Formal Concert 2024-01-06

The Fortnightly Music Club In cooperation with The City of Palo Alto Arts and Culture Division
Palo Alto Art Center
1313 Newell Road

*guest performers

Violinist Sue-mi Shin, a native of Korea, has been an avid chamber musician, orchestral player, and educator in San Francisco Bay area. Currently she is a member of Opera San Jose orchestra and Monterey Symphony, and often performs with Symphony Silicon Valley and San Jose Chamber Orchestra among many others. As a chamber musician, she was a founding member of the LEAF piano trio and has served as a music director of SF Sonnet Ensemble. Currently, she teaches at Norte Dame Namur University in Belmont while she maintains a dedicated private studio and coaches young musicians under many youth orchestra organizations in the bay area. The winner of the Henry Janiac Young Artist’s Competition, Ms. Shin has given numerous solo and chamber music concerts in New York, Connecticut, Georgia, South Carolina, and California as well as overseas concerts in Spain, France and South Korea. She holds a BM degree from Manhattan School of Music and a MM degree from Yale University in Violin Performance. She also attended
the University of South Carolina in Columbia where she has worked on DMA program and conducting.

Cellist Katie Youn has appeared in concerts throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, in venues such as Boston’s Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall, Japan’s Suntory and Minatomirai Hall, Vancouver’s Orpheum Hall, and Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Basilica. She is the founding member of San Francisco based Shoreline Piano Trio and regularly appears with Sound Impact, Chamber Music Silicon Valley, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, and Sonnet Ensemble. Passionate about teaching, Katie is on cello faculty at Santa Clara University and has an active private cello studio in San Jose. Born in Korea and raised in Canada, Katie began cello lessons at the Vancouver Academy of Music at the age of 7. She moved to Boston to earn her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the New England Conservatory and at Boston University with Doctoral of Musical Arts.

Pianist Menghua Lin, a native of Taiwan. She was the winner of Yamaha Piano Competition Junior Division, Chautauqua Music Festival. Concerto Competition, Pennsylvania Music Teacher Association Piano Competition, Steinway Piano Competition, and Pittsburgh Concert Society Major Audition. Menghua has given more than 100 performances in the USA, Europe, and Asia. She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently she serves as piano faculty at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in Michigan and Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View.

Violist Noriko Iwamoto is actively engaged in performing chamber music and teaching the next generation of violists and violinists. She is a graduate of Dominican University of California where she obtained her B.M. Noriko attributes her intuition in music making to her experiences at the Accademia Chigiana in Italy as well as her work with orchestras and ensembles in Japan, Mexico and the US. Her goal, of late, is to expose audiences to more viola repertoire.

Pianist Jean Goyal left her native Singapore in 1985 to pursue music in the United States. She earned her B.Mus. in chamber music and piano accompanying and an M.A. in musicology from Indiana University. Her Ph.D. (ABD) from Stanford University was fortuitously interrupted by the birth of her first child. As her family matured, she rediscovered the joys of performing music, and through performance, returned to her study of music.

Soprano Keiko Kagawa serves as the artistic/general director/performer for Silicon Valley Opera www.siliconvalleyopera.com. Keiko will reprise Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” on 2/25 at the fundraiser for Pomeroy Recreation and Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco and Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” in Fall at Historic Hoover Theater in San Jose. Keiko teaches piano/voice to about 55 students weekly, conducts COSMO www.choralcosmo.com and Aldersgate United Methodist Church Choir. She has a Master of Vocal Performance degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her Undergraduate degree, a Bachelor’s degree in Vocal Performance and a Teaching Credential in Music Education are from Tokyo’s Kunitachi College of Music. She has performed over 15 operatic roles. Keiko also gives recitals here and in Japan.

Pianist Kumiko Nishikawa was born in Nara, Japan. She started to play piano at the age of 6. She graduated from Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts as a valedictorian and finished a post-graduate Certificate Program in Music. She moved to San Jose with her family in 2008 after working as a music teacher and an accompanist/pianist and giving recitals in Japan for many years. While living in San Jose she joined the church choir as a singer, and occasionally played the piano for worship services. She moved back to Japan for 5 and 1/2 years and returned to the Bay Area again in 2017. She is a regular accompanist for Mixed Chorus Kakehashi, Chorus Nagi, and San Francisco Japanese School Parent’s Chorus and works with many musicians as a pianist/singer. She recently got a Pilates instructor certificate to pursue her study of performance technique.

Cellist Walter Halvorsen started playing the piano at age 7 and cello in the fifth grade through a school music program. He preferred piano until he began private cello lessons at age 13. He holds a degree in Violoncello Performance from the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied with soloist Paul Tobias. He also studied at the New School of Music in Philadelphia with Orlando Cole of the Curtis String Quartet. He was a founding member of the Silverwood Trio and performed in chamber music series throughout the Boston area for 11 years. In the San Francisco Bay area, he has performed in chamber music ensembles on the Cal Arte Ensemble, Soiree Musicale and Stanford Hospital Bing concert series.