XIAO XIAO

Violin

笑笑, born 2005/08/24, in 12th grade, has won scholarships to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Heifetz Institute Program for Exceptionally Gifted students, and the Tanglewood Institute at Boston University (JSI). She presently studies privately with William Barbini. Formerly, she was fortunate to have studied with Bela Horvath, Bettina Mussumeli, Jeanette Bajorek, Sandro Ladoo and Rei Luu.

As a first place winner in the Crescendo International Competition, XiaoXiao played at Carnegie Hall at age 10 and again at age 13. She won first place at the Classical Masters Music Festival twice, has been a first place medal winner at the CAPMT “Go for the Gold” competition several times, won first and second place in the International Music Festival, and was the winner of the Concerto Competition for the Sacramento Youth Symphony's Academic Strings Orchestra. This led to her performing as the soloist with the orchestra in the group's 60th Anniversary Spring Performance conducted by Angelo Moreno. She was also the soloist with the Music in the Mountains Youth Orchestra conducted by Wayland, and has been an invited performer with Bela Mavrak, Andre Rieu's star tenor, at the World Wide New Year's Gala at Richard Brunelle Performance Hall in Davis.

Currently, she is the only person in the world to play on a new design of the violin named Oisin called the “Ricci'' created by master violin-maker Hristo Tchechmedjiev. The violin was one of six finalists in an international violinmakers competition. It was given to her by the Orpheus Violin House foundation. Previously, XiaoXiao was honored to play a ¾ size violin, named Albert, that was custom-made and gifted to her by Yuriy Tchechmedjiev of Sacramento Violins.

XiaoXiao plays at churches, retirement and nursing homes. She regularly performs at a benefit for Willow Clinic, a clinic that serves the homeless population in Sacramento. She also sews toys for Sierra Forever Families to give to children when their adoptions are finalized. These toys are accompanied by a picture book XiaoXiao wrote and illustrated when she was seven.

She studies kung fu currently working for her black sash being only a step away and has competed in the Plum Blossom Tournament and local tournaments winning gold, and silver and bronze medals. Other interests are forensics, general psychology, crime and criminal psychology.

XiaoXiao has also won the American outstanding youth philanthropy award in 2019 for national philanthropy day with the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

She is passionate about environmental sustainability, and works various jobs including teaching violin to beginning and intermediate musicians to pool funds toward many causes such as endangered animal conservation, preventing deforestation, rising ocean levels and other environment conservation charities. She enjoys dancing and has won high gold medals at her first dance competition in 2018.