Award-winning Korean-American pianist Esther Park will perform Sunday, March 26, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, closing the 2016-2017 UAB Piano Series.
The UAB Piano Series, presented by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music, brings the world’s finest pianists to Birmingham. Professor of Piano and Artist-in-Residence Yakov Kasman, a Van Cliburn medalist, directs the series.
Park’s performance is set for 4 p.m., in UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center, Reynolds-Kirschbaum Recital Hall. Park will perform a program of works by Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy and Messiaen. General admission tickets are $15, $5 for students through grade 12 and UAB employees, and free to UAB students. Call 205-975-2787 for tickets. Call the Department of Music at 205-934-7376 or visit www.uab.edu/cas/music.
A Juilliard graduate, Park is the winner of the 2013 Jose Roca International Piano Competition and 2013 Russian International Music Competition, as well as the 2009 “Prix Amadeo” and Chopin Gesellschaft Klavierwettbewerb. She received top prizes at the third San Marino International Piano Competition, the third China Shanghai International Piano Competition, the sixth Paderewski International Piano Competition, the National Chopin Competition, Hilton Head International Competition and the 14th New Orleans International Piano Competition.
She has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Houston Symphony, Yale Philharmonia, Corpus Christi Symphony, Filharmonia Pomorska, Poland, Orchestra Filarmonica, Romania, Shanghai Philharmonic, China, Shreveport Symphony, the Juilliard Symphony and the New Jersey Symphony, and in recitals across the United States, as well as Asia and major European cities.
Park gave a five-city recital tour in Korea, and has performed at the Juilliard Theater in New York City, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Halls’ Weill Recital Hall, Salle Cortot in Paris, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and Palau de la Musica, Valencia, Spain, and on the Kum-Ho Music society’s Prodigy Series. She has appeared at the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara), the Aspen Music Festival, the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival in Maine, the Tel-Hai International Music Festival in Israel and the Van Cliburn-TCU Institute in Texas.
Born in Pusan, Korea, in 1984, Park began to play in public soon after her first piano lessons at the age of 4. She moved to the United States in 1995, after being accepted to the Juilliard School’s pre-college division. Park completed undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Juilliard School, studying with Yoheved Kaplinsky; she has also studied at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater, Hannover, under the tutelage of Bernd Goetzke, and received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale. Park received the Artist Diploma and Master of Musical Arts degrees at the Yale School of Music under the guidance of Boris Berman. Park is an assistant professor of piano at East Tennessee State University.