Faculty Recital: Rachel Childers, French Horn, Christopher Elchico, Clarinet, and Jiayan Sun, Piano

Artist(s)

Christopher Elchico, clarinet
Rachel Childers, French horn
Jiayan Sun, piano

Clarinetist Christopher Elchico joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as second clarinet in March 2022. He has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, Houston Grand Opera, Kansas City Symphony, and New World Symphony. His principal teachers were Burt Hara, associate principal clarinet of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and James Campbell, professor emeritus of clarinet at Jacobs School of Music Indiana University, where Elchico completed a dual master’s degree in clarinet and classical saxophone performance. Elchico is a Buffet Group USA and Vandoren Performing Artist.
 

Michigan native Rachel Childers has been a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2011. As Second Horn of the BSO, she occupies the John P. II and Nancy S. Eustis chair. She is notably the first female member of the Boston Symphony brass section. Prior to moving to Boston, Ms. Childers was the Acting Assistant Principal/Utility Horn of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Childers was in the first class of admitted horn players to the Colburn School, in Los Angeles, where she studied with David Jolley and David Krehbiel. She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the University of Michigan as a student of Søren Hermansson. Ms. Childers is on faculty at New England Conservatory of Music and the Longy School of Music.

 

Praised by the New York Times for his“revelatory” performances, and by the Toronto Star for his “technically flawless, poetically inspired and immensely assured playing,” pianist Jiayan Sun has performed with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the Chinese and RTÉ (Ireland) National Symphony Orchestras, the Fort Worth and Toledo Symphony Orchestras, the Toronto and Aspen Concert Orchestras, and the Suwon Philharmonic Orchestra, and he has conducted from the keyboard the Meiningen Court Orchestra. He has collaborated with prominent conductors such as Sir Mark Elder, Stefan Sanderling, Xincao Li, Daejin Kim, David Hayes, Thomas Crawford, Tianhui Ng, Kerry Stratton, the late Leon Fleisher and Michail Jurowski. His performances have been broadcast by the BBC, the RTÉ, China Central Television, and classical music radio stations in North America. He has performed at and participated in the Verbier Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Aspen Music Festival, the Sarasota Music Festival, and PianoTexas. Under the mentorship of Sir András Schiff, he was invited to give multiple solo recitals in Europe as part of Schiff’s “Building Bridges” project.

       Mr. Sun has been awarded prizes at many of the major international piano competitions, including third prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition, second prize at the Dublin International Piano Competition, fourth prize and the audience prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition, first prize at the inaugural CCC Toronto International Piano Competition. Playing early keyboard instruments and studying historical performance practice have played a significant role in Mr. Sun’s musical activities, with critically acclaimed appearances with the American Classical Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall. His solo album Busoni and His Muses, released on Bridge Records in commemoration of Busoni’s centennial of death, garnered critical acclaim on Gramophone and International Piano.

       Born in Yantai, China, he received bachelor’s, master’s and the Doctor of Musical Arts degrees from The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Yoheved Kaplinsky and Sir Stephen Hough. His other mentors include pianists Malcolm Bilson, Richard Goode, Robert Levin, and harpsichordist Lionel Party. Currently Associate Professor of Music and the Associate Chair for Performance Activities at Smith College, he presented Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas in chronological order, in addition to yearlong series devoted to the music of Schubert and Chopin. As a pedagogue, he has lectured and given masterclasses at The Juilliard School in New York and Tianjin, Central and Hangzhou Conservatories of Music, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, The Music Conservatory of Ho Chi Minh City, and The University of São Paulo, among others. Jiayan Sun is a Steinway Artist.