Kingston Chamber Music Festival

Cellist Megan Koch is an avid chamber musician, educator, and advocate for music as a vehicle for cultural exchange. She has performed and taught internationally, including in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Singapore, and Peru, often collaborating with local musicians and mentoring young conservatory students. Koch is a founding member of the Rivendell String Quartet and has performed with artists such as Robert Mann, Michael Kannen, Steven Dann, and Ian Swenson.

Locally, she performs with ensembles including the Nth Degree Chamber Ensemble, Verdant Vibes, and the Meeting House Chamber Music Festival, and frequently collaborates with pianist Andrew Welch. Her socially conscious projects include the premiere of Water is Life by Kirsten Volness, addressing climate change, and the creation of the Bay Area Cello Collective, bringing music to outdoor venues for public enjoyment.

Koch holds a Master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music from the Peabody Institute. She is a member of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and performs on a 1768 German cello by Leopold Wildhalm.

Known for captivating interpretations of a wide repertoire Natalie Zhu is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, and Astral Artists Award. The Philadelphia Inquirer heralded Ms. Zhu in recital as a display of “emotional and pianistic pyrotechnics”. Selections from her live performances are frequently broadcasted on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today.”

Ms. Zhu has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. In the U.S. she has appeared as soloist with the Indianapolis Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Haddonfield Symphony, The Curtis Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Princeton Chamber Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic, China Philharmonic, Riverside Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Philharmonic National Repertory Orchestra. Ms. Zhu made her European debut in 1994 at the Festival de Sully et d’Orleans in France, she has also given solo recitals at the Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Hall in New York City, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Seattle Chamber Music Society, New York’s Steinway Hall and Merkin Hall, Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Series in Fresno, Portland Piano Festival in Oregon, Munich’s Herkulessaal in Germany, and Beijing Concert Hall in China. She has performed with the Daedalus, Dover, Miami, Vermeer Quartets, and collaborated with members of the Guarneri, Orion, Mendelssohn, and Ying Quartets, as well as the Beaux Arts Trio and Time for Three. Ms. Zhu had been a touring recital partner with renowned violinist Hilary Hahn, and have maintained an ongoing partnership, most noticeably a Mozart Violin Sonatas recording with the Deutsche Grammophon label in 2005, as well as Suzuki Violin Books 1-3 in 2020.

As an active chamber musician, she has appeared in Marlboro Music Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Curtis-On-Tour, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Maestro Foundation Concert Series, Skaneateles Festival, Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival, Bay Chamber Concerts, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Chicago Chamber Musicians, Crested Butte Chamber Music Festival, The Friends of Chamber Music Reading Concert Series, and Brooklyn Library Chamber Music Series. Since 2009, Ms. Zhu has been the artistic director of the Kingston Chamber Music Festival in Rhode Island.

Natalie Zhu began her piano studies with Xiao-Cheng Liu at the age of six in her native China and made her first public appearance at age nine in Beijing. At eleven she emigrated with her family to Los Angeles, and studied with Robert Turner and Li Ming-Qiang. By age fifteen was enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music where she received the prestigious Rachmaninoff Award and studied with Gary Graffman. She received both Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music where she studied with the late Claude Frank. Ms. Zhu lives in Philadelphia suburbs with her husband and daughter.