Pianist Zhen Tu is a second-year graduate student at UMASS-Amherst, where she studies with Gilles Vonsattel. She began studying the piano at the age of four, and her previous teachers include Lydia Artymiw and Wei-Yi Yang. She has soloed with the Minnesota Orchestra, the La Crosse Symphony Orchestra, and the UMass Symphony Orchestra. She graduated from Yale University with a BA in History in 2022.