Student Spotlight: 2024/25 NEC Fellows
Each season, A Far Cry collaborates with the New England Conservatory (NEC) to offer outstanding student musicians a unique opportunity to join our ensemble as guest Criers! This year’s competition welcomed a talented cohort of student applicants and we’re thrilled to introduce three of our exceptional winners, violists Yeh-Chun Lin, Sachin Shukla, and cellist Jonah Kernis, who will join the Criers in performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 this evening.
Join us in celebrating their talent! Together, we're building a community that values creativity, collaboration, and the transformative power of music.
Taiwanese violist, Yeh-Chun Lin is establishing herself as an emerging chamber musician on the international stage. She has performed a lot of chamber music in the United States, Europe, Canada and Taiwan. She also has experience participating in orchestra including the New England Conservatory Chamber Orchestra, Phoenix Chamber Orchestra, New England Conservatory Philharmonic, Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and as the viola principal of the Counterpoint Chamber Orchestra in Taiwan.
Yeh-Chun Lin has recently won the first prize of the Les Violons du Roy Concerto Competition,
Borromeo Quartet Artist Guest Awards, and A Far Cry x NEC Collaborative Competition. She has attended to numerous summer festival such as Perlman Music Chamber Workshop, Yellow Barn, and Domaine Forget Chamber Orchestra. She has worked with musicians such as Molly Carr, Donald Weilerstein, Joel Krosnick, Merry Peckham, and Itzhak Perlman, and has recently performed with Vivian Hornik Weilerstein. She has performed in venues internationally, including Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall in Boston and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan.
Born in Tainan, a historical city. Yeh-Chun Lin began viola at the age of 8. She is currently studying viola with Mai Motobuchi and Beth Gutermann Chu. Chamber music with the Borromeo String Quartet and Paul Katz at the New England Conservatory, where she is a Dean’s scholarship recipient.
Sachin Shukla is a violist and teacher based in Boston. Performances have brought him across the US and Italy, and to the stages of Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, and NEC’s Jordan Hall. Sachin is on the faculty of the Powers Music School in Belmont, MA and is a teaching artist with the Boston Music Project. He is a member of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, and has performed with the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and the Portland Symphony Orchestra, and the Plymouth Philharmonic, among others.
Sachin won the 2021 Northwestern Viola Prize and has performed at festivals including the Heifetz International Music Institute, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Taconic Music, and the Cazenovia Counterpoint Festival. He is also active in the world of historically-informed performance, having performed in ensembles led by Ingrid Matthews, Phoebe Carrai, and Aislinn Nosky. Sachin is a graduate of Northwestern University and the New England Conservatory, where his principal teachers were Helen Callus and Mai Motobuchi.
Sachin’s article on the Walton Viola Concerto, which he presented at the American Viola Society’s Annual Conference was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Viola Society, after garnering first place in its 2021 David Dalton Research Competition. Another one of his papers was also featured at the 2022 Galant Schemata conference.
In addition to his musical activities, Sachin is also a public policy enthusiast. He served as research assistant to Diane Schanzenbach and Ajay K. Mehrotra, and was a member of the executive board of Northwestern University’s Political Union for three years, culminating in a term as co-president.
Jonah Kernis is twenty-one years old and has been playing the cello from the age of three. He currently studies with Paul Katz at the New England Conservatory. He was principal cellist for NEC’s second symphony orchestra concert of his first semester, which was conducted by Hugh Wolff. He performed Beethoven’s String Quartet in E-Flat Major, op. 74 ‘Harp’ in Jordan Hall, which was part of the Borromeo String Quartet’s Beethoven Seminar, as well as the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor, op. 132 in Jordan Hall for NEC’s Chamber Music Gala in his third semester. He has earned a position in the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Zander, which performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Carnegie Hall in February, 2023, and was also principal cellist of the Boston Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra, playing Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra and Mahler’s Second Symphony in Symphony Hall.
Jonah is currently cellist of the Alira String Quartet, which formed at NEC in September, 2024. They are coached by Paul Katz. The quartet has won the Chamber Music Honors Ensemble Competition at NEC, and will be performing a full quartet recital at Jordan Hall in April. They have also won the Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award, performing Mendelssohn’s String Octet in Jordan Hall alongside the Borromeo String Quartet. The Alira Quartet recently participated in the Classical Music Institute’s String Quartet Fellowship, where they received coachings from the Escher String Quartet and concluded with a performance of Ravel’s String Quartet at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.
He has participated in summer music programs including the Tanglewood Music Center, Taos School of Music, Aspen Music Festival and School, Yellow Barn’s Young Artist Program, Greenwood Music Camp, Bowdoin Music Festival, and the Kinhaven Summer Music School. Jonah has been invited by the Tanglewood Music Center to play in the Festival Orchestra as a part of the Shostakovich Festival in Leipzig, Germany (May, 2025). The festival will showcase numerous works by Shostakovich, and features three orchestras: the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, and the Festival Orchestra, comprised of fellows from the Tanglewood Music Center and members of the Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy. Fellows will work under the batons of BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons and former BSO Assistant Conductor Anna Rakitina.
During his highschool years, he studied with Natasha Brofsky in the Juilliard Pre-College program, while enrolled at the Professional Children’s School. As a student at the Special Music School (Kindergarten through 8th grade), Jonah studied with Yari Bond for nine years. Jonah was chosen to play in master classes given by renowned cellists Steven Isserlis in 2015, and Zlatomir Fung in 2023. Jonah has been principal cellist of the ISO Concert Orchestra as well as a winner of their concerto competition.
As a cellist in Face the Music's "This Side UP" string quartet, he participated in Kronos Quartet master classes and performed with them in Carnegie Hall in 2014. Jonah performed with “This Side UP” from 2013 to 2015 at Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, Queens Museum and many other venues, featuring more than 10 contemporary string quartets each year. In February 2017, Jonah premiered a new composition for solo cello by Mario Davidovsky at Greenwich House Music School. Jonah has traveled to Shanghai to perform a cello and piano duo, written by his father, Aaron Jay Kernis.
As soloist, Jonah won Kaufman Music Center’s Concerto Competition and subsequently performed the Shostakovich Cello Concerto with orchestra in Merkin Hall in 2018. He also won First Place (Gold Prize) in his age category at the 2017-18 Vivo International Music Competition and placed high in Camerata Artists International Competition.
Jonah was a member of the New York Youth Symphony for two years. He was also a participant in the NYYS Chamber Music program as cellist of the HaWK Piano Trio. HaWK was chosen to perform at Lincoln Center’s Rose Studio for Kinhaven’s annual benefit concerts in 2016 and 2018, and in Merkin Hall as a top prize winner in the League of Performing Arts National Chamber Music Competition. The HaWK Trio was a semi-finalist participant in the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition (May, 2019), as well as finalists in the Coltman Chamber Music Competition (March 2020).
