Sophia Zhou in Pine Plains for an Evening of Gershwin
The pianist who built the Stissing Center's chamber music program comes home with Rhapsody in Blue, a tenor, and a clarinetist.
June 20, 7:30pm | Pine Plains, NY
Pianist Sophia Zhou returns to the Stissing Center on June 20 for an all-Gershwin program with a touch of Duke Ellington thrown in, joined by tenor Daniel McGrew and clarinetist Graeme Steele Johnson. The program includes a solo piano performance of "Rhapsody in Blue," along with other Gershwin works full of the lyricism and unmistakable American energy that made his music a defining sound of the 20th century.
The concert is something of a homecoming. Zhou founded and directed Chamber Music at The Stissing Center starting in 2020, building the series from a pandemic-era experiment into an official presenting partner of Young Concert Artists by 2022. She has since moved on to found and direct the Millbrook Music Salon, but her connection to Pine Plains runs deep.
Born and raised in Shanghai, she came to Oberlin College as its first-ever double-degree Chinese student, studying piano performance and German literature, and went on to earn a Master of Music at Mannes College in New York. She's performed at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, the Kennedy Center, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw, and Shanghai Concert Hall, and has collaborated with members of the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Metropolitan Opera. She's also built a reputation for inventive, cross-disciplinary programming — past projects have included a multimedia concert pairing Bach with the work of environmental photographer J Henry Fair, and a performance tied to a Nam June Paik retrospective at SFMOMA.
Her collaborators for this concert are serious in their own right. Daniel McGrew, a 2021 Young Concert Artists winner, is a tenor known for intensity and clarity who has performed with Zhou at Merkin Hall, the Morgan Library, and the Kennedy Center. Graeme Steele Johnson has appeared alongside Zhou in past Stissing Center programs pairing Mozart's Clarinet Quintet with contemporary works.
The Stissing Center, 2950 Church St., Pine Plains, NY. Tickets $40–$50 at thestissingcenter.org.
Written by
After a decade of writing for RI (along with many other publications and organizations) Jamie took over as editor in 2025. He has a masters in journalism from NYU, a wonderful wife, two kids and a Carolina dog named Zelda.
