Faculty Artist Series: Hannah Levinson, viola

Violist Hannah Levinson is an in-demand performer of contemporary and classical music. She has recently been featured as a soloist and chamber musician at Carnegie Hall, The Stone, 92Y, Miller Theater, Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, June in Buffalo, and the Andy Warhol Museum, and at international festivals including the Kroch Festival (Stockholm), Musikprotokol Festival (Graz), Projektgruppe Neue Musik (Bremen), and Festival Musica (Strasbourg). Dedicated to working with living composers, Hannah has commissioned and premiered over 40 chamber and solo works.
 
Hannah is a founding member and Executive Director of the violin/viola duo andPlay, described by I Care If You Listen as “enthusiastic champions for new music and collaboration.” andPlay’s most recent album, Translucent Harmonies (2023), was released in September 2023 on the UK-label, Another Timbre. Featuring works by Catherine Lamb and Kristofer Svensson, the album was included on Bandcamp’s “Best Contemporary Classical: September 2023” and Steve Smith’s “2023, for the record.”
 
Committed to both contemporary and classical repertoire, Hannah is also a member of the Talea Ensemble (“a crucial part of the New York cultural ecosphere” New York Times), Fair Trade Trio, and the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and a former member of the Pittsburgh Opera Orchestra. She frequently performs with NYC ensembles including the International Contemporary Ensemble, either/or, counter)induction, Heartbeat Opera, Cantata Profana, Contemporaneous, and The Rhythm Method Quartet.

A strong believer in sharing her artistic practice with her local community, Hannah is committed to audience engagement events through “andPlay (in) conversation,” a free series in Upper Manhattan that provides opportunities for audiences to look inside the collaborative process of creating music, and through performances with organizations including “Music for Autism.”
 
Before her appointment at BGSU, Hannah was Music Artist Faculty at NYU Steinhardt and at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege. She earned her degrees at Oberlin College and Conservatory (BM in Viola Performance, BA in Russian East European Studies), Manhattan School of Music (MM in Contemporary Performance), and NYU Steinhardt (PhD in Performance). Her primary teachers include Karen Ritscher, Martha Strongin Katz, and Nadia Sirota. Her research explores how interactions between composers and political structures affect the creation of new music.

Dr. Susan Nelson is the Associate Professor of Bassoon and Woodwind Area Coordinator at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Ohio, and enjoys an active career as a performer, teacher, and clinician. Dr. Nelson is an advocate for new music as well as chamber music for the bassoon, and is the Director of the non-profit organization Bassoon Chamber Music Composition Competition (BCMCC) and founding member of Across the Grain bassoon/percussion duo. Dr. Nelson teaches at various camps, including BGSU’s Double Reed Camp and The Renova Festival. She has performed with the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, Michigan Opera Theatre, Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra, Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Adrian Symphony Orchestra, and Helena Symphony, among others. She has also given solo performances at the International Double Reed Society Conferences in Boulder (CO), Redlands (CA), Oxford (OH), New York, Tokyo (Japan), and Thailand, among others.

Dr. Nelson has taught bassoon and theory at Stephen F. Austin State University and played with the Stone Fort Wind Quintet in Nacogdoches, Texas. She also held the position of principal bassoon in the Great Falls Symphony and was a member of the Chinook Winds quintet in Great Falls, Montana. She can be heard on Elements, an album through the MSR Classics label, and Not Yet: New Chamber Works for Bassoon on the Mark Records label. Dr. Nelson is a graduate of the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Michigan. Her primary teachers include Jeffrey Lyman, Carl Rath, and Alan Hawkins.

Dr. Nelson is a Fox Artist.

Solungga Liu has earned acclaim as a pianist of remarkable breadth, celebrated for her advocacy of early twentieth-Century American music, underrepresented works in the classical repertoire, and her interpretation of contemporary compositions. Her discography is both wide-ranging and extensive.

Liu’s 2017 debut at the Library of Congress was praised for its “rhythmic precision, expression and a finely calibrated sense of balance between all of the moving parts.” There she performed a solo recital of works by Charles Griffes, Amy Beach and César Franck, a concert tailored to her strengths and uniquely composed of music from the Library’s manuscript collection.  

Hailed as “the best interpreter of Charles Griffes”, the American Record Guide described her recording “The Pleasure-Dome of Kubla Khan: Piano Works of Charles Tomlinson Griffes” for Centaur Records, as having, “excellent sound, sensitivity and beguiling color”. This recording led to the special request by the Library of Congress that she premiere Griffes’s 1915 piano transcription of Debussy’s Les parfums de la nuit from his orchestral work Iberia, once thought lost by Griffes’s biographers. About this world premiere, the Washington Classical Review wrote, “The piece retained an orchestral spectrum of colors in Liu’s hands. She served as the knowing conductor—the glue that held it all together while still allowing the transcription to shine through on its own merits”. 

A dedicated performer of new music, Liu has had numerous premieres and recordings of contemporary works to her credit and has collaborated with many composers of our time, among them Stephen Hartke, Steve Reich, Paola Prestini, Jeffrey Mumford, Eric Moe, and Aaron Jay Kernis. Highlights of her performances include Lutosławski’s Piano Concerto with OSSIA, Steve Reich’s The Desert Music and Tehillim with Alarm Will Sound, Aaron Travers’s Concierto de Milonga, written for her and the Indiana University New Music Ensemble, and Gregory Mertl’s Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for her, conductor Craig Kirchhoff and the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble. 

One of Liu’s 2025-26 new music projects is to perform and record a collection of solo and chamber works by Stephen Hartke with the eminent Verona String Quartet, under the composer’s invitation.

Liu enjoys an active career across five continents and has collaborated with the National Theater Symphony Orchestra of Brazil, the National Institute of Health’s Philharmonia in Washington D.C., the Taipei Metropolitan Orchestra, and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra/Choral Society. She has performed solo and chamber concerts at venues such as Carnegie Hall, The National Concert Hall in Taiwan, the Goethe Center in Bangkok, the Brazilian National Museum of Sculpture (MUBE) in São Paulo, and the Cultural Center of Braśilia, where she presented a series of solo recitals for the public as well as for members of the Cabinet and the Supreme Labor Court of Brazil. 

In addition to her dedication to students at BGSU, Liu is a sought-after Artist Teacher at major international festivals and competitions, among them the Sicily International Piano Festival and Competition, the Lied Center for Performing Arts Summer Piano Academy, the Eastman School of Music Summer Piano Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, Thailand International Mozart Competition,  the Piano Plus International Piano Festival in Greece, and the Global Summer Institute of Music in Bad Vöslau, Austria.

Liu holds a doctoral degree in piano performance from the Eastman School of Music where she studied with Alan Feinberg, Douglas Humpherys and Elizabeth DiFelice.

http://www.solungga.com

Stephen Eckert is a pianist and new music advocate from Newfoundland, Canada, now based in Bowling Green, Ohio. Appearing in festivals like the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany), Pique (Ontario), NUNC! (Illinois), MACCM (Ohio), FoCAM (Washington), Sound Symposium and Camber Arts Summer Music (Newfoundland), Mx. Eckert has established themself as an emerging voice in contemporary music. Stephen has premiered dozens of new and original works in VERSFest, the Orford Contemporary Workshop, soundSCAPE Festival, and with Ensemble Allure, which released its debut album Dual in 2024. Stephen was named on CBC’s “Hot 30-under-30 classical musicians” in 2022 and the following year performed Lutosławski’s Piano Concerto with the BGSU Philharmonia as the winner of the concerto competition. Career honours include grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, ArtsNL, the City of Ottawa, and the Nicole Senécal Emerging Artist Prize. Learn more at their website, www.stepheneckertpianist.com.