Dr. Yuchi Chou

Music Director

“Fierce, with graceful gestures and attention to detail.” - KlasikaPlus.cz

Dr. Yuchi Chou, born in Taiwan, enjoys an international career as a conductor and pianist, as well as being a passionate educator and performer. The 2024-2025 Season will be her inaugural season with Seattle Festival Orchestra and her second season with SYSO Junior Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Chou has been the winner of the 2021 International Conductors Competition and Workshop in Atlanta, finalist of the International Erno Lanyi Competition, Ansbacher Fellowship with Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival, Conducting Fellow of Allentown (PA) Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, Conducting Fellow and at Peninsula Music Festival and San Francisco Shenson Fellowship. Dr. Chou has performed at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Symphony Hall, San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall, and Cleveland Severance Hall. Dr. Chou has been working with a number of orchestras in the Seattle area, including as assistant conductor to Seattle Collaborative Orchestra, guest conductor of West Seattle Community Orchestra, Seattle Festival Orchestra and Philharmonia Northwest. Aside from the orchestral activities, Yuchi also serves as President of the Bellevue Federated Music Club.

Past positions include Guest Conductor of Western Washington University, Assistant Conductor of Peninsula Music Festival, Associate/ Assistant Conductor of Community Women’s Orchestra (Oakland, CA); Coaching Conductor of San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Yuchi concluded her academic journey at Northwestern University after San Francisco Conservatory and Oberlin Conservatory. As a Mercer Island resident, Yuchi loves watching her honeybees buzzing in her backyard beehive.

Lin Tokura

Soloist

Lin Tokura, 13, began playing the violin at the age of three and is currently studying with Prof. Robin Wilson at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England. After making her orchestral debut at the age of 11 as the winner of the Cascade Symphony's Rising Star Competition under the baton of Maestro Michael Miropolsky, she has performed with the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, the Bellevue Chamber Orchestra, and Philharmonia Northwest. She has also been selected as a young artist by the Seattle Symphony and the Olympia Symphony Orchestra and will appear as a soloist in the 2024-2025 season.

Lin has excelled in numerous local, national, and international competitions. In 2023-24, she won first prize at the 65th Kocian Violin Competition in the Czech Republic and first grand prize in the string division in all age categories from 8 to 35 at the 2023 Vancouver International Music Competition. Lin was the overall winner in the Junior Open Division of the Walgreens National Concerto Competition. She also won the Seattle Young Artists Music Festival Association's Concerto Competition in her first competition and was named Festival Medalist. She placed second in the under-18 division of the Portland Chamber Orchestra’s 2024 Young Artists Competition. Lin also won second prize in the 2022 Arthur Grumiaux Competition for Young Violinists in Belgium. In Washington State, Lin won the Seattle Music Teachers Association’s Simon-Fiset Competition two years in a row in 2022 and 2023.

Lin’s previous teachers in Seattle include Simon James, Jan Coleman, Mihoko Hirata and Yuuki Hashimori, and she has participated in master classes with Gérard Poulet, Tamaki Kawakubo, James Ehnes, Edward Aron, and Alisa Weilerstein. The instrument used is a 1669 Nicolò Amati 3/4 fractional violin on loan from Nippon Violin.

In addition to music, Lin has been calligraphing since the age of five and has won first prize in her age group at the National Calligraphy Competition in Japan three times. She is also an award-winning hip-hop dancer, and a voracious reader.

Check out Lin’s Instagram for updated and concert information.

Instagram: @lin.tokura

Sketches of Taiwan (Selections)
Bao Yuan-Kai

Sketches of Taiwan was completed in 1999, first performed by American conductor Henry Mazer conducting the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, on February 27, 2000. This symphony, consisting of eight movements, depicts the folk customs and native tunes of Taiwan, and expresses what I saw, heard, felt, and and was touched by while I was staying in Taiwan.

“Ilan Children’s Ditty” – The song “Diu Diu Tong” shows the joy of children welcoming the train to Yilan. “Diu Diu Tong” is an onomatopeia in Minnan dialect, simulating the sound of water dripping from a cave.

“Ilan Children’s Ditty” was composed of motifs from “Diu Diu Tong” and another popular ditty, “Tin Oh Oh.” The fast notes played evenly by the cellos simulate the spinning wheels of a locomotive. The four horns half a step apart simulate the blowing of whistle. The tune played cheerfully by oboe shows the laughter of children. Heightened by the harp, the melody played by the piccolo and clarinet shows the leisurely contentment of the children. They join the lively rhythm and the brisk and cheerful melody, vividly entering this orchestral music full of vitality and childlike fun.

“Homesick for Hengchun” – Heng-Chun Peninsula is located in southern Taiwan. About three hundred years ago, Qing troops crossed the strait from the Fujian, camped and stationed there. The Minnan and Hakka people came to cultivate the land and continued their family line here. This large-scale immigration was known as “Tangshan to Taiwan.” Those uprooted soldiers and peasants often stood by the seashore of southern peninsula, gazing at their distant homeland across the sea, remembering the arduous journey of the pioneers who risked their lives to cross the strait, and expressing the desolate thoughts of their descendants who missed their homeland. The popular Taiwanese Heng-Chun ballad “Si Xiang Qi” (which means “thinking about something”) was such a homesick song created in this time, place, mood, and scene.

I adapted the poignant melody and rhythm in “Si Xiang Qi” as the theme, and created a moody canon-like section as the introduction, and ended this plaintive piece of string ensemble music “Homesick for Hengchun” by interweaving the theme of “Si Xiang Qi” with multi-voice counterpoint.

“Green Mountain” is a song composed by Hong Kong director Chang Cheh in the film Alishan based on the lyrics of Deng Yu Ping. The first half of this song is Chang Cheh's original work, and the other is from a folk song of Amis.

Originally, my orchestration of this song was for the conductor Mr. Chen Chengxiong to express his Taiwanese identity at the curtain calls after conducting my Chinese Sights and Sounds in Shenzhen in 1994. The music uses flute and oboe to show the graceful "beautiful as water" aboriginal girls, and the continuous semitone modulation of the horns to show the sturdy and vigorous "strong as a mountain" aboriginal youth. After Skeches of Taiwan was completed, this small short piece filled with liveliness and joy has become the dedicated encore of Skeches of Taiwan. In the concerts all over the world and performed by the orchestras across the strait, it often becomes a passionate interlude as well.

“Dabong Festival” – The Fifteenth of February is the day of the Tsou Aboriginal Festival in Taiwan. On this day in 1996, I visited the Dabong tribe in Alishan and enjoyed the traditional festival, called “mayasvi” in the Tsou dialect.

After the welcoming ceremony, Red Warriors gathered around a big tree and reverently sang ritual songs. The onlookers held their breath and listened to the solemn hymns resounding from Dabong to the mountains and reaching the earth and the heavens. While I joined the Tsou men and women and visitors singing and dancing together and drinking with strangers by the campfire all night long, I suddenly felt a sense of escape from the squeeze of life’s conflicts and release from the cage of trivial worldly events. In “Dabong Festival” I expressed this rare joy and passion without reservation in the wild sound of the orchestra.

Edited from notes by Bao Yuan-Kai

Japanese Suite
Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst’s Japanese Suite was written at the request of Japanese dancer Michio Ito. With just one exception, the theme for each dance comes directly from Ito, whistling the tunes from his childhood to Holst. The first and third dances reference well-known tunes still regularly played today – “Gion Ballad” in “Ceremonial Dance” and “Edo Lullaby” in “Dance Under the Cherry Tree.” “Song of the Fisherman” and “Dance of the Wolves” instead use tunes more personal to Ito, and “Dance of the Marionette” is entirely of Holst’s invention.

Each movement represents a disconnected scene: the lonely fisherman on the water from the prelude “Song of the Fisherman,” moves seamlessly to the geisha of Kyoto performing in “Ceremonial Dance,” before a puppet show in the traditional Bunraku style takes over in “Dance of the Marionette.” The fisherman returns for a short interlude, this time hinting at a land of myths below the surface, leading into “Dance Under the Cherry Tree”’s gentle lullaby. “Dance of the Wolves” ends the piece with all the energy of an explosive Otaiko drumming performance.

Though Holst faithfully recreated these themes and imagery, the orchestration is in Holst’s distinctive style: complex rhythms, full-bodied harmonies, and ample space for both motifs and solos.

Notes by Ann Guinee

Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64
Felix Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, was completed in 1844 and premiered in 1845 by the composer’s longtime friend, violinist Ferdinand David. Conceived over nearly a decade, the concerto was Mendelssohn’s final large orchestral work and broke new ground with its seamless transitions between movements and formal elements that were innovative for the time.

The first movement is dramatic yet lyrical, with the violin’s soaring entrance unexpectedly arriving without lengthy orchestral introduction as was the norm. The movement follows a modified sonata form, with the soloist's cadenza unusually placed before the recapitulation rather than after, and directly woven into the fabric of the movement, rather than being more of a standalone improvisation which was customary at the time.

The slow movement arrives without pause and provides a moment of tenderness, with a songlike melody that showcases Mendelssohn’s gift for lyricism. A short minor key interlude introduces the finale, which bursts into a bright, effervescent, playful theme, bringing the concerto to a jubilant conclusion.

With its balance of virtuosity, lyricism, and structural innovation, Mendelssohn’s concerto remains one of the most beloved works in the violin repertoire.

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What’s Ahead This Season

Cinematic Adventures

The Gremlin Rag – Goldsmith, arr. Fitzpatrick
Merry-Go-Round of Life – Hisaishi
My Neighbor Totoro – Hisaishi
Audience Choice Winner: Beauty and the Beast – Menken
Monday Mornings – Barnhill
Star Wars - Suite for Orchestra – Williams

Sat May 3, 2025 (Shortened family-friendly concert)
Sun May 4, 2025

Tickets available at sforch.org

Board of Directors & Volunteers

Officers
Aaron Coe, President
Ilene Dracott, President Emeritus
Monica Chen, Treasurer

Directors
Andy Wickell
John Ochsenreiter
Kevin Tao
Melissa Heidrich
Molly Campbell
Nicole Hessler
Roger Klorese

Volunteers
Flora Lee, Librarian & Webmaster
Cory Maccarrone
Elena Marcus
Karen Fong