Under the guidance of Dr. Kimberly Trolier, the students in the Conservatory’s flute department have had a musically rewarding year:
During the 2025-26 season, Josie Burri, Associate Vice President for Capital Giving & Campaigns at Swarthmore College, was the third flute/piccolo substitute for the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra and she performed on piccolo for the Roxborough Orchestra’s season finale concert. This summer, she will participate in the International Piccolo Festival in Marktoberdorf (Bavaria), Germany.
An eighth-grade student at Radnor Middle School, Alice Kwon plays flute in the school’s Concert Band and Jazz Band. Alice is also a member of the Delaware County Young Musicians’ Band.
Shreya Misra is first-chair flutist of the Philadelphia Youth Concert Band. She plays in the Concert Band and the Competition Jazz Band at Black Rock Middle School, where she is in the eighth grade.
Ninth grade student Grace Wan is a member of the Great Valley High School Concert Band and Wind Ensemble.
Caroline Yao is in the eighth grade at Germantown Friends School, where she plays flute in the Concert Band.
As a member of the Upper School Orchestra and the Instrumental Ensemble, Isabelle Yao is very active in the musical life at the Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, where she is a sophomore.
This year, Shuman Yuan, a junior at Wissahickon High School, participated in several festivals organized by the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association. She was first-chair flute in the District 11 Orchestra and Band and the Region 6 Orchestra, and she was a member of the flute section in the All-State Orchestra.
It was also a successful season for John Sergovic’s class of violin and viola students:
Eighth-grader Jackser Chang performed throughout the year as Co-Concertmaster of the Welsh Valley Middle School Chamber Orchestra and was the featured violin soloist in a recent orchestral composition. He has been accepted by audition to participate next season as a violinist in the Harriton High School Chamber Orchestra.
Sophie Liu, is the highest-seated freshman in the first violin section of the Radnor High School Orchestra this year. She also performed as Associate Concertmaster at Mr. Sergovic’s summer string camp, the Kimberton Strings.
Violist Luisa Medrano Pizarro, who is in the ninth grade at Harriton High School, is a member of the Delaware County Youth Orchestra.
Fifth-grade student Grant Niedosik recently performed as Assistant Concertmaster at the Bala Cynwyd Middle School Orchestra’s spring concert.
During the 2025-26 season, Tudor Roşca, a freshman at Conestoga High School, performed as a member of the viola section in the Philadelphia Young Artists Orchestra, directed by Rosalind Erwin, who is also the conducting teacher at the Bryn Mawr Conservatory. Tudor played the viola solos in an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture in the spring concert of the Conestoga High School Orchestra. For several years, he has participated in the Kimberton Strings summer music program.
Abigail Streijl, an eighth-grade student at Welsh Valley Middle School was accepted by competitive audition into Harriton High School’s Advanced Chamber Orchestra as an incoming freshman.
Lisa Yuan, who is in the ninth grade, is Co-Concertmaster of the Haverford High School Orchestra and String Ensemble. With the Haverford Select String Ensemble, she performed the violin solo in the “Theme from Schindler’s List”, composed in 1993 by John Williams for the great violinist Itzhak Perlman. Lisa has participated, as Concertmaster, for several seasons in the Kimberton Strings. During the 2026-27 season, she will be a member of the Delaware County Youth Orchestra.
As a ninth-grade student, violinist Eric Zhang played in both the Harriton High School Orchestra and the Harriton High School Chamber Orchestra this year.
In this season’s spring concerts, Louisa F. Zimbrick-Rogers, performed as first-chair violinist in the Chamber Orchestra and as Principal Second Violin in the Orchestra at Black Rock Middle School, where she is in the sixth grade.
It has been a busy year for our piano students as well:
In April, six-year-old Danny Baek, a pupil of Daina Dodbiba, played her very first piano solo at Ithan Elementary School’s Arts Night.
Fifth-grader Tristan Barrier, who also studies piano with Mrs. Dodbiba at the Conservatory, performed a solo in the 2026 Talent Show at Lynnewood Elementary School.
During the 2025-26 season, Clara Chen, a junior at the Baldwin School and a student of Marcantonio Barone, has been the pianist of the Myer Schwartz Trio at the Settlement Music School, coached by distinguished violinist Mitchell Newman. In March, the Trio performed at the German Society of Pennsylvania as Gold Medal winners of the Bösendorfer Youth Music Festival; and in May, they advanced to the semifinal round of the Fischoff Junior National Chamber Music Competition. A week later, Clara performed at Weill Recital Hall in New York’s famed Carnegie Hall as a piano soloist in the Dr. Andor and Joy Kiszely Auditioned Recital, presented by the Philadelphia Music Teachers Association. This summer, she will study at the East Carolina Piano Festival at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.
Marjorie Payne recently hosted a gathering of pianists at which she participated in a performance of Claude Debussy’s Petite suite for piano, four hands, Hugh Gordon played music of Robert Schumann and Debussy, and Eric Haeker performed his own compositions. All three are long-time piano students of Laurie Ticehurst at the Conservatory.
This season, retired microbiologist Cheryl Platco, a piano student of Dr. Alexander Panku, performed in a chamber-music recital at New Beginnings Church in Ambler in November and gave a solo piano recital at Rydal Park in Jenkintown in April. On the 20th of September, she will give another solo recital at Normandy Farms Estates in Blue Bell. Although she recently retired as Music Director of Saint Helena Church in Blue Bell, she continues to play piano and organ, sing, and direct handbell choirs at two churches. For the fourth consecutive year, she produced Messiah 2.0, “a modern interpretation of G. F. Handel’s time-honored oratorio”. She also accompanies third- and fourth-grade choirs at two schools in the Methacton School District and plays keyboards for the Players Club of Swarthmore.
As a Second Prize winner at the 2026 West Chester University Pre-Collegiate National Piano Competition, Ekansh Thaker, a fourteen-year-old student of Marcantonio Barone, performed at the Madeleine Wing Adler Theatre at West Chester University in May.
Helena Traub, a second-grade student at the French International School of Philadelphia who also studies piano with Mr. Barone at the Bryn Mawr Conservatory of Music, won the Bronze Medal in the Elementary division of the Bösendorfer Youth Music Festival.