Lawrence Ferrara, guitar, and Shiqi Li, cello
Lawrence Ferrara
Lawrence Ferrara has the distinction of being the first guitarist to receive a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His principal teacher was George Sakellariou, and he was selected by Julian Bream to perform at his acclaimed conservatory master classes. A committed educator, Ferrara teaches at City College of San Francisco, San Francisco Conservatory of Music and San Francisco State University. He has performed with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Bay Chamber Symphony, with members of the San Francisco Symphony, Classical Philharmonic and the San Francisco Conservatory’s Chamber Orchestra and New Music Ensemble.
Ferrara was twice prize winner at the Carmel Classic Guitar Competition and served on the music advisory panel to the National Endowment of the Arts. He recently won the California Virtual Campus Award for Best Online Teaching Website for his course on music appreciation. Ferrara is a member of the Pacific Guitar Ensemble and author and performer of a sequence of music books titled The Student Repertoire Series for Guitar, Vol. 1 and 2, with accompanying CDs, published by Guitar Solo of San Francisco. He also has a solo CD of American guitar works on the VGo label.
Shiqi Li
Cellist Shiqi Li is from Shanghai and started her musical career at age 7. She received a Bachelor of Music under full scholarship at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University. Shiqi earned her master’s from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2018 and has performed concerts including at the Meadowmount Summer Festival, 2014 and 2015 Great Wall Music Festival, 2015 Robert McDuffie’s Chamber Festival in Rome, premiere of works by Phillip Glass at Le Passion Rouge (2013) and the Google Chinese New Year Concert in 2017.
In addition, Li was featured prominently on the Zhejiang Television Channel in China and has collaborated with acclaimed Chinese pop stars. Li teaches at the Amabile School of Music in San Francisco.