Nahre Sol, (born 1991) is a Korean-American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

, pianist, and

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influent ...

Youth and education

Nahre Sol, under her given name, Alice Gi-Young Hwang, attended the

Orange County High School of the Arts Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA, ), is a 7th–12th grade public charter school located in downtown Santa Ana, California. The school caters to middle and high school students with talents in the performing, visual, literary arts, cul ...

and graduated from the

Idyllwild Arts Academy Idyllwild Arts Academy is a private school located in Idyllwild, in the San Jacinto Mountains and San Bernardino National Forest, within western Riverside County, California. The school was founded in 1946. It was previously known as Idyllwild S ...

in 2009, where she was class valedictorian and recipient of The Most Outstanding Arts Student award. She received her

Bachelor of Music Bachelor of Music (BM or BMus) is an academic degree awarded by a college, university, or conservatory upon completion of a program of study in music. In the United States, it is a professional degree, and the majority of work consists of prescr ...

degree in piano performance from the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905, the school trains about 850 undergraduate and graduate students in dance, drama, and music. It is widely regarded as one of the most el ...

in 2013, studying with

Matti Raekallio Matti Juhani Raekallio (born 14 October 1954 in Helsinki) is a Finnish pianist. He has performed in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, having debuted at the Carnegie Recital Hall in 1980. A professor at the Swedish Royal College of Music (1994–1995), H ...

. In 2015 she earned her Artist Diploma from

The Glenn Gould School The Glenn Gould School is a centre for the training of professional musicians in performance at post-secondary and post-bachelor levels in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1987 and renamed in 1997 after the celebrated pianist, ...

The Royal Conservatory of Music The Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM), branded as The Royal Conservatory, is a non-profit music education institution and performance venue headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1886 by Edward Fisher as The Toronto Con ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, Canada, studying with

John O'Conor John O'Conor (born 18 January 1947) is an Irish pianist and pedagogue, and former director of the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Early career Born in Dublin, O'Conor attended Belvedere College in that city. During his early Dublin studies, his ...

; in 2017–2018 she was a New Music Fellow at the RCM. She also participated in master classes at the International Mendelssohn-Academy Leipzig and at the International Holland Music Sessions as a scholarship recipient. She was a 2013 recipient of a

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

France Harriet Hale Woolley Award in the Arts Grant, allowing her to study in Paris with

Gabriel Tacchino Gabriel Tacchino (4 August 1934 – 29 January 2023) was a French classical pianist and teacher. Life and career Tacchino was born in Cannes on 4 August 1934. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire from 1947 to 1953, where his teachers included J ...

and Narcis Bonet, pupils of

Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-kno ...

and

Nadia Boulanger Juliette Nadia Boulanger (; 16 September 188722 October 1979) was a French music teacher and conductor. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist. From a ...

. While at Juilliard, she co-founded the T.R.I.O. Project (Teaching and Responding Through Internet Outreach). She also contributed a set of recordings of the Chopin Scherzos to

Musopen Musopen Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Tarzana, California, launched by Aaron Dunn in 2005. It aims to "set music free" by providing music to the public free of charge, without copyright restrictions. Mission and charit ...

's compilation of Chopin's works, which were released under a public domain license. In

, she was co-director of the

chamber music Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small numb ...

collective Happenstance.

Competitions and awards

Sol was the Gold Medal Winner of the NFAA YoungARTS program, a semi-finalist of the Presidential Scholars in the Arts Program, recipient of the Sarra and Emmanuil Senderov Award at Arizona State University for the “Most outstanding performance of a piece by a Russian composer” at the 3rd Schimmel USASU International Piano Competition, and won prizes at the “Tomorrow’s Stars” Competition held by the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Spotlight Awards, the Idyllwild Arts Academy Concerto Competition, the Steinway Society of Redlands Piano Competition, the Young Artists Peninsula Music Festival, the Redlands Bowl Young Artists Auditions, the MTAC State Concerto Competition, and the 2008 Bronislaw Kaper Awards for Young Artists, She also was a contestant in such competitions as the

William Kapell International Piano Competition William is a male given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norm ...

and the 2015 National Chopin Competition in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

Personal life

After graduating from the Glenn Gould School, Alice Hwang abandoned her traditional piano performance career, working for some time as a commercial photographer. She resumed her musical activities through a series of videos on YouTube under the title Practice Notes using the name Nahre Sol, a nickname her father used to call her.

Recognition as Nahre Sol

Nahre Sol is best known for her YouTube channel, with around 619,000 subscribers as of July 2023, and as being co-host of the

PBS Digital Studios PBS Digital Studios is a non-profit organization that through which PBS distributes original educational web video content based in Arlington, Virginia. It comprises both original series and partnerships with existing YouTube channels. Most of t ...

show "Sound Field". She has also been a guest host of

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

Performance Today ''Performance Today'' is a Peabody Award-winning classical music radio program, first aired in 1987 and hosted since 2000 by Fred Child. It is the most listened-to daily classical music radio program in the United States, with 1.2 million liste ...

, created a video for

Wired magazine ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online magazine, online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquar ...

, appeared as a guest on the online channel

Physics Girl Dianna Leilani Cowern (born May 4, 1989) is an American science communicator. She is a YouTuber; she uploads videos to her YouTube channel ''Physics Girl'' explaining various physical phenomena. She worked in partnership with the PBS Digital Stu ...

, and collaborated with other composers and musicians such as David Bruce, Andrew Huang,

Adam Neely Adam Michael Neely (born 1988) is an American YouTuber, bassist, and composer. His YouTube channel is described as containing " music theory, music cognition, jazz improvisation, musical performance technique, musicology and memes". He also ...

, L.A. Buckner, Tantacrul, and Ben Levin. She was nominated in the category Best YouTube Musician in the 12th Annual Shorty Awards in 2020. The blog Pianote featured her YouTube channel in 2021 as #1 on their list of top YouTube pianists. She was a guest artist at the 2018 Costa Rica Piano Festival. As a composer, Nahre Sol has had works commissioned by the

Manitoba Chamber Orchestra The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (MCO) is a chamber orchestra based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It offers an annual subscription series at Westminster United Church, which regularly features Canada's leading soloists, such as James Ehnes and Meash ...

and her music was used in the film The Boss Baby: Family Business. In 2021, she released a digital album called ''Alice in Wonderland''. In June 2023, the

Elbphilharmonie The Elbphilharmonie (; "Elbe Philharmonic Hall"), popularly nicknamed Elphi, is a concert hall in the HafenCity quarter of Hamburg, Germany, on the Grasbrook peninsula of the Elbe River. It is among the largest in the world. The new glassy con ...

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

announced Nahre Sol as its first-ever 'Creator in Residence' for the 2023-2024 season.

References

External links

* *
Nahre Sol's page
on

BandCamp Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...

Nahre Sol's channel
on

SoundCloud SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming se ...

Nahre Sol's channel
on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sol, Nahre Music YouTubers American classical pianists American women classical pianists Women classical pianists American classical musicians American composers American contemporary classical composers American women classical composers American women composers Composers for piano 21st-century classical composers 21st-century classical pianists 21st-century pianists 21st-century American pianists 21st-century American women pianists 21st-century women musicians Women in classical music Juilliard School alumni The Royal Conservatory of Music alumni 1991 births Living people