In the 1930s an international chain reaction of disparate elements led to a creative collision in the U.S.A growing sense of the AMERICAN in American music burst into full flower as Vienna met Hollywood and classical met jazz. This album celebrates this amazing development in American music. Growing up in the Boston area, Helen Chang Haertzen studied under Bo Youp Hwang and Roman Totenberg. She attended Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, the Salzburg Mozarteum and the San Francisco Conservatory. Her principal teachers also included Szymon Goldberg, Felix Galimir, Ruggiero Ricci and Camilla Wicks. Haertzen was a prizewinner of the Karol Lipinski-Wieniawski Competition in Poland. In 2017, the Minnesota State Arts Board awarded her the Artist Initiative Grant. She is joined on this release by Denis Evstuhin, Silver Ainomae, and Oleg Levin.