The McGraw-Hill Companies' Young Artists Showcase on WQXR 96.3FM with host Robert Sherman opens 30th season with Juilliard pianists Michael Brown and Rachel Naomi Kudo

Live concert broadcast scheduled for Wednesday, September 26 at 9 PM from Juilliard’s Paul Hall Pianists are winners of the 2007 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition Airi Yoshioka is winner of The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Robert Sherman Award for Music Education and Community Outreach

On Wednesday, September 26 at 9 PM in Paul Hall, The Juilliard School will present a concert featuring the winners of the 2007 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition: pianists Michael Brown and Rachel Naomi Kudo. The concert will be broadcast live over WQXR, 96.3 FM and opens the 30th season of The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Young Artists Showcase with host Robert Sherman. Mr. Brown performs Federico Mompou’s Cancion y danza, No. 9, his own compositions: Homage to Mompou and Homage to Copland, Copland’s Piano Sonata, Vivace and Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53. Ms. Kudo performs Carl Vine’s Piano Sonata No. 1. Mr. Brown and Ms. Kudo also perform Brahms’ Hungarian Dances No. 5 and 7.

The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Robert Sherman Award for Music Education and Community Outreach also will be awarded during the broadcast to violinist Airi Yoshioka. The award includes a $10,000 grant to support ongoing projects in music education and community outreach. Previous winners have included William Harvey (2006), Alpin Hong (2005), and Jennifer Kloetzel (2004).

No tickets are required for this FREE concert. For further information, call the Juilliard Box Office at (212) 769-7406. Box Office hours are Monday through Friday from 11 AM – 6 PM. The Juilliard Box Office is accessible by elevator, escalator, or stairs located on W. 65th Street near Amsterdam Avenue. For further information, call the Juilliard Box Office at (212) 769-7406 or visit www.juilliard.edu. To get to Paul Hall, enter at 144 West 66th Street and take the elevator to the first floor.
       
The Bachauer competition awards young artists, in addition to this performance, scholarships to The Juilliard School, covering full tuition for the 2007-08 academic year. The Gina Bachauer Scholarship Fund for gifted pianists was established in 1979 with a bequest from Mrs. Lillian Rogers of New Orleans, a lifelong friend of Ms. Bachauer, who died in 1976.

Recent Bachauer winners include Michael Bukhman, William Chen, Ran Dank, Ching-Wen Hsiao, Soyeon Lee, Adam Neiman, Ian Parker, Edward Robie, Konstantin Soukhovetski, Chuan Qin, Xun Wang, Orion Weiss, and Xiang Zou.

Bachauer Award Winners

Born in Washington D.C. to Japanese-Korean parents, pianist Rachel Naomi Kudo is the recipient of the 2008 Gilmore Young Artist Award. She was the only American finalist at the 2005 Fifteenth International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, and was awarded second prize at the 2005 Seventh National Chopin Competition of the United States. Named a 2004 Davidson Fellow Laureate, she was awarded a scholarship by the Davidson Institute of Talent Development. An avid chamber musician, her piano trio won the silver medal at the 2003 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. Ms. Kudo has performed with the Warsaw Philharmonic, Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Reno Philharmonic and the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra, among others. She has been featured on the WFMT Chicago radio programs Impromptu and Introductions as well as The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Young Artists Showcase on WQXR. Ms. Kudo is an undergraduate in her third-year at The Juilliard School, studying with Yoheved Kaplinsky.
       
A native of Long Island, pianist Michael Brown is a double major undergraduate in his third-year at The Juilliard School, studying piano with Jerome Lowenthal and composition with Samuel Adler. He has won top prizes in the Friday Woodmere Music Club’s Young Artists Competition and the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Competition. As a winner of the Long Island Philharmonic’s Young Artist Competition, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, K. 466 with the Long Island Philharmonic. Mr. Brown also won first prize for the one-piano, four hands ensemble round of the second New York Piano Competition sponsored by the Stecher and Horowitz Foundation. He was also featured on National Public Radio’s From the Top, playing George Perle’s Six Celebratory Inventions. As a composer, Mr. Brown’s songs and clarinet trio were premiered in Berlin, Germany. He has also won the New York Arts Ensemble’s Young Composers Competition for his work Echoes of Byzantium. The New York State School Music Association’s Composers Competition and the Long Island Composers Alliance competition have awarded him top honors, and he is a winner of the Morton Gould Young Composers Award, presented by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). His other teachers include Paul Schenly, Adam Kent, and Joshua Gilinsky. Mr. Brown is the co-founder of New Paths, New Music – an organization that promotes new music by composers in the New York City area.

Robert Sherman Award Winner

Violinist Airi Yoshioka began her teaching-artist work as a Morse Fellow at The Juilliard School and continued with the New York Philharmonic and the Lincoln Center Institute. Currently, she is assistant professor of music at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) where her responsibilities include teaching the Arts in Education course, violin, and chamber music. She founded and directs the teaching artist and instrumental fellowships, which introduce music into the lives of primary and secondary school students in Baltimore while giving hands-on teaching experiences to students at UMBC. Her work also includes organizing a highly-acclaimed three-day symposium called Artreach!, which brings together teaching artists and educators from the Baltimore and Washington D.C. areas to discuss new ways of tapping into the power of the arts. Ms. Yoshioka is a founding member of the Damocles Trio and has performed and recorded with the members of the Emerson and Brentano Quartets. She also performs with the new music ensembles Continuum, ModernWorks, Son Sonora, Azure, and Ruckus.

The McGraw-Hill Companies’ Young Artists Showcase is a weekly program hosted by Robert Sherman and spotlights performances by some of the country’s finest rising young artists.  Harold McGraw III, chairman, president and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies, is the intermission speaker. The McGraw-Hill Companies is a leading global information services provider meeting worldwide needs in the financial services, education and business information markets through leading brands such as Standard & Poor’s, McGraw-Hill Education, BusinessWeek, and J.D. Power and Associates. The Corporation has more than 280 offices in 40 countries. Additional information is available at http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.

The Juilliard School established this country’s standard for education in the performing arts, beginning with music in 1905. In 1951, its Dance Division was established, with combined training in contemporary and ballet technique. Juilliard became part of Lincoln Center in 1968, and added a four-year Drama program. In 2001, Juilliard broke new ground with its first jazz program, now expanded and including advanced and college curricula. More than 800 young artists, from 49 states (including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia) and 46 foreign countries, attend Juilliard. Among its celebrated alumni are Pina Bausch, Van Cliburn, James Conlon, Miles Davis, Renée Fleming, Kevin Kline, Laura Linney, Lar Lubovitch, Patti LuPone, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Itzhak Perlman, Leontyne Price, Leonard Slatkin, Kevin Spacey, Paul Taylor, Robin Williams, and many others. For more information, visit Juilliard’s Web site at www.juilliard.edu.