A photo from the Petite Concert I played back in June was on Scarsdale Inquirer.

 At Petite Concerts, kids get to touch and try an instrument after a short performance. Our audience is pre-schoolers, age 0 and up. It's a great opportunity to intruduce live-music to young audience (they are usually not welcomed to concerts). They can be kids during the music and they get to participate in the music by clapping, singing, dancing etc.
 We are trying to branch out the project. If anyone in/around the Tri-State area is interested in bringing this project into your town, please contact us!

Thank you to those who came to the benefit event, "A Day of Music: An El Sistema Fundraiser" in Rye Brook on September 21. We raised over $630 by the admission, bake-sale and raffle ticket sale. Many thanks to our raffle donors; Long Ridge Music Center, Joseph Dermody and Fuji Mart CT!!
 And great job to young musicians who performed in the Young People's Concert! It was my great pleasure to present them.

 The recital went well and I'm very happy I got to play this great program with Benjamin Steinhardt!

 I'm editing the recital videos and I have the first piece up on YouTube. Hope you will enjoy my "Meditation from Thais"!

 The Brahms sonata might have been too heavy for our audience but I could tell some of them were really enjoying it. I, too, did enjoy performing it!
  After we performed, many musicians from SUNY Purchase College played solo and chamber music. It was great to meet them and listen to them, too.

  Thank you Atria Rye Brook for hosting such a lovely event, asking me to perform and sending the donations to Ang Misyon! Thank you to all the performers, students' families for taking the time to participate in the benefit. A big thank you to everyone who attended the event. And last but not least -- thank you, Benjamin Steinhardt for being such a wonderful pianist! I had a great time preparing for this recital with him; the rehearsals and music making were just "right", we worked efficiently and we got better and better as a duo. And we had delicious breaks during rehearsals (with famous donuts from Lakeside Diner in Stamford) and I got to meet his super adorable dog! :-)

 Of course this is not the end of a journey; I'm looking forward to the next big concert in early November -- Mozart Clarinet Quintet and Shostakovich String Quartet No.7.

 Here's a video of Piazzolla's "Tango étude No.3". Due to its copyright I decided to only include part of the piece. Hope you will enjoy it!

 Performed at Atria Rye Brook, NY on June 7.

 Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra visited five elementary schools in Ridgefield to give educational concerts this past week. I hope our young audience and their teachers enjoyed the concerts and learned something out of it.

 The program was to introduce a compositional form of fugue. Started with Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, we demonstrated fugue themes and how they develop by handing it to different instruments.
 And then... this!

 That's right, ANGRY BIRDS theme! I don't have to mention how excited our young audience was to hear us play it. Then we played a fugue based on Angry Birds theme, in Baroque style.

 Then "Fuga y Misterio" by Piazzolla -- here's a YouTube clip of it, Piazzolla himself playing it on bandoneon.

  Then we had a "guest conductor", a student from each school, conducting "Ode to Joy". That was really adorable. Each conductor has different characters and it shows very much in their conducting.
 We closed the concert with Can-Can. We invited the audience to dance to it or clap, and I think that was the most fun part for them.

 I am actually starting to plan educational concerts for young audience and I got some ideas (what works and what doesn't with this age group). Stay tuned!

 This past Sunday concert at Concordia College - New York concluded my seven consecutive weeks of concerts. I have one weekend off and then re-starting performing again.
 
  The last seven weeks was a series of difficult program and I had 2 weeks maximum to prepare for them. I'm so glad it all went well! The most fun I had was with the Long Ridge Music Center faculty recital and "All About Folk!" concert but I also got to play great orchestral literature. There were a few pieces that I had not known or even known of, and one of them, Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire by Wagner, surprisingly became my favorite. Why did I say "surprisingly"? Well, I had never really liked Wagner's music. Not that I had had that many opportunities to play his music (because his operas are lengthy and not budget-friendly for opera companies), but the ones I had played/known were not my favorites. A friend of mine had pointed out that I need to give it a chance. Well, he was right.  Here's a YouTube video of Wotan's Farewell and Magic Fire. Enjoy!

Thank you to those who came to our "All About Folk!" concert in Brooklyn (it was a nasty rainy evening)! The program featured folk-inspired pieces from all over the world, written in the 20th century. It was quite a challenging program for performers but was a good one, covering different regions of the world and each piece has its own unique characters.

 I would also like to thank the Zeavin-Moss family for hosting such a lovely house concert. It was set in their nice living room and the acoustics were just great. They gave us a warm welcome and it was great to meet and greet the audience members after the concert. It's more relaxed than concert hall situation and we enjoyed wine and cheese afterwards, too. 


We are hoping to repeat the program, in a concert setting and an outreach concert setting. If you know of any venues, schools and institutions, please let me know!

The program was;
Bartok -- Romanian Folk Dances (piano solo)
Kodaly -- Duo (violin and cello)
Sheng -- My Songs (piano solo)
Miyagi -- Haruno Umi (violin and piano)
Piazzolla -- Primavera Portena and Oblivion (piano trio)
O'Connor -- Appalachia Waltz (cello solo)
Zorman -- On Three Things (piano trio)

 Bartok and Kodaly covered Eastern Europe, Sheng and Miyagi Asia, Piazzolla South America, O'Connor North America and Zorman took us back to Eastern Europe (Israel) .