele Terlizzi, and Simon Maurer, violists Agnés Maurer, and percussionist Mika Godbole etc. The most noteworthy performances include a collaboration (by invitation) with the late Mistislav Rostropovitch in a cello octet and a two-week chamber music tour in China.

In addition to chamber music, she is currently the Assistant Principal Cellist of the York Symphony in Pennsylvania. Prior to this appointment, she performed with several orchestras in Asia and America, such as Yin Qi (Music Fellowship) Orchestra, Maryland Symphony Orchestra, the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, and Washington Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Their concerts have brought her to major cities including Los Angeles, New York, Taipei and Tokyo.

Aside from her deep interest in chamber performance, Dr. Hsieh has a passion for training a new generation of cellists. She was a cello instructor in the D.C. Youth Orchestra program and at Montgomery College in Maryland. She coached chamber music at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music. She also served as an adjunct faculty at Lebanon Valley College. Currently, she is an adjunct faculty teaching applied cello lessons at Messiah University and runs a private cello studio in Hummelstown, PA.