Taking Center Stage

Academy Award, Tony, and Grammy winners call it home. So does the National Symphony Orchestra. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is one of the foremost performance venues in the United States, and now a group of Shepherd School students have been invited to grace its stage.

The seven students performed at the Kennedy Center in May as part of the Conservatory Project, a new program designed to develop and present young talent from the leading music schools in the United States. It showcases young performers who demonstrate extraordinary talent with seven performances of classical music, jazz, and opera. The participants had the opportunity to be critiqued by world-renowned musicians, including Leonard Slatkin and Placido Domingo. After this initial series, the project will be presented biannually in late winter and late spring. This year’s performances were broadcast live on the Web from the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage.

The Shepherd School was one of eight leading music conservatories selected to participate in the program. “In this first year, students from our string, woodwind/brass, and piano departments were featured on the program,” said Robert Yekovich, dean of the Shepherd School of Music. The students were Benjamin Jaber, horn; Hyojin Ahn, piano; Lola Astanova, piano; and the Enso String Quartet, the graduate quartet-in-residence. “These students are indicative of the extraordinary level of talent that is pervasive in the Shepherd School,” Yekovich said. “We were delighted to have them as this year’s representatives. Our appearance at the Kennedy Center will only further enhance the lofty reputation enjoyed by the Shepherd School.”

The repertoire presented by the Shepherd School students began with Concertino for Horn, op. 45, no. 5 by Lars-Erik Larsson and “Flight of Fancy” by Richard Lavenda, professor of composition and theory at Rice. Both pieces were performed by Jaber, who was accompanied by Ahn. Jaber, a senior horn performance major, has gained widespread recognition as a musician with a diverse range and accomplishment through his performances in solo, orchestra, and chamber music. He made his solo debut performing Mozart’s Concerto no. 3 in E-flat with the American Radio Chamber Orchestra in 2000. In 2003, he also performed Concerto for Two Horns by Antonio Vivaldi with the Houston Chamber Orchestra, alongside Jacek Muzyk, who currently serves as the Dallas Symphony’s associate principal horn.

Jaber received first prize in 2003 at the University Division of the American Horn Competition, and he recently was appointed principal horn of Houston’s Orchestra X. He also is a substitute hornist with the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra and has participated in many nationally broadcast productions. As a chamber musician, Jaber is the hornist of the Texas Brass Ensemble and a frequent performer with the Paragon Brass Ensemble.

“I am honored beyond words to have been chosen to represent the Shepherd School in this great event,” Jaber said. “Being a student here has been a dream come true, but I never could have imagined that the great, eminent artists who make up our faculty would have the faith in me to allow me to perform in this capacity. It is a blessing, and I intend to make the absolute best of it.”

Ahn, a doctoral candidate in piano performance, began winning prestigious piano competitions when she was 9 years old in Korea and has received numerous scholarships and fellowships in Korea and the United States. A proponent of new music, Ahn has premiered several new compositions for solo piano and a variety of ensembles. She was a member of Contemporary Directions Ensemble directed by Jonathan Shames and has collaborated with composers Karen Tanaka, Evan Chambers, and Susan Botti. Ahn also has performed with the University of Michigan Band and Orchestra, the Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra, and Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra and has given recitals in Italy, Korea, Mexico, and the United States.

The third Shepherd School student to perform, Astanova is a graduate student in piano performance. She played Frédéric Chopin’s Sonata no. 2 in B-flat Minor, op. 35 “Funeral March.” Astanova began touring at the age of 8 and has played at concerts in the United States, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, and Russia both as a soloist and with orchestras.

In 1996, Astanova was selected as a laureate of the second international Chopin Competition for Young Pianists in Moscow. Her performances at the Big and Small Hall of the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory were featured in a Chopin Compilation album released in Europe by Zvuk Records and the Russian Chopin Society. During that same year, she played at a UNESCO event in Paris; her performance was featured in a UNESCO documentary, Prodigies of the 20th Century, and her performances also have appeared on international media, including CNN and the BBC. She is completing the recording of her first solo album, which is scheduled for release later this year in the United States.

Astanova said she was very excited to be chosen to represent the Shepherd School. “The Kennedy Center is a legendary concert hall, and performing there is a very special opportunity for any musician,” she said. “It is overwhelming to think of all the brilliant names that have performed there over the years. Being on that stage is a very powerful experience.”

The Enso String Quartet—composed of violinists Maureen Nelson and Tereza Stanislav, violist Robert Brophy, and cellist Richard Belcher—performed String Quartet in C Minor, D. 703 “Quartettsatz” by Franz Shubert and Episodes for String Quartet by Kurt Stallmann, assistant professor of composition and theory at Rice.

The Enso String Quartet is quickly becoming one of America’s leading young ensembles. The members hold degrees from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, Indiana University, Royal Northern College of Music in the United Kingdom, and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. They met while pursuing graduate degrees at Yale University, where they later worked with the Tokyo String Quartet.

Since then, they have amassed a truly incredible portfolio of awards and performances. They won the 2003 Concert Artists Guild International Competition and also earned top prizes at the Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition and the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. In April, the quartet made its New York debut on the Concert Artists Guild series at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Its future engagements include performances at the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s SummerFest and concerts at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall, the Chautauqua Institution, Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music, Chicago’s Music in the Loft Series, Market Square Concerts, Newtown Friends of Chamber Music, and the Bedford Chamber Music Series.

The string quartet has performed throughout the United States and abroad since its inception in 1999. It has performed at the Mostly Music and the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series of Chicago; SYZYGY, New Music at Rice; the Rockford Symphony Orchestra; and the Champaign–Urbana Symphony at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts. The quartet also toured Costa Rica as guest artists in the 12th International Costa Rica Music Festival, and other past performances have taken the ensemble to England and Canada, where the group was a finalist in the Banff Seventh International Quartet Competition. The group’s performances have been broadcast on PBS, Chicago’s WFMT, and Canada’s CBC radio.

Before becoming the graduate quartet-in-residence at the Shepherd School, the group held a graduate residency at Northern Illinois University. The ensemble’s commitment to bring classical music to the community includes performances at the Shepherd School geared toward children and emphasizing interaction between the audience and the quartet.

The other colleges and universities chosen to participate in the project were Berklee College of Music in Boston, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, the Juilliard School in New York, the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the School of Music at Indiana University at Bloomington.

—Ellen Chang