The Musicians of Lenox Hill
Annual Spring Chamber Music Concert
Emilie-Anne Gendron, Violin
Anna Elashvili, Violin
Wei-Yang Andy Lin, Viola
Sean Katsuyama, Cello
Soo-Kyung Park, Flute
Yeontaek Oh, Piano
In endowing this annual concert in memory of Dr. Hyman and Jerrold Levy, the late Mrs. Muriel Levy sought to promote the outstanding talents of the Musicians of Lenox Hill. Soo-Kyung Park, artistic director and founding member of the Musicians of Lenox Hill, has led the ensemble for more than 2 decades.
Dr. Hyman Levy was a renowned and beloved cardiologist, scientist, and teacher at Mount Sinai Hospitals, and incorporated his kind spirit and hard-working attitude in everything he did. In addition to his gifts in medicine, Dr. Levy had a passion for the arts and was an avid member of the music community as well as a violinist. He often gathered his colleagues to play chamber music at the hospital, and now his collection of selected chamber music has generously been donated to the Musicians of Lenox Hill. His late son, Jerrold Levy, was a flutist and enjoyed playing the instrument throughout his life. Jerrold especially loved spending time at the Hebrew School of Temple Israel as well as in services. Dr. Levy's contributions to his community through medicine, research and music will always be cherished.
The Musicians of Lenox Hill
Anna Elashvili
Anna Elashvili, violin, hailed as "riveting" by the New York Times and “maintaining ferocious accuracy into the upper register” by the New Yorker has appeared as a soloist, chamber musician and concertmaster around the world. She has collaborated with renowned artists such as Maxim Vengerov, Lynn Harrell, Daniel Hope and Dawn Upshaw.
Ms. Elashvili is currently a violinist in Decoda, an Affiliate Ensemble of Carnegie Hall, and the Musicians of Lenox Hill. She is a former first violinist of the Bryant Park Quartet and has performed with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, NOVUS NY and many others. Her international travels include concerts in England, Mexico, Germany, Canada, Israel, Iceland and Abu Dhabi.
Ms. Elashvili has written arrangements for several ensembles which have been performed around the country and in Europe. Anna commissioned and premiered works by prominent composers including, Valerie Coleman, Brad Balliett, Du Yun, Jane Antonia Cornish, Christopher Theofanidis, and Nico Muhly. She also enjoys collaborating with dance companies and has worked with Lar Lubovitch, Mark Morris and Wendy Whelan.
Ms. Elashvili is currently violin faculty the Special Music School and Yellow Barn’s Young Artist Program. Anna received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from The Juilliard School and completed a fellowship at Carnegie’s program “Ensemble Connect”. She has attended summer festivals including Yellow Barn, Perlman Music Program, Tanglewood and the VerbierMusic Festival, where she served as concertmaster for several European tours.
Ms. Elashvili performs on a Sam Zygmuntowicz violin on a generous extended loan.
Emilie-Anne Gendron
Lauded by the New York Times as a “brilliant soloist” and by The Strad for her “marvellous and lyrical playing,” violinist Emilie-Anne Gendron enjoys an active and versatile career based in New York City. She is a member of the Momenta Quartet (whose eclectic vision encompasses contemporary music of all aesthetic backgrounds alongside great music from the past); serves as one of the concertmasters of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; and has been on the roster of the Marlboro Music Festival and the touring Musicians from Marlboro since 2011. Ms. Gendron also appears with TaleaEnsemble, A Far Cry, New Asia Chamber Music Society, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Toomai String Quintet. In addition to her duties with Orpheus, she has served as concertmaster of Iris Orchestra, Sejong Soloists, and Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, among others. She is a founding member of Ensemble Échappé, a new-music sinfonietta, as well as the Gamut Bach Ensemble, in residence with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Her extensively varied international appearances have included recitals in Sweden and at the Louvre in Paris; festivals in Russia, Finland, and Jordan; and recently, major venues in China, South Korea, Argentina, Chile, and Colombia.
Born in the U.S. to Japanese and French-Canadian parents, and a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, Ms. Gendron was trained at the Juilliard School where her teachers were Won Bin Yim, Dorothy DeLay, David Chan, and Hyo Kang. She holds a B.A. in Classics from Columbia University (magna cum laude and with Phi Beta Kappa honors), and a Master of Music degree and the coveted Artist Diploma from Juilliard. For more information, please visit www.emilieannegendron.com
Andy Lin
Taiwanese-American violist and erhuist (Chinese violin), Dr. Andy Lin, is recognized as one of the most promising and active performers who specialized in both western and eastern instruments. Praised by The New York Times “Taiwanese-born violist Andy Lin… is also a virtuoso on the erhu, and he gave a brilliant performance.” Andy is the artistic director and co-founder of the New Asia Chamber Music Society. His recent appearances have included an erhu solo collaboration with world renowned pianist Lang Lang and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Lang Lang’s “The Disney Book” live in concert at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
Dr. Lin has appeared as a viola soloist with orchestras such as Yonkers Philharmonic Orchestra, Orford Academy Orchestra, Incheon Philharmonic and the New York Classical Players. He has also been invited to perform chamber music alongside with Itzhak Perlman where The New York Times described “Mr. Perlman, playing first violin… answered in kind by the violist Andy Lin.”
In addition to his accomplishments as a classical musician, he is also an erhu virtuoso. He has been invited by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra of the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago to play the solo erhu part in “Iris dévoilée” by Chen Qi-Gang. He has also appeared as an erhu solo with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and Busan Metropolitan Traditional Music Orchestra. In 2018, he performed an erhu concerto “Wild Grass” by Wenjing Guo with the Juilliard Orchestra at its Focus! Festival final concert at Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in which it was featured on the New York Times, this also made him the only person in the Juilliard history who performed concertos twice with the Juilliard Orchestra on both western and eastern instruments.
Sean Katsuyama
A versatile and accomplished cellist, Sean Katsuyama is a frequent performer on New York’s concert stages and Broadway theaters and has performed solo and chamber music in many of its most noted venues. He is a founding member of the Iris Quartet, which is now entering its eleventh year of concerts. Following 9/11, he had the honor to play for workers at the World Trade Center site.
As an orchestral player he was a member of the Hong Kong Philharmonic and Pacific Music Festival Orchestras, touring Europe, Japan, and Korea. He also toured the North American continent with “Star Wars in Concert”.
Mr. Katsuyama is a graduate of The Juilliard School, where he studied with Channing Robbins and Harvey Shapiro. His early teachers include Lee Fiser in Cincinnati and Orlando Cole in Philadelphia. He is on the faculty of Bard College’s Preparatory Division and teaches classes at the Globe Institute and the Collegiate School and is regularly invited to adjudicate at the Hong Kong Schools of Music Festival.
His hobbies include the Chinese, Japanese, and Western versions of chess, photography, and golf. His instrument is a modern reproduction of the "Sleeping Beauty” Montagnanacello, formerly owned by Orlando Cole.
Soo-Kyung Park
Flutist Soo-Kyung Park enjoys a multi-faceted career as an international soloist, chamber musician, artistic director, producer, and teacher. She was accepted to The Juilliard School, Pre-College Division at the age of 11, where she studied with Bonnie Lichter, and continued her studies at The Juilliard School, where she earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees under the tutelage of Julius Baker and Jeanne Baxtresser.
Ms. Park has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia in many of the world’s major concert halls. She has been a guest artist at Youngstown Flute Day in Ohio, New York Flute Center Salon Series, solo appearance with the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra at IBK Hall in Seoul and Double Concerto performances with Keith Underwood and Carol Wincenc in NYC. In 2013, She released her first album “Reminiscing” under the SONY Korea label.
Highly in demand as an instructor, Ms. Park is currently on the faculty at New York University and Manhattan School of Music, Pre-College. In addition, she’s also on the faculty of The Consummate Flutist summer masterclass series at Carnegie Mellon University. In addition to teaching, she has produced and presented numerous masterclasses and recitals by world-renowned flutists such as Jeanne Baxtresser, Julien Beaudiment, Linda Chesis, Mathieu Dufour, and Karl-Heinz Schutz.
An avid chamber musician, she is artistic director and a founding member of the Musicians of Lenox Hill, an ensemble she has led for annual performances at the Temple of Israel in NYC for two decades. She is also co-founder of NY Flutists, a professional flute ensemble based in NYC.
Yeontaek Oh
Korean born pianist, Yeontaek Oh started playing the piano at age 5. He studied at the Seoul Arts Center Academy for Gifted, Seoul Arts High School, Seoul National University, and then at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he graduated with honors. Recently, he finished his Konzertexamen degree at Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and his Consertiste degree at Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris.
An accomplished soloist, Mr. Oh made his concerto debut with the Wonju Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 13. Since then, he has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Daegu Philharmonic Orchestra, Daejeon Pop Orchestra, Euro-Asian Orchestra, Gwangju Philharmonic Orchestra, JeonjuClamu Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of the University of Alicante, CRR-Cergy Orchestra, Freiburg MusikhochschuleOrchestra, Morocco Philharmonic Orchestra, OrquestaSinfónica de Castilla y León, and Rome Tre University Orchestra.
In addition to winning the first prize at the International Piano Festival of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in 2022, Mr. Oh has won over ten national competitions in Korea including the prestigious Joong-ang Music Competition, and numerous international awards such as Valsecia Musica International Piano Competition (2nd Prize), PalmaD’oro International Piano Competition (2nd Prize), Concours International de Piano de Lyon (3rd Prize), Concorso International Pianistica “Piana del Cavaliere” (2nd Prize), Piano Campus International Competition (1st Prize), Animato International Piano Competition (3rd Prize) and the Morocco Philharmonic Orchestra Competition (2nd Prize). More recently, he also won the prizes at the Prix du Piano Berne International Competition (2nd Prize), Arthur Lepthien Wettbewerb (1st Prize), Frechilla -Zuloaga International Piano Competition (1st Prize), and the Rome Chopin International Competition (2nd Prize).
Mr. Oh is currently pursuing his DMA degree at Manhattan School of Music.
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