Meet our Soloist!

Our opening night is just ONE week away, and we are delighted to work with Jeanyi Kim on Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77. 

A note from Jeanyi:

I chose the Brahms Violin Concerto because I have always loved it so much! There are so many great violin concertos (Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Sibelius, Mendelssohn to name a few), but none with quite as much depth of expression and emotion. Along with the Beethoven, it is one that the performer cannot lavish gratuitous display upon, otherwise it detracts from its power. It’s probably one of the most challenging and demanding of the soloist’s technical command and endurance, because of the unidiomatic leaps, arpeggios, double and triple stops and symphonic structure and length. This is a masterpiece written for the violin, but not by a violinist. 

Beautiful and intimate lyricism is there, but it’s interwoven into the greater whole and shared with other instruments in the orchestra (for instance the famous oboe solo in the opening of the 2nd movement.) This is a tour-de-force for both the soloist and orchestra, and definitely a bucket list piece for me!

Although I have played this piece in different settings, I’ve never had the opportunity to perform it with orchestra. I’m so honored and delighted to have been invited by conductor Kevin Sütterlin to solo with the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra. I couldn’t be more excited and thrilled to meet and collaborate with Maestro Sütterlin and the wonderful musicians of the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra!!!

Join us on September 21 at 7:30pm for "Ben, Bonds, and Brahms" at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Cetner. Be sure to come early at 6:40pm for the pre-concert talk with Jeanyi and Kevin, and stay late for a free public reception in the lobby.

PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS HERE!

MORE ABOUT JEANYI KIM:

Jeanyi Kim is the Associate Concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Concertmaster of Milwaukee Musaik (also known as the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra). A Toronto native, Kim's command as a violinist and orchestral musician have brought her to illustrious venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, Salle Pleyel, and the Concertgebouw. As a guest, she has appeared as Assistant Leader of the London Symphony Orchestra (UK) under Sir Colin Davis and Valery Gergiev, Concertmaster of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, Principal Second of the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and guest musician of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Of her featured solo recital, the Journal Sentinel praised her performance, drawing likeness to that of "a glamorous international star." Kim is equally comfortable in soloist, chamber, and orchestral roles as well as a variety of styles, and her playing has been described as "engrossing…intelligent," and simultaneously having "easy grace" (Journal Sentinel) and "fistfuls of technical fireworks." (Urban Milwaukee) 

Recent solo appearances include performances with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Musaik Chamber Orchestra, Sunflower Music Festival Orchestra, Kenosha Symphony Orchestra and Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra. A passionate and energetic chamber musician, Kim is a founding member of the Philomusica Quartet, and is a regular artist at the esteemed Sunflower Music Festival. She has performed in a number of prominent chamber music series, including Frankly Music, Dame Myra Hess, Fine Arts at First, Searl Pickett, as well as on radio broadcasts for Wisconsin Public Radio, WFMT Chicago and Kansas Public Radio. In addition, she serves as Vice President of the Board of Milwaukee Musaik. 

A dedicated teacher, Kim has held faculty positions at various institutions, including University of Wisconsin-Parkside and University of New Haven, and during summers has taught at several festivals, including the Eleazar de Carvalho International Music Festival (Brazil) and the Elm City ChamberFest. Under her guidance, many of her students have gone on to win various prizes and honors. Kim is also a frequent adjudicator of competitions. Her major teachers include Erick Friedman, Kyung Yu, Rebecca Henry and Berl Senofsky, and important mentors include Aldo and Elizabeth Parisot, Sidney Harth, and Tokyo String Quartet. As a graduate student at Yale, she served as a teaching assistant to Erick Friedman. Kim holds a DMA from Yale University, where she also earned her BA, MM, and MMA degrees. As an undergrad, Kim was the recipient of the Bach Society Award. 

Kim recorded for a Boosey & Hawkes publication/CD entitled, 10 Violin Solos from the Masters, released by Hal Leonard. She performs on a 1705 Petrus Guarnerius violin. 

She and her husband, violinist and conductor Alexander Mandl, enjoy the adventures of raising their two young children, Miranda and Nikolas, frequenting their favorite coffee shops, biking, sailing, and traveling. 

More information on Philomusica Quartet and Milwaukee Musaik can be found here: www.philomusicaquartet.com 

www.milwaukeemusaik.org

Meet the Composer!

 

FVSO is excited to welcome Benjamin Krause to Appleton for our Opening Night concert on September 21 at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. In fact, he's the Ben in our concert title "Ben, Bonds, and Brahms" so you know we are serious!

Ben's piece is titled "Brief as Lightning" and will start the season and our first concert.

While you can meet Ben at our upcoming concert and ask him questions at our pre-concert talk, we wanted to start with some questions of our own.  

1. What was your inspiration for the piece? What brought you to this idea?

I knew that this piece was going to serve as a concert opener, basically a fanfare. I wanted to write a quick, energetic, and somewhat flashy piece that contained a lot of variety even within its short span. There wasn’t any specific source of inspiration other than these general musical ideas – the title, “Brief as the Lightning,” came later as I looked for language that alluded to a sense of kinetic, flashy energy. I was drawn to a passage from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that compares the wild and fleeting feelings of love to a lightning storm erupting at night. As with a lot of my music, a rhythmic impulse drives the piece forward. Over these rhythms come soaring melodies in the strings, somewhat reminiscent, to my mind, of the jazz-tinged Hollywood scores of the 40s and 50s.

2. What do you want people to take away from the performance?

I mainly hope that the audience is energized and thrilled by the music. There is a feeling I get from my favorite highly-propulsive pieces that is somehow both visceral and visual, and like all music it mostly bypasses my ability to describe meaningfully in words.

3. We are delighted you will be joining us for the concert. Is this the first time you will be joining an orchestra for a world premiere? If so, what are your thoughts? If not, how did that feel to experience?

I’m very fortunate to have had a previous orchestral work, Pathways, premiered by the Shepherd School Chamber Orchestra at Rice University and later performed by the Houston Symphony and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. Having so many musicians on stage to perform my work is always an overwhelming and slightly intimidating experience for me. Whenever I’m writing a piece of music, I want to do right by the performers, and have them in mind as much as I do the audience or myself.

4. Tell us a little about your other works.

I write a variety of music within the orchestral, chamber, and vocal or choral worlds. Even though my style encompasses many extremes and contrasts, as a whole I tend to be preoccupied with color and harmony, rhythmic energy, and the relationship between text and music. My Six Lowell Songs for voice and piano showcase impressionistic, colorful harmonies and my interest in poetry. Taxonomies of Pulse is a work for two pianos that, while still harmonically-oriented, is much more focused on energetic rhythmic patterns and the ways in which they can be combined and developed. I have also written a lot of choral music (such as “Hear Our Cry, O Lord”), which tends to be more influenced by early music and the Western sacred music tradition in general. My website is a good place to visit to hear more.

This piece is very special to FVSO, as it was commissioned by our music director Kevin Sütterlin and his wife April in honor of Dr. Monroe Trout, one of our most impactful supporters over the years and winner of the Winston Churchill Leadership Medal. Sadly, we lost Dr. Trout recently, but his legacy will live on with us. 

Join us on September 21 at 7:30pm for "Ben, Bonds, and Brahms" at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Cetner. Be sure to come early at 6:40pm for the pre-concert talk with Ben and Kevin, and stay late for a free public reception in the lobby.

PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS HERE!