Named as Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of the Year in 2021, Sean (Xiang) Gao is one of the world's most successful presenters, producers, composers, and pedagogues. He has solo performed violin for many world leaders and with 100 plus orchestras worldwide. As the Trustees Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of Delaware, Mr. Gao is the founding director of the Master Players Concert Series & Festival. Shanghai Sonatas - the new musical conceptualized and composed by Xiang is being developed by Tony-winning producers and touring as a concert production. (Mr. Gao is represented by the California Artists Management)
Matthew Brower
Treasurer & Secretary
Hailed as “superb” by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dr. Matthew Brower is a pianist, coach, and educator who brings vision and sensitivity to a variety of genres, from classical piano, chamber music, opera, and art song to musical theatre and jazz. At age eleven, he made his New York City debut, performing an original composition at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall). He has since appeared in many prestigious venues throughout the U.S. and China, including Carnegie Hall (Zankel Hall), the Kimmel Center, and the Shanghai Oriental Art Center, and he has been featured on WRTI, Philadelphia’s classical radio station. Matthew has performed with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia as well as members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and faculty from numerous leading conservatories. He is Artist Affiliate in Piano at Emory University and Agnes Scott College and a member of 6-WIRE, a violin-erhu-piano trio that combines traditional and contemporary Eastern and Western musical styles.
As a vocal coach and choral accompanist, Matthew has held positions at Opera Philadelphia, Westminster Choir College, the Curtis Institute Summerfest Young Artist Voice Program, the Centre for Opera Studies in Italy, Opera in the Ozarks, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the University of Delaware, the University of Pennsylvania, and The College of New Jersey. In 2019, he served as Director of the Collaborative Piano Program at the University of Delaware’s Master Players Summer Festival, and in 2020, he served on the faculty of the Collaborative Piano Summer Institute at Louisiana State University. He currently accompanies the Oxford Chorale at Oxford College of Emory University and is enjoying playing Keyboard 1 in the orchestra for Shanghai Sonatas.
Matthew is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music by the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and he chaired and presented on a panel at the 2021 MTNA National Conference entitled “Guiding the Next Generation of Collaborators: Career Paths in Collaborative Piano.” He received his Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees in Collaborative Piano from the University of Michigan under the tutelage of renowned pianist Martin Katz, and he received his Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance with a minor in Piano Pedagogy from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he was awarded the Oberlin Piano Faculty Prize in Accompanying.
Hamilton Chang
Director
An Executive Producer of Shanghai Sonatas since 2021, Mr. Chang is a business leader with decades of finance, sales, and management experience, having managed and built multi-million-dollar businesses both nationally and internationally. He was recognized as a Business Leader of Color in 2019 and serves/has served on the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, as well as various corporate, nonprofit, and university-related boards.
Julee Landau
Director
Originally from Detroit, Julee has had an extensive 30 year career in merchandising and marketing with major retailers. Currently Julee sells residential real estate and is a devoted volunteer for various nonprofit organizations in Phoenix and Scottsdale Arizona.
She is passionate about supporting Holocaust Education and dedicated to making sure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten. Julee was instrumental in bringing the successful Violins of Hope programming and exhibition to Arizona that included presentations about the Holocaust to over 23,000 school children .
She is on the west coast region advisory board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, on the Arizona State University Community Advisory Board for Genocide Awareness Week, an American Technion Society Board Member , and is a board member of the Jewish Agency For Israel North America.
Julee lives in Scottsdale AZ and Bloomfield Hills MI. with her husband Dr Robert Shahon. She loves to golf, play duplicate bridge and travel.
Larry Hai Lu
Director & Accountant
Larry has more than 18 years of experiences in both public accounting and private industry, with a strong passion and focus on complex technical accounting issues under US GAAP (as well as under IFRS). The strong passion for understanding the “whys” and nuances of the rules and the application to real-world transactions has been the motivation throughout Larry’s career.
The unique experience of leading global technical accounting teams in both the financial services industry and the retail pharmacy industry has provided Larry with invaluable opportunities to see issues from very different angles and perspectives. The leadership experiences also provided Larry with opportunities to interact with business leaders, standard setters, and regulators. A couple of highlights from the experiences include deep expertise and experiences with financial instruments accounting, lease accounting, stock-based compensation and many other complex areas.
In his most recent role, Larry has broadened his management to multiple functions including the end-to-end process of SEC reporting (from accounting policy advisory under US GAAP, to accounting systems closing, to reporting under the SEC rules) as well as review of ESG & Climate reporting.
Susanne M. Reyto
Director
Susanne M Reyto, an award-winning author, speaker, world traveler and an ardent supporter of Israel and the free world. She is an active member of several organizations, immediate past Chairman of the Board of Governors of City of Hope and board member of Beverly Hills Women's Club. She served as president of Hadassah Los Angeles and ZOA Western Region. Being a child survivor, she is a frequent speaker at Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. She works tirelessly for the education of our future generations, about history including the Holocaust and Communism.
Now as Chairman of VIOLINS OF HOPE Los Angeles County, Susanne will continue to engage in educating the public, particularly students about history, culture and music.
Her childhood experiences and her ultimate escape from Communist Hungary in the late 1950's left Susanne with an unwavering spirit of optimism and perseverance. She grew up in Australia, lived on Guam while her husband served in the US Navy and has traveled the world. Her writings have been featured in major US newspapers and Internet magazines/websites. She has appeared on television and radio in the US and Canada. Her book, Pursuit of Freedom has been designated as recommended reading for youngsters. Her recently published book, Destination Freedom, aims to reach middle-school age and older.
She owned and operated a prominent travel agency with an international clientele and for many years has specialized in art group tours throughout the United States and the world.
Her life today is balanced between family, business, philanthropy and cultural activities. Susanne is married, has one daughter and two grandchildren.
Zhuoyi Wang
Director
Zhuoyi Wang is Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures (Chinese) at Hamilton College, the author of Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951-1979 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), the co-editor of Maoist Laughter (Hong Kong University Press, 2019, awarded 2020 Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title), and the co-editor of Teaching Film from the People’s Republic of China (the Modern Language Association, forthcoming). He has published in such English-language and Chinese-language journals and edited volumes as Arts, China Review International, Chinese Literature Today, Cinema and TV Culture, Illuminating Empirical Data with Theory, Journal of Beijing Film Academy, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Phoenix Weekly, Literature and Art Studies, Literature and Culture, Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, and Taiwan Lit. He has given over 100 invited talks and lectures on Chinese-language and Hollywood cinemas as well as pedagogical use of films for institutions and organizations in the US, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Haihong Yang
Director
Haihong Yang is an Associate Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian Studies at the University of Delaware. She specializes in Chinese women’s literature and culture, comparative studies of women’s literature, and literary translation. Her teaching interests include Chinese language classes of all levels, Chinese literature and culture in translation, and translation. She has been directing the Asian Studies program at the University of Delaware since 2020.
Remembering Betty Grebenschikoff
(1929-2023)
Betty Grebenschikoff
Creative Team consultant of Shanghai Sonatas (2019-2023)
Betty Grebenschikoff, née Ilse Kohn, who was a director of our foundation, led a full and vibrant life and supported Shanghai Sonatas endlessly.
Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1929, Betty was part of a large and loving extended family. She was preceded in death by her sister, Edith Faris.
Her parents, Olga and Max Kohn, had many siblings. Life in Germany at that time was full of music, family and peace. In the 1930s, all this changed with the advent of the Nazi regime in Germany. Betty’s family's world was severely changed as the citizenship of Jews was revoked.
In 1939, Max Kohn received a summons to appear at the Gestapo headquarters.
Just before that could happen, the Kohn family managed to escape Germany and get to Shanghai by way of Naples, Italy, and a ship to China. There, safe harbor was available. Shanghai was the only place in the world at that time to offer a place of refuge for people without passports.
Shanghai eventually came under axis control during WWII, and Jewish refugees were put into the Shanghai Ghetto. Betty wrote a book, Once My Name Was Sara, that was originally meant to give her family her full life story, and has since become a part of Holocaust studies around the world. The little known story of the Shanghai Jews is now more well known due to the many lectures Betty gave to audiences at museums, community organizations, religious institutions, schools and colleges. She is featured in two documentary films: Shanghai Ghetto, which premiered in 2002, and the more recently released Survival in Shanghai. In 2019, as a script consultant, Betty joined the creative team of Shanghai Sonatas, a new American musical.
To learn more about Betty’s remarkable life, visit BettyGrebenschikoff.com.