Violinist Lily Tsai, violist Jenn Chang, cellist Valerie Chen, and pianist Solon Gordon perform duos, trios, and quartets for violin, viola, cello, and piano at the Lilypad to benefit Food for Free, an organization that rescues and redistributes 2 million pounds of food a year in Cambridge!
Program: Schoenfield — Cafe Music Prokofiev — Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in f minor, Op. 80 Schumann — Piano Quartet in Eflat major, Op. 47
Music for Food: A Farewell Finale at the Lilypad
Jenn Chang, viola
Jenn Chang (she/her) joined the Biden Administration in January 2021 and serves as the White House Liaison and Senior Advisor to the Chair at the National Endowment for the Arts. In this role, she helps advance equity and inclusion, health and well-being, civic infrastructure, and community engagement through the arts. She works closely with the White House Domestic Policy Council to implement the Executive Order on the Arts and Humanities, showcased in January 2024 at the Summit “Healing, Bridging, Thriving: the Arts and Culture in Our Communities.” This co-hosted summit featured Second Gentleman Emhoff, DPC Director Tanden, Surgeon General Murthy, and an array of local and national arts integration leaders. Jenn was also instrumental in designing the NEA’s $135 million American Rescue Plan grant program; recruited and onboarded 11 members to the National Council on the Arts; and laid the groundwork for ArtsHERE, the NEA’s first equity-focused grant program.
Jenn joined the NEA after working on the appointments team with the Biden-Harris Transition. Prior to that, she worked as an associated consultant at WolfBrown with a portfolio of arts and education clients. She spent over a decade at Google, where she worked in Strategy and Operations across Google Fiber, AdWords, and Grow With Google. In 2016, she took a sabbatical to serve as the Expansion States Operations Director at Hillary for America.
While at Google, Jenn received her Master’s degree in viola performance from The Juilliard School. Performance venue highlights include the MoMA sculpture garden, Dizzy’s Jazz Club and Carnegie Hall in New York, Jordan Hall in Boston, and Cafe Revolution in San Francisco. A graduate of Harvard College with a degree in Social Studies, Jenn wrote her senior thesis on how the El Sistema music education program in Venezuela serves as a vehicle for social change.
Lily Tsai, violin
Lily Tsai is a final-year PhD student at MIT researching data privacy in computer systems, but can often be found with her violin in hand. Lily will receive her graduate minor in violin performance, and has performed in masterclasses for Hillary Hahn and Bayla Keyes at MIT. A lover of chamber music, Lily enjoys organizing chamber porch concerts, pop-up and benefit concerts for both the MIT and broader Boston community, and livestream performances as part of the Tsai Duo with her cellist sister, Stephanie. Lily credits her love of music to her teachers---Li Lin and Lynn Chang---and her chamber coaches from Harvard, the Parker String Quartet and Hengjin Park.
Prior to college, Lily toured as Concertmistress of the inaugural National Youth Orchestra of the USA and played in the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Aside from playing classically, Lily also arranges and covers songs with her cellist sister as the Tsai Duo. When she is not playing music or doing research, Lily can be found making puns, running around forests, scrambling up a climbing wall, or reading a book.
This concert at the (aptly-named) Lilypad will be Lily’s final concert as a Cambridge resident, as she plans to move back to her roots in California after graduation. However, she hopes to be back often to play with friends!
Solon Gordon, piano
Solon Gordon enjoys a multifaceted career in music and technology. As a pianist, he specializes in music for strings and piano and finds joy in collaborating with young students, touring professionals, and everything in between. In recent years he has joined cellist Yo-Yo Ma for projects including his "Beginnings" recital and residency in Acadia National Park. As a software engineer, Solon has contributed to fields such as education technology and distributed databases. He also maintains a comprehensive live music calendar for the Boston area at bostonshows.org. Solon is ever grateful to his principal musical mentors: Monique Duphil, at Oberlin Conservatory, and Sandra Dennis, at the Community Music School of Springfield, Massachusetts.
Valerie Chen, cello
Because Valerie K. Chen always dreamed of uniting the cellists, she started MIT’s first cello club CelloWorld(); and associated ensemble Cello++ (abbreviated C++). Her initiatives extend beyond just the cello world, however: Valerie also founded the Music Unites: Songs for Equity (MUSE) Project, an MIT video performance series highlighting Black artists.
An ardent performer, Valerie has played in MIT’s Emerson/Harris Program, Chamber Music Society (classical and jazz), campus pop-up music series “Sharing Notes,” and with the Symphony Orchestra as both Concerto Competition winner and principal cellist. Most recently, she appeared as soloist with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall for MIT Tech Night.
Outside of MIT, Valerie has won numerous accolades both as soloist and chamber musician. She has also held the position of principal cellist of local, California All-State, and All-National honor orchestras. She is immensely grateful to her teachers Joyce Geeting, Maureen Hynes, Clive Greensmith, Kee-Hyun Kim, and Christine Lamprea.
Valerie is currently pursuing her PhD in collaborative robotics advised by Prof. Julie Shah. Her goal in both research and music is to improve lives through everyday interactions, which natural-ly compels her to share music jokes, no matter how minor the oppor-tune-ity.