General Admission $20
Dr. Ka Man “Melody” Ng is an award-winning pianist and researcher. She was a winner in numerous competitions and the national finalist for the MTNA Young Artist Competition. Her appearances included broadcast performances on Wisconsin Public Radio and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Her research interests in bringing music and STEM together have recently won grant awards to establish musical programs. She is the recipient of the 2019 College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences’ Outstanding Faculty Member Award at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), and the 2017 Katherine & Richard Lester Emerging Arts Contribution Award for her contributions in the Huntsville/Madison County arts community.
As an active clinician for innovative remote piano learning and performance, she recently conducted a historic exchange between a US University and a Beijing, China institution in the form of a live remote piano masterclass on multiple internet linked concert pianos with Yamaha Disklavier technology. She has presented papers and workshops in Europe, Asia and throughout the US. Her book chapter, “Listening to Live Music in Healthcare Environment”, written for European Perspectives on Music Education 6 is published in Austria. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Masters in Piano Performance & Pedagogy at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, with a doctoral minor in Business. She received her undergraduate double-degree in Piano Performance and Economics from Lawrence University, WI. She is currently the President-Elect of the Alabama Music Teachers Association, and serves as Associate Professor and Artist/Teacher of Piano at UAH. Dr. Ng is on the Yamaha Artist roster.
Yukiko Kuhara was born in Japan and began violin studies at the age of ten. In 2014, Yukiko won Art-chef 1st concerto audition, and performed Mendelssohn violin concerto with Boston Chamber Orchestra in its Japan Tour. She is also a National Finalist of the 24th Japan Classical Music Competition. She has participated in ͞Youth and Muse͟ Boston international Summer Music Festival, Seahat Music Festival, Across Fukuoka Violin Seminar, Okhotsk Monbetsu Music Seminar, Nagasaki Ojika International Music Festival, Nara international Music Seminar, Akiyoshidai Music Academy, Meadowmount School of Music, Round Top Music Festival and Sarasota music festival. In 2018, she performed Bruch violin concerto with Queensboro symphony orchestra. Her past teachers include Takako Yamazaki, Seiji Kageyama, Katsuya Matsubara, and Sally Thomas. Currently, she studies at Mannes School of Music with Wen Qian (Metropolitan Opera) and Jennifer Koh. Ms. Kuhara became one of the Mannes orchestra’s concertmasters in 2019.
Logan Vrankovic (b. 1997) is an award-winning classical composer, pianist, conductor, and multi-instrumentalist from New York City. He attended the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School, where he would later serve the Frank Sinatra Symphonic Orchestra as guest conductor and resident composer. He received his Bachelor’s in Music from the Mannes School of Music, studying composition with Dr. Lowell Liebermann, one of America’s foremost composers. He now studies composition, music history, and piano performance at the Masters level with Dr. Mark J. Stambaugh at the Manhattan School of Music. Notable works include two sonatas for the piano, three string quartets, art songs for voice and piano, two concertos for piano and orchestra, and a prodigious collection of various chamber, solo, vocal and orchestral works. He was awarded 2nd prize at the International Antonín Dvořák Composition Competition for his pieces “6 Variations on ‘Šlo Dzjevča’” for violin and piano, and his “Double Concerto ‘By Vltava’” for two solo clarinets in Bb and strings. He composed both pieces during the five day speed-composing competition in Prague, Czech Republic. That same year, his “Piano Concerto”, won both the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award and the Bohuslav Martinu Prize in Composition.
As a performer, Logan is a classically trained concert pianist and conductor. His repertoire choices are eclectic, including works of Mozart, Beethoven, Moszkowski, Joplin, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Mehldau, Gulda, Glass, and new piano works written by himself and his fellow living composers. He has performed in venues in the United States and Europe, his favorite performances including the DiMenna Center, Carnegie Hall, Lobkowicz Palace, and the historical Church of St. Donatus. He is a proponent of improvisation in classical music and includes the practice frequently in his programs.
Described as “beautiful, lyrical” and brimming with “unexpected harmonic shifts” (International Trumpet Guild), the music of Dr. Zach Gulaboff Davis centers on the core elements of musical narrative: Emotion, drama, and expression. The winner of the 2019 American Prize in Composition (Vocal Chamber Music division), Zach maintains an active schedule as a composer and collaborator across the globe. His works have been performed venues including Carnegie Hall, Columbia University, Bulgaria’s National Palace of Culture, Norway’s Arctic Cathedral, the International Trumpet Guild’s National Conference, NYU Steinhardt and Shanghai, and at schools of music and conservatories throughout the country. Zach’s works have been championed by notable performers and ensembles such as timpanist Jonathan Haas, percussionist Josh Quillen, violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved, pianist Jihye Chang Sung, trumpeter Jeffrey Work, the Xelana Duo, L’Abri Trio, Colorado Piano Trio, and conductors Matthew Jaroszewicz and Samuel McCoy, among others. Gulaboff Davis’ works gave garnered over 20 national and international awards since he began compositional studies in 2013. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Oregon, Zach holds a B.A. in piano performance and composition/theory, summa cum laude, from Linfield College, an M.M. in composition from the Mannes College of Music in New York City, and a D.M.A. in composition and M.M. in music theory at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he studied under Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Dr. Kevin Puts. Zach currently serves as the Brevard Institute's Composition Fellow and will undertake a residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts this autumn. In his spare time, Zach is active in American Kennel Club dog sports, where he travels the country as a licensed Dog Agility judge. Don’t ask him about the (countless) similarities between composing and designing Agility courses unless you have hours to spare!
