A wonderful concert of violin-piano duos—including Schubert’s transcendent Fantasy in C major and Brahms’ loving A major sonata—performed by Solon Gordon and Lily Tsai, to benefit the Newton Food Pantry and Newton Community Freedge.
*Masks and proof of vaccination are required for attendance.
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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 months he has joined cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 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 has a special interest in making software teams more welcoming and diverse. 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.
Lily Tsai is a PhD student at MIT researching data privacy in computer systems, but can often be found with her violin in hand. A lover of chamber music, Lily enjoys putting on chamber porch concerts, pop-up music events for the MIT community, and livestream performances as part of the Tsai Duo with her cellist sister, Stephanie. Lily credits her love of music to her teachers—Lynn Chang and Li Lin—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 as part of the Tsai Duo, and when she is not playing music or doing research, Lily can be found running around forests, scrambling up a climbing wall, reading a book, or making puns.