Tuesday, May 7, 2024 @ 7:30pm – 9:30pm (EDT)
Central Presbyterian Church, New York, NY, United States
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$20 (students free with ID)

Join us for the final concert of the season featuring works by Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich and Felix Mendelssohn.

We are grateful to our individual contributors who share our passion for music and the arts. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Central's program operating fund which makes programming such as this possible.

About Rachel Lee Priday, violin

Violinist Rachel Lee Priday (PRY-day) is a passionate and inquisitive explorer in all her musical ventures, in search of contemporary relevance when performing the standard violin repertoire, and in discovering and commissioning new works. Her wide-ranging repertoire and eclectic programming reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives.

Rachel Lee Priday has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, including the Chicago, Saint Louis, Houston, Seattle, and National Symphony Orchestras, the Boston Pops, and the Berlin Staatskapelle. Recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues including the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Musée du Louvre, Verbier Festival, Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series in Chicago, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival in Germany, and tours of South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Committed to new music, and making enriching community and global connections, Rachel takes a multidisciplinary approach to performing that lends itself to new commissions organically merging poetry, dance, drama, stimulating visuals and music. Recent seasons have seen a new Violin Sonata commissioned from Pulitzer Prize Finalist Christopher Cerrone and the premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s “The Orphic Moment” in an innovative staging that mixed poetry, drama, visuals, and music. Rachel has collaborated several times with Ballet San Jose, and was lead performer in “Tchaikovsky: None But The Lonely Heart” during a week-long theatrical concert with Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Her work as soloist with the Asia America New Music Institute promoted new music relationships and cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining new music premieres and educational outreach in the US, China, Korea and Vietnam.

Rachel began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York to study with iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay, and continued her studies at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division with Itzhak Perlman. Rachel holds a B.A. degree in English from Harvard University and an M.M. from the New England Conservatory, where she studied with Miriam Fried. Since Fall 2019, she serves as Assistant Professor of Violin at the University of Washington School of Music.

Recent and upcoming concerto engagements include the Pacific Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony, and Bangor Symphony. Since making her orchestral debut at the Aspen Music Festival in 1997, she has performed with numerous orchestras across the country, such as the symphony orchestras of Colorado, Alabama, Knoxville, Rockford, and New York Youth Symphony. In Europe and in Asia, she has appeared at the Moritzburg Festival in Germany and with orchestras in Graz, Austria, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea, where she performed with the KBS Symphony, Seoul Philharmonic and Russian State Symphony Orchestra on tour.

Rachel has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Family Circle, and The Strad. Her concerts have been broadcast on major media outlets in the U.S., Germany, Korea, South Africa, and Brazil, including a televised concert in Rio de Janeiro, numerous radio appearances on 98.7 WFMT Chicago radio, and American Public Media’s Performance Today. She been featured on the Disney Channel, “Fiddling for the Future” and “American Masters” on PBS, and the Grammy Awards.

Praised by the Chicago Tribune for her “irresistible panache,” Rachel Lee Priday enthralls audiences with her riveting stage presence and “rich, mellifluous sound.” The Baltimore Sun wrote, “It’s not just her technique, although clearly there’s nothing she can’t do on the fingerboard or with her bow. What’s most impressive is that she is an artist who can make the music sing… And though her tone is voluptuous and sexy where it counts, she concluded the ‘Intermezzo’ with such charm that her listeners responded with a collective chuckle of approval as she finished.”

She performs on a Nicolo Gagliano violin (Naples, 1760), double-purfled with fleurs-de-lis, named Alejandro.

http://rachelleepriday.com/

About Doori Na, violin

Known for his sweet and "sumptuous" (The New York Times) tone, American-born violinist Doori Na took up violin at the age of four and began his studies with Li Lin at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He quickly made his first performance with orchestra at age seven with the Peninsula Youth Symphony as the first prize winner of the concerto competition. Thereafter Doori went on to win top prizes in The Sound of Music Festival, The Korea Times Youth Music Competition, the Chinese Music Teacher’s Association, The Menuhin Dowling Young Artist Competition, The Junior Bach Festival, VOCE of the Music Teacher's Association of California, and The Pacific Musical Society. Receiving full scholarships to private high school Crossroads School of Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, he moved to Los Angeles to study with renown violin teacher, Robert Lipsett, at The Colburn Music School. There he appeared as soloist with the Palisades Symphony, Brentwood Symphony, and Torrance Symphony. During that time, the summer of 2004 was Doori’s first time at the Perlman Music Program where his expression and musical identity were greatly influenced. He has been a part of the program ever since and participated in many of their special residencies in Florida, Vermont, New York, and Israel.

Currently living in New York City, Doori plays with numerous ensembles around the city. He has played with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with tours in the US, Japan, and Europe performing in venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York and the Musiverien in Vienna. Other orchestras include American Symphony Orchestra at Bard College, American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House, and Riverside Symphony at the Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. The music of our time has also been an integral part of Doori's New York life. He is part of the New Music Project of Argento Chamber Ensemble performing the works of Georg Friedrich Haas, Beat Furrer, Tristan Murail, and many more. One of his favorite groups to work with is New Chamber Ballet, where he has been a member since 2013. He provides live solo music for dance at their regular venue of City Center Studios and have also gone on tour to Lake Tahoe, Germany, and Guatemala.

Chamber music has always been a big part of Doori’s growth as a musician. His first endeavor playing in an ensemble was with the Luna Trio as a teenager, and were finalists at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2016. From then on, he has collaborated with members of the Juilliard String Quartet, New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera and has been fortunate to tour with Itzhak Perlman at venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Other notable experiences include performing at the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach with the Bonhoeffer Trio and Les Amies trio.

Doori has also found that teaching and doing outreach is essential to being a well rounded musician. He currently works at the Juilliard School as a teaching assistant to Catherine Cho and gives lessons as well as running play-through classes for the students. In 2015, he returned to the Music Teacher’s Association of California to give a masterclass and recital for their annual convention. Outreach to schools includes going to Sarasota, Florida with the Perlman Music Program/Suncoast, Brazil with Juilliard Global Ventures, the British International School of Chicago with Juilliard President Joseph Polisi, and more.

Doori attended the Juilliard School with the Dorothy Starling and Dorothy Delay scholarships and holds a Bachelor's and Master's Degree where he studied under Itzhak Perlman, Catherine Cho, and Donald Weilerstein. He was concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra and was fortunate to play on a Guadagnini and Vuillaume violin from the Juilliard School's prestigious violin collection.

https://doorinaviolin.com/

About Jia Kim, cello

Korean-American cellist Jia Kim, recipient of the prestigious 2017 career award from the
Leonore Annenberg Foundation for Performing and Visual Arts, leads a dynamic musical life as a performer, educator, and a passionate advocate for the Arts. She has appeared on stages across the US, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East with performances broadcasted on WQXR,
PBS, KMZT Classical, and acclaimed by The New York Times. An avid chamber musician, Jia has performed at Tanglewood, Ravinia, Caramoor, Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, Chicago's Orchestra Hall, the 92Y, and joined Itzhak Perlman on a tour across Toronto, Mexico City, Virginia Beach, Miami and New York City.

Jia has been invited as Visiting Artist at the University of Hawaii, American Academy of Jordan, College of William and Mary, Grand Valley State University, and served as a Tone Judge for the Violin Society of America's 2016 International Competition.

Currently she is on Faculty at The Juilliard School Precollege Division, The Perlman Music Program, and New York Youth Symphony's Chamber Music Program. As Artistic Director of Central Chamber Series in NYC and Spruce Peak Chamber Music Society in Stowe, VT, she is committed to connecting with a wider audience through the powerful language of Chamber Music, both through education and performance.

Jia is evermore grateful to her mentors and teachers Ronald Leonard, Itzhak and Toby Perlman, and to Joel Krosnick, with whom she studied at the Juilliard School for a Bachelor and Master Degree in Music. Jia performs on a Testore cello made in 1748.

https://www.jiakimcello.com/

Central Presbyterian Church

593 Park Ave
New York, NY 10065
United States

https://www.centralpres.com/