~ PRESS RELEASE ~

February 1, 2008 - Mary Borkovitz (215-493-3010)

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PIANIST NATALIE ZHU TO PERFORM RECITAL ON MARCH 15    

-------- Yardley , PA , February 1, 2008January 12, 2008

The Bucks County Performing Arts Center (BCPAC) completes its 2007-8 concert series with a solo piano recital featuring internationally acclaimed pianist Natalie Zhu. She will perform major works by the great Romantic composer Robert Schumann and some unique transcriptions from the oeuvre of J.S. Bach.   Piano lovers and students of the piano, young and old, will not want to miss this opportunity to experience such outstanding keyboard skill and artistry.  BCPAC is proud to sponsor this recital as part of its 30th anniversary of providing major performing talent to local audiences in the Bucks County area.  The concert will take place on Saturday evening, March 15, at 7:30 P.M. in the historic Yardley Community Centre, 64 South Main St. in Yardley.

Pianist Natalie Zhu is a graduate of the Curtis Institute and has collaborated with major performing and recording artists.  She has also recently released a new solo recording of Mussorgsky’s towering “Pictures at an Exhibition”.   Winner of the 2003 Avery Fisher Career Grant, Natalie Zhu has been praised by the New York Times as “a pianist with wonderful technique and musical instincts who evidently has never heard a piano tone she could not make more beautiful.”  The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote “Zhu is an attentive, discreet chamber musician and a well-groomed Mozartean but with a demonic side…Zhu generated a virtuoso voltage in Schumann’s Kreisleriana  and Ginastera’s Sonata.”  And the San Francisco Chronicle  wrote ” Zhu came nimbly to the fore in Mozart’s F Major Sonata, contributing tenderness with style in the beautiful minor key variation set at the heart of the Sonata.”

Ms. Zhu began studies with Xiao-Cheng Liu at 6 and played her first recital at 9 in Beijing, and two years later emigrated with her parents to Los Angeles. At 15, she entered Curtis Institute to study with Gary Graffman where she received the prestigious Rachmaninov Award. Later she went on to study with Claude Frank at Yale. While still at Curtis, she made her European debut at the Festival de Sully et d’Orleans. Since then, she has been soloist with orchestras in Indianapolis, the Bergen Philharmonic, Riverside Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Astral Chamber Orchestra and the China Philharmonic.

As recitalist, she has played in New York’s Steinway and Merkin halls, in Munich, Philadelphia,   Portland, Oregon, and Beijing. A busy chamber musician, she has appeared with the Vermeer and Miami Quartets and with members of the Mendelssohn, Orion, Guarneri and Ying Quartets, as well as the Beaux Arts Trio. She has played at Tanglewood, Marlboro, Amelia Island, Skaneateles, Great Lake and Bay Chamber Music festivals. Beginning in 1997, she toured internationally with violinist Hilary Hahn.  They’ve since played in Hanoi, Bangkok, Shanghai, Taipei, Tokyo and Phnom Penh, after a tour which began in Geneva and included concerts in Hamburg, Lucerne, London and Lyon. They subsequently recorded a set of the Mozart Sonatas for the Deutsche Grammophon label.  In the 2006-7 season Natalie played in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s chamber music series, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series, the Kingston Music Festival and venues in California.

Over the years she has been the winner of many awards and prizes.  She received the 2006 Musical Fund Society Career Advancement Award, the 2003 Andrew Wolf Memorial Award, and the Astral Artistic Services national auditions award. She won grand prize in the Young Keyboard Artists competition in 1988 and in 1989, the Johanna Hodges Concerto Competition

Tickets are available for $12, $10 (seniors), $8 (students) and $5 for children under five.  Tickets are available by contacting the BCPAC office, online at their website (www.bcpac.org) or at the Yardley Community Center prior to each concert. 

BCPAC is a registered non-profit organization based in Lower Makefield Township.  Its mission is the creation of community through the arts.

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