Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Allant Trio Performs in Stamford on Sunday May 20th at 3PM

The Allant Trio (l to r): Alina Lim, cello; Beth Nam, piano and Anna Park, violin.
Friends of Music continues its 2012 Season with a performance by the Allant Trio on Sunday, May 20th at 3PM. Graduates of and graduate students at the Juilliard School (where the Trio was formed about 2 years ago) the group includes Beth Hyo Kyoung Nam, piano; Anna Jihyun Park, violin, and Alina Lim, cello.

Since then they have performed extensively as a group, and they participated in the Chamber Music Residency Program at the Banff Centre. In 2011 the Allant Trio was among the semi-finalists at the Trondheim International Chamber Music Competition in Norway. Through their proven commitment to community engagement they have generously agreed to make the journey to Stamford to perform for us here.
The program for May 20, 2012 is currently planned as follows:

Program

Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97 (“Archduke”) (1810 – 11)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
    I.  Allegro moderato
   II.  Scherzo (Allegro)
  III. Andante cantabile ma però con moto. Poco piu adagio.
  IV. Allegro moderato – Presto
Intermission

Piano Trio (1914)
Joseph-Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937)
    I. Modéré
   II. Pantoum (Assez vif)
  III. Passacaille (Très large)
  IV. Final (Animé)


Born in Korea, Anna Park moved to New York at the age of thirteen to pursue her studies at the Juilliard Pre-College with Professors Hyo Kang and I-Hao Lee. She joined the Vivaldi Youth Ensemble based in New York City that same year and gave both solo and chamber music recitals.

In 2002, Ms. Park attended the Aspen Music Festival and School where she performed in the Starling Recital Series. In 2003, she attended Killington Music Festival where she gave several performances and participated in master classes with Lawrence Dutton, a member of the Emerson String Quartet. In 2004, she performed Maurer's Concertante for Four Violins as first violin with the International Sejong Soloists, with whom she regularly tours internationally. Since 2004, she has annually attended the Great Mountains International Music Festival & School in Pyong Chang, South Korea, where she studies with Nam Yun Kim, Chee Yun, Kurt Sassmannshaus and Igor Ozim.

In 2005, her first year at the Juilliard School, Ms. Park was designated as the Samsung Award Student and gave a recital at the Samsung Experience in New York City. In 2008, Ms. Park gave a concert with the Kangwon Festival Ensemble in Korea as part of the Rising Star Series at the great Mountains International Festival & School. In 2010, she won the first prize of Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra Competition and performed the Elgar Concerto for Violin under conductor Toshiyuki Shimada in 2011. Ms. Park received a scholarship from the Korean Cultural Service in New York and she completed her Master's Degree at the Juilliard School with Hyo Kang and Naoko Tanaka in 2011.

Alina Lim is currently pursuing her graduate studies at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Richard Aaron. She began her cello studies at the age of eight with Joowon Kim at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada. During these years, Ms. Lim won various awards and scholarships through the Conservatory, as well as The Kiwanis Music Festival of the Greater Toronto Area and The Ontario Music Festivals Association. She was also a two-time winner at the national finals of The Canadian Music Competition (2003, 2005).

In 2005, Ms. Lim went on to continue her studies with David Hetherington at The Young Artist Performance Academy of the RCM. As the winner of the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra's Concerto Competition in 2006, she has performed with The Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Alina Lim has also performed with The Academy Symphony Orchestra of the RCM, The Kitchener-Waterloo/Durham Youth Orchestras and The National Repertory Orchestra. Ms. Lim is a recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award from the NPR show From the Top, in which she played with the Trillium Trio. She has participated in music festivals such as ENCORE School for Strings, Meadowmount School of Music, New York Strings Orchestra Seminar, Aspen Music Festival and School, The National Repertory Orchestra, and The Banff Centre for the Arts.

Beth Nam was selected to play in the Steinway Society Young Artist Concert in San Jose in 2003 where she was reviewed highly in the press. That same year she also played at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall with the Nesher Trio. The group toured in the Netherlands and won a debut concert at Carnegie Weil Recital Hall through the Artist International Audition in 2004. Ms. Nam is the winner of numerous competitions and scholarship awards, especially in California, and has performed in numerous recitals, chamber concerts, winner's concerts and master classes in well-known venues in the United States and abroad.

A native of Korea, Ms. Nam began studying piano at age nine. Her major teachers include Hak Soon Swiatkowski, Lois Roberts at El Camino College, and Martin Canin at Juilliard. She worked with the South Bay Children's Chorus as soloist, accompanist and assistant conductor under the artistic direction of Dr. Jane Hardester and Diane Simons. In 2007, Nam was invited by the choir as an assistant conductor to their England Tour where they performed one of her motets, a composition which won a competition sponsored by Juilliard's Literature and Materials department. She has taught at two New York City Public Schools through a Morse Fellowship and a Teaching Fellowship in Secondary Piano, and has also been a piano faculty of the Music Advancement Program at Juilliard since 2007.

Ms. Nam received both the Bachelor and the Master of Music degrees as a scholarship student from the Juilliard School. In 2008 Beth Nam gained acceptance to Juilliard's prestigious Doctor of Musical Arts program where she has continued her studies in piano performance with Robert McDonald.


To learn more about these fabulously talented young musicians, please visit their Web site at allanttrio.com.

Thank you to all of our donors and especially to the Robinson-Broadhurst Foundation for making this concert possible. We hope you will join us on Sunday May 20th at the Cyr Center in Stamford for this outstanding performance!