Ong Sisters Present: In Between the Lines

A classical recital by the Ong Sisters on piano and violin.
 

Isabel Ong

Violinist Isabel Ong is an avid chamber musician with a passion for contemporary music and has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, David Geffen Hall, National Sawdust, and MOMA and most recently, was invited to perform in the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra in Switzerland. An advocate for using the power of music to serve a greater humanitarian purpose, Isabel has organized and performed concerts with ASAP (Advocates for Southeast Asians and the Persecuted) honoring their non-profit service of spreading higher education and implementing healthier and cleaner living conditions for the people of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. Whenever she is able to, Isabel travels to Taiwan to collaborate with the Adventist Women’s Ministry and other missionaries to promote the arts.

During the 2017-2018 season, Isabel was an inaugural member of the Spark Collective, an ensemble designed to perform new works by current compositional students at the University of South Carolina, and curate and perform interactive concerts for the community. Recently, Isabel was director of a chamber music seminar held at Colgate University with the Manhattan String Quartet. Isabel is also a co-founder of a contemporary string quartet based in Buffalo, NY - fra/ctured. An equally dedicated teacher, Isabel is currently teaching at SUNY Fredonia, Mercyhurst University, Buffalo String Works, and spends her summers on faculty at Point CounterPoint in Vermont. She holds degrees from Juilliard and the University of South Carolina (BM, MM, and DMA). In her free time, Isabel can be found poring over a good book.

Wen-Ting Ong

Dr. Wen-Ting Ong (Ting) is a Boston- based Collaborative Pianist and Teaching Artist.  Ting was formerly a Company Rehearsal and Class-Technique Pianist at Boston Ballet/School and Walnut Hill School of the Arts. During her time there, she rehearsed works such as Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda Variations, Balanchine’s Four Temperaments, Divertimento No. 15, Balanchine’s Jewels, Claudia Schreier’s Slipstream, Jorma Elo’s Ruth’s Dance and others. Her Boston debut as a composer began with a project in collaboration with Julianna Utz’s Turning Key Dance Company in creating a modern sound-world based on L.M. Alcott's Little Women. They performed in celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Little Women's publication in Concord, MA. In 2021, Ting was invited as a guest rehearsal pianist to Vail Dance Festival in Vail, CO. She worked on Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes with James Whiteside and Mira Nadon and Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux with Tiler Peck, Joseph Gordon, and Roman Meija. 

Ting is currently at the Boston Conservatory as a Ballet and Modern-Technique Staff Pianist with the Dance and Music Department. Ting hopes to one day, create an arts collective to dance and perform her original works and reimaginings. Her compositional and improvisation style is a synthesis of minimalism, quartal and quintal harmonies, and hyper rhythmic energy inspired by her Taiwanese aboriginal roots. Her most recent original works include a May debut at Boston’s Citizens Opera House featuring a piano solo  for Boston Ballet’s Post-Graduate Ensemble and she also helped inaugurate The Asian American Ballet Project in July by writing a piece with choreographer, Junichi Fukuda. 

Recital Repertoire

Violin Partita No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1002
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

I. Allemanda
II. Double
III. Courante
IV. Double
V. Sarabande
VI. Double
VII. Tempo di Bourree
VIII. Double

Virtuosic Etude No. 1, Liza
Earl Wilde (1915-2010)

Imperfect as One
Wen-Ting Ong (1989- )

Dancers: Naoko Brown, Junichi Fukuda

Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

I. Allegro, ma non troppo
II. Improvisation: Andante Cantabile
III. Finale: Andante-Allegro