VANCOUVER METROPOLITAN ORCHESTRA
21st Season Spring Concert
PROGRAMME
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
Glinka: Capriccio Brilliante on the Jota Aragonesa
Gimenez: La boda de luis Alonso
Saint-Saens: Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28
Marquez: Danzon No. 2
Featuring
19-year-old pianist Sunny Lin Kai Zhang has performed in some of the foremost venues in the world, including New York Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Beijing Concert Hall, Vancouver Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Chan Centre, and Orpheum Theatre. He has performed numerous concertos with the Rimsky-Korsakov String Quartet in Canada and Chopin’s Second and Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concertos with the Grosseto Symphony Orchestra in Italy. He performed Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with the Vancouver Opera Orchestra at the Chan Centre in 2021 and Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with the Vancouver Metropolitan Opera in 2023. He will be performing the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto with the Vancouver Metropolitan Opera in February 2024, having recently made his Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium debut in 2023.
Sunny has participated in many competitions: He won First Prizes at the Seattle International Piano Competition, the Carmel Clavier International Piano Competition in solo and concerto categories, the Orbetello International Piano Competition for Young Artists, and the Pacific International Piano Competition. He won top prizes at Steinway, San Jose, Sviatoslav Richter, Lancaster, and Enkor International Piano Competition, among many others. In Canada, he won second prize in the Canadian Music Competition, 1st prize at Provincial Arts BC, received RCM’s Gold Medal for the highest grade in the LRCM certificate and became a Steinway Young Artist at the age of 16.
Frequently participating in International Masterclasses around the world, Sunny has attended festivals in Philadelphia, New York, Nancy, Grosseto, Weimar, and Cleveland, working with renowned professors such as Gary Graffman, Dang Thai Song, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Stanislav Ioudenitch, Lydia Artymiw, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Robert Levin, Rena Shereshevskaya, Jon Nakamatsu, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Susan Starr, Eleanor Sokoloff, Antonio Pompa-Baldi, Alexander Braginsky, etc.
His most recent musical project, “Sunshine Tour,” took place in the Summer of 2023, when he visited China for the first time in over a decade. Born in China but raised in Canada, Sunny has not returned to his birth country since he was five years old. This tour presented solo and duo recitals with viola nationwide at Renmin University, Dalian University, ShenYang Golden Steinway Hall, Nanjing Steinway Gallery, and the International Center of Music and Arts Beijing. He recently continued this tour with a solo recital playing to a full house at the GuLangYu Concert Hall in Xiamen, China.
Sunny’s main teachers have included long-time mentor Eugene Skovorodnikov and renowned professor Matti Raekallio. He is currently a sophomore at the Juilliard School of Music, studying with Hung-Kuan Chen.
The winner of the Cascade Symphony’s Rising Star Competition 2023, Lin at the age of 11, made her solo orchestral debut with the conductor of maestro Michael Miropolsky. She has achieved brilliant results in numerous competitions, including the 65th Kocian Violin Competition held in the Czech Republic in May 2023, Lin won the first prize and was applauded by the jury and audience. In addition, at the Vancouver International Music Competition held in Vancouver, Canada this past October, she won the first grand prize in the strings division in all age categories from 8 to 35 years old.
Lin won the second prize at the International Arthur Grumiaux Competition for Young Violinists 2022 in Belgium. She has also been the first prize winner at the Crescendo International Music Competition, the Paris International Music Competition, the London Festival Competition where she received the Judges Best Performance Award, and the New York Concert Festival International Competition where she received the Grand Prix and was named International Soloist of the Year 2019. Lin has performed several times in recitals at Carnegie Hall and in Bösendorfer Hall, Mozarthaus, and Amadeus International School while on an International Concert Scholarship Tour to Vienna. She was selected as an honored solo performer by The Japan-Seattle Suzuki Institute and had a recital at Seattle Pacific University in 2018. Lin was invited to participate in the Cremona Music Festival in Italy as the youngest ambassador from Japan when she was five. Lin appeared on Cremona local TV and featured in the newspaper, La Provincia in 2017.
After beginning violin at age three in Tokyo, Lin moved to the Seattle area and continued her studies with Mihoko Hirata. She joined the Coleman Studio as a student of Jan Coleman at age eight. Since joining the studio, she has won several local competitions including Simon-Fiset and PAFE. She currently studies with Prof. Simon James (San Francisco Conservatory of Music) and receives instruction in piano collaboration and music theory from Hiro David and Chien-Lin Liu. Participated in solo master classes with Gérard Poulet and Tamaki Kawakubo.
Lin received the MPulse merit scholarship award for Center Stage Strings at the University of Michigan, which she attended this summer. Lin was selected as one of 33 of Seattle’s most talented young musicians to participate in the Seattle Chamber Music Society Academy, an intensive pre-college chamber music program (directed by James Ehnes, to develop the next generation of world-class chamber musicians). Lin participates in master classes with SCMS musicians and is currently receiving weekly coaching. The instrument used is a 1677 Nicolò Amati, loaned by Nippon Violin.