The 65-year-old Peninsula Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Mitchell Sardou Klein close their successful 2013-2014 season May 16 and 17 by continuing one of the Orchestra's cherished hallmarks: presenting an extremely gifted young soloist and winner of the Irving M. Klein International String Competition. The 2013 Competition winner, 18-year-old South Korea-born violinist Youjin Lee, will perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on a program with Brahms Fourth Symphony and Nielsen's Helios Overture Friday, May 16, 2014 at 8 p.m., San Mateo Performing Arts Center, and Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 8 p.m., Flint Center/DeAnza College.
Tickets are priced $20-$40 and may be purchased at www.peninsulasymphony.org or by calling 650-941-5291.
About Youjin Lee:
South Korea-born violinist Youjin Lee, 17, began her violin studies at age 3. She made her musical debut at age 7 at the Inchon City Association of Music Competition, where she won First Prize. Ms. Lee has won many of Korea's major national competitions, including the Baroque Competition, Korea Times Competition and Seoul Art Center Concert for Talented Musicians. In 2008, Lee performed with the Joy Philharmonic Orchestra in the Baroque Competition's Winner Recital. In 2009 she performed with the Ploiesti State Philharmonic Orchestra in Romania.
Ms. Lee was invited to perform at the Blue House Recital for South Korea President Myung Bak Lee. In 2010 she performed at the Spring Festival Concert for LG Chamber Music School and at the Lincoln Center in New York.Since summer 2011, Lee has been a student at the Perlman Music Program led by Itzhak Perlman, selected for the summer program in New York and winter residency in Florida. In California, where she lives and studies at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, she recently won the Downey Symphony and Bellflower Symphony young artist competitions. As part of her prize, she appeared with both orchestras as a featured soloist.
Last season Lee was the soloist with the New West
Symphony and performed concerts for thousands of fifth-grade students in
Southern California as part of New West's Symphonic Adventures series. This season she won Fifth Prize in the Munetsugu International Violin Competition in Japan. She is a student of
Danielle Belen.
ABOUT PENINSULA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: Peninsula
Symphony Orchestra began in 1949, when two distinct musical ensembles--the Sequoia
Symphony & the Peninsula Symphony--and one conductor, Russian-born violinist/conductor Aaron Sten, joined forces. In 1951, under Vincent Guida, symphony clarinetist and business manager, the organization was incorporated as a non-profit association, and a formal board was chosen. With the arrival of current conductor Mitchell Sardou Klein, the Peninsula
Symphony grew from a grassroots ensemble to a polished 90-plus member orchestra of well-trained community musicians. The Peninsula Youth Orchestra was established in the spring of 1997, with Mitchell Sardou Klein serving as the Music Director. Today, Peninsula
Symphony Orchestra works to enrich the lives of people in the community with inspiring, innovative, high-quality musical presentations at affordable prices, and to promote music education through engaging programs for children and adults.
About Mitchell Sardou Klein: Mitchell Sardou Klein, whose performances on four continents have garnered wide acclaim, enters his 29th season as Music Director and Conductor of the Peninsula
Symphony and his 17th season as founding Music Director of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra. He regularly guest conducts orchestras in California, throughout the United States, and in Europe.
He made his debut with
Symphony Silicon Valley in two sold-out performances in January, 2012, and his other recent appearances as a guest conductor in California include the Santa Rosa Symphony, the Inland Empire/Riverside Philharmonic, Ballet San Jose, the California
Riverside Ballet and the Livermore-Amador Philharmonic. Concerts elsewhere have included his return to Europe to guest conduct the New Polish Philharmonic and the Suddettic Philharmonic, concert tours of England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Australia and New Zealand with PYO, numerous return engagements to the San Jose
Symphony (the predecessor of
Symphony Silicon Valley), and his return to the podium of the Santa Cruz Symphony. Prior guest conducting appearances have included the Seattle Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Eastern Philharmonic, Flagstaff
Festival Symphony, Amarillo Symphony, Lexington Philharmonic, South Bend Symphony, and many others. Maestro Klein also has extensive experience in conducting ballet orchestras, including the Kansas City, Lone Star, Oakland, and Westport Ballets, as well as the Theater Ballet of San Francisco and les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.
Maestro Klein directed over a hundred concerts as Associate Conductor of the Kansas City Philharmonic (where he was also Principal Pops Conductor and Principal Conductor of Starlight Theater, the Philharmonic's summer home), and also served as Music Director of the Santa Cruz Symphony.
Maestro Klein is a winner of many prestigious awards, including the 2008 Diamond Award for Best Individual Artist, the Silver Lei Award from the 2009 Honolulu Film
Festival (for the World Premiere of Giancarlo Aquilanti's
La Poverta), the 2000 ASCAP Award for Programming of American Music on Foreign Tour, the 2001 Jullie Billiart Award from the
College of Notre Dame for Outstanding Community Service, a 1996 award for the year's best television performance program in the Western States (for the one-hour PBS program about him and the Peninsula Symphony) as well as the 1993 Bravo Award for his contribution to the Bay Area's cultural life.
Mr. Klein was born in New York City, into a musical family that included members of the Claremont and Budapest String Quartets. He began cello studies at age four with his father, Irving Klein, founder of the Claremont Quartet. His mother, Elaine Hartong Klein, danced with the
Metropolitan Opera Ballet.
Since 1984, he has been Director of the Irving M. Klein International String Competition. Held in San Francisco each June, the Competition has become one of the most prominent in the world, featuring prizes totaling over $25,000, attracting applicants from more than twenty nations annually, and launching numerous major international concert careers.
Praised for his "keen judgment, tight orchestral discipline, feeling for tempo, and unerring control," Maestro Klein has conducted many significant world, American, and West Coast premieres, including works by Bohuslav Martinu, Meyer Kupferman, Joan Tower, Hans Kox, George Barati, Benjamin Lees, Giancarlo Aguilanti, Melissa Hui, Rodion Shchedrin, Brian Holmes, Ron Miller, Lee Actor, Alvin Brehm, and Margaret Garwood. He has appeared frequently on national and international broadcasts, including National Public Radio, the Voice of America, the WFMT Fine Arts Network, PBS Television, and KQED television. He lives in Oakland, California with his wife, violist Patricia Whaley. Their daughter, Elizabeth, lives and works in New York City.
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