Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival Opens with Young Artists Audition Winners

The 81st Annual Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival opens on Tuesday, June 22 with the Young Artists Audition Winners Concert. The performances of seven gifted and serious musicians from all over Southern California will follow a pre-concert performance of the Youth Ensemble of Strings of Redlands’ Community School of Music.

This will be the 53rd year that the winners of the Young Artists Audition have opened the Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival. This year, four junior-division winners and three senior-division winners endured a full day of grueling auditions, each to win one of the Caroline Sewell Pike Memorial Scholarship Awards and the privilege of performing on the Redlands Bowl stage.

The winners have come with impressive credentials including performances at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Tanglewood Music Festival, and live on Los Angeles’ K-Mozart radio station.

Sixteen-year-old Nicholas Pappone from Altadena began studying the violin at the age of ten. A student at the Colburn School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles, he served as concertmaster of the Colburn Chamber Orchestra for their recent program at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. With his accompanist Ruth Ann Carlock, he will perform Jules Massenet’s “Meditation de Thais,” and “Scherzo-Tarantella, Opus 16,” a work by 19th-century Polish Henri Wieniawski.

Another violinist, 17-year-old Zlata Grekov, originally from Russia and now living in Yucaipa, performed her first solo concerto at age 5 with the Philharmonic Orchestra. She will perform the Fifth Movement of “Symphonie Espagnole” by Edouard Lalo. Her accompanist will be Lavinia Nastasa.

Also in the junior division, pianist Michele Lee, 17 of Northridge, will play Franz Liszt’s “Tarantella.” She has won numerous awards and scholarships, including grand prize at the Glendale Piano Competition and the Korea Times Competition. She also received scholarships to attend the Tanglewood Music Festival.

The final junior winner, 18-year-old Rosa Jang, recently finished her sophomore year at Idyllwild Arts Academy where she studies flute with Sara Andon. Jang won first prize in the Korean Music Magazine competition, among others. Accompanied by Lara Urrutia, she will play “Carmen Fantasy” by Bizet/Bourne.

In the senior division, pianist Hee-Seung Lee, 19 from Los Angeles, recently graduated from the Aube Tzerko Piano Academy of New Roads School as the Sony Scholar. A winner of the first place at the Glendale Piano Competition, she has performed with the Palisades Symphony and the Crossroads Chamber Orchestra, and she performed in Bing Theatre of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in a live broadcast for radio station K-Mozart. She will perform Chopin’s Scherzo Op. 31, No. 2 in b flat minor.

Twenty-year-old Los Angeles resident Andrew C. Leonard, a senior at University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, continues his clarinet studies at Juilliard in the Pre-College division with Alan Kay. Next season, he will perform the Copland Concerto with the Torrance Symphony and conductor Frank Fetta.

The final senior-division winner, 28-year-old soprano Jammie/cq Ochoa currently studies vocal performance at Cal State University, San Bernardino. A resident of Romoland, she began studying voice at age six. She will sing “Spring” and “Diaphenia” by Dominick Argento, and “Ah! Je ris de me voir” by Charles Gounod. Her accompanist will be Dr. Kris Carlisle.

At 7:15 p.m., the Youth Ensemble of Strings from the Community School of Music and the Arts will perform Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite for String Orchestra and John Williams Trilogy featuring the main theme from “Star Wars,” the theme from “Jurassic Park” and “Raiders March.” Directed by Karen Thurman-Palmer, Y.E.S. was founded in 1990 to offer exceptional ensemble opportunities for young string players.

Sponsored by the Associates of the Redlands Bowl, Inc., the Young Artists Auditions Concert will begin at 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, June 22. The intermission speakers will be Marilyn Showler, chair of the Young Artists Auditions, and Sandy Wallace, president of the Associates of the Redlands Bowl, Inc.

All of the Redlands Bowl Summer Music Festival programs are presented free of admission charge; a free-will offering is collected at intermission. The Redlands Bowl is located between Eureka Street and Grant Street, south of Brookside Ave.

For directions and more information, contact the Bowl office at (909)793-7316, or visit the Web site at www.redlandsbowl.org.