13th Annual
Young Artists Competition FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2017 • 8 PM SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2017 • 10 AM SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2017 • 10 AM • 2 PM
Western Health Advantage Season of Performing Arts
RO B ERT A N D M A RG RI T
MONDAVI CENTER
FO R T H E PERFO R M I N G A RTS PRES EN TS
Young Artists Competition FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2017 • 8 PM SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2017 • 10 AM SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2017 • 10 AM • 2 PM Judges for the 2017 Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition: Rachel Barton Pine, Charles Letourneau, Mina Perry, Richard Aldag, Lara Downes 2017 YAC Composer in Residence: Sean Hickey Thanks to our national partners and hosts: Cleveland Institute of Music Festival Napa Valley The Colburn School, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music Steinway & Sons Individual support for the Young Artists Competition is generously provided by founding sponsors John and Lois Crowe, Mary B. Horton and Barbara K. Jackson Additional support provided by Jeff and Karen Bertleson, Karen Broido, Merrilee and Simon Engel, Debbie Mah and Brent Felker, Linda and Lawrence Raber and Steinway & Sons, San Francisco
The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones, watch alarms and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.
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PROGRAM
2017 MONDAVI CENTER YOUNG ARTISTS COMPETITION RACHEL BARTON PINE, violin LARA DOWNES, piano FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2017 • 8 PM | VANDERHOEF STUDIO THEATRE
PROGRAM
Romance for Violin and Piano, op. 23 (1893) Amy Beach Rachel Barton Pine, violin Lara Downes, piano Selections from American Partitas for Violin (2017) Waltz Jig Rachel Barton Pine, violin Shenandoah for Piano Elite Syncopations (1902) Lara Downes, piano
Traditional Scott Joplin
Three Preludes for Violin and Piano (1926) Rachel Barton Pine, violin Lara Downes, piano I Need To Cry But Can’t (2017) Lara Downes, piano
Roumain
“Prayer” from Voodoo Violin Concerto No. 1 (2002) Rachel Barton Pine, violin Lara Downes, piano Two Movements from Suite for Violin and Piano (1943) Mother and Child African Dancer Rachel Barton Pine, violin Lara Downes, piano
Program order and repertoire subject to change.
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George Gershwin
Daniel Bernard Roumain
Hip-Hop Dance 1 (2017) Rachel Barton Pine, violin
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Bruce Molsky April Verch
Roumain
William Grant Still
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Romance for Violin and Piano, op. 23 (1893) Amy (Mrs. H.H.A.) Beach (Born September 5, 1867 in Henniker, New Hampshire Died December 27, 1944 in New York City)
Amy Beach was the most prominent female American composer of her day, one of the leading keyboard artists during the years around World War I, the first native woman composer to earn recognition abroad, the first woman musician to receive her entire professional training in this country, and the first to write a symphony. Born Amy Cheney in Henniker, New Hampshire in 1867 to a family of colonial descent, she received her earliest instruction on piano from her mother, began composing melodies at 4, and gave her debut recital a year later, at which she played some waltzes of her own invention. In 1875, when she was 8, the family moved to Boston, where Beach pursued her studies of piano and theory. On October 23, 1883, she made her public debut with orchestra in Boston, and pursued a successful career as a soloist for the following two years. In December 1885, Amy Cheney married the prominent Boston surgeon Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, and thereafter referred to herself exclusively in the Victorian fashion as “Mrs. H.H.A. Beach” (initials only). Dr. Beach, an excellent amateur musician, encouraged his wife to cultivate her gift as a composer, and she began receiving notice from the musical establishment for her works. Her Gaelic Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony in 1896, was the first such work to be written by an American woman. Following the death of her husband in 1910, Beach resumed an active concert career. She died in 1944 at age 77. Beach wrote her Romance for Violin and Piano for a concert she gave with Maud Powell, the first American female violinist to make a successful career, in May 1893 at the Women’s Musical Congress at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Powell took the Romance into her repertory and when she performed it on a recital in New York in January 1906, critic Henry Krehbiel wrote that it was “a piece of sustained, emotionalized melody … with a rich and varied harmonic basis.” Selections from American Partitas for Violin (2017) Bruce Molsky (Born July 18, 1955 in Bronx, New York)
April Verch (Born April 7, 1978 in Pembroke, Ontario)
Bruce Molsky is internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading exponents of old-time fiddling as a performer, composer, recording artist, researcher and teacher. Born in the Bronx in 1955, Molsky started playing guitar as a teenager in New York City and became interested in the bluegrass music scene before he headed
upstate in 1972 to attend Cornell (as an engineering student, to please his father), where he got to know members of the Highwoods String Band, headed by fiddler Walt Koken, who convinced Molsky to take up fiddle and banjo. Molsky left Cornell after two years and moved to Virginia to immerse himself in traditional Appalachian music. He began performing widely on fiddle, guitar and banjo and in 1990 made the first of his currently two-dozen recordings, which have received two Grammy nominations. Molsky is a member of the American Roots Music Program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and teaches at workshops and music camps in America and overseas. Fiddler, singer, songwriter and stepdancer April Verch was born in 1978 in the small town of Pembroke, Ontario, 90 miles northwest of Ottawa, and her traditional Canadian roots have shaped her life and career. Verch was raised in a family of dedicated musical amateurs and started stepdancing at 3 and playing fiddle at 6. She appeared on a nationally televised country music show at 10; made her first recording at 13; studied classical violin as a teenager; was exposed to traditional American styles at Mark O’Connor’s fiddle camp in Nashville at 15; placed 10th at the U.S. Grand Masters Fiddling Championship at 18; won the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Championship the following year; and studied bluegrass, jazz and world music at the Berklee College of Music at 19. Verch is today recognized as one of the outstanding exponents of traditional music and dancing, touring internationally, recording a dozen solo albums, giving countless workshops, master classes and lectures, performing at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and accumulating some 400 prizes for fiddling and stepdancing. American Partitas, commissioned by Rachel Barton Pine, is a suite of pieces for solo violin in traditional and modern dance styles. Molsky’s Waltz recalls American fiddle music. The Irish-style Jig was a particularly apt assignment for fiddler and stepdancer Verch. Shenandoah for Piano Traditional Shenandoah is an example of the slow-tempo American sea chantey known as a “capstan,” melodies often sung to accompany the laborious raising or lowering of the anchor by the capstan, the wheel to which the anchor chain attached. David Ewen wrote of Shenandoah’s background, “The song is believed to have started out as a ballad about a trader wooing the daughter of an Indian chief whom he later deserts. It was brought to the sea from lumber camps. In the chantey, the sailor speaks of courting Sally for seven years who rejected him because he was a ‘dirty sailor’; he finds solace in ‘drinkin’ rum and chewin’ terbaccer’ as he is bound away ‘‘cross the wide Missouri.’” YOUNG ARTISTS COMPETITION
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PROGRAM NOTES
Elite Syncopations (1902) Scott Joplin (Born November 24, 1868 in Texarkana, Texas Died April 1, 1917 in New York City)
Scott Joplin, the son of an ex-slave, played piano in honkytonks as a teenager before settling in East St. Louis. He published his first piano rags in 1899 and his Maple Leaf Rag sold a half million copies within a decade. The success of the piece encouraged Joplin to get married, write further rags, and expand his artistic horizons to include ballet and opera. After several years of wandering in the Midwest, he moved to New York in 1907 and spent enormous effort in composing and trying (in vain) to find a publisher for his opera, Treemonisha. His self-financed production of the opera in 1915 failed, and Joplin’s spirit was crushed. The following year he was admitted to a mental institution in New York, and died there on April 1, 1917 from the complications of syphilis. Today, so wide-spread and persistent is the popularity of Scott Joplin’s incomparable rags that they have come to represent an entire era in American musical and social history. Elite Syncopations was published in 1902 in St. Louis with a cover that boasted the piece was composed “By the King of Rag Time Writers.” Joplin himself immortalized Elite Syncopations on a piano roll, which can be heard on YouTube. Three Preludes for Violin and Piano (1926) George Gershwin (Born September 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York Died July 11, 1937 in Hollywood, California)
Gershwin’s Three Preludes were based on popular musical idioms of the 1920s. The first is a blend of Charleston and tango; the second is a deeply nostalgic blues; the third is jazzy with a strong Spanish inflection. The Preludes, originally for piano, have been transcribed for various instrumental combinations, but the best-known arrangement is the one Jascha Heifetz made for violin and piano, which he recorded and frequently used as an encore. I Need to Cry But Can’t (2017) Hip-Hop Dance No. 1 (2017) “Prayer” from Voodoo Violin Concerto No. 1 (2002) Daniel Bernard Roumain (known as DBR) (Born December 11, 1971 in Skokie, Illinois)
Daniel Bernard Roumain (known by his initials, DBR), like many of his 21st-century colleagues, is a musical omnivore, classically trained as a composer and violinist but whose performances and compositions draw on such other wide-ranging influences as funk, rock, hip-hop, jazz and pop. DBR was born in 1971 into a Haitian-American family in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, grew up in south Florida, where he attended Dillard Center for the Arts in
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Fort Lauderdale, and earned his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt and his doctorate in composition at the University of Michigan. He is a recognized leader in the arts industry, serving on the board of directors of the League of American Orchestras, Association of Performing Arts Presenters and Creative Capital, the advisory committee of the Sphinx Organization (which supports minority participation in the performing arts), and was cochair of 2015 and 2016 conferences of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. DBR has composed for and collaborated with a diverse array of orchestras, chamber ensembles, soloists and dance companies in Europe and America; appeared widely with his own band; served numerous residencies; and in 2016 joined the faculty of Arizona State University in Tempe. Lara Downes premiered DBR’s I Need to Cry But Can’t in Harlem on February 1, 2017 at a concert celebrating the 115th anniversary of Langston Hughes’ birth and the start of Black History Month. Hip-Hop Dance No. 1 (2017) is a perfect collaboration for DBR and violinist Rachel Barton Pine, who is also an artist of almost unprecedentedly wideranging stylistic virtuosity. “Prayer” is arranged from a movement of DBR’s Voodoo Violin Concerto No. 1 (2002), which he said is “concerned with the notion of the ritual, or our collective rites of passage. The meditative tonality of “Prayer” reflects my own relationship with Catholicism.” Two Movements from Suite for Violin and Piano (1943) William Grant Still (Born May 11, 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi Died December 3, 1978 in Los Angeles)
William Grant Still was born in 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi, where his father was town bandmaster. At 16, Still matriculated as a medical student at Wilberforce University in Ohio, but soon switched to music. He graduated in 1915, and two years later entered Oberlin College. In 1921, he moved to New York as oboist with the orchestra of the path-breaking Noble Sissle–Eubie Blake revue Shuffle Along. There he studied with Varèse and ran Black Swan Records. In 1928, Still received the Harmon Award for the most significant contribution to black culture in America. While continuing to compose large-scale classical pieces, he also arranged for radio, for Broadway shows, and for Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw and other popular bandleaders. After moving to Los Angeles in 1934, he arranged for films (Lost Horizon) and television (Gunsmoke, Perry Mason). Still continued to hold an important place in American music until his death in 1978. Louis Kaufman (1905–1994) was one of America’s leading violinists, a celebrated soloist, concertmaster for over 500 Hollywood movies, and an acclaimed recording artist who released more than a hundred albums, including the 1947
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Grand Prix du Disque-winning The Four Seasons, which helped to revive the music of Antonio Vivaldi; Kaufman was elected to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002 and selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry the following year. Kaufman wanted to include Still’s music on his recitals, but learned that he had written nothing for violin, so Kaufman arranged the Blues movement from Still’s 1937 ballet Lenox Avenue for violin and piano, and performed it successfully in North and South America and Europe. Still liked the Lenox Avenue music as a violin piece and orchestrated it himself in 1943, and that year also composed an original Suite for Violin and Piano, which Kaufman premiered in Boston on March 15, 1944.
Still found inspiration for the Suite in works by AfricanAmerican visual artists. Mother and Child evokes a 1932 chalk drawing by Sargent Claude Johnson (1888–1967). The mother’s melancholy expression in the drawing and the gentle though plaintive elements in Still’s music may recall the death of Johnson’s own mother when he was 12 and his subsequent time in an orphanage. African Dancer, which contrasts insistently rhythmic outer sections with a bluesy central episode, was based on the 1933 statue of a female figure by Richmond Barthé (1901–1989), whose works were the first by an African-American artist to be taken into the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
SATURDAY, MAY 6, 2017 • 10AM | JACKSON HALL
Final Auditions
Talented young musicians from across the United States take the stage before an esteemed panel of judges. The Founders Division auditions feature performances of Dance Apotheosis, a new work by composer Sean Hickey, commissioned for the 2017 competition.
Final Audition Schedule
10:00AM–12:30PM
Young Artists Division–Instrumentalists
1:00–2:15PM
Young Artists Division–Pianists
2:30–4:30PM
Founders Division–Violinists
SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2017 • 10AM | VANDERHOEF STUDIO THEATRE
Master Class
Jury Chair Rachel Barton Pine will hold a public violin master class featuring the Founders Division finalists.
SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2017 • 2PM | JACKSON HALL
Winners’ Concert
Winners’ Concert Young Artists Competition Director Lara Downes hosts the celebratory concert featuring this year’s talented winners of the Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition. A panel of internationally renowned musicians juries the competition, held by live auditions in cities throughout the U.S., with winners in multiple instrumental categories.
Collaborative Pianists (May 6 & 7) Nicholas Dold Miles Graber Yi-Fang Wu
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Young Artists Division – PIANISTS APRIL CHEN is an 11th-grade student at Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, California, and studies piano with John McCarthy. Chen started studying music at age 6. She won first place in the 2012 and 2013 Menuhin-Dowling Competition for Young Musicians; won third place in the 2013 San Francisco Chopin Competition for Young Artist; and has won numerous prizes at the U.S. Open Music Competition since 2008. She was selected as a winner of the 2014 Junior Bach Festival; a finalist in the 2014 Pacific Musical Society Competition and the 2015 Henry Carol Zeiter Competition; and a semi-finalist in the 2015 Ross McKee Competition. More recently, she won first place in the 2016 Berkeley Etude Club Competition; second place in the 2016 Sylvia Ghiglieri competition; second place in the 2016 East Bay Music Competition; and the 2016 Burlingame Music Club award. She is also a member of Duo Apryel, winning prizes in piano duo competitions, including alternate winner in Southwest Division in the MTNA Duet Competition in 2015 in Santa Barbara; and second place in Piano Duo at American Protégé International Piano & String Competition. She performed at Carnegie Hall in 2014 in New York City. Outside of music, Chen excels in math, qualifying for the AIME twice, scoring in the top 2.5%. TYLER KIM, a 14-year-old pianist, made his debut with the Haydn Concerto in D Major, at the age of 10, performing with the Viennese International Orchestra at the Palais Ausburg in Vienna, Austria. Since then, he’s performed with various orchestras including the Greater San Diego Symphony, Inland Valley Symphony, and the San Diego Symphony. He has performed twice at Weill Carnegie Hall after winning first place at both the American Protégé International Music Talent Competition and American Protégé Concerto Competition. Most recently, Kim was invited to perform the entire Chopin No. 2 concerto with the Temecula Valley Symphony under Maestro John Mario. Some of his accomplishments in the competitive scene include: second place at the Los Angeles International Liszt Competition; first place at the MTAC State Competition; first place in the Helen B. Goodlin Competition; regional finalist at the Southern California Bach Festival; and first place at the U.S. Open Music Competition. Outside of concertos, Kim has played several solo recitals including an hour-long American Cancer Society Benefit Concert on behalf of Jacob’s House;
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a performance sponsored by the “Advocates of Classical Music” at La Jolla Riford Library; and a performance at the Poway Performing Arts Center. Outside of piano, Kim participates on the TMEC swim club and enjoys Tae Kwon Do, table tennis and mountain biking. ANDREW SEMENZA, 16, is a junior at the Harker School in San Jose, California. He currently studies piano with Frank Levy and formerly studied with Anna Polonsky. Over the years, he has participated in many international music festivals, including the Colburn Young Artists Academy Piano Festival in Los Angeles in 2012 and 2014; the Beijing International Music Festival and Academy (BIMFA) in 2015; and the Semper International Music Festival in Völs am Schlern, Italy, in 2016. He has taken classes and performed in master classes with pianists such as Jerome Lowenthal, Ory Shihor, Eduardo Delgado, Gabriel Kwok, Anatoly Zatin, Hung-Kuan Chen and Graham Scott. Semenza has earned prizes in multiple competitions, including first prizes in the U.S. Open Music Competition, first prize in the 2015 San Francisco Chopin Competition; and Honorable Mentions at the 2015 BIMFA piano competition and Marilyn Mindell Competition. In the orchestral world, Semenza is the principal percussionist and pianist in the Harker School Orchestra and the pianist for the California Youth Symphony. TALON SMITH is a 9th-grade honor roll homeschool student. Smith started playing the violin at age 4, piano at age 5, and began composing at age 8. Smith’s piano teachers include: Rufus Choi, Eduardus Halim, Hans Boepple, Carol Oaks, Andreas Werz and Brian Hammons. One of Smith’s violin teachers, Maxine Spencer, has also contributed greatly to his growth as a musician. Smith’s master classes include: professor at USC Thornton School of Music, Marek Zebrowski; professor at The Juilliard School, Jerome Lowenthal; professor at CSUS, Dr. Sarah Chan; former professor at The Juilliard School, Oxana Yablonskaya; professor at Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music and CSUN, and professor emeritus at USC Thornton School of Music, John Perry; and professor at UC Berkeley, Charlene Brendler. Smith has performed in many piano recitals, weddings, benefit and winner’s concerts, and other events since he was 5 years old. In 2015, Smith started performing solo keyboard concerts as well as accompanied concerto performances.
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PARKER VAN OSTRAND is an 8th grader at Merryhill School in Sacramento. He began studying piano at the age of 4. He performed at Carnegie Hall at age 5 after winning gold in the AADGT Competition. Since then, he has returned to Carnegie Hall twice and has performed in numerous recitals throughout the United States, Singapore and Japan. He has won numerous solo and concerto competitions. As a concerto competition winner, Van Ostrand performed with the Merced Symphony and Stockton Symphony. He was a finalist at the Mondavi Young Artist Competition in 2016. He will perform with the Symphony Parnassus and California Youth Symphony in 2017. He currently studies with Linda Nakagawa and Natsuki Fukasawa. Besides piano, Van Ostrand enjoys swimming, painting, building Legos and learning Japanese. He is a distance runner and is on his school track team. He is also a member of the Pacific Racers Athletic Association.
Young Artists Division – INSTRUMENTALISTS JUNG-AN (ANN) KUO, 14, is a freshman at the Colburn Music Academy in Los Angeles, California. Kuo moved to the U.S. in the fall of 2016 from Taipei, Taiwan, where she was born. She is currently studying with Professor Jim Walker. She had her first solo recital in Taipei in 2016, and she dedicated her recital to the orphanage in Taiwan. Kuo started her flute journey when she was 8. She had master classes with artists such as Mario Bonzagni, Jeffery Khaner, Vincent Lucas, Alexa Still and Seiya Ueno. In 2014, Kuo won the first prize in the National Taiwan Student of Music Competition Kuo has received remarkable awards from various international competitions including Mount Saint Mary’s University Concerto Competition in Los Angeles, California; National Flute Association High School Soloist in the U.S.; Biwako International Flute Competition in Japan; Culture Cup Competition; and Taipei Asia Cup Competition. Kuo also enjoys singing and playing piano. NATHAN LE is a 16-year-old high school senior. He is in his fifth year at the Colburn Music Academy, studying with Ronald Leonard. He has performed the cello concerti of Dvořák, Haydn, Saint-Saens, Elgar and Tchaikovsky with local orchestras such as the Culver City, Torrance, Irvine and New West
Symphony Orchestras, as well as abroad in countries such as Russia, Austria and Armenia. In 2014, Le was a finalist at the Mondavi National Young Artists Competition and won first alternate at the state VOCE Competition. That same year, Le also won the Bronze Medal at the Tchaikovsky International Competition for Young Musicians. In May 2015, he was invited by the First Lady of Armenia to participate in the International New Names of Armenia Festival, where he performed with the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra. Most recently, he performed on the NPR radio show From the Top in March 2016 at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. THERESA LEE, 16, is a junior at Monta Vista High School. She began playing cello at the age of 10 and currently studies with Jihee Kim. Lee won the grand prize from Silicon Valley Music Competition in 2016; first prize at Great Composers Competition in 2016; KAMSA music competition in 2015; Korea Times Music competition in 2013; and second prize from the U.S. Open Music Competition, and U.S. International Music Competition in 2015. Lee soloed with the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra with the Schumann Cello Concerto in 2015 as a winner of their annual concerto competition. Lee has been a cellist at Young Chamber Musicians since 2015 and is currently the cellist in the Amara Quartet. In the summer of 2014, she attended Summer Music West in the San Francisco Music Conservatory; and in the summer of 2015, Lee attended the Meadowmount School of Music in New York where she studied with Northwestern University professor Hans Jorgen Jensen. She has performed in chamber and solo master classes for Hans Jorgen Jensen, the Cavani Quartet, the Jasper Quartet, Mack pianist McCray, cellist Dr. Chung from the University of Manitoba and pianist Katherine Lee from the Music Institute of Chicago. Outside of music, Lee is an officer of Monta Vista FBLA and her team won third place at FBLA state competition. Lee also enjoys volunteering, catching up with friends over good food and playing with her two dogs. JAVIER MORALES-MARTINEZ, from Los Angeles, California, attends the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. Morales-Martinez started taking clarinet lessons around the age of 9 at the Harmony Project, where he joined the Hollywood Youth Orchestra. Three years later, he received the Herbert Zipper Scholarship at the Colburn Community School of Performing Arts where he currently studies. This is his fourth year at Colburn, and apart from taking lessons and YOUNG ARTISTS COMPETITION
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theory, he participates in the Colburn Wind Ensemble, Colburn Youth Orchestra and the Colburn Honors Woodwind Quintet. Morales-Martinez has participated in All-Southern and All-State Honor groups for multiple consecutive years and has attended summer festivals including: Interlochen Center for the Arts as part of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra; Boston University Tanglewood Institute where he was part of the Young Artists; and also been a member of the National Youth Orchestra of the U.S. (NYO2). He also recently learned that he was awarded the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship from From the Top and will be part of their show in December. WOOJIN NAM is a 16-year-old cellist, and a junior at Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon, California. She currently studies under Jonathan Koh. As the winner of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition, she debuted with her performance of the fourth movement of the Elgar Cello Concerto. She then performed at the Kohl Mansion as the first place winner of the Pacific Musical Society competition in 2015. In addition, Nam plans to perform at the Weill Hall in Carnegie Hall in November as the first place winner of the American Protégé Young Artists Competition. Nam was also awarded with numerous awards, such as honorable mention in the American String Teachers Association Competition; first place in the regional division and honorable mention in the state division of the VOCE string competition; Judge’s Distinction and first place winner in the American Protege Young Artists Competition; and has also received third place at the New York International Artists Association Young Artists Competition. Along with her solo performance career, as part of the Cal Music Prep Academy, her chamber piano trio has reached the top five in the Coltman National Chamber Competition and has won the Fremont Symphony Young Recitalist Competition in 2016. In the summer of 2016, Nam participated as a Young Artist at Music@Menlo, where she further expanded her chamber music experience. Outside of playing cello, she also enjoys playing piano and listening to music. NICHOLAS PADMANABHAN, guitarist, was the first-place winner in the Sierra Nevada Guitar Competition in both 2016 and 2014 and also won first place in the Menuhin-Dowling Young Musicians Competition in 2013 and 2012. He was a finalist in the 2016 Mondavi Young Artists Competition and was a prizewinner in the Pacific Musical Society
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Annual Competition, among others. Selected by audition, Padmanabhan has performed in the Junior Bach Festival for five consecutive years beginning in 2012. In 2015, Padmanabhan appeared on From The Top on National Public Radio with his guitar quartet, recorded before a live audience and broadcast nationally. He has performed as a soloist for the Sacramento Guitar Society and the South Bay Guitar Society; at the Bear Valley Music Festival in Bear Valley, California; and on public radio KPFA in Berkeley. In 2016, Padmanabhan also spoke and performed at a TEDx conference in Palo Alto, California. He is a student of Scott Cmiel at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s PreCollege Division, where he also studies music theory and chamber music in his guitar quartet. His first teacher was Jon Mendle. Padmanabhan frequently appears in recital and in informal performances as a volunteer at a local assisted-living center. He has played in master classes for Manuel Barrueco, Sergio Assad, David Leisner and Marcin Dylla, among others, and has studied solo and ensemble repertoire in Ben Verdery’s Maui Masterclass in Maui, Hawaii. Padmanabhan is a high-school sophomore in Palo Alto and enjoys math, science and computers. CLAIRE PARK, 16, began her cello studies at the age of 10 with Dr. Richard Naill at Colburn School. She was selected to perform as a soloist on the Colburn School’s Honors Recital four times in a row, and made her concert debut playing with Eastern Sierra Symphony at Mammoth Lakes. Park won first prize at American String Teachers Association Solo Competition and she played at Lynn Harrell Masterclass and Ko Iwasaki Masterclass. Park was a member of American Youth Symphony; principal of Sierra Music Festival Chamber Orchestra; was assistant principal cellist of the 2015 Eastern Sierra Symphony Orchestra; and currently is the youngest member of Young Artist Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Treger. Park is a recipient of a full merit scholarship from the Colburn School. At age 13, Park was one of the youngest musicians ever to advance to the quarter-finals of highly regarded Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition. This quartet also performed at Peabody Conservatory, Martin Beaver master class and Honors Recital at Colburn School. SOPHIA VALENTI is an 8th grader currently attending the Rincon Valley Charter Home Study Program. Her teacher is Jodi Levitz. Valenti started playing viola in her third grade ensemble at The Sebastopol Charter School. In 2012, Valenti became the principal
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violist of the Santa Rosa Symphony Preparatory Orchestra. The following year at the age of 10, she became principal violist of The Santa Rosa Symphony Repertory Orchestra and was also accepted as the youngest member of The Young People’s Chamber Orchestra. In the spring of 2014, Valenti participated as a soloist in a master class with the principal violist of the London Symphony Orchestra, Paul Silverthorne, won first place in The Sonoma County Etude Competition. That summer, she performed as a soloist with the Santa Rosa Symphony’s Summer Chamber Orchestra. At the end of the summer of 2014, Valenti, at the age of 11, was asked to join San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. In the fall of 2015, Valenti was a featured soloist with the North Bay Sinfonieta. She performed, with her quartet, on From the Top. In addition, Valenti won the Santa Rosa Symphony Youth Orchestra 2016 Concerto Competition. Currently, Valenti is attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Division. She also donates her time teaching a strings class at a Title IV elementary school. When Valenti is not playing viola, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends. She also loves watching very scary movies and listening to movie sound tracks. CLARA YANG is an 11th grader at Archbishop Mitty High School. She currently studies with Isabelle Chapuis. Yang is a flutist for the Young Artist Program of Chamber Music Silicon Valley directed by Dr. Ray Furuta. She is also principal flute of the California Philharmonic Youth Symphony Orchestra. Yang has taken master classes with Julien Beaudiment and Carol Wincenc.
Founder’s Division ANNELLE KAZUMI GREGORY is a Laureate of the 2013 Stradivarius International Violin Competition and the 2016 National Sphinx Competition; first prize winner of the 2016 American Protégé International Concerto Competition and the 2015 Beverly Hills National auditions; and Gold Medalist of the 2012 National NAACP ACTSO competition. In 2014, Gregory released a CD with pianist Alexander Sinchuk and in 2015 recorded with organist Carol Williams. In 2017, Bridge Records, Inc. will release her newest CD with Alexander Sinchuk. From 2012–2015, Gregory was concertmaster and a featured soloist for the California
International Music Festival Orchestra at Namedy and Weikersheim Castles, Germany. She has performed with the symphonies of Detroit, La Jolla, San Diego, Chicago Sinfonietta, Torrance and Bellflower, and the Long Beach Mozart Festival, among others. Gregory has performed at numerous venues abroad in Russia, Germany (Engers, Weikersheim, and Namedy Castles) and Portugal, as well as throughout the U.S. (Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Hall, The Ravinia). Gregory has been featured on BBC Radio, American Public Media radio, KUSC radio, German Television, Detroit Public Television and XLNC1 radio. Gregory is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree at the USC Thornton School of Music, studying under Glenn Dicterow. Her previous teachers include Michael and Irina Tseitlin. YUE QIAN is a 21-year-old violinist from China. She is in her senior year at University of Southern California as a Sterling fellow, under the tutelage of the renowned violinist Midori Goto. She started to study the violin at the age of 5, and got accepted to the Music Elementary/Middle School Affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory four years later. At the age of 16, Qian went to Interlochen Arts Academy with a full scholarship, studying with Yuri Namkung. She won the Interlochen Arts Academy Concerto Competition and also won the Silver Medal of the 39th Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She has been invited to participate in many leading festivals, including the Morningside Music Bridge, Music@Menlo, New York String Orchestra Seminar, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute and Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival. She has performed in such venues as Shanghai Concert Hall; DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, University of Notre Dame, Indiana; Harris Theater in Chicago; DAR Constitution Hall (Washington, D.C.); Alice Tully Hall and Carnegie Hall, among others. STRAUSS SHI appeals to an array of audiences through a unique combination of western and eastern instruments such as violin, erhu, gaohu and dizi. Shi won the first Prize at the U.S. International Music Competition (2015) at Stanford University and recently held his first solo recital at The Juilliard School, featuring Chinese Instruments. Shi has appeared as soloist with the Utah Symphony and the San Francisco Ruth Asawa School of the Arts Orchestra as winner of their concerto competition. He is currently in his 4th year at The Juilliard School studying with Catherine Cho. His tuition is YOUNG ARTISTS COMPETITION
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generously supported by the Molly Frank and Aliki Perroti Scholarship, the Moca Foundation Scholarship and the Dorothy Starling Scholarship. Born in 1995 in Nanjing, China, Shi moved to the San Francisco Bay Area at age 6, where he began studying the erhu, gaohu, and dizi at the Chinese Arts and Music Center, later picking up violin at age 8 with Elizabeth Liang. Shi’s previous teachers include Chen Zhao and Zuohan Pan. He is a top prizewinner at the YoungArts Foundation, 2015 Vivo International Competition, and 2013 Sid & Mary Foulger International Concerto Competition. He has appeared in concerts with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Melody of China, and throughout the Bay Area in venues including Davies Symphony Hall, Herbst Theatre, Fort Mason, San Francisco City Hall, Asian Art Museum, Old Presbyterian Church and Green Music Center. TRISTAN SIEGEL, a violinist from New Jersey, is in his third year at Indiana University studying with Alex Kerr. While studying at the Manhattan School of Music Pre-College, he performed as a soloist and with various chamber ensembles in numerous New York venues including WMP Concert Hall, Steinway Hall, Merkin Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Weill, Zankel and Perelman Stages at Carnegie Hall. In the winters of 2014 and 2015, Siegel was a participant in the New York String Orchestra Seminar at Carnegie Hall. He also participated in the 60th anniversary season of Alexander Schneider Concerts Series presented by The Mannes School of Music. Siegel was a semi-finalist in the 2016 Stulberg International String Competition. He has also played in master classes with Arnold Steinhardt, Dmitri Berlinsky, Joel Smirnoff, Paul Kantor, Vadim Gluzman and Cho-Liang Lin. SOPHIA STOYANOVICH, violinist, has captivated audiences across the country since her premiere at age 10 with the Bremerton Symphony. She has soloed with numerous orchestras including the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall, Rainier Symphony, Thalia Symphony Orchestra, Bainbridge Symphony and Butte Symphony, amongst others. Winner of the Seattle Symphony Young Artist Auditions she made her debut with the Seattle Symphony in 2011 performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Stoyanovich has been featured on Classical KING FM’s Northwest Focus Live with Sean MacLean, NPR’s From The Top with pianist Christopher O’Riley and by The University of Washington Women’s Society Recital Series hosted by Doug Beck. Stoyanovich presented her first professional solo recital for the Collected
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Works Concert Series at age 12, and continues as a recitalist in New York and at home in Seattle. In March of 2014, Stoyanovich traveled to Vietnam where she performed and led master classes for students in Hoi An, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City. An avid chamber musician, in 2014 Stoyanovich had the honor of performing with fellow members of her quartet from The Juilliard School at the opening gala of Carnegie Hall’s Resnick Educational Wing. She has been awarded scholarships to the Interlochen Arts Academy (2007); Indiana University String Academy (2008); Greater Kitsap Honors Orchestra (2008); Marrowstone Music Festival (2009–2010); Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra (2004–2013); The National Youth Orchestra of the U.S. (2013, 2014); Fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival (2015); and Sarasota Music Festival (2016). Stoyanovich has participated in numerous master classes including working with Noah Bendix-Balgley, Ida Kavafian, Gil Shaham, Robert Chen, Donald Weilerstein, Joel Krosnick and Ronald Patterson. She currently studies at The Juilliard School in New York City, as recipient of the C.V.V. Starr Scholarship under the tutelage of Violin Professor Li Lin. JONATHAN YI, 20, is an undergraduate violin performance major at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where he will graduate in 2018. He currently studies with Mimi Zweig, professor and head of the String Academy at Indiana University. Yi began studying the violin at age 5, and his skills as a violinist were honed under the most nurturing of environments. As a soloist, he has made appearances with the Louisville Orchestra, as well as the University of Louisville School of Music Orchestra. He was recently named as a finalist in the concerto competition at the Jacobs School of Music. In 2015, he was invited to perform as a part of the New York String Orchestra Seminar under Jaime Laredo and gave two performances in Carnegie Hall. At school, he is constantly active in the chamber music world, participating in performances of the Schubert Cello Quintet, Brahms B-flat Major Sextet, and currently plays in a quartet under the guidance of Masumi per Rostad of the Pacifica Quartet. In 2016, Yi attended the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, and in 2015, he attended the Academy of Domaine Forget in Quebec. He has appeared in master classes around the world under notable musicians such as Jinjoo Cho, Vadim Repin, Alan Gilbert, Rachel Barton-Pine and Jorja Fleezanis.
BIOGRAPHIES
RACHEL BARTON PINE Violin Heralded as a leading interpreter of the great classical masterworks, international concert violinist Rachel Barton Pine thrills audiences with her dazzling technique, lustrous tone and emotional honesty. With an infectious joy in musicmaking and a passion for connecting historical research to performance, Pine transforms audiences’ experiences of classical music. Pine’s 2016–2017 season includes performances with the Columbus Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. She’ll give the world premiere of the Maneein Violin Concerto with the Phoenix Symphony, conducted by Tito Muñoz. In May, 2017 Avie Records will release Pine’s Bel Canto Paganini, which includes her performance of all 24 Paganini Caprices as well as other Paganini unaccompanied works. Pine’s most recent album Testament: Complete Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by Johann Sebastian Bach (Avie, 2016) and her 2013 Violin Lullabies (Cedille) both charted at number one on the Billboard Classical chart. In August 2016, Pine spent time with the legendary Sir Neville Marriner to discuss their upcoming recording of the Elgar and Bruch violin concertos with the BBC Symphony. The album will now be released as a tribute to the late conductor on Avie in January 2018. Pine and Marriner previously collaborated on Mozart: Complete Violin Concertos with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields, which charted at number three on the Billboard Classical chart in 2015. Pine has appeared as soloist with many of the world’s most prestigious ensembles, including the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie. Her past festival appearances have included Marlboro, Wolf Trap, Ravinia, Davos and Salzburg. She has worked with such renowned conductors as Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, Erich Leinsdorf, Neeme Järvi and Marin Alsop. She has collaborated with many contemporary composers including Augusta Read Thomas, John Corigliano, José Serebrier and Mohammed Fairouz. Pine has a prolific discography of 35 CDs on the Avie, Cedille, Warner Classics and Dorian labels. She recorded Brahms and Joachim Violin Concertos with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Carlos Kalmar conducting. Her Beethoven & Clement Violin Concerto, with The Royal Philharmonic and conductor José Serebrier featured the world premiere recording of Clement’s D Major Violin Concerto.
She writes her own cadenzas to many of the works she performs. With the publication of The Rachel Barton Pine Collection, Pine became the only living artist and first woman to join great musicians like Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz in Carl Fischer’s Masters Collection series. Pine holds prizes from several of the world’s leading competitions, including a gold medal at the 1992 J.S. Bach International Violin Competition in Leipzig, Germany. Her Rachel Barton Pine Foundation assists young artists through various projects, including the Instrument Loan Program; Grants for Education and Career; Global HeartStrings (supporting musicians in developing countries); and a curricular series in development with the University of Michigan: Music by Black Composers. Pine performs on the Joseph Guarnerius del Gesu (Cremona 1742), known as the “ex-Bazzini, ex-Soldat” on lifetime loan from her anonymous patron.
LARA DOWNES Piano Lara Downes’ whole life has been a blending of traditions, styles, cultures, races and genres. Downes courageously dons and then sheds labels like “classical” or “eclectic” as freely as she engages audiences of all ages with her charismatic presence, intellectual curiosity and masterful command of her artistic voice. Not surprisingly, Downes is comfortable in a diverse range of venues, from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to Le Poisson Rouge (New York) and Yoshi’s (San Francisco). Her personal journey from student (trained by Hans Graf and Rudolph Buchbinder) to artist has followed a roadmap that seeks inspiration in unexpected places, drawing on the legacies of family, history, art and culture to form an artistic vision that in turn inspires her audiences with a unique style that The Huffington Post has called “addicting— Downes plays with an open, honest heart.” Born in San Francisco and raised in Europe, Downes’ interest in connecting music to a wide and inclusive breadth of human experience mines her own mixed African American and Eastern European background and her peripatetic upbringing. As she has shed the stricture of genre in her view of music, the musical press has embraced her distinctive artistry: her playing has been called “ravishing” by Fanfare magazine, “luscious, and moody and dreamy” by The New York Times. Her recent release, A Billie Holiday Songbook, has been embraced by YOUNG ARTISTS COMPETITION
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BIOGRAPHIES
both jazz and classical critics and listeners and called “possibly the most intriguing Holiday tribute” of this centenary year (Jazz Weekly). Her newest chart-topping release, America Again (Sono Luminus, 2016) was selected by NPR as one of “10 Albums that Saved 2016” and hailed as “a balm for a country riven by disunion” by The Boston Globe. The recording is in many ways the coming-of-age memoir of an artist who has found her own way and carved her own path through American music. Downes takes inspiration from the musicians that inspire her—from Leonard Bernstein to Nina Simone—to express the diversity of American history and American dreams. In her own words: “There is no such thing as a typical American life, and there are millions of American stories. American music has a complicated history, full of contrasts and contradictions, just like my own.”
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A laureate of the 2016 Sphinx Medal of Excellence award, Downes has been recognized as a leader in expanding the reach of the arts, as a performer, an entrepreneur and a cultural visionary. She enjoys creative collaborations with a range of artists, from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and her partnerships with prominent composers span genres and generations to bring significant new contributions to the piano repertoire. In addition to recording and performing, Downes serves as Artist in Residence at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, UC Davis where she mentors the next generation of young musicians as Director of the Mondavi Center National Young Artists Program. She is a Steinway Artist.
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