Ray Ushikubo, piano and violin
Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 4PM
Ticket: $60
Sponsored by The Peggy and Yale Gordon Trust
Ray Ushikubo, pianist and violinist, is excited about his return to Silo Hill after his sell-out, knock-out performance in September 2023. With a brand-new electrifying program of piano and violin virtuosic masterworks by Rachmaninoff, Respighi, and more, get ready—as we warned you three years ago—“to be gobsmacked!!” A perfect conclusion to 10 years of world-class music making.
Check out a brief highlight from Ray’s Steinway at Silo Hill performance in September 2023.
a highly unusual creative type: he is both a pianist and a violinist… he proved both by switching instruments after Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and tossing off Paganini Caprice no. 24 as an encore.
Bachtrack
His ability to play at a professional level on both piano and violin brings to mind two way baseball star Shohei Ohtani.
San Francisco Classical Voice
Ray Ushikubo
Ray Ushikubo stands out as a rare dual-instrument virtuoso—a pianist and violinist whose technical mastery, artistic curiosity, and innovations in performance have firmly positioned him as one of the most compelling young musicians of his generation.
Ushikubo has soloed with major orchestras across the nation; his most recent highlights include performing Piazzolla’s Four Seasons with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm Variations with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with the Colburn Orchestra led by conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.
A recipient of the prestigious Davidson Fellow Laureate Award in 2014, Ushikubo was named a Young Steinway Artist, won the 2017 Hilton Head International Piano Competition and the 2016 Aspen Piano Concerto Competition, and was a prize-winner at the 2023 Klein International String Competition.
Ushikubo has appeared as soloist with the orchestras of Aspen, Buffalo, Florida, Fort Collins, Hilton Head, Kansas City, Modesto, New West, Oregon, Pasadena, Reno, San Diego, and Westchester on both piano and violin - often in the same concert!
Ushikubo double-majored and received his Bachelor’s degrees at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied piano with Gary Graffman and Robert McDonald and violin with Shmuel Ashkenasi, Pamela Frank, and Aaron Rosand. Currently, Ushikubo double-majors at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, where he studies piano with Fabio Bidini and violin with Robert Lipsett.
