Ella Tran (age 16) is an 11th grader at James Martin High School in Arlington. Her parents. Duc Tran and Holly Nguyen drive her to Plano every week for piano lessons with Dr. Alex McDonald and Mrs. Marcy McDonald. Ella started piano lessons at age 5 and has been with these two teachers for the past nine years. Her parents put her in piano lessons when she was little to “keep her occupied” but she developed a passion for the piano as she got more comfortable with it. She practices piano 1 to 2 hours every day and has also played the violin for 7 years. She was named an All-State violinist in 2021 and 2022 and was one of a few students chosen to perform in an orchestra with professional musicians to accompany the Arlington Master Chorale at the 9/11 Memorial Concert.
This is the sixth time she has participated in the Collin County Young Artist Competition, performing six different movements from four different concertos. After being named a Finalist in 2019, she was finally chosen as a Grand Prize Winner in 2022. This January, she was awarded 2nd Place in the Piano category at the statewide Juanita Miller Concerto Competition sponsored by TASO (Texas Association for Symphony Orchestras). Ella was a 1st Place winner at the Dallas Symphonic Festival in 2020 and 2022 and was awarded 3rd Place at the state-wide 2020-2021 Texas Music Teachers Association (TMTA) Performance Contest. In February 2021, she won 2nd Place in Concerto Division I of the Baylor/Waco Piano Competition. She was a Rising Star pianist at the July 2019 Basically Beethoven Festival and performed the Beethoven Sonata for violin and piano.
Ella is a student in the STEM Academy at Martin High School. STEM is a four-year program for students seeking careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math. For fun, she plays coding games with her younger brother, creates digital art, watches movies, and plays with her dog Buddy. Her brother is a 6th grader and plays the cello.
This will not be the first time that Ella performs with a professional orchestra. She played Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Las Colinas Orchestra in 2020. A triple concerto is a concerto with three soloists - violin, cello, and piano. However, it has always been her desire to be a featured soloist with the Plano Symphony and she is beyond excited for this opportunity. She plans to pursue a career in music, specifically in piano performance.