Press Release

For Immediate Release:
February 14, 2006

Four Young Artists Also Perform in NEC’s Jordan Hall in Recitals Throughout the Spring

New England Conservatory’s four Artist Diploma candidates will perform in a month-long showcase of noontime concerts during March at the Old South Meeting House, 210 Washington St. in Boston. Most will also give free recitals at NEC’s Jordan Hall throughout the spring. The young musicians, who include three violinists and a pianist, have been chosen for the Conservatory’s most prestigious degree program and participate in a two-year curriculum that focuses on developing their artistry and professionalism. They are required to give a Jordan Hall recital each year and to take part in NEC’s Community Performances and Partnerships Program. Their performances at the Old South Meeting House, co-sponsored by NEC and WGBH 89.7 FM, take place on Friday afternoons in March from 12:15p.m.—1 p.m.

The four musicians are among the world’s most gifted young players and have already won significant competition prizes and begun international performing careers. Their concert dates are as follows:

Stefan Jackiw, violin
March 3 at 12:15 p.m. Old South Meeting House
(His Jordan Hall recital took place November 6, 2005.)

Boston native and NEC-trained violinist Stefan Jackiw, 20, is already recognized as one of the most significant artists of his generation. In recent seasons, Jackiw has performed with the Chicago Symphony; the Minnesota Orchestra; the Naples Philharmonic; the Pittsburgh, Oregon and Rochester symphonies; the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Pops. He made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in the fall of 2002 under the conductor Roberto Abbado. That same year, he also toured Japan with the Baltimore Symphony under Yuri Temirkanov.

In the spring of 2000, Jackiw made his European debut in London to great critical acclaim, playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor with the Philharmonia Orchestra under NEC’s Benjamin Zander. In Europe, he has also performed with the l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

An active recitalist, Jackiw has performed with the Steans Institute’s Rising Stars Series, the Boston Celebrity Series at NEC’s Jordan Hall, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, where pianist/conductor Christoph Eschenbach presented him in a collaborative recital.

Born to physicist parents, Jackiw began playing the violin at the age of four. He received early training at NEC’s Preparatory School, studying with Zinaida Gilels and Michèle Auclair. In the fall of 2003, Jackiw concurrently enrolled at Harvard University and the NEC Artist Diploma Program, where he is studying violin with Donald Weilerstein.

In 2002, Jackiw was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Susie Park, violin
March 10 at 12:15 p.m. Old South Meeting House
April 13, at 8 p.m. in NEC’s Jordan Hall

From Sydney, Australia, Susie Park, 24, is a student of Donald Weilerstein at NEC. She began her violin training at the age of three and made her recital debut in 1986 in a Suzuki showcase. She studied in the Preparatory Division of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and later attended the Curtis Institute where her teachers included Jaime Laredo and Ida Kavafian. During the 2001-02 season, she served as concertmaster of both the Curtis Symphony Orchestra and the New York String Orchestra Seminar in Carnegie Hall. Winner of numerous awards and honors, she was a Laureate in the 2002 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and in 1999 gave a recital in Government House as part of the Sydney Festival and later toured Korea as a “Goodwill Ambassador” for the Australian embassy in Korea.

In fall 2004, she toured with the Music from Marlboro ensembles and appeared in a New York recital with Jamie Laredo, John Dalley, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, and Ronald Leonard as those artists celebrated 50 years of friendship and music-making.

Karen Gomyo, violin
March 17 at 12:15 p.m. Old South Meeting House
(Her Jordan Hall recital took place in January.)

Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo, 24, won the 1997 Young Concert Artists International Auditions just one week after her 15th birthday. She has since performed with orchestras in the U.S. and abroad. Born in Tokyo in 1982, Gomyo moved to Montreal in 1984. She received a full scholarship to The Juilliard School, continued her studies at the University of Indiana, and is now studying with Donald Weilerstein at NEC. In the 2004–05 season she made subscription debuts with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, and others; in Canada she appeared with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony, and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and she returned to the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kazuyoshi Akiyama. Gomyo has given a recital tour of Japan, and has performed at the Louvre in Paris, on the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute Rising Stars Series, Seattle Symphony Recital Series, and La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s Prodigy Series. She has appeared at the Aspen Music Festivals in Japan and in Aspen, where she performed with cellist Lynn Harrell; at Bargemusic and the Bard Festival in New York; and at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Avery Fisher Hall in a pre-concert recital

Christopher Guzman, piano
March 24 at 12:15 p.m. Old South Meeting House
May 3 at 8 p.m. in NEC’s Jordan Hall

A student of Patricia Zander, Christopher Guzman, 24, of San Antonio, Texas, has won top prizes in numerous competitions, given solo and chamber music recitals throughout America, Europe and Asia and performed with orchestras throughout the United States. The pianist made his orchestral debut at the age of 13 and subsequently performed Prokofiev's Concerto No. 3 in C Major with orchestras in Texas, North Carolina, and New Mexico. He has also performed with the EOS Orchestra of New York City, the Fort Worth Symphony and extensively with the San Antonio Symphony. While attending The Juilliard School, he was the only student to have performed with the Juilliard Orchestra three times.

An enthusiastic advocate of new music, he has collaborated with one of the nation’s preeminent contemporary chamber ensembles, Speculum Musicae, and numerous times with the New Juilliard Ensemble, including tours of the U.S. and France. The New York Times hailed his “coiled, explosive playing” of works by Christopher Theofanidis and Joseph Pereira at New York’s Society for Ethical Culture in 2002. Mr. Guzman is a founding member of the Ikarus Ensemble, whose recent project included a concert of the music of áltaVoz, a group of Latin-American composers residing in the United States.

Guzman began studying piano at age nine and added cello two years later. His teachers have included Kenneth Thompson in San Antonio, and Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald at The Juilliard School, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

For more information, call the NEC Concert Line at (617) 585-1122 or visit NEC on the web at www.newenglandconservatory.edu/concerts

ABOUT NEW ENGLAND CONSERVATORY

Recognized nationally and internationally as a leader among music schools, New England Conservatory offers rigorous training in an intimate, nurturing community to 750 undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral music students from around the world. Its faculty of 225 boasts internationally esteemed artist-teachers and scholars. Its alumni go on to fill orchestra chairs, concert hall stages, jazz clubs, recording studios, and arts management positions worldwide. Nearly half of the Boston Symphony Orchestra is composed of NEC trained musicians and faculty.

The oldest independent school of music in the United States, NEC was founded in 1867 by Eben Tourjee. Its curriculum is remarkable for its wide range of styles and traditions. On the college level, it features training in classical, jazz, Contemporary Improvisation, world and early music. Through its Preparatory School, School of Continuing Education, and Community Collaboration Programs, it provides training and performance opportunities for children, pre-college students, adults, and seniors. Through its outreach projects, it allows young musicians to engage with non-traditional audiences in schools, hospitals, and nursing homes—thereby bringing pleasure to new listeners and enlarging the universe for classical music and jazz.

NEC presents more than 600 free concerts each year, many of them in Jordan Hall, its world- renowned, 100-year old, beautifully restored concert hall. These programs range from solo recitals to chamber music to orchestral programs to jazz and opera scenes. Every year, NEC’s opera studies department also presents two fully staged opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston.

NEC is co-founder and educational partner of “From the Top,” a weekly radio program that celebrates outstanding young classical musicians from the entire country. With its broadcast home in Jordan Hall, the show is now carried by more than two hundred stations throughout the United States.