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Chamber Music Institute

Chamber Music Institute Alumni Updates
(January 2010)

Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute offers students daily interaction with world-renowned musicians, multiple performance opportunities, and an engaging series of classes and lectures. This immersive, personal, and rigorous approach to teaching is paying off, and we are pleased to share with you some recent accomplishments of our talented alumni. We will add new updates to the Web site quarterly, so please check back often. If you have alumni notes you’d like to share, please email them to info@musicatmenlo.org.

Cellist Dmitri Atapine (International Program ’08 and Chamber Music Institute faculty ’09) was appointed Assistant Professor of Cello at the University of Nevada, Reno in July 2009 and began teaching in the 2009–2010 academic year.

Following its appearance at Music@Menlo this past summer, the Atria Ensemble (International Program ’09) performed Bartók’s Contrasts at the Yale in New York concert series at New York City’s Zankel Hall in September 2009.

In August 2009, pianist Hilda Huang’s (Young Performers Program ’06, ’07, ’08, and ’09) performance of Bach’s Piano Concerto no. 5 in f minor with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra was released on the CD From the Top at the Pops by the Telarc label. Hilda also won the Grand Prize in the Junior Division of the Fifth Annual Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition in January 2010.

Violist David Kim (International Program ’04) joined the San Francisco Symphony in the summer of 2009.

Violinist Joanna Kaczorowska (International Program ’03) and pianist Pablo Lavandera won First Prize in multiple divisions of the Collaborative Artists Competition at the 2009 Liszt-Garrison Festival and International Competition in October 2009. Their accolades included the George Shields Award for Violin-Piano Duo and first place in both the division’s Best Interpretation Awards and its Performance Awards. Additionally, the duo won the 2009 Special Award and will consequently perform a recital in Steingraeber Chamber Music Hall in Bayreuth, Germany, at the 2010 Wagner Festival.

Violinist Alexi Kenney (Young Performers Program ’03, ’04, ’06, ’07, and ’08) won the Grand Prize in the Senior Division of the Fifth Annual Mondavi Center Young Artists Competition in January 2010. Alexi also performed The Grand Tango by Astor Piazzolla on NPR’s radio program From the Top, which aired in October 2009.

Violinist Kristin Lee (International Program ’09) has been invited to join the roster of Astral Artists and is a featured performer at the organization’s Gala event on March 27, 2010.

Pianist Young-Ah Tak (International Program ’03) was appointed Assistant Professor of Piano at Southeastern University in Florida in July 2009. In addition to teaching, he continues to perform chamber music as a member of the university’s faculty piano trio.

Violinist Stephen Waarts (Young Performers Program ’06, ’07, ’08, and ’09) performed an excerpt from Franz Waxman’s Carmen Fantasie on NPR’s radio program From the Top in December 2009, which is scheduled to air the week of March 1, 2010. As a first-place winner in the 2008 American Fine Arts Festival (AFAF) competition at its Fifth Anniversary Celebration Concert in Carnegie Hall, Stephen represented the AFAF at the Moscow Meets Friends Festival and appeared with the Kostroma Symphony Orchestra in May 2009. He also won the Youth Division of KDFC’s 2009 Classical Star Search and played with the Palo Alto Philharmonic after winning its 2009 Concerto Movement Competition.

Read past alumni updates:
Summer 2009
December 2008
Summer 2008