Mehana Ellis is a UC Berkeley Music/Mathematics double major studying piano under the tutelage of Betty Woo. In the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Division, she studied with Annamarie McCarthy.

 

Mehana was named a Ross McKee Young Artist in the 25th Annual Ross McKee Piano Competition, Grand Prize winner of the 2nd Elena Leonova International Young Pianists Competition (New York Piano Society), First Prize winner of Rachmaninoff Concerto Competition 2025 (Triumph Music Festival), was awarded Berkeley's Alfred Hertz Memorial Traveling Scholarship, Bernece B. Lyon Memorial Prize, and the Joan C. Reutinger Prize "in recognition of an outstanding freshman pianist.”

 

She participated in the Boston University Tanglewood Institute in 2022 and the International Music Festival of the Adriatic in 2023. Mehana studied with Anton Nel at the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2024, where she performed in a masterclass with Mikhail Voskresensky. Mehana has also performed in masterclasses by Evren Ozel and Nico Muhly.

 

She has performed at 92nd Street Y, Carnegie Hall, Harris Hall (Aspen), SFCM’s Bowes Center, UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, Academy of Music Ballroom (Philadelphia), and abroad in Austria, England, France (The Opéra Bastille), Italy, Serbia, and Slovenia. Mehana has given lecture-recitals on works of Rachmaninoff (2024 World Piano Conference in Novi Sad, Serbia) and Margaret Bonds (2025 British Forum for Ethnomusicology, University of Cambridge).

 

Mehana enjoys chamber music and has performed the Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor at Tanglewood, Aspen, and UC Berkeley, as well as the Dvorak Piano Quintet in A major in Italy (Duino and Trieste).