Four Yale School of Music pianists will perform later this month at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C., as part of the organization’s Conservatory Project.
Joo Hyeon Park, Rachel Cheung, and Esther Park will perform solo pieces and Lee Dionne “will represent the Yale School of Music in the Conservatory Project Chamber Ensemble, which is made up of a musician from each Conservatory Project school,” according to a Yale School of Music news release.
The Kennedy Center’s Conservatory Project is part of the organization’s Performing Arts for Everyone program, which, according to its website, “is designed to introduce the Kennedy Center and its programs to a far wider audience than ever before by providing a performance open to the public and free of charge 365 days a year.”
Part of the 15-year-old program is the Conservatory Project, which, the Kennedy Center’s website indicates, is “designed to present the best young musical artists in classical, jazz, musical theater, opera and more from our nation’s leading undergraduate and graduate conservatories, colleges and universities.”
The Conservatory Project takes place twice annually. Students from fifteen schools are expected to participate this winter, between Feb. 19 and March 13. The Yale School of Music students are scheduled to perform on Saturday, Feb. 25, on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. The performance will be streamed live, on the Internet.
According to the above-mentioned news release, the Yale School of Music students will perform works by Alexander Scriabin, Nikolai Medtner, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, and Béla Bartók.
In selecting students to participate in the Conservatory Project, the Yale School of Music tries to vary the instrumentation that will be represented. Students from the Yale School of Music have participated in the program since 2009.
In April 2011, the Linden String Quartet, an ensemble-in-residence at the Yale School of Music, represented the university on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. A Yale School of Music percussion ensemble performed as part of the Conservatory Project in March 2010.