Competition 2021 Results
Overall
Sooah Jeon (Junior)
(Blaire) Nayoun Kim (Senior)
Leland Ko - Cello (College)
Division
Liyuan Xie/Hana Mundiya (College)
Jinan Laurentia Woo (Junior)
Spencer Rubin/Bethany Bobbs (Senior)
College
Leland Ko (Cello
Liyuan Xie (Violin)
Hana Mundiya (Violin)

Leland Ko (Cello)
Leland Philip Ko (b. 1998) is a cellist of Chinese-Canadian descent from the Boston area. He has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in venues across America’s east coast, such as Merkin Concert Hall and Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall in New York, and Jordan Hall and Sanders Theatre in Boston, as well as internationally in Sweden, Israel, and Spain, including Auditorio Manuel de Falla in Granada. Leland’s most recent accolades include second prize at the inaugural Bader and Overton Canadian Cello Competition in 2020, and appearing as a finalist in the 2020 Young Concert Artists International Auditions.
Despite growing up a part of Boston’s strong youth orchestra culture, Leland has often sought out chamber music at various summer festivals over the years, having attended the Perlman Music Program’s Summer Music School and its Chamber Music Workshop, and Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute.
Leland’s love for chamber music has also led him to be an Artist in Residence of New York Piano Society (NYPS), as well as a frequent performer on Swedish pianist Per Tengstrand’s concert series “Music on Park Ave” at Scandinavia House in NYC, and former Music Director of Opus 21, a student-run chamber music collective at Princeton.
Leland was a long-time student of Ronald Lowry and Paul Katz before attending Princeton University, where he graduated with a B.A. degree in German Literature. Currently, he is pursuing a Master’s degree at The Juilliard School under the teaching of Minhye Clara Kim and Timothy Eddy. Since the end of 2020, Leland plays on the ex-Peled, ex-Greenhouse Thomas Dodd from 1790.
Leland was also a competitive long-distance runner for several years, but remains loyal to his original passion of tennis, both as a player and even more so as a fan.

Hana Mundiya (Violin)
Hana Mundiya made her concerto debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 13 at David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center as a part of the orchestra’s Young People’s Concerts. Her recent top prizes include the 25th International Brahms Competition in Austria, 9th Leopold Mozart Competition in Germany, Kosciuszko Foundation Wieniawski Competition, Aspen Music Festival Concerto Competition, World Bach Competition, and Princeton University Concerto Competition. The Allgemeine Zeitung described her performance at the Kurhaus in Wiesbaden as a soloist with the Mainz Kammerorchester as “convincing and technically impeccable.”
A strong believer in the universal ideals of the United Nations Charter, she is a dedicated member of the UN Chamber Music Society, and performs regularly at the UN Headquarters, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center for UNHCR, UNESCO, the Red Cross, and Mount Sinai Hospital. As President of Opus 21, Princeton University's chamber music collective, she led a collaboration with and now frequently performs at the Music on Park Avenue series at Scandinavia House in NYC. She is the Artist-in-Residence for the New York Piano Society.
As a baroque violinist, she has appeared with The Academy of Ancient Music at Walt Disney Concert Hall and San Francisco Early Music Society, and with the English Concert as a principal member of Early Music Princeton.
Born to a Japanese mother and Indian father, Hana is a native of SoHo, New York City. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, and is currently pursuing a Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Catherine Cho and Naoko Tanaka, and Robert Mealy for baroque violin. Her past teachers include Donald Weilerstein, Eric Wyrick, Nancy Wilson, Detlef Hahn, and Bojan Čičić. She is a graduate of Juilliard Pre-College and the United Nations International School in New York City.

Liyuan Xie
Born in 2000, Chinese violinist Liyuan Xie started playing the violin at age four and is currently a student of Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory. He studied previously with Binyou Zhou in Shanghai Conservatory before coming to the United States. His other mentors include Lei Fang and Jiayin Huang.
Liyuan has collaborated with the orchestra such as Shanghai Philharmonic, Shanghai Opera House, Nanjing Philharmonic, Qingdao Symphony and Shanghai Chamber Orchestras. As a chamber musician, he has performed for the ‘From The Top’ and ‘WQXR’ channel as well as in Jordan Hall and Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival.
He also served as a concertmaster of National Youth Orchestra Of China, Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra, NEC Symphony and the others. His concert engagements in season 2020-2021 include performing Beethoven and Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Nanjing Philharmonic Orchestra, solo appearance throughout the major cities of China and playing as a member of his hometown chamber ensemble ‘Nanjing Quartet’.
Juniors
Sooah Jeon (Flute)
Jinan Laurentia Woo (Violin)

Sooah Jeon (Flute)
Sooah Jeon has already distinguished herself as one of the most promising young flutists of her generation. She quickly demonstrated enormous talent since beginning her flute studies at the young age of seven.
Six months after she started learning the flute she won several national and international competitions. At the age of nine, Sooah was officially
announced as the world's youngest flutist to receive a Performance Diploma with distinction award from the Associate of the Royal Schools of Music in the United Kingdom. Subsequently Sooah was awarded first prize in various music competitions in the United States, including the American Protege, international Grande Music Competition and the New York International Music Competition. In 2019 she won the first prize in the New York Flute
Club Young Musicians Contest, the South Carolina Flute Society Competition, the 92nd Street Y Concerto Competition in New York and the Camerata Artists International Concerto Competition, where she was the youngest grand prize winner.
As a soloist, Sooah has performed at New York's leading concert halls, including the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, Buttenwiser Hall
at the 92nd Street Y and Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Music Center, as well as Weill Recital Hall and Isaac Stem Auditorium at Carnegie Hall.
Since her solo debut with the New Jersey Camerata Orchestra at Merkin Hall at the age of eleven, she has performed as a soloist with numerous orchestras, including the Concert Festival Orchestra, New York Chamber Players Orchestra and the 92Y Orchestra. Sooah has also appeared in various international concert halls. She performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Cite de la Musique Amphitheatre in Paris as the first prize and exceptional young talent special prize winner of the 2019 Grand prize Virtuoso International Music Competition.

Jinan Woo
Jinan Laurentia Woo is an 8th grader at Harvard-Westlake School and currently studies the violin with Li Lin and Stella Chen of the Juilliard School. She was a Honors Merit Scholarship fellow at the Colburn School, where she studies with Robert Lipsett and Fabiola Kim. She was admitted to the junior division of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts at four years old, where she studied with Michael Ma and Hong-Ying Ho. Jinan made her solo concert debut at ten years old at a prodigy series concert sponsored by the Kumho Asiana Cultural Foundation and an orchestral debut at twelve with Incheon Philharmonic. Jinan has taken part in various music festivals, including the Innsbrook Institute, Center Stage Strings and the Aspen Music Festival and School. In 2019, she won 1st Prize at the Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians.