Adé Williams, violin
Chelsea Wang, piano
Union College

Praised by the New York Times as “stunning,” Adé Williams is a renowned, award-winning concert violinist known for her vibrance and special connection to audiences. A 2023 Stradivari Society recipient, she is a highly sought-after soloist and collaborator in the US and abroad.

At age six, Adé made her solo debut with the Chicago Sinfonietta, which launched a thrilling career of performances with the world’s finest orchestras, including the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras; the Detroit, Pittsburgh, New World, Indianapolis, Hartford, and Nashville Symphonies; and the Buffalo and KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) Philharmonics. By age 17 she had won 17 competitions, and by 18 she had made her White House and Kennedy Center debuts as well as her Carnegie Hall debut where she has since returned five times.

Adé continues to frequent the world’s best concert halls, including Symphony Center in Chicago, Severance Hall in Cleveland, Merkin Hall in New York, and Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. In the 2024/25 season, she makes solo recital debuts on The Phillips Collection and Capital Classical Records series. She also makes her first appearances with the Richmond, Charlotte, and Tuscaloosa Symphonies, and returns to the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra.

While concerto performances are at the heart of her career, Adé is also a passionate chamber musician who performs with ensembles of all forms. Most recently, she has collaborated with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Parlando Chamber Orchestra, and Sphinx Virtuosi. This season, she joins the Nexus Chamber Group, presenting music by Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Kurtag, and Ran. Adé enjoys working with living composers and presenting new works. In 2017, she premiered Guardian of the Horizon: Concerto Grosso for Violin, Cello, and Strings by Jimmy Lopez, a work commissioned by Carnegie Hall and New World Symphony. The New York Concert Review praised her as “an absolute winning champion of the work.”

Adé participates in a wide range of special projects like Rachel Barton Pine’s Music by Black Composers project as a recording artist; the Milken Institute’s “Why Wait? Young People Blazing Trails” program as a panelist; and the University of Michigan as a guest lecturer. In 2012, she produced her first Adé & Friends benefit concert in support of a new school on Chicago’s south side where she was born and raised. 

Between concerts, Adé continues her work with young students in schools across the US and her blossoming private studio. Her students have been accepted into some of the best schools, including the New England Conservatory in Boston. In the 2023-24 season, she gave her first collegiate masterclass at University of Hartford’s Hartt School of Music.

Adé began playing violin at age three. She has studied with Rachel Barton Pine, Marko Dreher, and Almita and Roland Vamos at the Music Institute of Chicago. She graduated with honors from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Ida Kavafian and served as concertmaster of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in the 2018-2019 season. Adé is grateful to be performing on the outstanding “Dancla” G.B. Rogeri violin, from Brescia, circa 1700, on extended loan through the generosity and efforts of the Stradivari Society.

Praised by the New York Times as an “excellent young pianist”, Chelsea Wang has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician throughout North America in venues including Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, New York’s Merkin Hall, Kimmel Center’s Perelman Hall, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, Rockefeller University, Buffalo Chamber Music Society, the Orford Music Festival in Orford, Quebec, and more. She has performed extensively in Europe and Asia, appearing in venues including Konzerthaus Berlin, Munich’s Allerheiligen-Hofkirche, Konzertsaal at Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden Hochschule fur Musik, Auditori Teulada Moraira in Spain, Chamber Hall of Warsaw Philharmonic, Seoul Arts Center, and Taitung Cultural Performing Arts Center. She is a prizewinner and finalist of many national and international piano competitions including the Seoul International Piano competition,  Washington International Piano Competition, New York International Piano Competition, Schubert Club Scholarship Competition, and many more.

Ms. Wang made her orchestral debut at the age of six and has performed with many orchestras since then including the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, musicians from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New Orleans Civic Symphony, Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra and the Fort Dodge Symphony Orchestra, among others. Her festival appearances include the Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival, Ravinia Steans Institute, Bravo!Vail, Tippet Rise Art Center, Music Academy of the West, PianoTexas, Fontainebleau, Music from Angel Fire, Four Seasons Winter Workshop, Banff, Amalfi Coast, and Norfolk Chamber Music Festivals.

Chelsea has collaborated alongside Ida Kavafian, Ani Kavafian, Steven Tenenbom, Peter Wiley, Roberto Diaz, Anne-Marie McDermott, Anton Nel, Hsin-Yun Huang, Yu-Chien Tseng, Arnaud Sussmann, Kristin Lee, Matthew Lipman, Yoojin Jang, Dmitri Murrath, and other inspirational mentors. She has also had the honor of working with many notable musicians and chamber groups including Richard Goode, Gary Graffman, Robert McDonald, Seymour Lipkin, Arie Vardi, Aldo Ciccolini, John Perry, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Andre Watts, Jonathan Biss, Miriam Fried, Leonidas Kavakos, eighth blackbird, Emerson Quartet, and Tokyo String Quartet, among others. Radio appearances include “What Makes It Great” with host Rob Kapilow, NPR’s “From the Top”, along with programs on New York’s WQXR, and Philadelphia’s WHYY Public Radios and other programs in Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota.

A native of West Des Moines, Iowa, Ms. Wang is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she studied with  Meng-Chieh Liu and Ignat Solzhenitsyn and was awarded the prestigious Sergei Rachmaninoff Award upon graduation. She received her Master of Music degree and Graduate Performance Diploma at the Peabody Conservatory under the tutelage of Leon Fleisher and Yong-Hi Moon, and is currently pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music with James Giles.