What is Music in May?
Mim brings renowned musicians to Santa Cruz in a weekend full of concerts. Our intent is to expand and broaden the audience of classical music, impact youth, increase awareness of and develop relationships with other local non-profit organizations serving the Santa Cruz community.
Amy Yang
Hailed by Harris Goldsmith of The New York Concert Review as "a magnificent artist and poet: everything she touches turns to gold--a Midas touch for tone and music", twenty-four-year-old pianist AMY JIAQI YANG has captured first prizes at many competitions and has performed in various renowned venues in the United States, Europe and Asia. Most recently, she toured the east coast with Musicians from Ravinia's Steans Institute, made her debut at The OK Mozart Festival, returned for her second season at Marlboro Music Festival, and competed in the Thirteenth Van Cliburn Piano Competition. This season will include Ms. Yang’s debut recital at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and recitals at Steinway Hall in New York. An experienced performer, Ms. Yang has concertized in major venues including the Kennedy Center, Columbia University, Lincoln Center’s Rose Studio, Cemal Resit Rey Concert Hall in Istanbul, and at The Ravinia Festival, to name a few. From a chamber recital, Peter Dobrin from The Philadelphia Inquirer remarked, "Yang made sense of complex passages by deftly highlighting one voice among many [and] elevated joy to the edge of rapture while still in control of a totally refined sound." Ms. Yang has garnered first prizes at the International Corpus Christi Young Artists' Competition, where she also received the grand prize, the National Chopin Piano Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation of New York City, and the International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition (Corpus Christi). She has been a soloist with the Houston Symphony, Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, Corpus Christi Symphony, Richardson Symphony, and Woodlands Symphony. Her performances have been heard on radio broadcasts in Poland, across the U.S., and on National Public Radio. Ms. Yang received degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. Currently, she is pursuing an Artist Diploma at The Yale School of Music, where she received the Elizabeth Parisot Prize for an Outstanding Piano Student. Her principal teachers are Hua Yang, Qing Li, Timothy Hester, Claude Frank, Robert McDonald, and Peter Frankl. A visual artist, she devotes her time to drawing, painting, and sculpting as well as reading great literature, playing classical guitar, and taking art classes at Yale. Her compositions have been premiered at Juilliard's Double Visions series. www.amyjyang.com