“Hallelujah Junction” for John Adams at his 70th birthday celebration in New York. For a Hilan Warshaw WDR-Arte documentary titled “Wagner’s Jews,” which explores the controversy of performing Wagner in Israel and has been aired around the world, Mr. Sanchez-Werner recorded works of Liszt, Wagner, and Tausig.

Since making his concerto debut at age 6, he performs regularly under the batons of such conductors as Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Michael Morgan, Karina Cannellakis, Boris Brott, Tito Muñoz, David Lockington, William Noll, Burns Taft, Robert Lawson, and Karim Wasfi. His long relationship with Michael Morgan, with whom he has soloed with 3 orchestras, expanded beyond performing titans of the concerto repertoire when they took on the rarely performed Carlos Chávez piano concerto in a performance that received the Ross McKee Foundation Grant. Mr. Sanchez-Werner’s adventurous programming also took him to perform Glass’ Second Piano Concerto, “After Lewis and Clark,” in 2016 under the baton of Tito Muñoz.

Mr. Sanchez-Werner performed Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn concerti in partnership with the National Academy Orchestra of Canada and the New West Symphony in 16 concerts for 20,000 North American students to excite more youth about classical music. He continued his work with conductor Boris Brott with performances for an additional 6,000 students as part of an anti-bullying campaign.

A California native, Mr. Sanchez-Werner began his first college degree at 5, and at 6 began performing regularly with orchestras. At Juilliard, he was the youngest admittee to the Bachelor’s Degree at 14 and the Master’s Degree at 18, where he was the recipient of the Kovner Fellowship. While at Juilliard, as the winner of the concerto competition he performed under the baton of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. He was also awarded a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ YoungArts gold medal in music. Principal teachers have included Yoheved Kaplinsky, Ilya Itin, Burns Taft, composition with Lowell Liebermann, and improvisation with Noam Sivan. He has extensively studied chamber music with artists including Wu Han, Joseph Kalichstein, Robert McDonald, Robert Levin, and the Brentano, Borromeo, and Shanghai Quartets.

Mr. Sanchez-Werner studies with Boris Berman at the Yale School of Music, where he received the Charles S. Miller Prize at the completion of his first year, in their prestigious Artist Diploma program.

## Nkieru Okoye Composer

A composer with a gift for incorporating many influences and styles within her work, Nkeiru Okoye is perhaps best known for her opera, Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom, the orchestral work, Voices Shouting Out, which she composed as an artistic response to 9/11, and her suite, African Sketches, which has been performed by pianists around the globe. Profiled in both the Music of Black Composers Coloring Book and Routledge’s African American Music: An Introduction textbook, Dr. Okoye is also the inaugural recipient of the Florence Price Award for Composition. A recent New York Times article mentioned, “Okoye’s work would make a fitting grand opening for an opera company’s post-pandemic relaunch.”

In March 2020, the State of Michigan issued a proclamation acknowledging Dr. Okoye’s “extraordinary contributions” to the history of Detroit, Michigan, for Black Bottom, a symphonic experience commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, in celebration of the centennial season of Orchestra Hall. Her other recent works include Tales from the Briar Patch, a sung story, commissioned by The