Southampton Cultural Center’s seventh annual Rising Stars Piano Recital Series will open with a performance by Kwan Yi, a 2008 Pianofest participant, at 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 3, at the Levitas Center for the Arts.
Mr. Yi will perform a program featuring Mozart’s Sonata in F major K. 333, Chopin’s Scherzo No. 3 and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer praised Mr. Yi’s Chopin as “notable for the delicate, noble and tempestuous qualities he so vibrantly conveyed” and the Houston Chronicle remarked that he delivered the “technical polish and lyrical elegance needed for Liszt’s kaleidoscope of show-stopping, then tender music.”
Mr. Yi has been hailed by audiences and critics alike as an artist of poetic insight and communicative powers. In 2007, he made his solo debut with the Houston Symphony under the baton of Hans Graf in Jones Hall. He performed as soloist with the Eastern Connecticut Symphony, the Pottstown Symphony, the LaGuardia Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Pines.
As a recitalist, Mr. Yi has performed in Carnegie Weill Recital Hall, Nichols Hall in Chicago, Gusman Hall in Miami, for the Channing Recital Series in Houston and in San Francisco.
As a part of his residency at Stephen F. Austin University, Mr. Yi has presented a solo recital and master classes. As an avid chamber musician, he has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Peter Wiley and Roberto Diaz. He was the artist-in-residence at the 2008 and 2009 Amelia Island Chamber Music Festivals.
Mr. Yi’s performances have been broadcast by WHYY, KUHF and WQXR. His future engagements include solo appearances with the Maryland Symphony Orchestra and the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra, a duo recital in the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, which will be broadcast by France Musique, a chamber music tour with Itzhak Perlman and numerous performances in New York, Chicago, Madison, Jacksonville, Ireland and the United Kingdom.
A recipient of many honors and prizes, Mr. Yi counts among recent awards a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Award, the ASCAP Foundation’s Ira Gershwin Award for Outstanding Musicianship, and the grand prizes in the 2007 Ima Hogg National Young Artist Competition, the 2007 Sorantin International Young Artist Competition and the 2008 Schmidbauer International Piano Competition.
Mr. Yi is currently studying with Robert McDonald at the Juilliard School. He received his bachelor’s degree in music from the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with Ignat Solzhenitsyn. At the Juilliard Pre-College Division he studied with Frank Levy. Additionally, he has worked with Gary Graffman, Claude Frank and Fou Ts’ong.
Tickets are $15 for general admission; free for students under 21 with ID. Reservations are encouraged and can be made at reservations@southamptonculturalcenter.org or by calling 287-4377.
The series continues on Saturday, November 14, with a recital by Matthew Graybil. For more information, visit www.southamptonculturalcenter.org.
on Sep 29, 2009