Cameron Daly, Katie Liu, Ursula Steele, Nathan Chan, Eric Han, Mark Steinberg, & Albert Cano Smit
Friday, June 4, 2027, 7:30 pm
Cameron Daly, Associate Principal Second Violin
Seattle Symphony
Cameron Daly, a passionate chamber musician, joined the Callisto Quartet shortly after graduation from the Yale School of Music, leading that ensemble as first violin until his recent appointment as Associate Principal Second Violin of the Seattle Symphony.
Cameron has performed chamber music alongside notable artists, including Andres Diaz, Stephen Drury, James Ehnes, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, Jose Franch-Ballester, Benjamin Hochman, and Peter Winograd, and has been invited to perform at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, as well as the Taos, Tanglewood, and Aspen music festivals.
Mr. Daly graduated cum laude (B.A. Global Affairs ‘18) at Yale University prior to earning a Master’s degree in Violin Performance (M.M ‘20) under the tutelage of Wendy Sharp, Ani Kavafian, and the Brentano Quartet. He received the Yale School of Music’s Alumni Association prize and Yale’s Wrexham and Sharp prizes for musical performance.
Mr. Daly resides in Seattle with his wife, Seattle Symphony First Assistant Concertmaster Emerson Millar.
Katie Liu, Associate Principal Viola
Seattle Symphony
Katie Liu, recently appointed Seattle Symphony Associate Principal Viola, is an active chamber musician, with appearances in the North Shore Chamber Music Festival, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, Aspect Chamber Music series, and Music on Park Avenue series with pianist Per Tengstrand. Festival experiences include NUME Academy, YellowBarn, Verbier Festival Academy, Music@Menlo’s International Program, and Kronberg Academy’s Chamber Music Connects the World program.
A semi-finalist at the 2024 Primrose International Viola Competition and 2023 Oskar Nedbal International Viola Competition, Ms. Liu changed from violin to viola during her final year at Princeton University, where she earned a degree in Operations Research and Financial Engineering, with minors in Computer Science and Musical Performance, and from which she was awarded the Princeton University Concerto Competition prize. She received a Master of Musical Arts degree at the Yale School of Music under Ettore Causa, and a Master of Music degree at the Colburn School with Paul Coletti and Teng Li.
Prior to joining the Seattle Symphony, Ms. Liu was American Youth Symphony Principal Viola and New Haven Symphony Orchestra viola. She has also performed with the New York Philharmonic.
Ms. Liu performs on a viola made for her in 2024 by French luthier Frédéric Chaudière.
Ursula Steele, Fourth Chair Viola
Seattle Symphony
Ursula Steele completes the leadership of the Seattle Symphony viola section.
A graduate of the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University under Atar Arad, Ms. Steele was awarded the Viola Concerto Competition prize, the Kuttner Quartet Scholarship, mentorship with the Pacifica Quartet, and a quartet residency at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, Germany.
In addition, while at Jacobs, her quartet was invited to participate in the Robert Mann String Quartet Seminar, the Ashkenazi/Kirshbaum Chamber Music Seminar at Heifetz International Music Institute, and the Chamber Music Residency at the Banff Center.
Prior to Ms. Steele’s appointment to the Seattle Symphony in the fall of 2024, she performed with the Royal Swedish Opera and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. She holds Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees and an Artist Diploma from the Jacobs School.
Nathan Chan, Assistant Principal Cello
Seattle Symphony
Nathan Chan, Assistant Principal Cello of the Seattle Symphony, has performed as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Reno Philharmonic, and Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra, working with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, James Gaffigan, Alexander Prior, and Donato Cabrera, among others.
Identified at a young age as a prodigy to watch, Mr. Chan was featured in the three-part documentary “World’s Greatest Musical Prodigies,” and was chosen to participate in Classe d’Excellence du Violoncelle with world-renowned cellist Gautier Capuçon. He was the winner of the 2015 Aspen Low Strings Concerto Competition, playing Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D Major, and recipient of the 2016 Samuel Mayes Memorial Cello Award at Tanglewood.
Recently completing a year as Vancouver (BC) Symphony Orchestra Principal Cello, Nathan has returned to the Seattle Symphony to the relief of his many Seattle-based fans. He resides in Seattle with his wife, cellist Christine Lee.
Eric Han, Fourth Chair Cello
Seattle Symphony
Eric Han, a Korean-born, Canadian cellist, completes the leadership quartet within the Seattle Symphony’s cello section and is a distinguished chamber musician, having participated as both an artist and Artist-in-Residence in numerous festivals, including Moritzburg, La Jolla, Music@Menlo, and Sarasota, with regular appearances in the Seattle Symphony chamber series.
Mr. Han made his concerto debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the age of fourteen, leading to further engagements with ensembles such as the Toronto Sinfonietta, Toronto Chamber Players, and Boston’s Symphony by the Sea. In addition to studies with David Hetherington at the Glenn Gould School, he holds a Bachelor of Music from the Colburn School of Music under Ronald Leonard and is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Peter Wiley and Carter Brey.
Mr. Han performs on a cello made by Frank Ravatin on generous loan from the Maestro Foundation.
Our Seattle artists’ guests for the evening are Mark Steinberg, first violin of the world-touring Brentano String Quartet, and Naumburg Prize pianist, Albert Cano Smit.
Mark Steinberg, violin
Brentano String Quartet
Mark Steinberg, first violin and founding member of the Brentano String Quartet, has performed extensively in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Korea, Israel, and Colombia. As a member of Brentano, which is ensemble-in-residence at Yale School of Music, he has compiled an extensive discography and been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Naumburg Chamber Music Award, the inaugural Cleveland Quartet Award, and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award for best debut in the UK.
In addition to quartet performances, Mr. Steinberg has often appeared in duo and trio ensembles with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, with whom he presented the complete Mozart sonata cycle in London’s Wigmore Hall and recorded Sonatas for Piano and Violin (Philips). Solo appearances include those with the London Philharmonia, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Kansas City Camerata, Auckland Philharmonia, and the Philadelphia Concerto Soloists, with conductors such as Kurt Sanderling, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya.
Mr. Steinberg holds degrees from Indiana University and The Juilliard School, where he studied with Louise Behrend, Josef Gingold, and Robert Mann. An in-demand pedagogue, he is currently a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music and CUNY The Graduate Center, and an active competition adjudicator at such events as the Banff International Quartet Competition, London Quartet Competition, Mozart International Quartet Competition in Salzburg, and the Naumburg Violin Competition. He has been invited to teach at Banff Centre for the Arts, the Aspen Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Taos School of Music, and has presented masterclasses at Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Britten-Pears Institute in Aldeburgh, Mozarteum in Salzburg, Guildhall School, Amsterdam Conservatory, and Yellow Barn, among many others.
Mr. Steinberg is counted among Cameron Daly’s most influential teachers, having changed his understanding of and approach to music. We are thrilled to welcome him to The Seattle Series.
https://www.brentanoquartet.com/
Albert Cano Smit, piano
New York, NY
Albert Cano Smit, a Spanish/Dutch pianist praised as “a moving young poet” (Le Devoir of Montreal), is noted for his captivating performances, storytelling quality, and nuanced musicality. First Prize winner of the 2019 Young Concert Artists Wadsworth International Auditions and the 2017 Naumburg International Piano Competition, among many additional honors, Mr. Cano Smit is in a rarefied group amongst his peers. He has appeared as soloist with major symphony orchestras, such as Seattle, Las Vegas, San Diego, Montréal, Colorado Music Festival, St. Luke’s, Barcelona, Catalonia, and Manchester Camerata, and performed recitals internationally, including Fondation Louis Vuitton of Paris, streamed live globally; the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater; Germany’s Rheingau Music Festival; and Auditori de Barcelona. He has been in residence at France’s Festival de Musique de Wissembourg for seven years, a piano fellow at both Bravo! Vail Music Festival and Tippet Rise Art Center, and debuted in Asia at Xiamen’s Banlam Grand Theater.
In 2017, Mr. Cano Smit was First Prize winner at the Walter W. Naumburg Piano Competition, and a Finalist and CMIM Grant winner at the Concours Musical International de Montréal. Additional special prizes at the 2019 Young Concert Artists International Auditions include The Paul A. Fish Memorial Prize, the Alexander Kasza-Kasser Concert Prize for support of his Kennedy Center debut, the Friends of Music Concert Prize (NY), and the Sunday Musicale Prize (NJ).
A polyglot of five languages, Mr. Cano Smit was born in Geneva to a Dutch mother and a Spanish father, and left home at 9 to join the Escolania de Montserrat choir school, where hours of daily rehearsal strongly influenced his musical development. An alumnus of the Verbier Festival Academy and Ravinia Steans Institute, he recently completed an Artist Diploma and Master’s Degree with Robert McDonald at the Juilliard School, where he was awarded the 2020 Rubinstein Prize for Piano; holds a BA in Piano Performance from the Colburn School with Ory Shihor; and studied with Marta Karbownicka and Graham Caskie at Chetham’s School of Music.
Mr. Cano Smit currently resides in New York City.
https://www.albertcanosmit.com/
