Faculty Artist Series

April Sun

Boston-based pianist April Sun thrives as an imaginative, sincere, and versatile performer and teacher. She is a founding member of the Meadowlark Trio--semifinalists in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition (2017), artist-fellows for Music for Food (2019)--and she frequently plays with the Phoenix Chamber Orchestra and the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra. April has also collaborated with members of the Chiara Quartet, Escher Quartet, Cleveland Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

April is deeply invested in music education, service, and activism. She has shared music in schools, nursing homes, and community centers throughout the nation, and she currently teaches piano and chamber music at the Brookline Music School and the Rivers Conservatory. Additionally, April serves as the communications manager at Music for Food--an organization that uses music to generate funds for food pantries. From 2016-2018, she was an Artist-in-Residence at Judson Park, as part of an intergenerational living initiative.

April holds a DMA in collaborative piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), where she also received both a MM in piano performance, a certificate in pedagogy, and the Bennett Levine Chamber Music Award. She completed her B.A. in music, with minors in English and Art History, at the University of Nebraska--Lincoln. Her incredible mentors have included Daniel Shapiro, Anita Pontremoli, Paul Barnes, Kim Kashkashian, Peter Salaff, Bayla Keyes, Sharon Robinson, Francesca Brittan, and Susan McClary. Away from the piano, April enjoys films, bikes, poems, hikes, strong beverages, and small bites.

Janny Joo

Violinist Janny Joo is a multifaceted musician who is equally at home in chamber, orchestra, and solo recital settings. She is a founding member of the Meadowlark Piano Trio, a recent semi-finalist of the Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition, and enjoys performing works from the established repertoire as well as championing works from contemporary composers with the trio.

An active chamber musician, Janny has studied chamber music with the members of the Chiara, Muir, and St. Lawrence String Quartets, the Triple Helix Piano Trio, and violist Kim Kashkashian. She has also performed with such artists as Bayla Keyes, Cho-Liang Lin, Kim Kashkashian, Hsin-Yun Huang, Desmond Hoebig, Rhonda Rider, William Fitzpatrick, and Norman Fischer.

She has served as the concertmaster of numerous orchestras, which includes Symphony Nova in recent years, and she currently holds the Principal 2nd Violin chair of Phoenix Orchestra and the Assistant Principal 2nd Violin chair of the Cape Symphony. She also performs with Chorus Pro Musica, BMOP, Cantata Singers, and guests with A Far Cry, Boston Lyric Opera, and Boston Ballet.

Janny is passionate about teaching and coaching the next generation of musicians, and has taught violin as well as theory classes at Boston University where she received her Doctorate degree in Violin Performance. She received her M.M degree from Shepherd school of music at Rice University and her B.A degree with minors in Math and History from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Believing that an artist is also a citizen who has a duty to further social justice, she is serving as the Finance Manager for the Music for Food organization this year, which is a musician-lead initiative for local hunger relief. She will be working with the artists in the organization to benefit food pantries all around the United States, as well as in Canada and Taiwan.

Her primary teachers include Bayla Keyes, Cho-Liang Lin, Hyeyung Yoon of the Chiara String Quartet, and Hal Grossman.

In her free time, she enjoys ballroom dancing, horseback riding, traveling, and photography.