Di Wu
piano

Van Cliburn International Piano Competition finalist Di Wu Di Wu joins the Mid-Texas Symphony for the opening engagement of her touring schedule as a Van Cliburn performer. Di made her orchestral debut with the Beijing Symphony at age fourteen after which she was invited to study in the United States. As winner of Juilliard’s 2009 William Petschek Award, Di made her Alice Tully Hall recital debut at Lincoln Center in May 2009. She noted, “I just have to present music that I really love and cherish. When you play pieces like that, you will have no regrets.”

She has performed with the National, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras, and twice with the New York Pops Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. International engagements include recitals at the Busoni International Piano Festival in Italy and at Germany’s Klavier Festival Ruhr, as well as at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Recently singled out by Musical America as a young artist to watch, Di Wu attracted an enthusiatic following at the Van Cliburn Competition. Dallas music critic Scott Cantrell describes her as "a superbly equipped pianist, and one with flair," while arts writer Mike Winter identified her as one of the three best pianists in the competition.

Di completed undergraduate studies at the Curtis Institute, a Masters degree at Juilliard, and is currently enrolled in the Artists Diploma program at Juilliard.

Nancy Zhou
violin

Born in 1993, San Antonio native Nancy Zhou has been studying the violin since age four, and played her first recital at the age of five. In March 2009, Nancy won the Johansen International Competition for Young String Players and the competition’s prize for Best Performance of the Commissioned Work. Nancy is a current recipient of the Circle of Friends Foundation scholarship established by world-renowned violinist Anne Sophie Mutter and will tour Europe with Mutter in 2009 (violin) and 2011 (viola). She will appear as soloist with the Prince Georges Philharmonic Orchestra in October 2010 is in conjunction with her Johansen competition awards. Later this season, she will perform the Sibelius Concerto with the San Antonio Symphony and the Brahms Concerto with the Symphony of the Hills of Kerrville. Other highlights of her concert schedule include concerts in Germany’s Verbier Festival, solo recitals in Georgetown and Washington, D.C., and performances of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 2 and Mendelssohn’s Octet under the auspices of the Circle of Friends Foundation.

Nancy attended the Aspen Music Festival and School, studying with Paul Kantor, and the New School’s New York String Seminar, directed by Jaime Laredo. She has participated in master classes with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Peter Oundjian, Pinchas Zukerman, and Koichoro Harada of Japan’s Toho School of Music. Nancy studies with her father, violinist Long Zhou and with violinist, violist, and conductor Jaime Laredo.

Amanda Grooms
soprano

Soprano Amanda Grooms is the winner of the 2009 Mid-Texas Symphony Young Artist Competition. Amanda is a Missouri native and recently completed her Master’s Degree at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music where she studied with Dr. Stephen King. Her operatic career includes performances at Aspen Music Festival and Sarasota Opera. She has performed in concert at From the Garden’s LIVE! with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and in the American premiere of Stabat Mater by D’Amico at Rice University. Her awards include District Winner, Saint Louis, Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 2008 and Finalist at the West Palm Beach Opera Competition in 2007. Amanda enjoys scuba diving and takes part in the annual Comal River TrashFest.

Larry Mueller
oboe

Oboist Larry Mueller divides his time between performing on oboe and English horn and repairing woodwind instruments. Larry has been principal oboist of the Mid-Texas Symphony since 1997 and is described by Maestro David Mairs as a “poet of the orchestra.” He is also principal oboist of the Corpus Christi Symphony and frequently performs on oboe and English horn with the San Antonio Symphony and the San Antonio Opera. Before settling in San Antonio, Larry spent one year playing oboe in Guadalajara, Mexico. His oboe degrees are from Ohio University and the University of Iowa, and he has studied with oboists from the Cleveland, Atlanta, Detroit, and San Antonio symphonies.

As a woodwind repairman, Larry specializes in oboe and clarinet repairs and does repair work for many colleges and orchestras around the United States and Mexico. He is a nationally known repair clinician and won the “best clinic” award in 2008 from National Association of Professional Band Instrument Repair Technicians. He lives in San Antonio with his wife and four dogs.

Kelly Watson
Flute, Voice

Born in 1980 in North Carolina, Kelly spent her high school years in San Antonio, where she studied flute with MTS Principal Flutist, Dr. Rita Linard. In 2002, she received her Bachelor’s of Music in Flute Performance from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she studied with Jim Walker, a 2005 guest artist with MTS. Deciding to take a left turn from the orchestral route, Kelly completed a degree in Jazz Performance and Composition from The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City in 2006. During her time in New York, she worked closely with many well-known jazz artists and studied improvisation and composition privately with recording artist, Greg Osby. Kelly also recorded and self-released two albums of her original music, “from the shelf” and “dear and bare.” She has performed in the United States, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. She has recently relocated to Berlin, Germany where she leads a large Suzuki Flute studio at the John F Kennedy German-American School and her modern-chamber-jazz sextet performs regularly in creative music venues.

Christian Leotta
piano

Italian pianist and Beethoven virtuoso Christian Leotta first performed with the Mid-Texas Symphony in September 2004, shortly after the President of the Italian Republic had awarded him the prestigious President's Medal for his performances of the complete cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Since that time, his career has blossomed and Christian has appeared as a recital soloist and with orchestras in his native Italy and in more than 40 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Oceania and Africa.

In 2002, Christian Leotta became the youngest pianist since the Daniel Barenboim to undertake a recital series of all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas. Since that time, he has performed the sonatas in Madrid, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Vancouver, Venice, Québec City, and elsewhere.

Christian has performed with the Munich Philharmoniker, the New Philharmonie Westfalen, the Vienna Kammerorchester, the Orchestra Nazionale Sinfonica della RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, the Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, the Lexington Philharmonic, the Richardson Symphony, the Symphony of the Americas, and Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco. Highlights of the present concert season include performances of Beethoven's five piano concertos, the Choral Fantasy, as well as the Beethoven piano sonatas.

A pupil of Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Christian was born in Catania, Italy, and lives on Lake Como. He began playing the piano at the age of seven and studied at Milan's Conservatory with Mario Patuzzi, at the Theo Lieven International Piano Foundation on Lake Como, and with Rosalyn Tureck at Oxford, as well as at the Literature and Philosophy Faculty of Milan's State University.