2024 / 2025 · Jury

Since joining the faculty at Western Washington University in 1992, pianist Jeffrey Gilliam has performed throughout the Pacific Northwest as a solo recitalist, as guest pianist with The Seattle Chamber Players at Benaroya Hall, as chamber musician and soloist in the Marrowstone and Bellingham Festivals, and as concerto soloist with local orchestras. His extended association with the late Lord Yehudi Menuhin led to collaborations with instrumentalists at London's Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Carnegie Recital Hall in New York, on concert tours across the United States and Canada, and at European, Asian and South American festivals.

Originally from Akron, Ohio, he studied piano with Cécile Genhart at the Eastman School of Music and with Theodore Lettvin at the University of Michigan. A Fulbright Scholarship in piano and German literature took him to Günter Ludwig in Cologne, where he made his European recital debut in 1982. He has performed in master classes for Leon Fleisher, György Sebök, John Perry, Maria Curcio Diamand, Dorothy Taubman, Tatiana Nikolayeva and György Sandor, and studied accompanying with Martin Katz and Margo Garrett.

He taught an accompanying course at The Juilliard School and spent three years as Assistant Professor of Piano at the University of Michigan, as well as fourteen years on the faculty of the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad and Blonay, Switzerland. He has recorded with violinists Yehudi Menuhin, Ruggiero Ricci and Alberto Lysy for EMI, Opus 111 and Dinemec Classics.

At Western Washington University he teaches piano and directs the piano accompanying programme, and is Artistic Director of The Sanford-Hill Piano Series. Recent piano performance majors have gone on to Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, Stony Brook University and the New England Conservatory. He remains active as an adjudicator and clinician with the Washington State Music Teachers Association.

He has taught as a guest professor at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and at Silpakorn Fine Arts University in Bangkok, and in 2005 received a second Fulbright, a Senior Specialist Award for performance and teaching in Thailand.

Dr. Boya Li is a pianist celebrated for her achievements in competition and her breadth of performance experience. She took First Prize at the 2019 Denver International Piano Competition and First Prize at the 2020 Mississippi MTNA Young Artist competition, and was awarded Second Prize in the 2021 Mississippi Music Teachers Association Graduate Solo Division.

She has given seven solo recitals and taken part in more than twenty chamber and collaborative performances in the last five years, alongside regular charity performances. Her repertoire spans Baroque, Classical and Romantic styles as well as avant-garde contemporary music. Professor Georg Friedrich Schenck of the Robert Schumann Hochschule said of her playing: "Boya is a passionate and thoughtful pianist. Her playing blends a purity of expression with youthful vitality."

As an educator she guides students from beginner to professional level, and served as an instructor at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her online private students took Second Place in both the 17th Century and 18th Century Music categories of the Great Composers Competition in 2020.

She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Southern Mississippi and a Master of Music from the University of Northern Colorado, with earlier studies at the China Conservatory of Music and the Tianjin Conservatory of Music, under Manchun Chen, Meina Yu, Adam Żukiewicz and Ellen Elder.

Recognised for her innate musicality, compelling presence and technical precision, conductor Sunny Xuecong Xia's ability to forge an immediate connection with orchestras and singers alike has led to engagements around the globe. She joined the Seattle Symphony at the start of the 2022/2023 season as Douglas F. King Assistant Conductor and was quickly promoted to Associate Conductor, leading over a dozen programmes featuring soloists including Conrad Tao, Noah Geller and Mahani Teave.

Highlights include the world premiere of Angelique Poteat's Dear Humanity for youth chorus and orchestra, the Celebrate Asia programme with violinist Kerson Leong, and the Merriman-Ross Family Young Composers Workshop Concert with ten world premieres. She has assisted Dame Jane Glover and James Gaffigan at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

In 2021/2022 she was a Conducting Fellow at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, making her festival debut with the world premiere of Marc Migó Cortés' Dumka, and led a production of La bohème with the Chandler Opera Company. Equally at home in the opera pit, she has served as assistant conductor for Così fan tutte, Hänsel und Gretel, Die Zauberflöte, Cavalleria rusticana, Le Rossignol and L'Enfant et les sortilèges.

She holds a dual master's degree in orchestral conducting and violin performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Carl Topilow and Jan Mark Sloman, and a doctorate from Arizona State University under Dr. Jeffery Meyer and Tito Muñoz. At the Seattle Symphony she is mentored by Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot.

Originally from Guangzhou, she moved to Sydney at fourteen on a sponsorship from the Australian String Academy. An accomplished violinist before turning to conducting, she performed as a soloist with orchestras in China and Australia, and served as concertmaster of the CIM Orchestra.

Yang Lu holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in cello performance from the University of Washington, a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a bachelor's degree from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She was the recipient of the Alcor Endowed Scholarship and the Louis G. Marsh Endowed Music Scholarship, and performed with the Corda Quartet, winner of the Strings and Piano Chamber Music Competition for 2016–2017.

She has taken master classes with the Emerson, Brandis, Tokyo and Calidore string quartets, and solo master classes with Wolfgang Boettcher, Lynn Harrell, David Geringas, Walter Grimmer, Jeffrey Solow and Xavier Phillips.

Always seeking to intersect technology with music, she has researched recorded excerpts of renowned cellists using digital signal processing, allowing cello vibrato to be visualised as it was actually executed.

Michael Brockman, DMA, moved from the East Coast to Seattle in 1987 to join the University of Washington School of Music faculty, where he teaches concert and jazz saxophone performance and jazz arranging and composition. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts from the UW and a Master of Music with distinction from the New England Conservatory, studying arranging with Jaki Byard, composition with George Russell and woodwind performance with Joe Allard.

His doctoral dissertation is titled "Orchestration Techniques of Duke Ellington", and he has transcribed numerous classic large-ensemble scores by Ellington, Mingus, Mulligan, Lunceford, Kenton and Monk. As lead saxophonist and co-director of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra he has performed with Wynton Marsalis, Clark Terry, Jimmy Heath, Quincy Jones, James Moody, Benny Carter, Ernestine Anderson, Arturo Sandoval and Ella Fitzgerald.

A perpetual student of woodwind acoustics, he is the inventor of a patented device called the "Broctave Key", which provides an additional octave and register vent to any wind instrument. He has premiered many new works for saxophone, including the West Coast premiere of Gunther Schuller's Sonata for Saxophone.

Miao Liu, born in Beijing, is a DMA candidate at Arizona State University. She received her Master of Music from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Science in psychology with a focus on education from Fujian Normal University.

An active soloist, she has appeared as featured soloist with the Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble, the ASU Percussion Ensemble, the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Washington Symphony Orchestra and the UW Wind Ensemble. She won the 2024 National Flute Association Convention Performer Competition and performed at the 2024 National Flute Convention, and took first prizes at the 2019 Arizona Flute Society Collegiate Competition, the 2017 Seattle Philharmonic Don Bushell Concerto Competition and the 2016 Concerto Competition at the University of Washington.

She organised and performed in a biannual chamber concert series promoting works by BIPOC composers. As a teaching assistant in the ASU Flute Studio she taught lessons, technique classes and pedagogy, and as a flute teacher with the Harmony Project she gave lessons and ensemble coaching to underprivileged elementary and middle school students in the Greater Phoenix area. Fluent in Mandarin and English, she teaches in both languages.