Summer is here and we are busy getting ready for the ninth annual Great Wall International Music Academy. This year features concerts at the famous National Center for the Performing Arts and the addition of our piano department in cooperation with the University Mozarteum's Leopold Mozart Institut. We're also looking ahead to next year when we get to celebrate our tenth anniversary in Beijing! But before I head to China, you can find me in Iceland performing with the Sassmannshaus Piano Trio and conducting at the new Harpa International Music Festival in June.
I also saw this news about the UK's largest Stradivarius exhibition this summer in Oxford. Unfortunately the exhibit will close just before my trip to Oxford for the 2013 European String Conference, so leave me a comment below if you are able to take it in!
Have you seen this story from the BBC exploring the search for the perfect new wood for violin making? Apparently the best time to cut down a tree for new wood is at night at the end of autumn when the moon is the lowest in the horizon!
I am happy to share with you a new video featuring violinist Zhang Ying performing the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on our Showcase series in Cincinnati, below.
We are very excited to announce that this summer, the Great Wall International Music Academy will be featured at the world famous National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, aka "The Egg." You likely already know that this is our ninth season of the academy and this year we are starting a new piano department in cooperation with the University Mozarteum's Leopold Mozart Institut.
I would like to share with you two exciting pieces of news. Great Wall International Music Academy faculty member Gao Can has been given the 1617 "Lobkowicz" Amati on loan from the Stradivari Society in Chicago. Below, you can see a photo of Gao Can, left, and a photo of Gao Can, myself, and Lang Lang in the center.
In Cincinnati, two of my talented young students, Christina Nam, 10, and Skye Park, 11, recently had the wonderful experience of performing the Bach Double Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under the baton on Robert Treviño. You may have also heard them perform on From the Top's broadcast from Great Wall International Music Academy this fall.
I hope the new year has treated you well in its first month. There has been a lot of exciting news in the violin world, including a new record holder for the world's most expensive violin, finding an excellent home in the hands of the incomparable violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. Read more about it here.
We were very saddened to hear the news of the passing of well known violin maker Carl Fredrick Becker from Chicago. Read a touching rememberance from Laurie Niles here.
