Secret Chamber Music

Sunday, June 5, 2022
Sammamish, WA

About the Performers

Annie Chang-Center, violist and pianist, started performing as a pianist in her native Taiwan for foreign dignitaries when she was six years old. Since she came to the U.S. at thirteen, Annie has concertized in Europe, Asia and the U.S. as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician.

Annie has performed as a piano soloist with major symphony orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. As a violist, she was a prize winner of the Irving Klein International String Competition, has performed at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Olympic, Utah, Prague, Red Rocks, and Music in the Mountains Festivals, and collaborated with members of the Juilliard, Guarneri, Emerson, Cleveland and Philadelphia string quartets.

When living in Arizona, she was the assistant principal violist of the Phoenix Symphony, the principal violist of the Phoenix Symphony Sinfonietta and the Arizona Chamber Orchestra for which she performed regularly as a viola soloist. She was also the pianist of the Concorda Trio with cellist Michael Center and violinist Dana Pasley. In recent years, she has also performed in the Arizona Musicfest Orchestra in Scottsdale, AZ, the Black Pearl Orchestra in Philadelphia, PA, South Florida Symphony in Key West, FL, and the Seattle Opera. She is a current member of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra.

An arts administrator, teacher and visual artist, Annie has produced multimedia presentations for live concerts for the American Studio Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra; created promotional videos for Intercultural Journeys; taught classes and served as the marketing director for the Academy of Music Northwest in Seattle, WA. She is a chamber music coach for Cornish Summer Music, Summer Sounds, Bellevue Youth Symphony, Cascade Youth Symphony and Seattle Chamber Music Society’s ‘Music In The Classroom’ Program.

Annie is also a writer for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) newsletters and is passionate about organizing and performing in concerts to benefit organizations that provide assistance to homeless people, refugees and victims of natural disasters.

Erika Pierson grew up in the Seattle area, beginning cello at age 7. She earned a bachelor’s degree in cello performance from Indiana University and a master of music performance degree from the University of Michigan. Between her degrees Erika studied in Berlin, Germany at the Hochschule der Kunste, and then studied privately under Eileen Croxford, FRMC, in London, England. In 2001, she performed at the Manchester International Cello Festival. Her other main teachers have included Richard Aaron, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Markus Nyikos, and Erling Blondal Bengtsson.

Erika has given solo recitals in England, including a solo performance at St Martin in the Fields, London, in Germany, Spain, and in the United States. She has performed as featured soloist with orchestras in Berlin, Ann Arbor, and Everett, WA. On the less classical side of things, she has also performed with Mannheim Steamroller, Rod Stewart, the Walkmen, and Deltron 3030. Currently, Erika performs regularly as a section cellist in the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra and the North Corner Chamber Orchestra, gives frequent recitals as a soloist and a chamber musician in the Seattle area, and is an active freelancer in the Seattle community. Erika is a performing member of the Ladies Musical Club of Seattle.

Erika is also a professional portrait photographer, a mother of two daughters, and wife to her loving husband Colin Meek. In her spare time, she enjoys caring for her many pets, including chickens, fish, a gecko, and two big beautiful dogs.

John Sharify lives and breathes storytelling and is grateful to those willing to share their stories. One of the most honored broadcast journalists in the country, Sharify is a 79-time Emmy award winner. He has been honored with the 2021 DuPont Columbia award for his documentary 'Bob's Choice'. The Dupont is the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. Sharify has also been honored with nine National Edward R. Murrow awards, including four National Murrow awards for Writing. His latest National Murrow for Writing was in 2020.

In June 2018, Sharify was inducted into the Silver Circle by the Northwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The honor goes to individuals who’ve made significant contributions to the broadcast industry. He was also selected as the 2019 and the 2015 National Press Photographer Association (NPPA) Reporter of the Year (ROY) for his work at KING 5 News.

For more than a dozen years, Sharify was General Manager of Seattle Colleges Cable Television (SCCTV) and from 2011 to 2020, he was also the GM of Seattle Community Media (SCM), the city of Seattle’s public access television station. In 2021, he was the NW Regional Communications Manager for Western Governors University - WGU.

Sharify’s passion for storytelling has taken him around the world as he presents workshops in newsrooms on the craft of video storytelling. His 2010 documentary about the holocaust, The Boys of Terezin, has been shown in film festivals in Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, West Palm, Miami, New Jersey and Seattle. His documentary Hear Our Story Now, which he produced and wrote in 2018, chronicles two decades of work created by Seattle’s Music of Remembrance.

Sharify is a proud graduate of Princeton University. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree in film directing from Columbia University where he studied under Oscar winning film director Milos Forman. Sharify is honored to have presented a Ted Talk in 2012 about his National Murrow Award-winning documentary called Climb of a Lifetime.

His latest documentary film Bob’s Choice has had more than five hundred thousand views on YouTube. John Sharify and Joseph Huerta chronicled Bob Fuller’s last 68 days of life in this “death with dignity” documentary.