First Violin
NANCY ZHOU
Concertmaster and Artist in Residence
Sponsored by Locatelli Moving & Storage
Our new concertmaster is a probing musical voice infused with searing virtuosity. Nancy Zhou’s musicianship resonates with a global audience and brings her on stage with leading global orchestras. She also won the 2018 Shanghai Isaac Stern Violin Competition.
At 13 years old, Nancy made her orchestral debut with her hometown San Antonio Symphony. She went on to collaborate with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Munich Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and many more. She has performed with stellar conductors such as Jaap van Zweden, Sakari Oramo, Peter Oundjian, Eun Sun Kim, Christoph Poppen, and others of equal stature.
Nancy loves chamber music and guiding young musicians. She has performed at many international music festivals. In 2017, she was guest artist and faculty at Encore Chamber Music Festival. Holding masterclasses and private classes, she is a guest educator at summer festivals. She also teaches global students from an online studio.
Nancy also has explored nontraditional works. She presented Zhao Jiping's first violin concerto, and she gave the US premiere of Unsuk Chin's "Gran Cadenza" for two solo violins with Anne-Sophie Mutter. She will soon perform Chen Qigang's "La joie de la souffrance" and commission composer Vivian Fung to write a work for solo violin and electronics. The goal is to explore the intersection of Nancy’s personal family oral history, folk minority culture, and music.
Born in Texas to Chinese immigrants, Nancy learned the violin from her father. She studied with Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory while pursuing literature at Harvard University. She is also an Associated Artist of the Queen Elisabeth Chapel, where she studied with Augustin Dumay.
Kiri Murakami-Loehmann
Acting Associate Concertmaster
Sponsored by Jill and Andy Stone
Kiri Murakami-Loehmann began playing the violin and piano at age three, attending Dr. Suzuki’s summer program for a few seasons. She has garnered many accolades, including first prize in The Juilliard School violin competition and recognition from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Kiri was concertmaster of the New York Youth Symphony for three years, performing at Carnegie Hall. At Aspen Music Festival, she was a soloist with the Young Artist Orchestra and worked with conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon, and David Zinman. Her principal teachers include Toshiya Eto, Masao Kawaski, and Anna Lim. She has also participated in master classes given by the Nash Ensemble, the Brentano Quartet, and Emanuel Ax, among others.
She has performed with many ensembles, including the Oregon Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Princeton Symphony Orchestra, and Opera New Jersey. In the Bay Area, in addition to being a member of Santa Cruz Symphony and Symphony Silicon Valley, she appears with groups such as Opera San Jose and Monterey Symphony. As a composer, she has had her orchestral pieces premiered by The Juilliard and Princeton University Orchestras, and works commissioned by the Gemini Youth Orchestra in New York and the Youth Orchestra of Central Jersey.
Kiri graduated with high honors from Princeton University in music theory/composition, Japanese, and environmental studies. As an educator and arts administrator, she has worked for Education Through Music in New York City, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Symphony Orchestra as its General Manager and Artistic Administrator, and Portland Youth Philharmonic where she was Executive Director. From 2009-2015, she served on the board of Music for Autism. In her spare time, she enjoys interviewing South Bay high school seniors as part of Princeton University’s Alumni Schools Committee.
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XANDER ABBE
Originally from McLean, Virginia, Xander Abbe has been a violinist since the age of five, and graduated with a B.A. in music from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. His principal teachers included Sally Thomas, Jody Gatwood, and Gerald Fischbach. He joined the Santa Cruz Symphony in 2016. He is also a member of the first violin section in the Monterey Symphony, and the second violin section in the California Symphony. Previously, he served as concertmaster of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, with which he performed the violin solo in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, and he toured nine cities in China with New York's Park Avenue Chamber Symphony. He is an avid player of string quartets, having participated in chamber music workshops in Budapest, Salzburg, Paris, and Bennington, Vermont. He lives in San Jose with his husband Murray and their four cats.
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LORI JENSEN
Sponsored by Bob & Sharon Bailey
Lori Jensen graduated from Santa Clara University with a Bachelor of Arts in Music, a double major in Communications and a minor in Religious Studies. She has played violin since she was five, studying first with Lesa Zuehlke until age 12, then with Zaven Melikian at the San Francisco Conservatory through college. She has performed in Santa Cruz Symphony’s first violin section since 2003 and is also Concertmaster of the Palo Alto Philharmonic. She is a substitute violinist for Symphony Silicon Valley and has subbed with San Jose Chamber Orchestra, West Bay Opera, and California Pops. Lori also plays piano, passing the Advanced level of the Certificate of Merit program with honors in 2012. Along with her brother, she is learning how to tune pianos. Lori has over 25 years of teaching experience, instructing beginning through advanced students on violin, viola, and piano. She also maintains a YouTube channel with one of her videos receiving several thousand views. She studied Tae Kwon Do for over seven years and is a second-degree Black Belt. Her other hobbies include hiking, jigsaw puzzles, reading, cooking and video games.
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EMILY LANZONE
Sponsored by Marlene Henderson & Family
Emily Lanzone (Cox) earned her Bachelors of Music in violin performance from the University of Oregon, Masters of Music from the University of Nevada, Reno, and a Professional Studies Diploma from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her principal teachers have included Kathryn Gray, Kathleen Winkler, Kathy Lucktenberg, Stephanie Sant'Ambrogio, and Axel Strauss. Since moving to California's Central Coast in 2011, Emily has been a member of the San Luis Obispo Symphony, along with other area ensembles such the Symphony of the Vines, OperaSLO, and Santa Maria Philharmonic. She also plays with the Santa Cruz Symphony and the Oregon Coast Music Festival in Coos Bay, OR. Emily teaches at Cal Poly University and works with the SLO Youth Symphony, while maintaining a private studio of violin and viola students. Although she specializes in orchestral performance, Emily's first love is chamber music, a passion which took her abroad to northern Italy in the summer of 2011 for the Zephyr Chamber Music Festival. A native of Portland, OR, she currently lives in Morro Bay, CA with her husband Brian, and young son Kieran.
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Annamarie Arai-lopez
Sponsored by Ron & Cindy Sekkel
San Francisco-based violinist Annamarie Arai-Lopez enjoys collaborating and performing with ensembles of various backgrounds and sizes. For the past nine seasons, she has enjoyed being a member of One Found Sound, a democratically-run, conductor-less chamber orchestra in San Francisco, and since 2020, she is one half of a violin duo with her good friend and violinist colleague Agnieszka Peszko. She also frequently freelances with various larger regional symphonies including the Sacramento and Reno Philharmonic orchestras. In addition to her performances in traditional classical settings, she is also thrilled to have shared the stage accompanying Kygo, Michael Bublé, Geographer, and Portugal the Man in their respective California tour stops.
Annamarie is also a passionate educator; in addition to cultivating her private violin studio in San Francisco, she is the Lead Beginning Strings Teaching Artist at Enriching Lives through Music (ELM), a non-profit music program in San Rafael. She holds degrees from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory.
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STeve tjoa
Steve Tjoa is an active solo, chamber, and orchestral violinist. As concertmaster of the San Francisco Civic Symphony from 2014 to 2017, he helped lead the orchestra, coach chamber groups, organize special events, raise funds, attract guest soloists and conductors, and perform volunteer outreach. He performs regularly with the Oakland Symphony and Bay Philharmonic.
Steve studied music performance at the University of Maryland under James Stern. He recently studied with John Chisholm, San Francisco Symphony. Born and raised in New Jersey, he currently lives in San Francisco. For more, see stevetjoa.com.