Formal Concert 2024-10-05

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

Pianist Eugene Lee started piano lessons at the age of 4 and took lessons until graduating high school. He restarted piano lessons after a 32-year hiatus and has performed in several solo and chamber music recitals, Fortnightly Music Club concerts, California Concerto Festivals, as well as the Piano Texas and Cliburn Amateur Piano Festivals. He currently studies with Temirzhan Yerzhanov. His professional career includes co-founding an email company, VP Marketing at Cisco and Adobe, CEO of Socialtext, and is now CEO of Motiv8.

Pianist Hyun-Ju Sung has appeared as a solo pianist at various venues including Seoul Arts Center, Gyeonggi Arts Center, Kerr Cultural Center, Katzin Concert Hall, Chopin Hall, Weigel Hall, Hughes Hall, and Goldmark Hall. After she moved to the Bay Area in 2009, she gave four solo piano recitals at Santa Clara University Recital Hall and Tateuchi Hall throughout 2012-2018. This year, she will have her fifth recital on November 9th at Tateuchi Hall. This year’s recital would be a benefit concert for shelter animals in need. All proceeds from voluntary donations will go to HangDongSa (Instagram: @hds_adopt) where she has sponsored the livelihood of multiple animals in need over the past five years. She received both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea. In the United States, she received her second Master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music and Doctor of Musical Art degree from Arizona State University. Dr. Sung has been successful and enthusiastic as a piano teacher. She has been awarded Outstanding Music Teacher Diploma of recognition from the US International Music Foundation four times throughout the years 2017-2020 .She was also recognized as an outstanding dedicated teacher by the Bay Area Music Association from 2021-2024. Currently, she runs a private studio in San Jose as an active member of the Music Teachers’ Association of California and the Music Teachers National Association.

Taide Ding began studying piano at age 4 and studied solo piano throughout grade school with Dr. Ian Hominick at the University of Mississippi, and throughout college with Dr. Fred Weldy and Dr. William Wellborn at Stanford. While at Stanford, he also studied collaborative piano with Laura Dahl and chamber music with Dr. George Barth and worked as a vocal accompanist for Claire Giovannetti. He is an avid chamber musician, and he is a rehearsal pianist for the Berkeley Community Chorus, as well as the Chora Nova vocal ensemble in Berkeley. He has a particular interest in playing and creating transcriptions of orchestral works for chamber ensembles (recent examples include arranging Brahms’s D minor Piano Concerto for Piano Quintet and Bartok’s Dance Suite for piano four-hands). He finds the process of examining a work and recasting it in a new form so that audiences can experience it in a new light to be very enjoyable and meaningful.

Elbert Gong, a native of New Jersey, started studying piano at age 4 with Michael Jacobsen. From 2008 to 2015, he studied at the Juilliard Pre-college with Julian Martin. He has given solo and chamber recitals at the Juilliard School, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and at festivals throughout the US, Canada, and Spain. He won first prizes at the Julia Crane International Piano Competition, Penn State International Piano Competition, and Princeton Festival Piano Competition. As assistant manager of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, he organized a weekend retreat for the choir and a series of 30 holiday caroling mini-concerts. He accompanied the choir, as a tenor and pianist, on their 2019 South Africa tour. Currently located in the SF Bay area, he is a founding member of Ensemble Continuo chamber choir and is a regular at local jazz jams and Broadway cabaret events.