By Angela Ye '24, Loomis Chaffee
Listing every accolade and award won by Loomis Chaffee alum Sirena Huang ’12 would be astonishing in itself, but it would also neglect much of the hard work and hardships that Huang had to experience to earn each title. Loomis Chaffee, Yale University, and The Juilliard School graduate Huang’s most recent news in the music world is winning Gold Medal at the 2022 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. The 1st Prize includes a $75,000 cash prize, a recital at Carnegie hall, a professional CD recording and website, and career guidance for the next four years. Being a competition that is only held every four years and known as the “Olympics” of the violin world, simply participating is the dream of most violinists.
Huang found the lockdown days of COVID-19 very difficult – to her, performing on-screen removed the human connection when playing for people – but the time that COVID hit her hardest was six days before the Preliminary Rounds of the 2022 competition, when she tested positive for the virus. She went into quarantine for the five days leading up to the Preliminaries, missing out on rehearsals and overall feeling too sick to practice. The night before the Preliminaries, her right ear was completely muffled. Huang said that “usually I rely on my right ear to hear the echo, the balance, I listen to the surroundings - and I had none of that,” making her outstanding performance at the Preliminaries even more impressive, including playing two Paganini Caprices. And as her symptoms improved, her playing in the subsequent rounds improved, too.
To go back to the very beginning, young Huang wanted to play the piano, just like her sister. But her parents, thinking that her hands were too small, suggested the violin, starting out at the age of four. At age eight, she was studying at Juilliard with Stephan Clapp; at age night, she had a solo debut with the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra. Huang is a local from Windsor, Connecticut and when reflecting on her experience at Loomis Chaffee, she emphasized the importance of having “a normal high school life” and learning “how to balance a teenage life and a violin career,” taking the classes that any other student at Loomis would take. Throughout her time at Loomis, she continued with Juilliard’s pre-college program, until she earned her Bachelor of Music at Juilliard as an undergraduate. She then studied at Yale, where she describes a “change in scene” that allowed her to try out new opportunities outside of music. An overall fulfilling experience, she explains in an interview with Laurie Niles that she gained a “perspective towards music’s role in society,” where other than the technical imperfections was a greater implication that “music is a power tool that can serve our communities.”
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