Rachel Hsu , violin
Milana Pavchinskaya, piano
(Violin Elementary division 2nd place, 12/13/2010)
Flash movie Format
video length 1 min 1 sec
Lutkin Hall, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
Jan 9, 2011
Rachel Shekinah Hsu, age 9, is a fourth grade student at Romona Elementary School in Wilmette, IL. She has learned violin for six years and piano for five years. Currently she studies violin with Desiree Ruhstrat and piano with Sueanne Metz. Rachel has won many violin competitions, including first-place awards in 2008 Confucius Music Festival and in 2009 SAM violin competitions. She received Honorable Mention in Walgreens National 2010 Concerto Competition String Category and was the winner of 2009 DePaul Concerto Festival for Young Performers having chance to play violin solo with the DePaul Symphony Orchestra. Rachel also won many piano competitions, including 1st place at ISMTA , SAM, Confucius Music Festival , Illinois Music Association, the MACMO Piano Contest, CAMTA Roberta Savler Piano Contest, Granquist Music Competition in Olympic Division, as well as gold medals at the NSMTA and CAMTA Sonata-Sonatina Festivals. She received Honorable Mention at the DePaul Concerto Festival for Young Performers. She was the winner in Steinway Young Artist Competition 2008, 2009, 2010 and her performance has been broadcast live on WFMT radio station as a winner in 2008. Her other interests include: singing, writing, drawing, reading and math.
 Misook Kim received her B.A. with the honor of Cum Laude from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. After finishing her “New Star Concert” sponsored by the Cho-sun Newspaper, she entered the graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin where she completed her M.M. and D.M.A. degrees in composition and the certificate of piano performance. Reviewer Mike Greenberg, writing in the San Antonio Express-News, called the composer ‘a bold and unrepentant modernist’. He also has mentioned ‘each of her works presented thus far has impressed with its fearless modernism, its concision and its strong individual profile’.
Kim has performed as a composer as well as a pianist in various concerts of her own works from solo to larger ensemble compositions throughout the States and Korea. Including commissions for the MUSICOPIA Concert, Olmos Ensemble, she has won International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM) Judith Zaimont Award and the Long Island Arts Council International Composition Competition in 2007. She was a former faculty member at The University of the Incarnate Word and Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. She had also served as a music director at KUMC. In Fall 2006, Kim joined the faculty at the Conservatory of Music at Wheaton College, IL. A Collection of Korean Music for Children I. Jindo Arirang A Collection of Korean Music for Children for violin and piano is written for fun. Fun is an important part of everyday life, especially for children. Fun can be expressed in Korean music with its generous use of bright rhythms and melodies. These pieces were written with the intent of being humorous in the hopes of causing young students to laugh, smile, or feel amused. These effects are acquired through unconventional approaches to the music, such as using pizzicato throughout the entire movement of a piece, tapping on the body of the instrument with the hand, or adding a Korean twist to the Wizard of Oz. |