Hannah Cho is currently a senior at Pacific Academy and has been a full merit-based Thibaudet Scholarship and a Provost Fund recipient at Colburn Music Academy since August 2023. She won the 2024 Gold Medal in the Annual Young Artist Competition of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra USA and will perform Kalliwoda Oboe Concertino I, II, and III with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in late January 2025. Hannah was also a National YoungArts finalist (highest-level winner, latter term changed to Winner with Distinction from 2024)  and participated in National YoungArts Week in Miami in January 2023. Additionally, she placed second in the 2023-2024 National Final Round of the MTNA Performance Competition (having qualified for this award by earning first place at the California MTNA in October 2023 and first place at the Southwest Divisional MTNA across 6 states in January 2024). She won second place too in the U.S. Army Orchestra Young Artist Competition in 2023.

 

As a chamber musician, soloist, and orchestral musician appearing with the NYO2 2022 and 2024 Orchestra and Principal of the 2022 NAfME All-National Symphony Orchestra, Hannah has played in various music halls across the country. Her musical talents have been showcased at the New World Center, Merkin Hall, Nixon Library, and Carnegie Hall. In addition, she performed the Marcello Oboe Concerto in May 2023 with the U.S. Navy Band as a follow-up to her first-place finish in its Young Artist Solo Competition.

 

Hannah currently studies with world-renowned oboist Eugene Izotov at Colburn Music Academy and Pacific Symphony oboist Ted Sugata. She previously studied with Santa Monica Symphony Principal Victoria Lee as well as Curtis Faculty and Baltimore Symphony Principal Katherine Needleman on a scholarship. She has attended masterclasses with Curtis faculty and Philadelphia Principal Philippe Tondre, Juilliard Faculty, and MET Opera Co-Principals Nathan Hughes and Elaine Douvas, among others. 

 

Hannah’s love for sharing music with the world inspired her to create Empowering Arts (www.empoweringarts.org), a non-profit organization that brings arts to the local community through music concerts, environmental workshops, and art classes at various children's learning centers and multiple nursing facilities throughout Orange County, California and Alpharetta, Georgia. She also serves as a volunteer oboe teacher and mentor to two elementary school students at El Sol Academy. 

 

Passionate about protecting the environment, Hannah has published a book titled Earth Guardian: 10 Fun Ways to Help Save the Planet. She’s also designed unique workshops empowering youth to use recycled materials to create music. Along the theme of environmentalism, she co-founded HARIN, a project that redefines waste as a resource by turning denim into everyday items we can use and cherish. She enjoys running, hiking, baking, reading Asian-authored literature, watching films, trying new coffee shops, visiting museums, traveling, and listening to classical as well as popular music. Finally, she recently discovered a new passion for using coding and data modeling involving neural networks to help find solutions to protect areas of Californian coastline vulnerable to erosion.