Susan Kang is the newly appointed Principal Flute of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra. She has served as Principal Flute of the Houston Ballet Orchestra since 2018 and as Acting Principal Flute of the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra during the 2018-2019 season. Kang spent summers at the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, and Verbier Festival. Other orchestral engagements include performing with the Houston Symphony and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary music series MusicNOW. She had the privilege of working under prominent conductors such as Thomas Adès, Stéphane Denève, Andris Nelsons, Gianandrea Noseda, and Klaus Mäkelä.

Also passionate about chamber music, Kang has attended the Bowdoin International Music Festival and Krzyżowa-Music in Poland, where she collaborated with remarkable musicians such as David Bowlin, Alan Chow, Christian Jost, and Radovan Vlatković.

Kang is the winner of first prizes in the Donald Peck International Competition and Seattle Flute Club’s Young Artist Competition. She performed Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Flute Concerto Dances With the Winds with the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra as a winner of the Shepherd School Concerto Competition.

Originally from Southern California, Susan Kang earned a Bachelor of Music degree at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music and a Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. Her principal teachers include Leone Buyse and John Thorne.

Beilin Han was born in Shanghai, China and began studying piano at the age of three. She attended the Shanghai Conservatory of Music for Primary and Middle School and also attended the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore on a full scholarship. Immediately after graduating from Academy in Singapore, Ms. Han was accepted into the University of Kansas for her Masters Degree, being the only full scholarship recipient at the time.

Beilin was invited to perform at the 7th Annual World Piano Pedagogy Conference in Las Vegas in 2002 and was honored as a Young Artist in 2003. In 2004, Ms. Han became a prize winner of the Vianna Da Motta International Piano Competition in Portugal. She toured internationally as a concert pianist performing throughout China, Portugal, Spain, and the US. She also appeared on radio programs in Singapore and the U.S., as well as a television program in China.

In 2008, Ms. Han graduated from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where she earned her Artistic Diploma with Solomon Mikowsky and Meng-Chieh Liu.

In addition to Ms. Han’s successful solo career, she enjoys chamber music and collaborating with such artists as pianist Alberto Portugheis, world-renowned countertenor Paul Esswood, world-famous violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yossif Ivanov, Ilya kaler, Kyoko Takezawa and Elmar Oliveira among others. She has also played for world-famous conductors such as Riccardo Muti and Christoph Eschenbach.

Currently, Ms. Han is a collaborative pianist at both Northwestern University and DePaul School of Music, and the Chicago Stradivari Society. In 2011, she joined the collaborative piano faculty at the Heifetz International Music Institute. In 2015, she participated in the Cremona International Music Festival.