The Program

Janáček: Violin Sonata
Ravel: Violin Sonata
Webern: Four Pieces, Op. 7
Brahms: Violin Sonata in G Major, Op. 78

The Artists

Soovin Kim won first prize at the Paganini International Competition when he was only 20 years old. He was later named the recipient of the Henryk Szeryng Career Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Subsequently he went on to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra. He has given solo recitals at Weill Hall in New York, Terrace Theater in Washington D.C., Ravinia, Tokyo’s Casals Hall, and the Seoul Arts Center. Mr. Kim devotes a considerable amount of time to teaching at Stony Brook University and is also on the faculty of Bard College. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Jaime Laredo and Victor Danchenko, and he also studied with David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Mr. Kim maintains a close relationship with the Marlboro Festival and regularly spends summers there. Soovin Kim plays on the 1709 “ex-Kempner” Stradivarius which is on loan to him. For more information on Soovin Kim, visit www.soovin.com.

The recipient of a 2006 Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award, the 2003 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2003 Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, pianist Natalie Zhu is a winner of Astral Artistic Services' 1998 National Auditions. The Philadelphia Inquirer heralded Astral’s presentation of Ms. Zhu in recital as a display of "emotional and pianistic pyrotechnics"; selections from the recital were later broadcast on National Public Radio’s "Performance Today."  Natalie Zhu began her piano studies with Xiao-Cheng Liu at the age of six in her native China and made her first public appearance at age nine in Beijing. At eleven she emigrated with her family to Los Angeles, and by fifteen was enrolled at the Curtis Institute, where she received the Rachmaninoff Award and studied with Gary Graffman.  She received a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Claude Frank.  For more information on Natalie Zhu, visit www.nataliezhu.com.