Cellist Hai-Ye Ni to perform April 11

Cellist Hai-Ye Ni will soon become a familiar face on the stage at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, but not before she first performs as a guest artist at Skidmore College.

Now in her first season as principal cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ni was invited to Skidmore as a Sterne Virtuoso Artist and will perform with the Skidmore College Orchestra at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 11 in Filene Recital Hall. Orchestra music director Anthony Holland will conduct. General admission tickets are $5; students and senior citizens, $2.

Ni and the student orchestra will play the finale of Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major, and the second and third movements of Schumann's Cello Concerto in A Major. "I was told the cello students at Skidmore requested those two pieces," said Ni, who has performed both works often in the past.

The orchestra's program also will include Grieg's Suite No. 1 from "Peer Gynt."

Ni said she looks forward to leading a master class at 7 p.m. Monday, April 9. The master class is open to the public.

"I like working with students, and will try to help them on whatever level they feel they can comfortably reach," said the cellist. "Some might need technical help, and some might want musical help, but mostly my role will be to inspire them."

In her teen years, Ni herself was inspired by advice she received from superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma. "I played for him several times in San Francisco," she recalls. "At 17, I played the Kodaly [concerto] for him, and he suggested that even though I could play hard pieces, I needed to decide on my goals and work toward them. That's when I decided I would go on to Juilliard," she said.

Now in her mid-30s, Ni was born in Shanghai, where she began her cello studies with her mother, who hand-copied music from friends near the end of the Cultural Revolution, "when people could study classical music only in secret."

"We learned mostly technique," she said of her studies at the Shanghai Conservatory in a published biography. "I really learned how to play music only after my family came to the U.S. in 1985."

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Ni earned a bachelor's degree from San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a master's degree from Juilliard. She won first prize at the 1991 Naumburg Cello Competition and at the 1996 International Paulo Cello Competition, and received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2001.

Before winning the coveted principal's position with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ni was associate principal cellist with the New York Philharmonic.

In August, Ni will perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for this first time, during the orchestra's annual three-week residency there.

"I've heard wonderful things about Saratoga, and so I'm really looking forward to playing there. Maybe some of the Skidmore students I'll meet will stick around during the time I'm there in the summer, and we'll have a chance to talk about how they are playing," she said.