NEWS ABOUT PAST ARTISTS

At the Juilliard School 2024 commencement, graduating violinist Christina Jihee Nam received the Peter Mennin Prize, an award for outstanding achievement and leadership in Music presented to an undergraduate student, announced by David Serkin Ludwig, Dean and Director, Music Division. Nam, High School Instrumental Scholarship recipient at the inaugural Nancy F. Walker Scholarships in 2018, performed in the MMC recital series in 2022.

Recitalist Pene Pati (2019, 2021, 2024), tenor, announced that he will debut with the Chicago Lyric Opera in the role of Rudolfo in La Bohéme in 2025! For those who were hoping to purchase his CD when he was here in 2019 and 2021, here's you chance! His first solo CD was released in March of 2022! Click here to listen and/or purchase!

French horn virtuoso Yun Zeng (2024) was recently appointed Principal French Horn of the Berlin Philharmonic. He has been Principal French Horn of the Staatskapelle Berlin since November 2022. He performed in Memorial Hall on Sunday, March 3, 2024.

After receiving 290 applications, the Queen Elizabeth Competition has announced that 69 young violinists will proceed to the live rounds in Flagey and the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts on May 6 to 11, 2024. One of them will be Joshua Brown (2017). Good luck, Josh!

Ryan Speedo Green (2022) recently won his third Grammy at the 2024 award ceremony. His lead role in Terence Blanchard's Champion won Best Opera Recording.

Jason Vieaux (2018), guitar, gave a solo recital on January 26, 2024 for San Francisco Performances. He also soloed recently with the Columbus (GA) Symphony, the Santa Fe Symphony and the Cleveland Pops. In 2011, Vieaux co-founded the guitar department at the Curtis Institute of Music (with David Starobin). He has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music for 25 years. Jason’s online Guitar School for Artistworks Inc. has hundreds of subscribers from all over the world. 

Cincinnati Opera has just announced that Elliot Madore (2023), baritone, will star in a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni this coming summer! We can't wait to hear him again!

One of our past artists, pianist Nicholas Angelich (1994), passed away on April 18, 2022.

On March 14, 2023, the Metropolitan Opera presented A Concert for Ukraine, a benefit performance to support Ukrainian citizens under attack, with all ticket sales and donations going to support relief efforts in Ukraine. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Met Orchestra and Chorus and star soloists in a 70-minute program, featuring music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, Strauss, and Beethoven. The soloists were Lise Davidsen and Elza van den Heever, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton (2018), tenor Piotr Beczała, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green (2022), and Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi, who led the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem.

Violinist Paul Huang (2017) performed recently at the Panthers vs. Vikings NFL football game at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. The game was before a live crowd of over 75,000 people and was broadcast on FOX Sports and ESPN — reaching a TV and digital platform audience of over 15 million people internationally. The Taiwanese-American violinist performed his own arrangement of the United States national anthem.

Tenor Pene Pati ( (2019, 2021, 2024) was named the winner of the Reader's Choice International Opera Awards in 2022. This Samoan tenor was also hailed as ​“the most exceptional tenor discovery of the last decade” (Opéra-Online).

Pene Pati (2019, 2021, 2024), tenor, and Nadine Sierra (2016), soprano, starred in Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” at the San Francisco Opera in September 2019. Click here to see them in this outstanding video clip!

Albert Cano Smit (2019, 2021), pianist, was named a 1st place winner of the Young Concert Artists International Competition in November 2019.

Yolanda Kondonassis (2018), harpist, performed here in April 2018. She received her second Grammy nomination in the classical instrumental solo category in 2020. While she didn’t win, composer Jennifer Higdon won in the Classical Composition category for the harp concerto that she wrote for Yolanda!