(Credit: Dasha Dore)

Soprano Yvette Keong is one of the 2020 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows and the only musician from among 30 honorees.

The fellowship, established by Hungarian Immigrants and American Philanthropists, was created in 1997 to support immigrants and children of immigrants in the U.S. during critical moments of their education.

Keong is a student at The Juilliard School currently undertaking her Master in Vocal arts. She is an immigrant from Australia and the child of immigrants from China. She moved to New York where she won the Diversity Visa and is the first person from her entire family to be a resident in the U.S. She has performed at such venues as Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, and David Geffen Hall, and she appeared as Henrietta M. in Thomson’s “The Mother of Us All,” co-presented by the New York Philharmonic, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s MetLiveArts performance series, and The Juilliard School.

She is also the recipient of The Rohatyn Great Promise Award at the Eastern Region of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and was also honored as the Australian Music Foundation’s Nora Goodridge Young Artist. She also appeared in the west coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s “Cold Mountain.”

Former fellows include pianists Hilda Huang and Agata Sorotokin National Sawdust’s founder Paola Prestini, composer Lera Auerbach, soprano Yulia Van Doren, Ars Lyrica Houston director Kinga Skretkowicz Ferguson, former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris, as well as CEOs, professors, elected officials, AI technologists, musicians, artists, doctors, scientists, lawyers, engineers, and educators.