ADÉ WILLIAMS

Violinist Adé Williams is a two-time Sphinx Competition laureate (1st place, Junior Division, 2012; 2nd place, Senior Division, 2019). She has won numerous other competitions in the US and Europe, beginning at age eight, and has placed in several chamber music competitions.

Adé has enjoyed a thrilling solo career, from her debut with the Chicago Sinfonietta at age six to her concerts with over 50 American orchestras including the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, the Detroit, Pittsburgh, New World, Indianapolis, and Nashville Symphonies, and Buffalo and KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonics (South Africa) by age 18. Most recently, she has made her debut with the Chineke! Orchestra at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and with the Lansing Symphony. In 2017, Adé premiered Guardian of the Horizon: Concerto Grosso for Violin, Cello, and Strings by Jimmy Lopez, a work commissioned by Carnegie Hall and New World Symphony. The NY Concert Review praised her as “an absolute winning champion of the work.” Adé made her White House debut in 2015 and Carnegie Hall debut in 2013 where she has since returned five times. She has attended the Pacific Music Festival (Japan), the Astona International Music Festival (Switzerland), Cambridge International String Academy (England), and the Chautauqua Institution (US).

Sought out as a classical music and humanitarian leader, Adé has participated in the Music by Black Composers project as a recording artist, in the Milken Institute’s “Why Wait? Young People Blazing Trails” program as a panelist, and at University of Michigan as a guest lecturer. In 2012, she produced her first Adé & Friends benefit concert in support of a new school on Chicago’s south side, where she is also a charter member of the Junior Division of the Chicago Music Association. In 2004, Adé founded SugarStrings, a string trio of cousins known for exhilarating performances on 98.7 WFMT, CNN/Essence, NBC Nightly News, ABC7, WTTW’s Chicago Tonight and at numerous civic and charitable events around the US. She continues her work with young musicians by teaching in her joyful, expanding private studio.

Adé has received many honors, awards, and fellowships, including the Linda and Isaac Stern Charitable Foundation Award in memory of Isaac Stern, the first William Warfield Scholarship, and the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation grant and instrument loan programs. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she served as concertmaster of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in the 2018-2019 season and studied with Ida Kavafian. Prior to Curtis, Adé studied with Almita and Roland Vamos, Marko Dreher, and Rachel Barton Pine.

Adé Williams, 17, had John Corigliano’s impetuous “Red Violin Caprices” all to herself and played it stunningly. – NY Times

A Chicagoland wunderkind … known not only as a one-name performer but also as one singular sensation … played with a sweet tone and strength of character. – The Grand Rapids Press

ALGERNON (AJ) ROBINSON

Algernon Robinson (b. 1997) was called “a sophisticated composer with a fine ear” by Classical Voice North Carolina, who described his music as “a delightful exploration of tonality with sweeping gestures carved from a complex quasi-tonal pitch language”. A Wilmington native, Robinson began composition studies with Lowell Lieberman at Mannes School of Music. He earned a bachelor of music degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he studied with Lawrence Dillon, and a master’s degree in composition from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Evan Chambers and Roshanne Etezady.

Robinson is deeply passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration and exploring the role of art as a herald for social and political change. His dance music video piece, Parapo, premiered at the Royal College of Music in 2019 in a presentation for Old Salem Museums and Gardens’ Hidden Town Initiative, which aims to “research and reveal the history of a community of enslaved and free Africans and African Americans who once lived in Salem, NC and integrate the narrative of the enslaved into the visitor experience through contemporary art forms, salon discussions, and public gatherings”. Robinson has enjoyed premieres with Tallis Chamber Orchestra, Wilmington Symphony Youth Orchestra, and the University Philharmonia Orchestra at U of M. Additionally, he was fortunate to have readings with Matt Albert, Lindsay Kesselman, Attacca Quartet, and Eighth Blackbird.