SAN RAMON, CALIFORNIA – A 12-year-old San Ramon pianist is headed to the stage with one of Contra Costa County’s longest-running community music institutions.
Ellie Xuan, a seventh-grade student at Gale Ranch Middle School, has won the Diablo Symphony Orchestra’s 2026 Yen Liang Young Artist Competition and will perform Edvard Grieg’s “Piano Concerto in A minor” with the orchestra at its spring family concert, according to a Diablo Symphony Orchestra announcement.
Xuan won the competition in early January and will receive a $1,500 honorarium, organizers said. She studies piano with Dr. Chia-Lin Yang and has been playing for five years.
Xuan is scheduled to appear at the orchestra’s “Family Concert: Joy of the Symphony” on Sunday, March 29 at 2 p.m. at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. The program also includes Mozart’s overture from The Abduction from the Seraglio and Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra…