Sofia Hernández-Williams, 12-year-old STEP cellist, recently performed a solo with Cape Symphony, won the BYSO Concerto Competition, will perform the complete Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto with the Boston Youth Symphony on March 8 2026, AND for the second year in a row will compete in the National Sphinx Junior Division Competition!
Sofia Hernández-Williams studies at Worcester’s Joy of Music Program and Project STEP and has attended chamber music programs at Rivers Conservatory and Groton Hill Music. In 2024, she studied with Dr. Anzel Gerber in Vienna, Austria.
Sofia is a member of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra and principal cellist of the Joy of Music Youth Orchestra. The list of her competition accolades is growing quickly. Sofia made her concert debut in 2024, performing Haydn’s C Major Cello Concerto with Worcester’s Seven Hills Symphony, and gave a second performance of the concerto with the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra.
In 2025, she performed the final movement of Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C as a soloist with the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra as part of their Musical Superheroes concert.
Beyond the cello, Sofia enjoys mathematics, gardening, writing, piano, voice, and tinkering with her father’s violin-making tools.
