Music Mentors
Leavv
GERMANY
Leavv is a musician hailing from Germany, with a focus on silky, relaxing instrumental hip hop. Spherical synths and smooth piano chords are often part of his music, which is generally themed around little moments, travels and dreamy memories.
Songs from his album Mind Garden (2018) have been listened to over 7 million times collectively across Youtube, Spotify, and music streaming services. His previous works include recreation (2017), essence (2017), and currents (2017).
Grace Coberly
ILLINOIS, USA | PENNSYLVANIA, USA
Grace Coberly (she/they) is a composer, conductor, and aspiring music teacher from the suburbs of Chicago. A sophomore at Haverford College, she’s a music and linguistics double major with a passion for ensemble singing. She has sung in thirteen choirs, including the district and all-state levels of ILMEA and the Heritage Chorale of Oak Park, IL (as the 2015 recipient of the Marcie Hartman Mentoring Scholarship). She has also led two a cappella groups — including her current group, the Haverford College Mainliners — and founded two others. This past spring, she bought a pack of plastic kazoos and organized her friends into their school’s first kazoo chorus, just to ensure that no one was taking her too seriously.
Grace likes to think that her compositional style reflects her personality: thoughtful, sentimental, a little weird, and a little gay. She’s written for choir, piano, strings, and kazoo, and she dreams of composing a solo piece to be played by her own house. She loves all things French — Chopin! Poulenc! Debussy! Liszt! Fauré! — but mostly listens to ’70s and ’80s rock.
Grace has six plants and a boundless love for peanut M&Ms. She’s learning Esperanto and is spending her summer in the PR department of an opera house. She has also been known to write short fiction; an alum of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and the Adroit Mentorship Program, she has had her work published in Cleaver, Border Crossing, Iceview Magazine, and COUNTERCLOCK, of course!
Elizabeth Newkirk
ILLINOIS, USA
Entrepreneur, activist, and musician, Elizabeth Newkirk encompasses thoughtfulness and artistry in all of her work, performances, and collaborations. She is the co-founding member and pianist of Bow & Hammer, her primary ensemble. With Bow & Hammer, she explores her passion for duo repertoire of the early 20th century, while balancing it with new and standard works. Extremely inspired by the slow-food movement, she is dedicated to creating concerts that can mirror the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the food movement, furthermore creating a relevancy for new audiences, meaningful experiences, and a camaraderie among other disciplines. “IndustryNight” and “Élevé ,” are just two examples of presentations by Bow & Hammer that feature a wide range of disciplines, artists, and small businesses in Chicago.
Growing up on her family farm in Indiana, Newkirk came to Chicago to pursue studies in Piano Performance. She received her MM from Roosevelt University with a minor in Collaborative Piano where she studied with Ludmila Lazar, Dana Brown and Angela Yoffe. Receiving her BA from Columbia College, she studied under pianist/composer Sebastian Huydts and jazz with Dennis Luxion. Additionally, she has had the privilege to work with Mary Sauer, Cliff Colnot, and Sylvia Wang. Newkirk currently is on faculty at Columbia College Chicago. When not in the thick of rehearsals or performance, Newkirk enjoys cooking, supporting her colleagues, and of course, running with her cattle dog, Lady.
Kathryn Satoh
ILLINOIS, USA
Kathryn Satoh is impassioned by genuine and purposeful human connectivity, and uses these characteristics to drive her artistic career. Ms. Satoh is co-founder and violinist of her primary ensemble Bow & Hammer, curating new performance series which affirm the relevance of classical music in mainstream social interaction. Through their original concert series, “IndustryNight” and “Élevé”, BH has cultivated close collaborative relationships with other artists and small businesses and has held local and international residencies (Italy, Canada) to develop their communal mission. A collaborator to the core, she sees chamber music as a timeless manifestation of social progress.
Highly regarding her value as a communicator and advocate for the arts, Ms. Satoh is an active teaching artist. She has held faculty and/or administrative positions at many music schools throughout Chicagoland, and maintains a private violin studio throughout Chicagoland. With Bow & Hammer, she acts as a guest lecturer and collaboration coach, and has individually adjudicated various festivals and competitions.
Ms. Satoh holds two Bachelor of Music degrees with distinction from the University of Colorado in Violin and Voice Performance under the teaching of Lina Bahn (Corigliano Quartet) and Patrick Mason. In the rare spare moment, she loves to read/watch memoirs, eat home-cooked meals (made by herself or others; she is non-discriminant), be outdoors, and embark on adventures with friends.
Peirong Li
BEIJING, CHINA | CALIFORNIA, USA
Peirong Li goes to a small private school in the Silicon Valley and is going to be a senior in the upcoming August. She was born in Beijing, China, and came to the U.S. in fifth grade. Having been a piano player for more than ten years, Peirong has performed at many recitals and participated in various competitions, such as US Opening Competition and MTAC branch competitions. Her experience also includes many types of volunteer works, such as accompanying for a choir at the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, and participating in a coalition for musicians who want to give back to their community by performing at senior houses. Peirong usually plays classical piano pieces from all four periods in music history. However, she also enjoys playing contemporary pieces in her free time.
Daniel Lelchuk
LOUISIANA, USA
Daniel Lelchuk was appointed Assistant Principal cellist of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in Fall 2013 by music director Carlos Miguel Prieto. Described by the Washington Post as a “dazzling virtuoso,” he has concertized throughout North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. He was invited as visiting cellist with the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra in Doha and has also performed as principal cello at the Royal Opera House Muscat (Oman) with the Castleton Opera (Lorin Maazel, music director) and with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería in Mexico City.
His numerous festival appearances include Baden-Baden, Hawaii International Music Festival, Chamber Music Silicon Valley, Moritzburg, Lake George, and Salzburg. Since 2017 he has played in the cello section of the Colorado Music Festival and also serves as cellist for the New Orleans-based chamber ensemble Lyrica Baroque. At the invitation of Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovisi, he presented a series of solo cello recitals at the famed Villa Aurora, Rome. In Spring 2017 he performed as guest principal cellist with the Orquesta Filharmónica de Jalisco on their acclaimed European tour.
Originally from New Hampshire, Daniel Lelchuk studied with Eric Kim at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (Bloomington) where he received the Eva Heinitz scholarship and played as principal cellist of the Philharmonic and Opera orchestras. He began cello when not yet five, studying for ten years with Donna Denniston, followed by studies with Sato Knudsen in Boston and Francesco Strano in Rome.