Hannah Ishizaki Takes Pittsburgh Symphony for a Spin with New World Premiere

In 2017, when Hannah Ishizaki was still in high school, the premiere of her work City of Bridges made her the youngest woman ever to be programmed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She grew up in Mount Lebanon, in the suburban South Hills of Pittsburgh, where violin lessons commenced at age 6. She’d been so inspired by a flamenco band that visited her elementary school (featuring a solo violinist) that she begged her parents for lessons – she “just couldn’t stop playing air violin,” she told me in our recent interview. She and her father joined the Pittsburgh Mandolin Orchestra together, and she later enrolled in the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Her first steps into composition were made pragmatically, when a friend in middle school lamented that the viola never seemed to have the melody. Ishizaki’s solution: to write a piece that put the viola on top. A wide range of composition teachers followed, starting with Charley Rappapport, the director of the Pittsburgh Mandolin Orchestra. “He was the only person I knew at the time who composed things because he would do a lot of arranging for the Mandolin Orchestra,” she explained. Rappapport eventually recommended that Ishizaki go to the City Music Center at Duquesne University, where she connected with several other area composers, including Chris Massa, who all contributed to the early development of her craft.

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