Competition Wins, Honors

NEC String Players, Harpist, Prep Pianist Honored. NEC cited for superior...

 

NEC String Players, Harpist Win Concert Artists Guild, Israel Harp Competitions

Prep Pianist Plays with Lang Lang; NEC Named One of Top Producers of Fulbright Fellows

   
Hye Jin blueViolinist Hye-Jin Kim '08 M.M. '10 G.D. (right in photo) and cellist Sebastian Baverstam '11 and '07 Prep have won the violin and cello sections of the 2009 Concert Artists Guild Competition. Each of them was awarded a two-year management contract with the Guild as well as a New York recital at Weill Recital Hall.
   
Ina Zdorovetchi '08 G.D. won the top prize (2nd place; no First Prize awarded) in the 17th International Israel Harp Contest in Tel Aviv. In addition to her $6000 Prize, she also received two special awards, the $3000 Chamber Music Prize and the $2500 Aharon Zvi and Mara Propes Prize for best performance of a new work Out to Infinity. The composer of that piece is Yitzhak Yedid, who also attended NEC.
   
In news from NEC's Preparatory School, nine-year old pianist Anna Larsen was chosen to perform with Chinese virtuoso Lang Lang in his Lang Lang & Friends Concerts Oct. 27 at Carnegie Hall in New York and Nov. 3 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, CA.  Larsen will perform in the bravura piano ensemble Carmen Fantasy by Mack Wilberg.
   
Also, NEC was singled out by the Chronicle of Higher Education for its success in generating Fulbright scholars.  The Conservatory was listed among the top producing colleges and universities under the category of special institutions that includes a variety of arts schools.  In 2008-09, one of three NEC applicants was awarded a Fulbright to study abroad.

Biographies

Violinist Hye-Jin Kim '08 M.M. '10 G.D. has performed as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach and with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Hannover Chamber Orchestra. First Prize Winner of the 2004 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition in London, Ms. Kim has also won the Philadelphia Orchestra Concerto Competition, the Virtuosos of the 21st Century in Moscow and was awarded the Kay H. Logan Chamber Music Award. Ms. Kim with Miriam Fried at as a recipient of the Emma V. Lambrose Presidential Scholarship. She plays a Gioffredo Cappa violin, crafted in Saluzzo, Italy in 1687.

Twenty year-old cellist Sebastian Bäverstam '11 performed his first concerto with orchestra at the age of seven and has since performed concerti in the U.S, Europe, China, Venezuela and Brazil. An alumnus of NEC Prep, he was the 2006 Winner of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition and in 2007 was asked to substitute for Lynn Harrell, playing the Schumann Cello Concerto with the Cape Cod Symphony. He gave his Weill Hall debut in 2002 and has appeared multiple times on the nationally syndicated radio program From the Top and in a PBS documentary filmed in Carnegie Hall. Mr. Bäverstam has attended the following festivals: Aspen, Banff Centre, Verbier and the International Music Academy of Switzerland with Seiji Ozawa. He currently studies with Paul Katz.

Ina Zdorovetchi '08 G.D. serves on the harp faculty at The Boston Conservatory and NEC Preparatory School. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2004, performing alongside Grammy Award winning soprano Dawn Upshaw and Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla in the world premiere of Osvaldo Golijov's Ayre and Berio's Folk Songs. Later that year, she returned to Carnegie Hall with the Boston Symphony, performing in the James Levine Gala.

Zdorovetchi performs as soloist with Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Haifa Symphony Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Moldova National Radio Orchestra, Moldova National Symphony, Boston University Symphony Orchestra and Bucharest National University of Music Symphony Orchestra. In May 2009, she gave the World-Premiere of ...bisbigliando... Concerto for Harp and Orchestra by Thomas Oboe Lee written for her and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Anna Larsen is nine years old and lives in Needham. She studies piano and composition in the Preparatory School with A. Ramón Rivera and Alla Cohen and is coached in chamber music by Laura Blustein. She started playing piano when she was three years old and learned music very quickly. She played her first Bach Two-Part Invention at four years old and her first Mozart Sonata at age five.  Now, Anna practices about two hours a day with some additional time after school for theory and composition homework. She dreams of playing with an orchestra and traveling around the world performing on the piano.


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 720 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, 106-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 National Public Radio and is heard on 250 stations throughout the United States.

Contact: Ellen Pfeifer
Public Relations Manager
New England Conservatory
617-585-1143
ellen.pfeifer@necmusic.edu