Spotlight | Associate Principal Cello, Richard Hill Chair

Susie Yang

Susie Yang joined the Kansas City Symphony as Associate Principal Cello in 2010. She made her solo debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of 11. The performance was broadcast on PBS in Chicago and also the classical radio station, 98.7 FM. She has also appeared as a soloist with many orchestras in the greater Chicago area. As an avid chamber musician, she won a top prize in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and has participated in the Juilliard Quartet Seminar and the Beethoven Intensive Quartet Seminar at the New England Conservatory of Music. From 2006-2008, Susie was a fellow of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach and was a rotating principal under music director, Michael Tilson Thomas. After winning the concerto competition, she performed the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the New World Symphony in 2007. In April of 2016, Susie performed Dvorak Cello Concerto again, as a subscription soloist, with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Susie has performed as a soloist, orchestral, and chamber musician at many music festivals, including Sarasota, Schleswig-Holstein, Music Academy of the West, Spoleto Italy and USA, Taos, and Yellow Barn. Originally from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Susie holds degrees and numerous scholarship awards from The Juilliard School and New England Conservatory of Music, and her teachers include Andre Emelianoff and Laurence Lesser. She has a small private studio of cello students that she loves to teach and enjoys performing chamber music around the community.