March 18th, 2008

By Darla Martin Tucker

With grace, sensitivity and poise, La Sierra University student Julia Park played the intricate runs of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23.

The audience of alumni, students and faculty responded by applauding Park back to the stage for repeated bows and bouquets after her performance as this year’s concerto competition winner. Her portrayal of the Mozart work served as the centerpiece for the university’s 50th Annual Concerto Concert held in Hole Memorial Auditorium on March 8.

The music department titled the event, “An Evening in Vienna,” and offered piano, orchestral and choral performances of works by Schubert, Haydn and Beethoven.

Park won the annual concerto competition last November, earning her place as the featured soloist for the concert held during La Sierra’s 85th Homecoming weekend. She was the first concerto winner to perform on the music department’s new, black Steinway grand piano.

“She played very beautifully. She has a lovely Mozart touch,” said Anita Nørskov Olsen, retired La Sierra music professor and piano teacher. Olsen, a descendent of famed fifteenth century artist Fra Filippo Lippi, taught at La Sierra between 1968 and 1990. The university offers an endowed scholarship in Olsen’s name. She continues to teach piano from her Loma Linda studio.

Olsen remembers the earlier days of the music department’s annual concerto concert. The late Perry Beach, former chair of La Sierra’s music department, began organizing the concerts in 1958. They provided a mechanism for piano students to gain experience performing with piano accompaniment.

The university orchestra eventually began performing with the concerto players, first under the baton of long-time orchestral conductor, violinist and scholarship namesake, Alfred Walters.

During the 1970s and 1980s the concerts featured full concertos by Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Mozart and other composers. Different students played the various concerto movements, accompanied by the orchestra.

Sometime after 1990, selection for the concerts became competitive.

“It was very different in the days when it was not competitive. The best students were chosen by their teachers. They prepared from the fall and had many rehearsals with the orchestra,” Olsen said. “It gave many more students an opportunity to play.”

Miss Claire Hodgkins conducted the orchestra and concerto concerts from 1974 to 1981. Students under her baton “were very ready. Miss Hodgkins had so many rehearsals with them, that each soloist performed very well,” Olsen recalled.

Jeff Kaatz, the university’s vice president of advancement and a cello professor in the music department, soloed for the concerto concert in the early 1980s. He also conducted the La Sierra Symphony Orchestra during that decade. “As a student it was an incredible honor to be selected to perform as a soloist with the La Sierra orchestra. … Compared to other opportunities I had experienced at that point in my life, this was by far the most significant,” he said.

“For most musicians, performing as a soloist with an orchestra is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and only top tier college or university music programs are able to provide this training opportunity,” Kaatz said. “Quality students will find such an opportunity in La Sierra's music program.”

Kaatz is one of four La Sierra music professors who have soloed during past concerto concerts. Donald Thurber, director of music education, performed in 1966. Music department Chair Kimo Smith played piano and organ solos in 1972 and 1981, respectively. Elvin Rodriguez, director of keyboard studies and music technology, soloed in 1982 and in 1985.

“It was fun, a great experience,” Thurber said of his performance.

The March 8 concert lineup included Franz Schubert’s Andante, D. 968 and the toe-tapping Trois Marches Militaires, D. 733, four-hand piano works performed by Rodriguez and La Sierra Symphony Orchestra conductor and pianist, Daniel Cummings.

La Sierra’s director of vocal studies, soprano Raejin Lee, gave elegant performances of Schubert’s Du bist die Ruh, D. 776 and Die Forelle, D. 550. Cummings accompanied on piano.

The program included two Scottish folksongs for piano trio by Joseph Haydn, performed by concertmaster and violinist Darlene Nick, cello performance major Miguel Fernandez and Cummings.

The La Sierra University Chamber Singers conducted by E. Earl Richards II, La Sierra’s director of choral studies, performed Schubert’s well-known “The Lord is My Shepherd,” D. 776.

The La Sierra Symphony Orchestra capped the evening with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36.

Park also won the second annual Marcia Specht Guy Memorial Award, a $2,500 cash scholarship presented by university President Randal Wisbey and Lenore Lowry, Specht Guy’s sister. Lowery is a founder of the scholarship.

Violinist Laura Trupp and pianist Jed de la Paz won the first Marcia Specht Guy awards last year as well as that year’s concerto competition.

The late Marcia Specht Guy, a pre-nursing major and accomplished pianist, performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1951 with the La Sierra College Orchestra. She was a faithful attendee of campus music events and the wife of religion professor Fritz Guy, La Sierra’s first president.

Park is a second-time winner of the concerto competition. She won the contest two years ago as a freshman and performed the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2.

Park discovered she was this year’s winner a few days after competing against nine other student musicians on Nov. 30. The win was a surprise since Park had decided just two weeks prior that she would participate again. She had been playing the Mozart piece for fun over the summer.

In preparation for competition, Park practiced the Mozart concerto three or more hours a day and once logged a six-hour rehearsal. That effort resulted in an injured arm requiring hot and cold water massage therapy.

“I saw it [winning announcement] on the bulletin board and I couldn’t really believe it because I had such a short period of time to prepare for it,” Park said.

She credits her teacher, La Sierra’s Rodriguez, for much of her success. “I never knew I had any sort of talent in piano until I met him. He’s like a good friend to me as well as a teacher. I would say he’s a role model, a Christian as well as a teacher, a musician. I used to get stage fright all the time. I can now perform because he taught me how,” Park said.

Cummings and Stephen Tucker, assistant music professor at the University of California, Irvine and conductor of the UCI Symphony, judged the students for this year’s competition. Five piano students, two vocalists and a violin and viola duo played in individual, 10-minute sessions for the judges.

Cummings and Tucker critiqued the students’ technical accuracy, musicianship and their musicality, or “sense of phrasing. Do they have a clear idea of what they want to do with the piece?” Cummings said. He joined La Sierra last October as an adjunct faculty member and conductor of the La Sierra Symphony Orchestra.

“Julia had nice places at the ends of phrases where she would wait and take a little time before going into the cadence. She had a very refined sense of [shaping and phrasing],” Cummings said.

Park, a native of Korea, is pursuing a life-long love of music that emanates from her family. When she was just old enough to sit at the piano, Park began imitating her older piano-playing sister, Jaien, who later studied violin at La Sierra. Jaien is pursuing a performer’s certificate at LSU while working as a dentist. She graduated from Loma Linda University’s School of Dentistry last summer.

Park, who currently teaches two piano students, plans to continue teaching and performing. She wants to give concerts benefiting university missions, students and other causes. “I really like teaching,” she said. “I am very inspired by my own teacher.”

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)