Pianist Sejoon Park

PRELUDE RECITAL
Friday, June 4
Wisconsin Conservatory of Music
7:30 pm
Adults $15; Students $10

Sejoon Park, 2008 winner, sets the standard for the competition to follow. His program includes works by Robert Schumann, Domenico Scarlatti, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Speaking about himself, Sejoon says, "I am a normal teenager who happens to be in love with music.... to feel the connection between myself and the audience is extremely rewarding”… something Sejoon Park tries to achieve everyday. When Sejoon is not performing or listening to piano music, he enjoys being with his friends, participating in athletics and listening to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart operas, Dimitri Shostakovich symphonies and Peter Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. But when he was a young student in Seoul, Korea, he was not excited about taking piano lessons. Later on he experienced the joy of expressing himself at the piano and became “addicted to music.”

Sejoon was eleven when he moved to the United States to live with his aunt and to study at the Levin School of Music. When he arrived, he could not speak English. Today, he is an honor student, graduate of McLean High School and college sophomore. Sejoon attends the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University, where he studies with Boris Slutsky

In 2007 Sejoon won first prize in the Aspen Music Festival Piano Concerto and performed Edward Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Orchestra of the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. In 2006 he won first Prize in the Southeastern Piano Concerto Competition and performed the Grieg’s concerto with the South Carolina Philharmonic. Other awards include first prizes in the Marlin-Engel and the Cogen Concerto Competitions, both sponsored by the Levine School of Music in Washington D. C., and first prize at the Alexandria Performing Art Association Competition, second prize in the Oberlin International Piano Competition, second prize in the PianoArts 2005 National Competition and third prize in the Eastman Music School International Piano Competition. Sejoon was selected for the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award, which carries a generous scholarship and the opportunity to appear on the well-known "From the Top" radio show.

PIANOARTS AWARDS:
2008 First Place Prize

2006 Scholarship to the International Keyboard Institute and Festival at Mannes College of Music in New York City

2006 Best Performance of a Duo