Aristo Sham, the Gold Medalist and “Audience Favorite” of the 2025 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, will join Maestro Loh and the Waco Symphony in playing the first piano concerto of Johannes Brahms. This competition was named for American pianist Van Cliburn who, in 1958 during the Cold War, won the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In tribute to that monumental feat in artistic diplomacy, the WSO will perform Tchaikovsky’s final 6th Symphony. We open this concert with music by American composer Jessie Montgomery. She wrote Starburst in 2012 for The Sphinx Virtuosi, the flagship ensemble of the Sphinx Organization. Montgomery writes the following to describe this work: “Exploding gestures are juxtaposed with gentle fleeting melodies in an attempt to create a multidimensional soundscape.”

Opening Notes

Learn interesting insights about the music you’ll hear at Opening Notes, a free pre-concert talk led by Maestro Lawrence Loh.

6:40 p.m.–7:10 p.m. in Recital Hall II within Waco Hall.